We focus on prophecy each week for about five-minutes.
Christians who are critical, even sarcastic, about emphasizing prophecy argue that it’s study has only negative effects on your walk with the Lord.
Not according to the apostle Peter. He spent a great deal of time in his second letter discussing things to come. Then he asked, “what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God” (3:11-12).
The apostle Paul wrote extensively about the resurrection and rapture of the church in his first letter to the Thessalonians. Then he told them to “comfort one another with these words.”
Personal holiness and comfort are just two of the spiritual by- products of studying Bible prophecy.
There are approximately 500 yet-to-be-fulfilled prophecies. Knowing what they say, we expect to see certain trends in the world.
We’re not saying these trends are the fulfillment of prophecy – only that things seem to be unfolding just as you’d expect.
The Bible describes a yet future period of seven years during which the entire planet will experience tribulation like never before. One prominent feature of that Great Tribulation is the world ruler we know best as the Antichrist. At one point in the middle of the Tribulation, he will exercise complete control over his citizens. No one will be able to buy or sell anything without first having sworn total allegiance to him. It will be the ultimate totalitarian state.
His ability to control every aspect of a person’s life isn’t going to happen overnight. Things must already be in place for him when he seizes power.
You’d therefore expect the world to be moving in the direction of surrendering our rights.
And that is precisely what is occurring on account of rapid advances in technology.
APNews posted an article titled, Did 2018 usher in a creeping tech dystopia?
Excerpts:
We may remember 2018 as the year when technology’s dystopian potential became clear, from Facebook’s role enabling the harvesting of our personal data for election interference to a seemingly unending series of revelations about the dark side of Silicon Valley’s connect-everything ethos.
The list is long:
High-tech tools for immigration crackdowns.
Fears of smartphone addiction.
YouTube algorithms that steer youths into extremism.
An experiment in gene-edited babies.
Doorbells and concert venues that can pinpoint individual faces and alert police.
Repurposing genealogy websites to hunt for crime suspects based on a relative’s DNA.
Automated systems that keep tabs of workers’ movements and habits.
Electric cars in Shanghai transmitting their every movement to the government.It’s been enough to exhaust even the most imaginative sci-fi visionaries.
More awaits us in 2019, as surveillance and data-collection efforts ramp up and artificial intelligence systems start sounding more human, reading facial expressions and generating fake video images so realistic that it will be harder to detect malicious distortions of the truth.
Internet pioneer Vint Cerf said he and other engineers never imagined their vision of a worldwide network of connected computers would morph 45 years later into a surveillance system that collects personal information or a propaganda machine that could sway elections.
https://www.apnews.com/32d7fa7625044044950053a793448ee0
Read the Bible and this is the kind of Last Days trend you’d expect.
As believers, we expect that Jesus could return at any moment.
Jesus promised He’d return to rapture His church – which entails the resurrection of the dead in Christ of the Church Age, then the translation from earth to Heaven of all living believers.
It is presented in the Bible as an imminent (any-moment) event.
Are you ready for the rapture? If not, get ready, stay ready, and keep looking up. Ready or not, Jesus is coming!