Cooking the Frog?

A frog jumps out of hot water, but if it’s in lukewarm water and you turn the heat up slowly, it cooks because it never knows when to jump.  Are we like the frog, not knowing when to bail out as various systems of government, health care, education, welfare, law enforcement and justice fail?

In the face of a failing society, the church is apathetic as the frog. If we don't act or seek to understand God's provision for the impending emergency, we may be cooked too.

General Conference President Robert  Folkenberg  could have been speaking for Christians in America when he said,  “We are the Laodicean Church.” That church in Revelation 3 was lukewarm because they thought they were rich and increased with goods, but it ended in an earthquake circa 63 AD.

When Christ was asked about the end of the world, He said to understand the book of Daniel. “Daniel” means God is my judge, but we should remember that in the Bible’s book of Judges, judges were deliverers, like Gideon and Samson.

So the book of Daniel is about deliverance, and we can see it in the life and death issues that Daniel and his friends faced in Daniel 1-6. Christ said…

“When you shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not…then let them…flee to the mountains and let him that is on the housetop not go down…to take anything out of his house: Woe to them that are with child…And pray  that your flight be not in the winter (nor on the Sabbath, Matt 24:20) Mark 13:14-18.

What did Christ mean? Could He have meant military in our cities when martial law is declared in a state of emergency? This happened in New Orleans when people didn’t flee and they were sent to detention centers. Could it happen to us?

“Christians should be preparing for what is soon to break upon the world as an overwhelming surprise… by diligently studying the word of God and striving to conform their lives to its precepts.” PK 626

Many Christians today are crammed into cities with no thought of how to comply with warning. With this context in mind, please consider a second article submitted to Ministry Magazine in the right column…

The Lunar Calendar, Creation Calendar why it's biblical and the current one isn't

References for the article:

A Surprise Context of the New Covenant Promise
God’s Secret Revealed

Summary: The context of the New Covenant Promise includes God’s gathering Israel and Judah to the land that He gave for Abraham’s descendants. This includes Christians and it offers survival when no man can buy or sell without a mark that brings God’s wrath.

#          #          #

“Surely the Lord GOD does nothing unless He reveals His secret counsel to His servants the prophets. ⁸ A lion has roared! Who will not fear?”[1]

Lions hunt in packs with a strategy. The young lions hide downwind from a herd and an old lion goes upwind to give a roar. The herd stampedes away from the roar toward crouching young lions that seek their prey. It would be better for the herd to run toward the roar.

Christ is “the Lion…of Judah”[2] and just as Judah was the primary defender for Israel anciently, we want to run toward His roar and be counted on His side in the time ahead.

So what does Amos 3:7,8 mean, “a lion has roared”? Amos begins, “two years before the earthquake, he said, The Lord will roar…”[3]  This is about an earthquake. The previous page says, “The Lord also shall roar…the heavens and earth shall shake.”[4]

This is bigger than Japan or the Lisbon Earthquake in 1755 felt on three continents. Roaring “like young lions”[5]  is also the context for the earthquake when Isaiah was called to be a prophet. “The foundations of the thresholds trembled…while the temple was filling with smoke,”[6]  probably because the censor tipped over.

This was “in the year of king Uzziah’s death,” (verse 1) and Zechariah confirms an earthquake,  “You will flee just as you fled before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah.”[7]

All of this may sound as far off as the lions in Africa, but if we look at the context of the previous text, it’s about the impending “day of the Lord” when God says, “I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity…Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.”[8]

President Obama's speech on May 19 may open the door for Jerusalem’s calamity by calling for Israel to surrender their land to pre-1967 borders that were indefensible. “All nations” in Zechariah 14:2 may mean all Arab or Muslim nations.

Every time the United States has taken action to force Israel to give land for peace, it has been accompanied within 24 hours by a hurricane, tornado or natural disaster in the US. This is described in a book, “Eye to Eye,” which takes its title from Zechariah 2:8, “He who touches you, touches the apple of [God’s] eye.”

The stage is set for gathering all nations against Jerusalem to divide land that God covenanted to give to Abraham’s descendants. We could soon hear the Lion’s roar. When we do, we need to understand the biblical message, like David who ran toward the giant.

“A lion has roared, who will not fear?” reminds us of another message so important that it has the imagery of messengers (the Greek word, aggelos means messenger) flying “in the midst of heaven [satellite-supported media?) …Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment is come.”[9]

The Greek word for “judgment” is krisis, and we seem to be getting there. The context of the crisis in Revelation 14 is the last verses of Revelation 13 where the image beast (beasts represent kingdoms—dominions of kings or governments, and this beast is an image or look-alike to the first beast in Revelation 13 which early Americans believed was the papal Old World Order that they fled.

The image beast (United Nations/New World Order) will cause everyone to comply with false worship and be marked or they can’t buy or sell. Christians who take their faith seriously cannot go along with this, or the wrath of God will be on them![10]  It will be a huge emergency and when it starts, there must be an initial provision for Jews in Israel or it will be obvious genocide.

“That which God purposed to do for the world through Israel, the chosen nation, He will finally accomplish through His church on earth today…even His covenant-keeping people…and to them will be fulfilled all the covenant promises made by Jehovah to that ancient people.” [11]

But the covenant includes the “Promised Land.” It is God’s provision for believers in the end-time and this includes Christians! “If you are Christ’s, you are Abraham’s seed [descendants], and heirs according to the promise [of land].”[12]   God will defend His covenant-keeping people who, like Israel coming out of Egypt, make a covenant with Him and are not afraid of the giants as Israel was then.

Paul wrote, “Brethren, I would not that you should be ignorant how that our fathers…all passed through the sea [Exodus]… all these things happened unto them for examples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.”[13]

Christians say, “the Bridegroom comes,”[14] but we forget that we can marry the Bridegroom by making a covenant as Israel did at Sinai, and that Paul said those things were an example for us at the end of the world.

It took faith for Caleb and Joshua to say, The giants are not a problem—and we can do it too, if this understanding of Scripture is correct and I appeal your consideration of its plain meaning.

Understanding God’s plan for the end-time requires us to have the courage of David who ran toward the giant and of Daniel who wasn’t afraid of lions. The devil is like a roaring lion and he is trying to scare us from the direction we need to go. We might credit him with changing Ellen White’s message.

Seventh-day Adventist founder, Ellen White, had her last title, “The Captivity and Restoration of Israel” changed by publishers to a meaningless “Prophets and Kings.” Her title cited Jeremiah 30:3--“I will bring again the captivity of my people, Israel and Judah…and cause them to return to the land that I gave their fathers, and they shall possess it…latter days,” verse 24.

All Christians should see this as the best option v New World Order, or we suffer the wrath of God for accepting false worship and a mark of the beast’s authority.

Christians are supposed to take the Bible as it reads…

“I will take you from among the heathen and gather you out of all nations and bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean…

²⁶ A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.

²⁷ And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do [them].

²⁸ And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.” Ezekiel 36:24-28 is the context for dry bones coming together after a shaking in Ezekiel 37, and where Ezekiel takes two sticks, one for Israel (Christians who accept the torah?) and one stick for Judah (Jews who accept Messiah?) and they become one stick in Ezekiel’s hand. See also Jeremiah 31:8,10,17,31-33, for parallel meaning.

We probably won’t live to see Christ come without having His law written in our hearts because only the pure in heart shall see God and live. It can be our choice to have His law written in our hearts if we are willing to accept the context of that promise (being gathered to the land of the covenant) and this could protect us from a mark enforced by New World Order that brings God’s wrath everywhere else.

Why should Ministry run this? Because the aggelos (messenger) to Laodicea is blind and naked. Blind means we don’t see what’s coming. Naked means our loins are not girded with truth.[15] Not having a wedding garment on, ministers to churches that are lukewarm because they are “rich and increased with goods” will be thrown out when the King comes to inspect guests for the wedding,[16] if we can believe the imagery implied in Christ’s words.

In the wedding parable of Matthew 25, foolish virgins lacked oil and light to find their way to the wedding. Oil comes from two olive trees representing the Old and New Testament.[17] This imagery suggests a lack of oil for Christians who neglect the Old Testament where we gain insight on our need of a covenant to marry Christ as His bride, and our need of the New Covenant Promise which has the context of the land God covenanted to give Abraham’s seed.  The Old Testament also offers insights to our roots in a Jewish heritage--10-tribe Israel was scattered among the nations that God promised to gather in the latter days.[18]

The New Testament helps us see an impending time when we cannot buy or sell without a mark of false worship, but New World Order will surely make an initial provision for Jews. Christ will make them of the synagogue of Satan “who say that they are Jews but are not.”[19] We must be willing to renew a solemn covenant with God as Israel when they returned after their exile.

Our time may be impending. God told Ezekiel to lie on his side 390 days, each day for a year of Israel’s apostasy.[20] But God also said if they didn’t learn their lessons, He would punish them “seven times more.”[21] 7 x 390 years = 2730 years. Google supports 720 BC for the Assyrian captivity. 2730 – 720 = 2010, but with no year “0,” Israel’s exile could end in 2011.

Major events have marked the end of an era for Israel in the past. We have looked at prophecy suggesting a similar serious event to signal the end of God’s forbearance, and a time of impending Judgment. Will the Lion roar, and will we act with understanding?