Peril of Forgetting …

Ion Mihai Pacepa wrote in the Washington Times, “It is worth remembering that Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, chose to live in a Soviet gulag instead of continuing to develop the power of death.

Sakharov explained in 1968, "I wanted to alert the world to the grave perils threatening the human race of thermonuclear extinction, ecological catastrophe, famine."

Even Igor Kurchatov, the KGB academician who headed the Soviet nuclear program from 1943 until his death in 1960, expressed deep qualms of conscience about helping to create weapons of mass destruction.

He warned in an article written together with several other Soviet nuclear scientists not long before he died, "The rate of growth of atomic explosives is such that in just a few years the stockpile will be large enough to create conditions under which the existence of life on earth will be impossible.’”

Since those grave announcements were made, the world has plunged into much greater nuclear peril than they knew.

Russia has a greater arsenal of more sophisticated thermonuclear missiles today. China has greatly enlarged both its nuclear arsenal and its ability to carry them – especially to the U.S.

A totally irresponsible government like North Korea has both nuclear warheads and missiles capable of hitting even some parts of the U.S. and Europe. The long-term religiously based hostility between Pakistan and India makes their possession of nuclear tipped missiles extremely frightening.

Both have military plans that consider a nuclear war conceivable and winnable. They may be the first to fight a nuclear war since its use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Unless something bold and daring is soon done, Iran will have nuclear tipped missiles. Their version of Islam considers “martyrdom in the cause of Allah” to be the ultimate act of faith.

Nuclear martyrdom is not an unacceptable concept to the Mad Mullahs of Tehran. And if Iran gets nuclear weapons, count on it, other Muslim nations will get them too.

All of this is fitting into a larger and more familiar pattern – one that students of Bible Prophecy have seen for a long time.
The events of the last three and a half years before Christ returns are spelled out in all their graphic horror in the Bible.

This period is called “the Great Tribulation.” Prophecies of this period are strewn all over the Bible and are correlated with the events that surround the Messiah-Jesus’ return to earth. Isaiah foresaw this as follows:

“Behold, the Lord lays the earth waste, devastates it, distorts its surface and scatters its inhabitants … The earth is also polluted by its inhabitants, for they transgressed laws, violated statutes, broke the everlasting covenant. Therefore, a curse devours the earth, and those who live in it are held guilty. Therefore, THE INHABITANTS OF THE EARTH ARE BURNED, AND FEW MEN ARE LEFT.” (Isaiah 24:1, 5-6 NAS)

“Behold, THE DAY OF THE LORD is coming, Cruel, with fury and burning anger, to make the land a desolation; And He will exterminate its sinners from it. For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light; the sun will be dark when it rises and the moon will not shed its light. Thus I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud and abase the haughtiness of the ruthless. I WILL MAKE MORTAL MAN SCARCER THAN PURE GOLD AND MANKIND THAN THE GOLD OF OPHIR.” (Isaiah 13:9-12 NAS)

Note that both of these prophecies refer to the final great judgment of the whole world that accompanies the return of Jesus the Messiah. Both point out that earth’s population that survives will be few in number. Both speak of fire devouring the earth and its people.

Ezekiel foresees this same period as he describes Russia, the power from the extreme NORTH that leads Iran and a Muslim confederacy against Israel,

“You will come from your place out of the remote parts of the north, you and many peoples with you, all of them riding on horses, a great assembly and a mighty army; and you will come up against My people Israel like a cloud to cover the land. It shall come about in the last days that I will bring you against My land, so that the nations may know Me when I am sanctified through you before their eyes, O Gog … “I will call for a sword against him on all My mountains,” declares the Lord God. “Every man’s sword will be against his brother. With pestilence and with blood I will enter into judgment with him; and I will rain on him and on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him, a torrential rain, with hailstones, fire and brimstone.” (Ezekiel 38:15-6, 21-22 NAS)

I certainly believe that God can supernaturally rain these things upon men. But I believe that God allows man to destroy himself with weapons of his own invention.

The Book of Revelation also describes this same time period.

“And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another; and a GREAT SWORD was given to him … When the Lamb broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, ‘Come.’ I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. AUTHORITY WAS GIVEN TO THEM OVER A FOURTH OF THE EARTH, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.” (Rev. 6:4, 7-8)

Revelation 9 verses 17 and 18 predict that 200 million soldiers from Asia will kill a third of earth’s remaining population. They will do it with “fire and the smoke and the brimstone.”

I believe that the world is now set up for this final chapter before the Messiah comes and destroys this present world order and sets up God’s Kingdom.

The real issue is – are you ready?
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