Chapter Ten

The Battle of Gog And Magog

During the Millennium, according to Revelation 20, Satan will be bound and out of the way for this entire thousand-year period: “And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season” (Revelation 20:1–3).

There will have been no problems with demons or devils for a thousand years. They’re all going to be in prison with the Devil, thank the Lord. It’s going to be a much nicer world then, with no more Devil and the curse largely lifted, a beautiful, wonderful, heaven on earth. Except for one little problem: There are going to be some people there who don’t really belong in such a heavenly place.

Although we won’t have to battle with the Devil and his spiritual forces during this millennial period, we’ll still have to grapple with the rebellious nature of some of the people we’re going to be ruling over—the unregenerate, willful hearts of men who will still have free choice to do good or evil. They won’t be influenced by satanic spiritual influences any longer, but they will still have their own wicked hearts if they are unsaved.

There will still be free will and there will still be people who disobey, even whole nations that will rebel. As a result, the curses of God are going to fall on them and they’re going to have drought and famine and all kinds of judgments. The nations which refuse to obey and are rebellious will be punished. (See Zechariah 14:16–19.)

Throughout the Millennium, Jesus and the resurrected saints will be the rulers of the earth, and Jesus will reign with “a rod of iron” (Revelation 19:15), and whether they like it or not, “righteousness shall cover the earth as the waters cover the seas” (Isaiah 11:9). Those who obey and submit willingly to the kingdom of God will be blessed for it. So it appears it’s going to be another trial period, another chance to repent. God will be giving the unsaved a second chance, and thank God, He is going to salvage some that are a little more worthy than the others.

God is also going to try to show the world what they should have done and how they should have done it, how they should have behaved, and what His kingdom would have been like if they had obeyed Him. The Lord will mercifully and patiently try this for a thousand years, but even after all that, some people will still stubbornly refuse to learn.

The “little season”—Satan’s second coming

At the very beginning of the Millennium, immediately after Jesus Christ and His heavenly forces conquer the Antichrist and his forces at the Battle of Armageddon, Satan will be bound in the bottomless pit “till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.” It is this final “little season” that we are now going to deal with.

“And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever” (Revelation 20:7–10).

At the end of the Millennium, Satan is going to be released from his prison in the heart of the earth where he’s been held for a thousand years. He’ll be given his freedom briefly—just long enough to deceive the nations again, the unconverted and unsaved who survived into the Millennium.

“He shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle.” The Bible has mentioned Gog and Magog before, in relation to the Antichrist and his invasion of Israel and the great Battle of Armageddon, as described in Ezekiel 38 and 39. But these are two different battles that you don’t want to get mixed up, because although they both involve “Gog and Magog,” they are a thousand years apart.

The Battle of Armageddon is led by “Gog”—a name given to the Antichrist in Ezekiel 38—from “the land of Magog”—and occurs at the end of the wrath of God period. This is when Jesus and His followers conquer his forces and take over the earth at the very beginning of the Millennium. But the Battle of Gog and Magog takes place at the very end of the Millennium, after the thousand years is over and Satan is released from his prison for “a little season.”

The fact that Gog and Magog feature in both the Battle of Armageddon at the beginning of the Millennium and the Battle of Gog and Magog at the end of the Millennium shows that it is going to be an attempted revival of the same empire and the same forces over which the Antichrist and the false prophet ruled. Only this time, the Devil won’t be working through the Antichrist, but the Devil himself will personally try to revive his anti-Christ satanic kingdom, the kingdom of Gog and Magog that he had before the Millennium.

In spite of the visible, all-powerful kingdom of Christ on earth for a thousand years, a lot of people are obviously still not going to receive Jesus as their Savior and will be deceived and misled to follow the Devil when he comes back at the end of the Millennium.

This Battle of Gog and Magog is sort of like the Devil’s second coming. He comes back to lead his people again, and they certainly will be his people if they haven’t received Jesus by this time. Imagine, even after a thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ in person, they will still rebel against the King of kings and His heavenly kingdom on earth! It shows you how clever the Devil is and how gullible people can be.—To think that they could actually overthrow the kingdom of Christ after a thousand years of His supernatural, visible, personal reign on earth.

Imagine, most of the saints will have literally come back from the dead. There will be millions, perhaps billions, who will have returned from the dead to rule and reign with Christ on the earth over the people who are left after the horrors of the final holocaust. They will see and feel and know the supernatural powers that we have as rulers of the kingdom of God. They will see it demonstrated, they will know it’s true, they will know God exists, and they will know that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah. They will know it’s all true, and yet they will not receive it.

Time doesn’t heal in this case. It doesn’t change the nature of the truly wicked. It doesn’t change the nature of those who have refused to receive and accept and become a part of the kingdom of God. So in this heaven on earth of Christ’s kingdom on earth, they’re going to be uncomfortable misfits, oddballs, constantly resenting it and grumbling, complaining, and finally rejoicing to see the Devil himself let loose so they can follow him, in open rebellion against the Lord and His government.

There are some people who apparently are incorrigible, total reprobates who will never change and can never be won over, no matter how much mercy they receive. No matter how much God’s personal power is shown to them, they still reject Him and try to get rid of Him and His kingdom and His people. Even today, there are people who believe in God and Christ and the Bible, but nevertheless reject Him and harden their hearts and refuse to receive Him because they’re in open rebellion against Him. But in that day they will even see God’s kingdom on earth in visible power and glory. And yet, though they see it, know it, and in the lighter sense of the word “believe” it—they can’t help but believe it when they see it before their very eyes—they will not truly believe it in the sense of receiving it, drinking it in, accepting it, and submitting to it.

God will have mercifully shown them in every way, by His personal rule, how the world ought to be run and what they ought to be like. They will see the Lord and His angelic officers and followers and know His righteousness and the beauty of His creation, a restored creation with the curse lifted and even with very little death, for a thousand years. Surely you would think they all would receive Him then. But not all do, sad to say.

When God finally tests them and lets the Devil loose again, just to see who has really changed and reformed and gotten converted and saved and who loves the Lord and is following Jesus, to sift them and to winnow them, the Devil’s going to find a lot of rebels who didn’t like the bondage of the kingdom of God and God’s strict rules of behavior and love. And they will rebel. They will go along with the Devil and try to actually destroy God’s camp of the saints.

Once again, God will have sifted the tares from the wheat and separated the sheep from the goats. By giving them a chance to rebel, those who reject Christ and His kingdom will come out into the open at the end of the Millennium and follow Satan into the Battle of Gog and Magog and openly show their rebellion, the rebellion they had in their hearts all the time.—Their refusal to become citizens of the kingdom of God and their refusal to be in subjection to the rule and reign of Christ and His saints on earth.

“When Thy judgements are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.” Thank God some will learn and will receive it. But, “Let favour be shewed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness: in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty of the Lord” (Isaiah 26:9–10).

It’ll be the last great test for mankind on earth. Just as Adam and Eve were deceived in the Garden of Eden, and just as the world will soon be deceived by the Antichrist, these millennial rebels will be deceived by the Devil when he’s released and will follow him into battle against the kingdom of God.

Throughout the Millennium, the Lord will be saving all who will receive Him. When all who can be salvaged during that thousand years have been salvaged, God’s going to let the Devil loose for a little while to go out and deceive the ones who are left, to sift them again.

The unconverted wicked will then rebel against God and His goodness and will endeavor to throw off the chains and the bondage of His kingdom, the restrictions of the rule and reign of Christ and His people on earth. We’re given a picture of this in the second Psalm: “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against His anointed, saying, ‘Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.’ He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall He speak unto them in His wrath, and vex them in His sore displeasure” (Psalm 2:1–5).

The camp of the saints and the beloved city

After the Devil has gone throughout the earth and gathered his innumerable company of kingdom-of-God-rejecting followers, it says, “And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them” (Revelation 20:9). The only city called “the beloved city” in Scripture is earthly Jerusalem, which Jesus is going to take over and from where He’s going to reign as king of the earth during the Millennium.

The heavenly super-city “New Jerusalem” will not come down to earth until after the Millennium, in the new heaven and the new earth (which period we will cover in chapter 12). This cannot be referring to the heavenly city but must be earthly Jerusalem, the beloved city which is mentioned many times by the prophets as being the headquarters of the coming millennial kingdom of the Messiah.

What about this “camp of the saints” that the Devil’s forces surround? Is that referring to the resurrected saints of God who have been ruling the earth with Jesus for the past thousand years? If we are already “equal unto the angels” (Luke 20:36), as Jesus said we’d be, then we could just disappear or fly away. We wouldn’t have to be camped down on the ground and threatened by the forces of evil and natural human beings under the leadership of the Devil. They couldn’t touch us.

We will have immortal resurrection bodies. We will be able to fly, disappear, and they won’t even be able to touch us. So who will Satan and his forces be fighting against? Who else could it be than those who are also human beings just like them, still in human bodies, still in mortal flesh, with whom they can fight?

Remember, it appears from the Bible’s description of the Millennium that there are going to be many who will receive Christ’s kingdom on earth and will obey and will be blessed by the Lord, in spite of those who rebel. It sounds to me as if those who come into faith and belief and loyalty to God will be the ones who make up this camp of the saints at the Battle of Gog and Magog—the nations and the forces who are loyal to the Lord, who will resist Satan and his renegade, reprobate rebel forces.

So it looks like this “camp of the saints” that Satan’s rebels try to surround and defeat at this time is going to be made up of the natural physical human beings who are saved during the Millennium, those who have obeyed and followed God and Christ and refused to join the rebellion. I can’t prove it, but that’s what it sounds like. This is a whole new breed of Christians, a whole new race of Christian mortals having to again withstand the anti-Christ forces.

It even calls these forces Gog and Magog again, as it’s almost the exact same situation, and they are again led by the Devil and his demons. These are the rebels of the Millennium, fighting against the saved of the Millennium. What else could it be? I just can’t picture the resurrected saints, who will be as powerful and as great as the angels of God, huddled up, surrounded by the Devil and his mere human forces of human rebels.

But this would affect the Christian mortals. During the Millennium, the sheep will be divided from the goats and this will be the final reaping, the final separating of the tares from the wheat. And at the end, the Devil and his forces and all the wicked rebels will try to wipe out those who have gotten saved and followed Christ and been reconciled to the Lord.

The devouring fire

It says then that “fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them” (Revelation 20:9). This camp of the new saints, the millennial saints, the saved of the Millennium, is surrounded by the forces of the anti-Christ, anti-God Devil— Satan in person on earth again. This time he is not even disguising himself as the Antichrist, but leading his human forces personally.

This time God is so fed up with them that He sends down fire out of heaven to devour them completely. He annihilates the anti-God, antiChrist wicked remaining upon the face of the earth. In fact, He causes such a horrible fire to come down from heaven that it completely wipes out the entire earth. Not the ball itself, but the entire surface of the earth will be burned and purified from all the horrors of man, and God will start all over again with a new creation, as we’ll read in a following chapter—a new earth.

He promised never to destroy the world again with a flood of water, but this time, at the very end, He’s going to destroy it with a flood of fire. He’s going to purify it and destroy the pollution, the germs, the contamination, the wicked, the curse, and all evil, and remake the surface of the earth into another Garden of Eden. He’ll purge the whole surface of the ball. That’s the only way He’s ever going to get rid of all the nuclear wastes and toxins and pollution, not to mention all the junk flying around in the air. No wonder He’s got to destroy both the atmospheric heavens and the earth.

The heavens shall be rolled back like a scroll, He says, and depart with a great noise (Revelation 6:14; 2 Peter 3:10). It’s all going to explode and be burned up, and the whole surface of the ball is going to be re-created. God will then rebuild a new world on the ashes of the old, and His great heavenly city will be able to safely come down through the new heaven to rest upon the new earth. (See Revelation 21.)

For “the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Peter 3:10–13).

We know that this terrific, cataclysmic, catastrophic judgment of God that will wipe out the wicked millennial rebels in one final great explosion is only going to burn up and destroy the surface of the earth and the atmospheric heavens, because God’s Word says that the earth is established forever (Psalm 78:69). He also says that His eternal heavenly city will come down to this earth, where God will dwell with men forever.

If God’s going to send down fire from heaven to devour the forces of the Devil, can you imagine that this fire also devours the camp of His saints? Do you think He’s going to allow His own children to die in fire and flame, even if they’re saved and would go to heaven afterward?

I believe that all these people who have been won to the Lord and His kingdom on earth during the Millennium, who are following Him and living righteously and in cooperation and submission to Him and His saints will be spared in some manner at the end of the Battle of Gog and Magog when this fire comes down from God to destroy their enemies and even the whole surface of the earth. In some way they will be spared. The fire is to destroy their enemies, not them.

Some claim there’s going to be a second rapture of these new saints. How God does it, we don’t know, because it’s not explained. Obviously the fire is not to devour them, but their enemies and the surface of the earth, so that the whole ball can be purified from all its pollution and contamination and wreckage and the mess that still remains at the Battle of Gog and Magog.

After all, if He’ll rescue the saved at the end of the Tribulation with a rapture, sparing them from the wrath of God, why shouldn’t He also rescue His millennial saints with a rapture, and spare them from the devouring fires that wipe out the forces of the Devil at the Battle of Gog and Magog? There must be some way He’s going to save them and take them out.

Satan gets his

While the saints of the Lord are safely tucked away in the heavenly city somewhere out in space, the surface of the earth and the atmospheric heavens will be destroyed in the great fire which burns up the forces of Gog and Magog who had attacked the millennial saints at the end of the Millennium. Satan’s forces will be destroyed by that fire and Satan himself will be cast into hell. Like the Antichrist and the false prophet, the Devil won’t need or deserve any judgment—his judgment has gone on before, and he will be cast straight into the Lake of Fire (1 Timothy 5:24).

“And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are” (Revelation 20:10). In other words, where they already are at this time. They had been cast into the Lake of Fire after the Battle of Armageddon a thousand years previously. They’d already been in hell for a thousand years, and the Devil is now cast in to join them. At last he receives his punishment.

Satan’s mortal followers are at this time only slain and killed by the fire, whereas the Devil himself is cast into the Lake of Fire, “and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever” (Revelation 20:10). As we’ll bring out in detail in our next lesson on the judgment and hell, this term “for ever and ever” literally means “for an age and an age,” which undoubtedly is a very, very long time, but like every age, does have an eventual end.

The lessons learned

This final war of all, the Battle of Gog and Magog, is going to prove once and for all that though mercy is even shown to the wicked, yet they will not receive it, they’ll not believe, they’ll not repent. They will still rebel.

There will still be those who are so incorrigible, so rebellious and unregenerate that they’re going to merit hell. After all that, they are going to get what they deserve, and everybody is going to know that they deserve it. They had every chance to repent and change and receive and believe and obey, and yet they rebelled against Christ’s visible kingdom.

Think of it: after a thousand years of the reign of Jesus Christ, having learned what real righteousness is and what the kingdom of God is like, they will still go back under the Devil! After having that much light, that much time, that much love and that much mercy, they are going to deserve the world’s final flood, a flood of fire, which will totally destroy the surface of the earth and them in the process.

All of this is also going to prove that enforced righteousness doesn’t work, that you cannot legislate righteousness—even with the iron rule of love. The stern discipline of the personal presence of the Lord and us and His utterly fair, just, merciful government in a beautiful restored Garden-of-Eden world still can’t make people be good. The minute the Devil is let out of his prison, away they go after him and rebel against God.

This great millennial drama on earth will manifest the heinous sin of the confirmed rebels, the utter reprobates. Like the scribes and the Pharisees and the chief priests and the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, even though they saw Jesus and watched Him perform miracles and heard His Words and saw the results—even saw Him raise the dead—they still rejected Him and wouldn’t receive Him as their Messiah.

Jesus said, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets”—the written Word of God—“neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead” (Luke 16:31). Millions are going to come back from the dead, perhaps billions, and yet they’re not going to be persuaded. God’s going to rule over them personally in the form of Jesus Christ for a thousand years, and yet they will not receive Him. “Let favor be shewed to the wicked,” Isaiah says, “and yet they will not learn righteousness” (Isaiah 26:10). They will not repent.

It’s going to prove that if they wouldn’t receive Him willingly now, neither will they do it willingly then, even in His personal presence. Even with Jesus Christ’s personal, present, visible reign, and with us as His officers, like angels, supernatural, miraculous, and all this visible power of God.

Now He’s invisible and His power’s invisible, and most people have to believe purely by faith, without seeing. “For without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6). Although, in most cases where they truly, genuinely, honestly believe, though having not seen, they will see some evidence, some proof, some change, if nothing else than in their own lives as God rewards their faith. They will feel it; they will see it.

So how about you? Are you believing, receiving, obeying, and submitting to Jesus Christ and His loving kingdom by faith today? If so, you have a wonderful future to look forward to. God bless you with faith and yieldedness to Him here and now, so you can rule and reign with Him there and then.

Chapter Eight

The Wrath of God and the Battle of Armageddon

After the Resurrection takes place and all the saved are supernaturally raised to meet Jesus in the clouds, then the wrath of God will be poured out upon the Antichrist forces left behind. The church will have been supernaturally rescued out of the Great Tribulation and will be in heaven with Jesus, having a wonderful party, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, while there’s hell on earth as God pours out His judgments upon the wicked who were left behind.

When our testimony here is finished, the Lord will harvest all the good grain that He possibly can and will gather it and take it into His garner upstairs. Farmers always keep their harvested grain upstairs in the barn, to keep it away from the pigs and the rats and the varmints and dampness. The Lord will tell His angels, His reapers, “Gather the wheat into My barn” (Matthew 13:30). And then, according to Revelation chapter 14, after His grain is safely gathered into His heavenly garner, He’s going to cast the grapes of wrath, all of the Antichrist forces, into the winepress of His indignation (Revelation 14:14–20).

The Marriage Supper of the Lamb will be going on up in heaven while the wrath of God is going on down on earth. When His children are finally all in and He’s taken them all to be with Him and gotten them out of this old world, away from all the wicked persecuting and causing His children all kinds of tribulation, then God’s going to pour out His judgments, the seven vials of the wrath of God.

God’s going to deal with the Antichrist and his empire in very much the same way that He dealt with Pharaoh and the Egyptian Empire during the time of Moses. He wiped out Egypt’s riches, leadership, armies, chariots, arms, nearly everything they had, and Egypt was left powerless. Their forces were drowned in the Red Sea, as God’s children miraculously passed from tribulation into the Promised Land!

After catching His own out of this world, God’s going to pour out His judgments and wrath upon the Antichrist forces.—Until the final wrath of all, when Jesus Himself, along with His resurrected, glorified, heavenly forces, returns on majestic white chargers out of heaven, an invasion from outer space, to win the Battle of Armageddon, wiping out the forces of the Antichrist as He takes over the world.

As we now read about this period of the final judgments of God, remember, it does not occur until after the Rapture, after Jesus has come and gathered together His saints, His church, the born-again believers, and taken us all to the great Marriage Supper of the Lamb in heavenly places. Then, having removed His own from this antiChrist, gospel-rejecting world, He metes out His final plagues and judgments upon unrepentant, rebellious men who have refused the truth of God and chosen to believe the lies of the Devil.

The vials of wrath

In Revelation chapter 16, we are given a vivid picture of the hell that’s going to be unleashed on this earth after Jesus Christ has deserted it and removed His church, when God releases His judgments upon the world kingdom of the Antichrist. In Revelation 15, the introductory chapter to this event, we see that these final judgments will be delivered by “seven angels having the seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God” (Revelation 15:1). Now, for the actual plagues:

“And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth. And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image” (Revelation 16:1–2). This first plague is poured out upon the earth, and the men who had followed the beast, the followers of the Antichrist who accepted his mark and worshipped his image, develop horrible sores. Maybe the different types of skin cancer that so many people are getting nowadays are a forerunner of the sores that will fall upon the followers of the beast who are left behind to partake of the judgments of God.

“And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man; and every living soul died in the sea” (Revelation 16:3). Some of these plagues had already been brought about by the judgments of God on the kingdom of the Antichrist during the Tribulation, under the seven trumpets of Revelation, chapters 8 and 9, but they were only partial at that time: A third was destroyed, a third of the waters became blood, a third of the trees were burned up, and so on. But this time, under these final seven vials of wrath, the destruction seems to be total. It says the sea became blood, apparently all of it, and everything that lived in the sea died.

“And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because Thou hast judged thus. For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and Thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy. And I heard another out of the altar say, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are Thy judgements” (Revelation 16:4–7).

The third angel will pour out his vial upon the rivers and fountains and they’ll become blood. There’ll be no way to get a drink of water; there’ll be nothing to drink but blood. And the angel says they’re worthy of it because they shed the blood of God’s prophets and His people, so they deserve to drink blood. How the blood of the martyrs is avenged! Those that cried from under the altar in heaven in Revelation chapter 6, “How long, O Lord, until You avenge our blood upon our enemies?” (Revelation 6:9–10).

“And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give Him glory” (Revelation 16:8–9). God is going to cause the intense heat of the sun to be multiplied, it says in another place, sevenfold (Isaiah 30:26). People will be scorched with its fire, yet still refuse to repent and turn to the Lord.

“And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain. And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds” (Revelation 16:10–11). Here is the picture of the wicked, left on the earth, deserted by God and His children, left to their sufferings and their torments, their plagues, licking their sores, drinking blood, scorched with fire, and now finally in darkness—groping around in such thick darkness that they can’t even find their way.

The plagues will be so bad that men shall gnaw their tongues for pain and shall seek death but not find it, and yet repent not of their sins. Think of that! In spite of the judgments of God, they will still not repent of their sins, nor cry out to God for mercy or ask for forgiveness.

Isaiah foresaw this time of wrath and prophesied: “Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and He shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine” (Isaiah 13:9–10). It’s going to be so smoky and dark, they won’t even be able to see the sun or the moon or the stars.

“And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of His fierce anger. And it shall be as the chased roe, and as a sheep that no man taketh up: they shall every man turn to his own people, and flee every one into his own land” (Isaiah 13:11, 13–14). There won’t be any place to go for some of them; there won’t be any refuge. There will be no place to flee, because the whole earth will become a disaster zone under the judgments of God.

The sixth and seventh vials

“And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty” (Revelation 16:12–14).

The sixth angel dries up the great River Euphrates to prepare the way for the kings of the East and the armies of the East. In fact, the kings and armies of the entire earth will be summoned together for one last great battle—still in violent rebellion against God and His angels and His hosts, and still trying to conquer the earth. Still reviling and cursing God and creating even more destruction in a final horrible war called “the battle of that great day of God Almighty!”—Summoned together by the evil spirits of Satan and the Antichrist and his false prophet. Next verse:

“Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame. And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon” (Revelation 16:15–16). You’ve probably heard of the Battle of Armageddon at some time. With almost every great new world war that has come, people have wondered if Armageddon had finally arrived. But those were only previews of this final worst of all wars at the end of the age of man.

“Armageddon” literally means the “height of Megiddo,” which is a big round mountain in the middle of the valley of Megiddo in central Israel between Haifa and Jerusalem. On maps it is called either the Valley of Jezreel, or the Plain of Esdraelon, and in the middle of it you’ll find a place called the Ar-megiddo, or the height of Megiddo. And it is around this mount that the “battle of that great day of God Almighty” will rage.

The Battle of Armageddon actually takes place under the seventh vial of the wrath of God. However, the forces and armies of the Antichrist are assembled together from all around the world under the sixth vial, and then the battle is evidently fought and great hailstones fall from heaven and a very great earthquake occurs under the seventh vial. So it’s after they have gathered together under the sixth vial and converge into this valley of Megiddo surrounding the height of Megiddo— Armageddon—that the seventh angel will pour out his vial into the air.

Then Jesus inserts a warning here to anyone who wants to escape these horrors: “Watch out, I come as a thief. You’d better be ready for the Rapture, the Resurrection, when I come before all this, if you want to escape all this hell!” And He says you’re to watch and keep your garments. What garments are these? That suit, coat, and tie you’re wearing? That lovely dress you’re wearing? Of course not! He’s talking about the “robe of righteousness and the garments of salvation” (Isaiah 61:10), not natural clothing. He says, “lest ye be found naked.” That means lest you be found without His salvation, without His robes of righteousness, without being saved. (See Zechariah 3:4; Matthew 22:10–13; Revelation 3:5, 18; 19:8.)

“And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done. And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great. And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell: and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath. And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent (about 100 pounds!): and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great” (Revelation 16:17–21).

Upon the pouring out of this seventh vial, a voice from the throne says, “It is done,” meaning, “This is the end.” The last scene of this drama of all the damage that man has wrought on earth. This is his last scene, this last horrific battle— war—creating the most possible destruction. Man’s inhumanity to man.

One great final earthquake is going to destroy the cities. Isaiah also envisioned this great final utter destruction of the city system at the time of the Battle of Armageddon when he spoke of “the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall” (Isaiah 30:25).

John’s apocalyptic visions of the sixth and seventh vials here in Revelation are paralleled by Ezekiel’s description of the Battle of Armageddon in Ezekiel 38 and 39. He says that there’s going to be a great shaking when God finally decides to judge the Antichrist after he has taken over Israel. We know from Daniel 11 and Revelation 11 and 13 that the Antichrist will be there for 3½ years, Jerusalem being his headquarters from where he’ll run the world. But after he’s caused so much trouble, persecuting the people of God, Christians, Jews, and Muslims the world over, God finally has to put a stop to him.

When the judgments fall on the Antichrist and his worldwide kingdom, his anti-God, anti-Christ, anti-religious kingdom of which he’s tried to make himself God, God’s going to send great earthquakes to Israel, because it will be his capital.

“For in My jealousy and in the fire of My wrath have I spoken, Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel; so that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the field, and all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men that are upon the face of the earth, shall shake at My presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground” (Ezekiel 38:19–20). This sounds like part of the wrath of God—a mighty earthquake!

“And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire and brimstone” (Ezekiel 38:22). What did we read about in Revelation that was a part of the seventh vial of the wrath of God? Mighty hailstones weighing 100 pounds each! “Thus will I magnify Myself, and sanctify Myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the Lord” (Ezekiel 38:23).

If you want to know how bad this war’s going to be, the final war of Armageddon, this direct confrontation between the forces of God and His angels and the forces of the Devil and his people, you’ll find it in Ezekiel 39. But for now, let’s go back to Revelation for a bird’s-eye view of the forces, logistics, and tactics used in this battle.

Immediately following the description of the glorious marriage supper for the saved, the 19th chapter of Revelation gives a magnificent picture of the glorious victory of Christ and His saints and His kingdom over the kingdom of darkness at the conclusion of the wrath of God period. John writes:

“And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and He that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns; and He had a name written, that no man knew, but He Himself. And He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and His name is called The Word of God” (Revelation 19:11–13). This is definitely Jesus, as plain as day. “The Word that was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).

Here is Jesus Christ, crowned with many crowns, no longer coming as a savior, no longer coming as a babe in a manger, no longer coming with mercy. Now He’s coming with righteousness and with judgment. He is coming as a great warrior and a judge to make war, as King of kings and Lord of lords!

“And the armies which were in heaven followed Him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of His mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it He should smite the nations: and He shall rule them with a rod of iron: and He treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He hath on His vesture and on His thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS” (Revelation 19:14–16).

Here we have the very end of the wrath of God and its complete fulfilment: this great invasion from outer space by the Lord and His hosts, to conquer the world and set up His kingdom. We’re going to ride with Jesus as His “ghost riders in the sky”! We’re going to come riding out of the sky on our heavenly horses with the Lord, an invasion from outer space—aliens now to this world.

“And out of His mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it He should smite the nations” (Revelation 19:15). He’s going to smite them with His Word. “The worlds were framed by the Word of God” (Hebrews 11:3). If He can make the world and the whole universe just by speaking the Word, how much more can He smite the nations by His Word!

“And He shall rule them with a rod of iron.” When Jesus died on the cross, He was God in the hands of men. But this time it’s not going to be God in the hands of sinful, wicked men; it’s going to be men in the hands of God, who’s going to mete out the judgment they deserve.

“And He treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He hath on His vesture and on His thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS” (Revelation 19:15–16). This picture of the grand finale of the judgments of God, with Christ coming and casting the wicked into the great winepress of God’s wrath, is even clearer back in chapter 14 of Revelation, where we read about the two great harvests.

But following these verses on the Rapture comes an altogether different harvest, which has to do with those who miss the first one. “And another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle. And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe” (Revelation 14:17–18).

“And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs” (200 miles) (Revelation 14:19–20). The death at Armageddon is going to be so horrible that blood is going to run for 200-and-some miles, in some places even as deep as the horses’ bridles!

The prophet Joel also foresaw this gathering of the unregenerate at Armageddon to be cast into the winepress of God’s great wrath when he prophesied: “The Lord shall utter His voice before His army. For His camp is very great: for He is strong that executeth His Word: for the day of the Lord is great and very terrible; and who can abide it? Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears. Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about” (Joel 2:11; 3:9–11).

“Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision; for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision” (Joel 3:13–14). The bloodletting in this “day of the Lord” at Armageddon will be so extensive, that as we return to Revelation 19 we see that God will then invite His garbage men, the vultures and buzzards of the world, to come and have a great feast upon the kings and captains and armies of the Antichrist.

“And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God” (Revelation 19:17). He invites the carrion-eating fowls of the air to feast upon the bodies of the people who rebelled against God and tried to fight God to the very end.—Even after all His judgments, and after He did so many mighty miracles and caught His people away out of their graves and off the surface of the earth into the sky to be with Him in heaven. They hate Him all the more and fight Him all the more! So this angel cries out to all these foul fowls, “Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great” (Revelation 19:17–18).

Ezekiel’s description of this horrific Battle of Armageddon remarkably parallels John’s, where God says, “Speak unto every feathered fowl, and to every beast of the field, Assemble yourselves, and come; gather yourselves on every side to My sacrifice that I do sacrifice for you, even a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat flesh, and drink blood. Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth … Thus ye shall be filled at My table with horses and chariots, with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord God” (Ezekiel 39:17–20).

Now back to where we left off in Revelation: “And I saw the beast (the Antichrist), and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against Him that sat on the horse (Jesus) and against His army” (Revelation 19:19). Here are the wicked, gathered together at Armageddon, under the devil-man, the Antichrist, to try to fight the very forces of God How ridiculous! How presumptuous! “These shall make war with the Lamb (Jesus) and the Lamb shall overcome them: for He is Lord of lords and King of kings: and they that are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful” (Revelation 17:14).

These God-defiant, rebellious followers of the Antichrist try to make war with Jesus Himself and His forces, His resurrected children, His Christians. And that’s where they go too far, because He is the Lord of all lords and the King of all kings, and therefore they are utterly defeated!

Out of heaven will come the great hosts of heaven with Jesus Christ in the lead on a white horse to destroy the Antichrist and his kingdom in this great supernatural battle, and take over the earth to set up the kingdom of heaven on earth, the kingdom of God, and restore the earth to the beauty of the Garden of Eden again.

“Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgement upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him” (Jude 14–15). The word translated as “convince” here in our Bibles is “exelegcho” in the original Greek, which literally means to “convict fully” or to “punish.”

“And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone” (Revelation 19:20). At last the fiendish Antichrist gets his just deserts! He and his chief propaganda minister, the false prophet, are taken from this Battle of Armageddon and are tossed directly into hell, into the lake of fire.

“And the remnant were slain with the sword of Him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of His mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh” (Revelation 19:21). What happens to all of these vicious mark-of-the-beast people, the Antichrist’s bestial people, his followers who have persecuted and tortured God’s children and pursued and imprisoned and killed Christians? “He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints” (Revelation 13:10).

“It is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; and to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power; when He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe” (2 Thessalonians 1:6–10).

Jesus will come charging out of the blue on a mighty white charger in an invasion from outer space, and He’ll just utter His Word like thunder, sharp as a sword, and it will slaughter His enemies—those that have resisted and rebelled against Him, and have troubled and tortured and tribulated His children. The Bible says, “I will render vengeance to Mine enemies, and will reward them that hate Me. I will make Mine arrows drunk with blood, and My sword shall devour flesh. Rejoice, O ye nations, with His people: for He will avenge the blood of His servants, and will render vengeance to His adversaries, and will be merciful unto His people” (Deuteronomy 32:41–43). The Antichrist forces are slaughtered by the sword which comes out of the mouth of Christ, which obviously symbolizes the Word of God. For “He shall smite the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked” (Isaiah 11:4).

“Our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29), so the sword of His Word proceeding out of His mouth is evidently going to be like fire to devour His enemies. “For, behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with His chariots like a whirlwind, to render His anger with fury, and His rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by His sword will the Lord plead with all flesh: and the slain of the Lord shall be many” (Isaiah 66:15–16).

“And the slain of the Lord shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth: they shall not be lamented, neither gathered, nor buried; they shall be dung upon the ground” (Jeremiah 25:33). Such is going to be the horrible holocaust of the wars and judgments of God upon the earth and its wicked!

When the Battle of Armageddon is over and the blood has run so deep, there will be so many bodies left that the Scripture tells us it will take “men of continual employment”—a full-time job— seven months just to bury the dead in Israel alone (Ezekiel 39:14). The stench will be so bad that it says it will “stop the noses of the passengers” (vs. 11), and it says that as they search, finding the last bodies, they’ll put up little signs or markers showing the grave diggers where a body still remains (vs. 15).

Although the death toll resulting from this battle will be unparalleled by any wars or disasters before it, it will not be total. There will still be some who will survive it. Even of the armies of the Antichrist, the Lord says He will spare one-sixth of them (Ezekiel 39:2). God will have mercy on some and they will survive.

The Lord will not annihilate everybody during the wrath of God, nor at Armageddon when the forces of the Antichrist and his followers are wiped out. You’ll see in the next chapter of this book, which is a detailed study on the Millennium—the one-thousand-year golden age of Christ’s kingdom on earth—that there are going to be lots of survivors. Probably the most worthy and deserving, and maybe even a few of the most unworthy, just to show that they’ll never change! But this is another study, which we’ll cover in detail in the following chapter.

At this mighty Battle of Armageddon, Satan and his forces are not only conquered, but Jesus and His followers take over the world, to rule and reign and run it the way it should have been run to begin with, and would have been if man had not disobeyed God and gone his own way. God’s going to take over the government of this world and He’s going to turn it right side up and run it the way it ought to be run. So the Battle of Armageddon is going to be the biggest revolution that has ever happened.

The righteousness of God

Some people say, “God is a God of love. He’d never do anything like what you’ve described here.” If He’s not a God of justice, He couldn’t be a God of mercy and love. If He’s not a God of right and wrong, and there’s no difference between good and evil, then He’s not God at all. And if He is a God of justice, then there has to come a time for Him to mete out His justice and His judgments.

If you fight God too hard, God will fight you! He is usually merciful and gives you time to repent. But if you still don’t repent, if you fight and resist and rebel even more, then eventually His judgments will fall.

The Antichrist and his forces will not only refuse to voluntarily yield themselves to the Prince of Peace, but in the last thrill of their violent defiance of Christ and His kingdom, they’re going to send armies and try to literally wage war against Him—the Battle of Armageddon. They’ll fight against Him to the last ditch!

So when Christ finally takes over, it’s going to have to be with force and with power, “with great power and glory.” God says He’s going to destroy them which destroy the earth” (Revelation 11:18), those who refuse to surrender to God and His love and His Son Christ Jesus, the one and only Prince of Peace.

He is the God of love. In fact, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). And He “is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). If you don’t know Him and you want to enjoy heavenly happiness forever and miss this coming hell on earth and hell hereafter, then receive Jesus and His gift of eternal life by asking Him into your heart.

1. Jim Elliott, Christian missionary and martyr, 1949.
2. From the poem “Only One Life” by C. T. Studd.

Chapter One

A More Sure Word of Prophecy (2 Peter 1:19)

So many people today are worried about the future, wondering what’s going to happen. Most of today’s youth seem to almost instinctively realize that they are living on borrowed time. After all, we are the first generation that has had to live with the knowledge that we could completely destroy ourselves. People want to know what to do about it, or if there is any way to avoid it or prepare for it, to survive it.

Psychologists tell us that uncertainty and the fear of the unknown is the worst fear of all—not knowing what’s going to happen. It’s sad that so few people realize that they can know the future, that they can know what’s going to happen—accurately and in detail. Even the exact number of years, months, and days of parts of it.

How could this be? By what means can mortal man possibly transcend the bounds of time and peer into the future? By tuning in to God and His wonderful Word, the Bible. For He alone is the great “I AM,” who dwells in the eternal now where there is no past nor future and “time shall be no more” (Revelation 10:6). It all looks the same to God, and He can easily reveal to His prophets and seers the mysteries of the future. “For surely the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7).

“For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them. For I am the Lord: I will speak, and the word that I shall speak shall come to pass; for I say the word, and will perform it, saith the Lord God” (Isaiah 57:15; 42:9; Ezekiel 12:25).

“Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, and read: no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate: for My mouth it hath commanded them” (Isaiah 34:16). The mate of every prophecy is its fulfillment. God’s Word finds its mate in fulfilled Bible prophecy, and the ones which have already occurred and been fulfilled, foretold hundreds of years in advance, have been fulfilled. Every prophecy the Bible has uttered has been fulfilled except the ones that are yet to come, and they’ll be fulfilled just as surely as the ones that have been fulfilled in the past.

It’s a marvelous, thrilling study to deal with fulfilled prophecies, and it encourages your faith to know that those regarding the future will be fulfilled just as accurately and just as perfectly and just as surely as every prophecy of the past. But we are particularly interested in those which are yet to be fulfilled.

You’ll find that God’s Word is specific and clear. Its prophecies tell you exactly who and where and even when. So if you’ve been wondering, “Where did we come from? Where are we going? What’s happening?” this wonderful book, the Bible, tells you all about it, exactly what’s going to happen. You don’t have to worry about it; you don’t have to fear. You don’t have to guess at it. It’s all here just as plain as can be.

“For that that is determined shall be done” (Daniel 11:36). What God has determined and prophesied, He’s going to do. Whatever God has said He’s going to do, He is going to do. Not one shall lack her mate. Not one prophecy shall be without fulfillment; every single one shall be fulfilled.

“We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:19–21).

“And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away” (John 14:29; Matthew 24:35).

“Pearls of great price” (Matthew 13:45–46)

God has warned us time and again almost since the beginning of man, and certainly throughout the Bible, that there’s coming an end to things as far as man’s rule on this earth is concerned, and that his governments are going to eventually end so that God can set up His heavenly kingdom of peace on earth. God has given man thousands of years to try to solve his own problems and run the world and bring peace and happiness, and he has brought nothing but war and misery. God has given man his chance and he has done nothing but make a mess of the world. And now, finally, man is able to destroy it. If God did not step in and intervene in this last hour of history, man could completely destroy it and totally annihilate himself.

If God didn’t step in, mankind could commit suicide. We could either blow ourselves up with the bomb or we could gradually kill ourselves with famine or overpopulation or air pollution or water pollution. Let’s face it, man is destroying himself. He’s killing himself with his pollution and with his destructive nature, and if God doesn’t intervene and stop it, man would eventually wipe himself off the map! This is why Jesus prophesied of the last days: “Except those days be shortened, there should no flesh be saved” (Matthew 24:22).

The Bible predicts that in the last days of man-made regimes on earth, a totally godless, antiChrist world government will arise, led by a Devilpossessed dictator, Satan incarnate, who will bring a temporary false peace on earth and a counterfeit utopia. Its price will be enforced worship of him as the imitation Messiah. All of his subjects will be branded with a credit number in order to buy or sell or obtain food or employment, and all those who refuse to cooperate will be hunted, persecuted, and slaughtered by his commandment. This will be a time of Great Tribulation.

This anti-Christ government of anti-Christ forces under the leadership of the Antichrist himself, this superhuman world dictator of man’s last one-world godless government, will then set up its headquarters in Jerusalem, his capital, and unite all peoples of the world into a one-world worship of this demon-demagogue and his magical image which can speak.

These startling events will immediately precede the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, which is the major endtime event, the grand climax, as the Lord Himself returns and wipes out the Antichrist and his followers and sets up the last and most lasting and only perfect government the world has ever known, and “the meek shall inherit the earth” (Psalm 37:11).

Most Christians seem to have rightly gathered from reading their Bibles and hearing various preachers that in the last days, times are going to wax worse and worse, and not get better. A lot of them believe that the end is going to be a time of very bad trouble and tribulation. And, of course, all real Bible-believing Christians believe that Jesus is coming again. They have also gathered the fundamental idea that there’s going to be a heavenly time on earth at some time or other. But a lot of them have it pretty mixed up and they don’t know how, where, or when these events will take place.

They’ve got the knowledge of these events and these priceless truths like a handful of pearls, but they don’t realize exactly how they ought to be strung, in what order and in what sequence, to make them a beautiful string of pearls in proper order to, you might say, wear around their neck of knowledge. They don’t realize the chronological sequence, which is necessary to understand what’s going to happen, how it’s going to happen, when it’s going to happen, etc.

True, the Bible admonishes us not to fret for tomorrow, which means we’re not to worry about tomorrow, but the Lord sure has had a lot to say about tomorrow, so He certainly must want us to be informed about tomorrow! That’s the whole point of prophecy: to let you know what’s going to happen so you won’t worry about it. You’ll know what’s going to happen.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed. To understand what’s going to occur is to be prepared to face it and take it as it comes and hopefully survive it.—At least certainly to understand what you’re going through and to know what’s happening. You may not understand it all in advance; you may not know everything that’s going to happen. But we can know enough from God’s Word that we can know the major events and their characteristics, the major characters in these events, and in some cases when they’re going to happen, the exact time periods predicted in the Bible, so that when the time comes you’ll know exactly when certain events are going to take place, because God has already said so in His Word, plain as day.

It’s wonderful to be able to read a newspaper that tells you what’s going to happen—not just what’s already happened. Anybody can tell you what’s already happened, but the Bible tells you what’s going to happen. Newspapers are not really newspapers; they’re history papers. They tell you what’s already happened—past news. But God has given us a lot of later news about today, the time in which we’re living right now, and what’s going to happen next. So the Bible is not just a history book, it’s a news book. It not only tells you about yesterday, it also tells you about tomorrow.

To know or not to know “the times and the seasons”

All the way through the prophecies of Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, John, and Jesus, there are specific detailed descriptions of the last days on earth before Christ’s Second Coming. Has the Lord given us these signs for a reason? Does He want us to know about the soon coming of His kingdom? Does He want us to be prepared for it? Does He want us to have that knowledge and be able to teach others so? If He doesn’t, He’s sure wasting an awful lot of time throughout both the Old and New Testament telling us all the signs of His coming.

In fact, in one of the most descriptive endtime prophecy books of the Bible, the Lord told Daniel to close up the book and seal up the prophecy until the end: “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. For the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. And none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand” (Daniel 12:4, 9–10).

For almost 2,500 years the book of Daniel has been virtually a sealed book, and it’s only recently that men have begun to open the book, break the seals, and understand the prophecies and what Daniel was saying. Although they had the Bible for thousands of years, they still didn’t understand endtime Bible prophecy. But now we’re supposed to open the book, break the seals, and read it and understand it, because we live in the time of the end.

God’s Word says, “Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy” (Revelation 1:3). It takes an effort; it’s work to try to understand Bible prophecy and to “study to show thyself approved unto God, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). But you’ll find that “the entrance of Thy words giveth light” and wisdom and understanding (Psalm 119:130). When we delve into God’s Word, we “bring forth treasures, both new and old” (Matthew 13:52). You’ll discover how wonderfully the Lord can weave His Word together like a beautiful tapestry, filling in the whole picture to give you His vision of His plans. “For where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18).

Of course, some Bible professors and students are going to say, “Jesus told His disciples that ‘no man knoweth the day or the hour when the Son of Man cometh, not even the angels in heaven.’ And ‘it’s not for you to know the times or the seasons’” (Matthew 24:36; Acts 1:7). When all the dramatic, climactic, final events of world history begin to unfold, let me tell you, you’re going to need to know. You are going to want to know and you are going to know, because God promised it in His Word.

If the Lord did not intend for us to know the times and the seasons, then why did He give us Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21, John 14, Acts 1, 1 Thessalonians 4 and 5, 2 Thessalonians 2, 1 Timothy 4, 2 Timothy 3, 2 Peter 1 and 3, and the whole book of Revelation, as well as multitudes of prophecies in the Old Testament, including many in the historical books, as well as the poetical books, and 17 books of the prophets with prophecies and specific predictions of the future? If God didn’t want His children to know anything specific about the future, then He wasted half the Bible talking about it, and we ought to throw that half away.

But He does want us to know, and throughout the Bible He continues to give us multitudes of literal, specific predictions of the future and what its times and seasons will be like. In fact, the Lord makes it extremely explicit many times in many places regarding the exact number of years and months, and even days, during the crucial last seven years of the endtime.

In Matthew chapter 24 and Luke chapter 21, Jesus Himself gives one of the most descriptive and specific of all résumés of future endtime events of any prophet in the Bible. After giving a long list of predictions and coming signs of the times, He tells us, “When you see these things or these signs come to pass, look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.” “The generation that sees these things come to pass is not going to pass away till all these things are fulfilled” (Luke 21:28; Matthew 24:34). So obviously He wants us to “see” and “look” at the signs of His coming being fulfilled before He returns so that we can “discern the signs of the times” (Matthew 16:3).

“For as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days that were before the Flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage”—going on, business as usual—“until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and they knew not until the Flood came and swept them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matthew 24:37–39). Who knew not? The unbelievers. Who knew? Noah! He knew what was going to happen; he was expecting it.

“For unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to others it is not given, because they seeing, see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto you, many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them” (Matthew 13:11–17).

“For ye, brethren,” the apostle Paul tells us, “are not in darkness, that that day (of Christ’s Second Coming) should overtake you as a thief.” In other words, it shouldn’t take you by surprise. “Ye are all the children of light, the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.” We’re not in the dark on this question. We know Jesus is coming, and from His Word we know how He’s going to come. The Bible tells us plainly! (1 Thessalonians 5:1–5).

“Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.” He says, “You’re not children of the night. You’re not supposed to be sleepy and asleep when it happens. You’re the children of the day, children of light. You’re supposed to be wide awake and have the light on these things” (1 Thessalonians 5:6).

You’re supposed to know what’s happening and when it’s going to happen. God’s children are not supposed to be in the dark about all these Bible prophecies. If you know His Word, you won’t be surprised when you hear about the rise of a new powerful world leader and one-world government, the new credit-only computerized economic system and the dramatic ending of man’s governments on earth with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

To be foretold is to be forewarned. We who know His Word and His prophecies and promises for the future will never be surprised with a “mighty widening of the eyes” like those who have not discerned the signs of the times. We will be prepared.

We don’t have to be in doubt and confusion and in darkness, wondering what’s going on like the rest of the world, “men’s hearts failing them for fear, for looking after those things which are coming on the earth” (Luke 21:26). We can know exactly what’s going to happen, exactly the way things are going to go. We may not like it and it may look pretty bad, but we know the happy ending, and all is well that ends well.

Thank God we have the preparation that prepares us for anything that’s going to happen, and that’s salvation, knowing Jesus and knowing that we’re saved. Then no matter what happens, even sudden death is sudden glory! No matter what anyone does to you, even if they kill you, “after they’ve killed the body, they have no more that they can do” (Luke 12:4–5), because God will take you into His spirit world with Him until we return to rule and reign here on this earth with Jesus.

Are you prepared? Have you personally received Jesus into your heart? I hope you’ve accepted Him. I hope you’ve received Him so that you can look forward to these marvelous future events not with fear and trembling, but with hope and faith and assurance that God’s going to see you through, He’s going to save you and rescue you out of it all and take you to be with Him, to live with Him forever.

You don’t have to know the future and all the marvelous details of endtime prophecy. These events will happen whether you know them or not. But it’s a good thing to know and to understand these things so that you’ll be able to know what’s going on and what’s happening, as well as be able to teach and warn others. The main thing you need to know is summed up in one verse, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son (Jesus), that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Receive salvation now; then you’ll be ready for the revelation of the future. Otherwise, knowing the future wouldn’t make much difference to you, because your future will be all bad news. You probably won’t even want to hear about what’s going to happen if you’re not saved. But if you are saved, then God has got some marvelous, wonderful, encouraging, thrilling revelations of the future in store for you.

Knowing Him and His Word, that’s what’s going to carry you through. The vision of what’s coming will give you the faith to believe God and the courage to launch out and march victoriously through the plagues of this world, through Great Tribulation, and right on through to the coming of Jesus Christ and our loving reign with Him forever.

https://youtu.be/zvzajsUU6sE

https://youtu.be/zvzajsUU6sE

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