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Every so often, some unknown “wanna be” sticks his head up and announces some wild prediction to the masses, of doom, gloom, and the destruction of the world. When the date comes and goes without incident, as in the most recent case, then the “see-er” recalculates his dates and comes up with another one, as also in the most recent case. After so many tries, people tend to lose faith in the boy who cries wolf! Up until now, the most accurate prognosticator of our generation, has proven to be a furry groundhog named Punxatony Phil of PA. Phil and his namesakes have been around several generations predicting the remaining length of winter based upon his ability to see his shadow! Hollywood even made a movie based upon this old PA custom called (you guessed it) “Groundhog Day”! It is a sad thing when an overgrown rat proves to be a greater fortune teller, than a self-proclaimed Bible prophet! Of course, Phil has 50-50 odds...the sun will either shine or it won't on Feb. 2nd! 

The other guy could have saved himself the embarrassment of his mistaken prediction by consulting the Bible. Jesus already told us the answer lest anyone would be tempted to start a panic, or be caught up in one! Matt. 24, 25 and Luke 21 are great teachings on the various aspects of the end-times. 
Matt. 25:13 specifically says that “no man knows the DAY or the HOUR” when Jesus returns.

We must be careful when we speak too specifically concerning the future events that the Bible talks about. Right now, we fall into the Pauline category when he said that “For now we see through a glass darkly; now I know in part;...” 1 Cor. 13:12. There was a well-known minister who mainly created the Y-2 scare. He wrote a book about it and the speculations ran through some of the masses about the likelihood of the world's computers shutting down when we began the 21st century. However, the computers didn't go berserk when the calendars turned over to the year 2000, as predicted. I don't know that he ever fully recovered his popularity, as even the Christians aren't quick to forgive their prophets who miss it, but at least we quit stoning the mistaken to death, as false prophets! (Some may have said, “More's the pity”!)

I haven't understood how this latest concern has infiltrated some of the Christian world. My first exposure to the false prophecy concerning the 12-21-12 ending of the world, oddly enough came through another popular minister! He said it was first attributed to the Mayan Indians. They were supposed to be a great race of mathematicians, who were brilliant in design and time calculations, and these Central American Indians should be considered in their predictions. My feelings when reading Wikipedia were “Where are they now”? I'm sorry, but when I read how the Mayan people worshiped demons, sacrificed children, and did such horrible things to animals as well as each other, I think we are better served by studying wild life! Better yet, we need to study what the Creator tells us, rather than the predictions of an extinct race of heathen people, even if they did have certain mathematical insights. If they knew when the world would end, why didn't they foresee their own demise and prevent it?
God said there is no beginning or ending with Him. He is an eternal God who gives us eternal life because we were made in His own image (Rev. 22:13, Mark 10:30). However, at this point in time, we can hear the cry of a troubled and confused world as it peers through the darkness ahead and asks “Watchman, what of the night?”(Isa. 21:11). (Praise God, the watchman answered “The morning cometh...” vs. 12). 

Our LORD, (not fortune tellers or groundhogs) looking down through the three world-ages, gives a prophetic SIGN of the ending of each. Matt. 24:3 says “And what shall be the SIGN of Thy coming, and the end of the world?” Many of us see ourselves as the last generation of this church-age where it says in Matt. 24:14 “...and then shall the end come”. 

Our Lord Jesus saw our very day, with its strange, fantastic figures of destiny when approaching Great Tribulation with unparalleled suffering, bringing the curtain down on man's civilization.. Matt. 24:21 says “For then shall be great tribulation...” Verse 37 goes on, “But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be”. Verse 32 infers that it would take place AFTER Israel became a nation once again, which happened on May 14, 1948. 

The Bible as the Word of God is man's only sure word of prophecy, and its thousands of fulfillments prove the Book is divinely inspired. One of these biblical prophecies was given by the Prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 29:11-13, concerning the forty years when the then powerful Egypt would be empty of both man and beast. This came to pass when the King Nebuchadnezzar, conquering the world, captured the land of  Egypt, and as was his custom, took out all the cattle, and people and moved them to another land. Forty years later, they were brought back because no other people knew how to irrigate the land.

Another great prophecy said that Babylon, the earth's largest and strongest city, would be destroyed and left in ruins forever. The prophet Jeremiah (50:38-39) describes this destruction. Years later Alexander the Great sent an army of workmen into the vast stone ruins, but the snakes and lions drove them out, and Babylon is still in ruins.

In the book of Daniel, the prophet saw in a vision FOUR WILD BEASTS which spoke of world  empires. The fourth Beast, being Rome, was so terrible he could not describe it. Daniel 7:4-7 shows they were figures of the LION, BEAR, LEOPARD, and the fourth BEAST had ten horns (power). He saw in the same seventh chapter, two other world systems, namely the Kingdom of Heaven, (Dan. 7:1, 14, 21). Also in the same chapter, rising out of the FOURTH BEASTLY EMPIRE, was another strange fierce power called the “LITTLE HORN”. Dan.7:8, 11, 20, 21, and 24, and then seen again in Dan. 8:9-12. This seems to many to be the Papacy, an ecclesiastical kingdom that overthrew the civil Rome and became greater than the civil Rome.

In Matthew 3:12-17, we view the Lord Jesus as a young man being baptized in water and the Holy Spirit as a Dove is descending upon Him. Jesus came forth with a new non-violent power that would build a heavenly kingdom that will never pass away.

Since God is the Author of His Book the Bible, with foreknowledge of these events, and power to bring them to pass, He gave forth through the prophets the entire pre-written history of the earth scenes.

Watching the trending of current events and Bible prophecy, one sees them running together as we near the end. They are largely composed of three groups of prophecies; the first group concerns the TIMES OF THE GENTILES; the second group concerns the history of God's chosen people Israel; and the third group concerns Christ's glorious Church as it passes through an unfriendly world. Each of these three has a different length of cycle of years, yet strangely they are all IN ONE CONJUNCTION at this time of the end.

One of the many signs of this age-end is that of the vast sidereal universe about us, composed of millions of galaxies. And they are expanding as a bubble, as if to flee from the wrath of God, Who comes to deal with all nations that forgot Him. In Luke 21:34-36, we are warned as Christians to watch and pray “that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man”. (To  be continued...)

Dear Friends,

Every once in awhile a writer finds that a story takes on a life of it's own. When I sat down to write about an occasional false prophecy, and liken it to Groundhog Day, I had no idea that the Lord was going to have me attempt to teach the real thing! Sometimes, we have to really seek God's will, and other times we just fall into it. God is so cool!

I don't remember in the 12 years I have had a website, that I EVER continued a message.....
This reminds me of the Saturday Matinees in the 1950's when our cowboy hero was left hanging off the cliff (hence, The Cliffhanger?!), and we had to wait a week to see how he got out of his life threatening dilemma. Or perhaps others may better identify with when Batman was in danger, and the announcer broke in with “Stay tuned next week, at the same Bat time and the same Bat station....”! Or even when Clarabell was chasing Buffalo Bob with his seltzer bottle, and Howdy Doody...oh...sorry...guess I'm showing my age...but you get the picture!

May God Bless You All, 
Pastor Moser
January, 2012