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The Great Earthquake and Clues to the Restoration of Paradise

Catastrophes and the Time of the End

Translation by the New King James Version

By Robert Mock MD

robertmock@biblesearchers.com

www.BibleSearchers.com

June, 2004

Part Three 

 

Topics

Preparing for the Coming of the Messiah (Moschiach)

The Great Cycle of the Lord

The Catastrophic Era – the Era of the Hebrews

A Global Earthquake in the Sixth Seal

 The Global Earthquake in the Seventh Trumpet of the Seventh Seal

When the Lord of hosts sets His Feet on the Mount of Olives

 The Coming of the Messiah is associated with Major Planetary Crustal Change on this Earth

The Oracle of Habakkuk

The Earthquakes at the Cross as a ‘Shadow Type’ of the Coming of the Messiah  

Are You Ready for the Coming of the Messiah?

 

Preparing for the Coming of the Messiah (Moschiach)

 

Have you ever thought how the Lord of hosts speaks to us today?  Without understanding the language of the Lord, how can we hear His voice and understand His way?  For most of us all we want to understand is what we are willing to accept.  If the Lord speaks to me, let me compress the message, soften the edges, tweak the commands of the Lord so I can feel comfortable and His instructions can become palatable to my personal sensitivities.  Lord! Let me help you in the delivery of your message.  Yet the Lord gently nudges me aside and says, “I am who I am! There is none other except Me!” 

 

The final moments at the time of the end has over the centuries been written with many different flavors and interpretations.  Prophetic writers of the 15th century, the 18th and 19th century envisioned a different panoramic cascade of events than you and I living in the 21st century.  Great men of God have poured their hearts and souls into an understanding of these great moments of time that are in part still cast into the future. Yet so many times we cast these events into what we feel fits our day and era. Why?  Somehow many of us do want to be a part of the action so we can say after the Parousia (coming) of the Messiah, “I was there!”

 

Over the centuries the Lord of hosts stated that the culmination of His Plan of Redemption will be cast in a spectacular kaleidoscope of natural catastrophes.  All of this will begin as this planet enters another era of catastrophes greater than any this world has ever seen.  This new cycle of catastrophes will begin with the Global Earthquake at the Sixth Seal of Revelation. 

 

I remember the day when I stood in my examining room talking with an elderly grandmother.  The heart was rent by the scandals and the destructive sibling rivalries that her children were acting out.  In a moment of anguish she blurted out, “O Lordie Jesus, please come quickly, I can’t stand this mess any longer”. 

 

Is this not so much like all of us?  When we think of the cascading events rapidly moving towards the coming of the Messiah, most of us want to jettison ourselves out of the impending conflict and cry out to the Lord saying, “Beam me out of here”.  But the Lord has His own agenda.  For most of us, ‘watching and waiting’ has become a protracted and agonizing struggle to maintain some form of spiritual sanity. 

 

Look at the geo-political catastrophe that the United States is sinking itself into in the Middle East. Of all the models by the greatest of the military strategists on the War on Terror, none could image that the hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of lives of warriors would be squandered by the actions of less than ten soldiers in the confines of Saddam Hussein’s former torture and execution Abu Ghraid prison.  With the click of a digital camera they memorialized man’s inhumanity towards another by filming gross sexual acts against the Iraqi captives by our military .  The Islamic “red” rage quickly nullified America’s “white” righteous war of indignation against terror.  Also with the click of a camera the fate of the rider of the white horse may be seen with the ‘crown’ being taken away from the Bush presidency. 

 

What America thought was a local Jewish problem as Islamic homicide terrorist bombers hit Jewish homes, playgrounds, buses, shopping malls, sea ports and synagogues during the days of the Intifada is now going global. It will soon reach Europe and America’s homes, churches and shopping centers.  The American Christian mindset is in a revolutionary shift at the present time. 

 

Probe the minds of Christian followers of Jesus about the coming of the messiah and punctuate between moments of denial, words such as ‘soon’ and ‘quickly’ weave through our conversations.  When our conversation turns to events that appear that we are in the time of the end, we want to put our motion picture about these future events in  fast forward.  Like the comedian black and white serials of the 1930’s, we run, jump, scamper, twist and turn with the pantomime motions of basic human behavior.  This includes no forethought, no emotional planning, and no premeditated preparation. While we truly are uncomfortable about the present condition of the world, we are equally uncomfortable about our visions of the future.

 

In the days before a Super Bowl Playoff, the opposing teams would spend hours and hours devouring the actions and plays of their opponents filmed on prior games.  Watching these ‘shadow pictures’ of their opponent’s past games, the Super Bowl hopefuls strive to understand their rivals strengths and weaknesses so they might earn themselves a super bowl ring. 

 

Preparing for tribulation and the time of the end is not for the faint at heart.  I have sat in many classes teaching about the prophecies of Revelation.  The instructor many times will give a methodical discourse on the textual exegesis of these apocalyptic passages with all its boring tomes.  The instructor will match this symbol and that allusion and try to weave a patchwork quilt of religious confusion.  When it is all over, it appears that we have arrived at a pre-determined conclusion taught to us by our spiritual forefathers and seek to find a prophetic pathway to our own conclusions. 

 

I challenge you to take the book of Revelation and read it as a literal sequential story of John the Revelator witnessing events almost two thousand years into his future.  Create in your mind visual literal images of cometary impacts, erupting volcanoes, moving and shifting tectonic plates, tsunamis, global earthquakes, polar reversals and sinking islands into the mighty oceans.  Imagine the angel of the Lord talking personally to John while they are watching the literal sequences of the seven trumpet plagues and the seven last bowl or vial plagues and their impact on the earth.

 

We might be the most thoughtful business executive, astute politician, fiery evangelist or seasoned senior citizen.  Yet, when we face the reality of what might happen in the future as the approaching presence of the Lord of hosts collides with the dark and evil forces of the satanic powers, our hearts will become faint. Then the serotonin enriched synapses of the neurons in our brains begin to short out.  We begin to identify that we may soon be participating in the chaos and destruction at the end of tribulation. 

 

Oh, yes we might want an ‘out’.  Like a child, we may anticipate the coming of the Lord like a child awaiting Santa Claus, “I’ve been as good as good can be.”  For many modern Christians this ‘out’ is the pre-millennial rapture.  We cry out, “Beam me out of here, Lord!  We are ready to come home with you.”  For the rapturists, let the Jews retake their chosen status, we’d rather be out of here. They (the Jews) know better how to be persecuted, discriminated, slaughtered, and have genocide committed to them by the whole world.  I’m ready to go, Lord. Get me out of here! Now!” 

 

Yet, what will happen if the crushing weight of the coming tribulation finds you still on this planet earth and there has been no rapture?  Will this be your spiritual wake up call or will it be your spiritual demise? 

 

If we are serious about the thought that we are willing to walk with the Lord (halachah) through tribulation, then it is time to understand that we are entering an era that is bigger than you or I.  The most brilliant military general will find his war plans in disarray, the most erudite politician will find his strategic political alliances fading away, the most noble and august body of peace makers will find that “peace on earth” means only “peace with great security”.  This peace then evaporates when armored vehicles and military escorts blow up in smoke with the most carefully laid land mine.  As a nation, we are so focused in a military engagement, that if one child dies, the world screams in shock.  What will happen when billions of people die in a simple day or week in a catastrophic celestial calamity?  Will we forgive God for causing these great ‘Acts of God'?   

 

How will you listen to God and how will God communicate with you? The only thing that this secular world gives the Lord of hosts any credit for are what we call the ‘acts of God’; hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, and typhoons.  Of course these are the destructive forces the Lord of hosts has at His command. What would happen if the ‘destructive’ catastrophic events were a part of the restoration of this planet to once again have a ‘Garden of Eden on this planet? No, I am not talking about a New Earth but a restored earth to teach the nations of the earth Torah, or how to walk with God, by the Messiah Yahshua Himself. 

 

If you were God, how would you communicate with your favorite creation that was made in Your image?  If we see His face, will we be annihilated?  If He blows His breath on us, will we be destroyed?  Think how carefully you must treat an ant or it will be crushed under the mere pressure of your ‘tender’ fingers.  Can we perceive how the Lord of hosts has limitations on how He can communicate with us because of our fragile sensory systems? 

 

It is not that He cannot communicate to our minds, but most of our lives are so absorbed in the excitement or misery of our personal lives, trapped in our own emotional upheavals, living in a two-dimensional horizontal world that we refuse to look up and reach up to God.  We refuse to touch Him as He reaches down to us and talk with Him as He instructs us in the ‘still small Voice’.  Yet God does speak to us through His creation, in the heavens and on earth?

 

The Great Cycle of the Lord

 

Spend some time and study the vast order and movement in the natural world around us.  Everything, designed by the finger of the Almighty, appears to flow in cycles and rhythms.  We watch the sun traverse across the sky, repeating its pathway every twenty-four hours.  The cycles of the moon in the calendar of the Eternal Creator gives us the monthly cycles starting with the new moon, the full moon, the disappearing moon and the return of the new moon.  The cycles of the moon give us the ordained seasons of the Lord and the festivals that celebrate these seasons

 

The spring festivals of the Lord give us a shadow-picture of the life and ministry of the Son of God who came to find the ‘lost sheep of the house of Israel’. 

 

The fall festivals of the Lord we now see give us a shadow picture of the future return of the Messiah.  Here prophetically the great trumpet at Rosh Hashanah matches with the seventh trumpet of the seventh seal heralding the coming of our Lord.  Here prophetically, Yom Kippur or the Great Judgment gives a visual picture of the demise of the final judgment of the wrath of God against those who assault God and everything He hold dear.  Here we see Satan being thrown into the bottomless pit just as the ‘scapegoat’ is thrown into a pit in the wilderness at Yom Kippur.  Then the Moschiach (Messiah) will come to dwell with His people during the Feast of Tabernacles (Dwelling) at Succot five days later, to be with His own people for a thousand years. 

 

It was the Lord of hosts who designed the blooming cycle of the flower, the menstrual cycle of a female, and the seasons of the year.  Medical researchers have even found multiple biorhythms in the human physiological and biological functions.  The photon of light by which we receive visible images is transmitted in waves or moving cycles.  The vibrations of sound by which we communicate with words and music flow in rhythms and cycles and transmit these vibrations through the tympanic membranes of our ear.  The brilliant imagery and creative prose in our brain comes from a vibratory electrical current in our brain and documented on the electroencephalogram.  The red blood cells cascade throughout our blood vessels in pulsations created from our contracting heart. Even the atom as it flows through the ‘ether’ of the invisible atmosphere, depicts a rhythmic cycle as the electron rotating around the nuclei. 

 

The great mystics of the East believe in a cosmic circle where time and eternity always end back at the beginning or the primal Source.  The Hebrew God took this cosmic circle out of the Eternal Now and gave to His chosen ones a new concept of reality.  The Hebrews visualized that the Eternal One moved this cosmic circle forward in time.  The movement around the Great Cosmic Circle was now moving forward in time like a rotating spiral and the cosmic circle when looked from the side became a rhythmic wave.  

 

So also the Great Day of the Lord is now seen as part of the forward moving cosmic cycle called the Plan of Salvation. This “Plan” was God’s gift to Adam and Eve when they chose to rebel against the Lord and chart their own independent course from their Creator.  This cycle is called the Great Cycle of the Lord:

 

Paradise Created---à Paradise Lost----à

Paradise Restored----à Paradise Recreated

 

It is this theme that is carried in unison by all the prophets of the Tanakh (Old Testament) and culminated by the final prophecy of Revelation in the Brit Hadassah (New Testament).  This is the theme for the restoration of this physical world

 

The arrogance of modern theology suggests that man can be taken from this earth in a rapture or by the Second Coming of Christ and all the rest of natural creation on this earth will be destroyed.  Are we the only part of Creation that God feels is worthy to redeem or restore?  Will God take man out of this world and then let the trees and flowers, the dolphins and whales, the lions and the lambs, and the butterflies and the beetles be casually discarded as an afterthought?

 

Was it not the Lord of Creation who stated on the sixth day that the creation of man, Adam, was ‘very good’?  (Genesis 1:31)  Is it not this same Lord of Creation that the creation of each of the living creatures was ‘good’? (Genesis 1: 10, 12, 15, 18, 21, 25)

 

The theme of Genesis suggests that Adam was created with a purpose; to be a ‘Son of God’.  He was created in the image, the sefirot of God, and given dominion as the ‘lord’ and custodian of this earth. 

 

Genesis 1:28 – “And God said unto them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

 

Did not God present all the living creatures to Adam so that each animal would be given a name?  To the ancients, to give a name to any creature suggests that the name represent the life and purpose of that creature.  (Genesis 2:19-20)  Don’t consider that this was a simple task.  To give a name for each animal and living creature, Adam  would have to have a complete understanding of the biology and physiology of each creature or organism in the animal and plant kingdoms.  As custodian of this planet, he would have had to understand the laws of nature, the cycles of biological life and the express nature of the specie as envisioned by the Almighty Creator.  He was the first Michelangelo, the master of all knowledge and it was to Adam that the Lord of Creation gave the awesome privilege to have dominion over this earth. 

 

Adam failed that first custodial job by rebelling against God at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He lost his son-ship and the privilege to represent this world in the Great Council before the Throne of God.  Satan, one of God’s Archangels, became a usurper as a son of God, a privilege he took away or stole from Adam and Eve and also us. (Job 1:6)  So enters the Conflict of the Ages, the conflict to restore Adam back to his rightful creation, as the Son of God and the rightful custodian of this earth.

 

So enters the lineage of the genetic heirs of Adam, through the lineage of ‘the chosen’:  Adam à Noah à Shem à Abraham à Isaac à Jacob à and the twelve sons of Jacob à House of Israel and the House of Joseph.  Was this chosen-ness a selective country club privilege that they might be eventually saved and the rest of the world lost and destroyed?  No!  The rabbi Shaul (Paul) so eloquently states:

 

Romans 9:4 – “They are Israelites; they were made God’s sons; theirs is the splendor of the divine presence, theirs is the covenants, the law (Torah), the temple worship, and the promises.  Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them, in natural descent, sprang the Messiah. May God, supreme above all, be blessed for ever! Amen.”

 

Genealogy and genetic purity is critical and important to the entire plan of salvation.  That is not my idea but the Lord of hosts stated so.  It was a specific lineage that the Messiah of Israel was to come to this earth.  Evidence suggests that Satan (HaSatan) did everything he could to corrupt the lineage of Yahshua.  It was the chosen lineage that was preserved in the flood of Noah. 

 

Many biblical scholars are skeptical when John the Revelator wrote that it was God’s intent to preserve genetic purity in all the tribes of Israel.  (Revelation 7:4) Why? That is for God to know, but He specified the number and which tribe that was worthy to be counted.  Also there was no hint that the literal genetic tribes were to be usurped by anyone else.

 

This may be one of the reasons for the 144,000 pure genetic Israelites from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, standing before the Throne of God along with the great multitude standing on the sea of glass.  And what did the elder who sat in council by the throne say to John?  “The 144,000 and the great multitude are those ‘that came out of the great tribulation’” (Revelation 7:14).  They were leaving tribulation behind.

 

At the end of the 6th Seal and before the 7th Seal, the ascending angel from God seals the saints. (Revelation 7:3) Also during this same time between the 6th Seal and the 7th Seal we see Satan giving his seal, the Mark of the Beast to his chosen ones.  (Revelation 13:16-18) 

 

During this sealing time the Lord of host entrusts the final call to salvation to go to all the earth. Three archangels are sent proclaim this final message to this planet earth.  Then there will be a “great silence” that penetrates the corridors of heaven.  (Revelation 8:1) The hour of God’s judgment is about to begin.  The wrath of God will descend upon those chosen and sealed by Satan (HaSatan).

 

The Catastrophic Era – the Era of the Hebrews 

 

One of the themes of the BibleSearchers is that every prophecy given by God to His people will be fulfilled totally during the events at the time of the end.  These events though dramatized and enacted in whole or in part during the days of the Catastrophic Era of the Hebrews, will be fulfilled totally in the Great Finale at the time of the end. 

 

Prior to or associated with the coming of the Messiah, the prophets of old also spoke of the restoration of both the House of Judah and the House of Israel.  The fact that both of them are mentioned suggests that God is very meticulous and does not casually interchange the names around.  He even amplifies the name of the House of Israel as the House of Joseph or the House of Ephraim. 

 

Whatever the terminology, one thing appears to be certain; every prophecy given by the prophets of old will be replayed, reenacted and fulfilled exactly like the Lord of hosts promisedWhatever the Lord of hosts says, He will do.  This will be the dramatic ‘Finale of the Ages’.  For four thousand years, since the first promise and covenant with Abraham, the Hebrews have been the principle actors in the ‘Conflict of the Ages’, and in the time of the end, they will once again be playing center stage.

 

The creation of this world set the stage for a thousand years of solar and cosmic peace. This was the era of the Day of the Lord portrayed in the life of Adam.  So Adam at the age of 930 died, as commanded by God in Eden.

 

Genesis 2:16-17- “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

 

No, this day was not the earth’s rotational day of an evening and a morning as portrayed in the creation story.  This day was the Day of the Lord, for “a day of the Lord is a thousand years.”  (2 Peter 3:8)  Peter was only quoting the Tanakh in the Psalms, which said;

 

Psalms 90:4 – “For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past…”

 

Outside the first moment of Creation, an event of infinite energy that would surely be catastrophic to many living beings, there is no biblical evidence that any planetary catastrophe or earthly catastrophe occurred, outside of local flooding during this era.  It was the Great Flood of Noah that introduced man into the first catastrophic era of mankind and mankind’s first introduction to the judgment of the Lord.  

 

According to the Hebrew historical record, the dynamic world of the Patriarchs and Israelites was an awe inspiring and terrifying planet.  The world in which they reacted and responded was filled with cataclysmic events in their lives which they had to invoke the saving hand of the Lord. This was an era in which the sons of Adam and Noah walked and talked with the angels.

 

The direct control and intervention of Yahweh was an inspiring theme that was portrayed in the cataclysmic era that began in the Days of Noah (2350 BC).  The final occurrence was at the doorsteps of the city of Jerusalem, saved by direct intervention of the Lord (701 BC) as a billion volt electrical flue vaporized the forces of Sennacherib. 

 

A Global Earthquake in the Sixth Seal

 

Have you every thought what a global earthquake would be like?  A global earthquake is not one that we watch on TV in Washington D.C. while California rumbles. A global earthquake will be the time with all the seismographs around this world will go into hyper seismic vibrations.  Well John the Revelator saw a global earthquake and this was his testimony.

 

Revelation 6:12-17 - And I looked and He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood; and the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs, when it is shaken by a mighty wind.

 

And the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its placeAnd the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, and every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb; For the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

 

What an event!  Look at each of these events.  Every one of them, the Lord of hosts has total control of their occurrence and man has no control.  These are truly ‘Acts of God’.  What we also know by this great earthquake is that it marks the end of Text Box: The key to know when tribulation ends is when this event occurs: “and every mountain and island was moved out of its place”.  (Rev. 6:14)  tribulation.  How so you exclaim?  Right after the six seal we see the 144,000 and the angel of the Lord who explains:

 

Revelation 7:1-4,9 parts – “After these things (the great earthquake of the sixth seal), I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth…then I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God.  And he cried with a loud voice…”Do not harm the earth and the sea, or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheadsAnd I heard the number of those who were sealed, one hundred and forty-four thousandAnd after these things I looked and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all the tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne of God and before the Lamb.” 

 

Look over each of the six seals and understand that the global effects of these seals were originated by Satan and his forces of evil.  This is the time of Satan’s wrath.  Yes, the destructive effects of these seals will be done by the permission of the Eternal One. 

 

The key to know when tribulation ends is when the sixth seal occurs: “and every mountain and island was moved out of its place”.  (Revelation 6:14)  Have you ever considered what this means and the implication of what these catastrophic events will have on this earth?  Most of us want tribulation in the time of the end to move forward in fast motion.  In our good ol’ American impatient way, we say, “Get it over and let’s get on with the show.”  But that is not God’s way.

 

The Global Earthquake in the Seventh Trumpet of the Seventh Seal

 

There are some prophetic scholars who want to place the earthquake in the sixth seal and claim that it matches the earthquake that will occur at the second coming of Jesus.  Let us look at the testimony of John’s vision at what will happen during the second coming of the Lord.  Here we see another great earthquake. 

 

Revelation 16:17-21 – “Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, ‘It is done’, And there were noises and thunderings and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth. 

 

Now the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. And great Babylon was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath.  Then every island fled away, and the mountains were not found.  And great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent. (75 pounds)  Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since that plague was exceedingly great.” 

 

Let this soak into your consciousness. The Lord of hosts picks His words very carefully.  Here are two biblical passages and two separate events in the future of this earth’s history.  One event is called the earthquake at the Sixth Seal of Revelation.  The second event is the earthquake at the Seventh Trumpet when the angel of the Lord pours out the ‘Bowl or Vial Plague’ on this earth in the Seventh Seal of Revelation.  This event heralds the literal coming of Yahshua as the King of kings and Lord of lords.

 

There will be weeks and months in between these two events. A series of celestial catastrophic events will occur as ‘acts of God’.  At the sixth seal, the tectonic plates in the subterranean floor under our earth will once again be cracked apart like it was in the ‘days of Noah’.

 

Matthew 24:37 – “But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of man be.”

 

There will not only be a global earthquake but a global re-positioning of the continental mountain chains such as the Rockies, Andes and the Himalayas.  Not only that, but the oceanic mountains like Japan, the Philippines, Azores, Cuba and Hawaii will also be shifted with severe catastrophic effects.

 

Let us compare again this Sixth Seal earthquake with the earthquake caused by the Seventh Angel of the Seventh Seal of the Seven Last Plagues.

 

In the Sixth Seal, there is a great earthquake in which,

 

Revelation 6:14 – “every mountain and island was moved out of its place.

 

In the Seventh Vial Plague of the Seventh Seal there will also be a great and mighty earthquake in which,

 

Revelation 16:20 - every island fled away, and the mountains were not found.’

 

Can you imagine the immense forces that it would take to shake the tectonic plates under this earth and move the mountain on land and in the sea (islands)?  Yet can you image the great continental mountains beginning to collapse?  How so you ask? You collapse a mountain by reversing the forces that caused the continental plate to crash into each other in the first place.  How else can it be done by moving the continental plates in the opposite direction?  Impossible you exclaim! You cannot reverse the immense forces that are pushing one continental plate into another and form the immense mountain peaks that send spires into the heavens around the world. No, I cannot but the Lord of hosts can!

 

When the Lord of hosts sets His Feet on the Mount of Olives

 

Let us look at another mini-picture of this same event that was seen through the eyes of the prophet Zechariah on the Day when the Lord will set His feet on the Mount of Olives.  

 

Zechariah 14:3-4 – “Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations, as He fights in the day of battle. And in that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two, from east to west, making a very large valley; half of the mountain shall move toward the north and half of it toward the south.”

 

Zechariah 14:6-7 – “It shall come to pass in that day that there will be no light; the lights will diminish.  It shall be one day, which is known to the Lord. Neither day nor night.  But at evening time it shall happen that it will be light.

 

Can you imagine one day in the future, a great earthquake in your city or town is collapsing buildings all around you?  You turn on the radio and find out that catastrophic earthquakes are occurring not only in your state but in every state in the United States and in every country of the world? 

 

Then you watch CNN or Fox News.  A news reporter is giving an evening report from the land of Israel on the destruction on the Temple Mount.  As the camera positioned on the Mount of Olives pans towards news reporter, we see the collapsing walls of the Temple Mount.  Silhouetted behind is the setting sun in the western sky. Then you notice a strange phenomenon.  The sun as it slips down below the horizon begins to rise from the same horizon as though it were a new day. 

 

The camera crew suddenly goes into confusion.  Yes the sun is arising from the west and the earth has just experienced a complete physical pole reversal. We will literally be seeing what the prophet perceived in vision when he wrote these strange and mysterious words,

 

Zechariah 14:7 - “But at evening time it shall happen that it will be light.”

 

This planet earth with its magnetic pole to the North Pole will suddenly find its magnetic pole flipped over to the south.  The current clockwise rotation of the earth on its magnetic pole rotates this planet downward to the east and the sun appears to be rising in the east. This event will be reversed.  Suddenly the rotation of the earth will be going counter-clockwise.  The earth will now rotate upward while facing the east and the sun will be setting in the east and rising in the west.  What a day that will be! 

 

Here is one of the purposes of the biblical injunction, given by the Lord of hosts.

 

Matthew 24:36 – “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.”

 

There are many reasons why neither “the day nor the hour” will be known when the Lord returns back to this earth.  When you calculate the festival seasons by the ‘lunar calendar of the Lord’ that he gave to the Hebrews, you cannot print a yearly calendar.  The festival year of the Lord does not bring in the spring until the day of the sighting of the New Moon over Jerusalem and confirmation that the barley is ripe in the fields around the temple of the Lord.  The new moon sighting may vary by two days and if the barley is not ripened, the festival seasons are delayed for another month; that is Passover, Pentecost, Rosh Hashanah (Sounding of the Trumpet in the 7th month, Yom Kippur (Day of Judgment) portraying the day of the coming of the Messiah, and Feast of Tabernacles (Succot), when the Lord comes to dwell with His people will be delayed by a day or two or even a month.   

 

In this sequel in which ‘no man knoweth the day nor the hour when the Son of Man cometh’, it suggests that a polar rotation on this earth just preceding the coming of Yahshua (Jesus) will occur.  All the sequences of time will be altered.  Is it any wonder that we must ‘watch and wait’?  Here we also have a suggestion of surprise associated with a time in which there will be the absence of light in the ‘day…known to the Lord’.  It suggests that the messiah will come ‘as a thief in the night’. (Matthew 24:36) Count on it!  When the Lord of hosts decides to change times and seasons, the whole earth will be in confusion. 

 

And then, the prophet Zechariah adds, “But at evening time it shall happen that it will be light.” (Zechariah 14:7)  In all cultures of the world the ‘day’ and the ‘night’ have certain expected and anticipated cycles.  To the Jews, the ‘day’ begins at the setting of the sun with the approach of nighttime and then the daylight hours arrive.  To the Westerners, the ‘day’ begins with rising of the sun and ends with the nighttime hours.  Even so this ‘day’ will confound and perplex all the inhabitances on this earth.  If on the Day of the Lord we add the potential that the natural forces on this earth will go in reverse, then we have added a new element to this Mysterious Great Day of the Wrath of the Lord. 

 

The Coming of the Messiah and  

Major Planetary Crustal Changes on this Earth.

 

The final days at the time of the end many catastrophic changes will occur on the face of this earth.  The hints and the visual imagery in Isaiah and Revelation we can now reshape with our knowledge on the astrophysical, geological, tectonic and the magnetosphere of the earth. We can visualize literal images of the catastrophic changes that will occur on this earth.  One of the major clues in the following text is what will be happening to the mountains and islands on the face of this planet earth.

 

Revelation 6:12 – “I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood.  And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops it late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place...for the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”

 

The ‘sun’ becoming black like sackcloth and the ‘moon’ becoming like blood are signs known to scientists as signs of global volcanism.  The grey and black sky of atmospheric ash can actually hide the sun and turn the moon a ghostly bloody orb.  The stars of heaven falling to this earth could be; a super active Leonid Shower, the planet earth moving through a cometary field of debris, a polar shift in which the earth rotates forward quickly ten degrees or a polar reversal in which the earth flips over in its orbit.  In the context of a fixed star-field, and the earth quickly reversing its poles, the stars will appear to be falling down below the horizon. 

 

For mountains and islands to be “moved out of place”, suggests that the tectonic or continental plates will be shifting and moving under the crust of the earth.  A whole new era of catastrophic changes not seen since the days of the patriarchs of old is about to begin.  The earth will truly be moving and shaking. 

 

The great earthquake of the Sixth Seal has been estimated by scholars to be at least a magnitude of 10 to 12 with world wide catastrophes in all the nations of the world.  The great cities will collapse and the pangs of childbirth will be felt by all the nations of the earth at one time. Fear and calamity will settle over all the inhabitants of the globe as the earth groans under the terrestrial strain of crustal shifting, colliding and separating continents and magnetic and polar reversals. 

 

Did not Isaiah, the catastrophic prophet mention:

 

Isaiah 13:6-    - “Wail, for the day of the Lord is at hand!  It will come as destruction from the Almighty.  Therefore all hands will be limp, every man’s heart will melt, and they will be afraid.  Pangs and sorrows will take hold of them; they will be in pain as a woman in childbirth; they will be amazed at one another; their faces will be like flames.

 

Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with both wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate; and He will destroy its sinners from it.  For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be darkened in its going forth, and the moon will not cause its light to shine...I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will halt the arrogance of the proud, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.  I will make a mortal more rare than fine gold, a man more than the golden wedge of Ophir. 

 

Therefore I will shake the heaven, and the earth will move out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts and in the day of His fierce anger.  It shall be as the hunted gazelle, and as a sheep that no man takes up every man will turn to his own people. And everyone will flee to his own land.  Everyone who is found will be thrust through and everyone who is captured will fall by the sword.  Their children also will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished.

 

Have you ever seen or heard of a global earthquake?  They do occur. I’m sure you have always thought that you will find a place on this earth that will not be affected by earthquake.  In an era of uniform laws of nature that is true.  Yet the Bible suggests in the prophecies of the prophets that the era of uniformitarianism is about to end.

 

Once again in anticipation for the coming of the Messiah, an era of catastrophes will usher this great event.  We as BibleSearchers also believe that the hand of the Almighty One will use a series of catastrophic events to remodel this earth back to the days of Eden, when Torah and how to walk and talk with the Eternal Father will be taught to the nations.  This time of education will be done by the Messiah Himself.

 

Take a side trip and learn about the ‘Causes of Global Earthquakes’

 

Visit the Live Internet Seismic Server when the “Whole Earth experienced a Global Earthquake on March 17, 2003”

 

USGS Live Internet Seismic Servers.

 

Out of this entire calamity, great things will begin to happen.  All of our selfish plans will suddenly be swept away.  The evil and wicked, whose life goal on earth was to use power, greed and control, will be destroyed by the presence of the Messiah.   In that Day, we will have only two choices in life, curse God and seek to wreck as much personal havoc in our own sphere of influence and dominion or turn our hearts to the Lord of hosts and as such the Spirit of the Almighty will be poured upon the land. 

 

Joel 2:28-32 – “And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. And also on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days.

 

And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth; blood and fire and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.  And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.  For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be deliverance, as the Lord has said, among the remnant that the Lord calls.

 

Great and momentous decisions will be made.  The power of the Holy Spirit will be shedding the light of truth on exposing corruption, power and greed around this globe.

The United States will turn its back on the acknowledgment that our founding fathers truly did believe that our nation was founded under the principles of the Almighty One. One by one the monuments of testimony testifying to the simple faith of God will be torn down.  The Nativity Scenes will be gone, the Bibles in the courtroom will be gone, and the angelic messengers on the spires of churches will be torn down. We will be exposed more and more to power and greed in the churches of our nation while denominations will merge into a near monopoly of religious ideology.  The vast populations of the world will all be facing the ‘valley of decision’. 

 

Joel 3:14-17 - Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision!  For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision!  The sun and moon will grow dark and the stars will diminish their brightness.  The Lord also will roar from Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem; the heavens and earth will shake; but the Lord will be a shelter for His people, and the strength of the children of Israel.  So you shall know that I am the Lord your God, dwelling in Zion My holy mountain.  Then Jerusalem shall be holy, and no alien shall ever pass through her again.” 

 

Tribulation will now be over.  The time of the wrath of Satan will be ending.  The time of the Wrath of God will just be beginning.  The cosmic powers will be at war as Satan’s final hour is about over.  Over and over, the Prince of Darkness will be demoted from one sphere and dimension of the heavens after another until he and the forces of evil and darkness will become trapped in our three dimensional world. 

 

According to ancient Hebrew lore, many of these angelic powers were guardians over the natural forces that guided and protected the stars and planets of the universe.  Whereas in the Hebrew thought, the stars of the heavens were also known as angels, so when the rebellious angelic forces make their final assault on the forces of Michael, the Archangel, the heavenly spheres will be thrown in chaos and the “powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

 

Matthew 24:29-31 – “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven and the power of the heavens will be shaken

 

Then the Sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.  And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heaven to the other.”

 

What is this “Sign”?  Let us not forget that prophecy is Israel-centric.  What will happen in the heavens that will cause all the tribes of the earth to mourn?  Why do some not rejoice?  Yes, the sign will be when the Son of Man will come and gather His elect.  This was the same Son of Man who said on the Judean roadways, “I come to save the Lost Sheep of the Tribes of Israel”.   He did not say that he was coming to save the Christians of Antioch for there were no Christians in Antioch at that time.  All the followers of ‘The Way’ were Jewish followers of Yahshua and known as Nazarenes. Yet Yahshua knew that the day when the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel would be redeemed would be the day in which salvation will be given to all the Gentiles of the earth who have faith in Yahshua and His ministry for His Father. 

 

The ministry of the ‘Two Witnesses’ will be the Lord’s final stand with those chosen to be His own.  Is it no wonder that the final scenes at the time of the end will be in Jerusalem, the capital of the Lord of hosts for the whole universe.  No movie drama will ever be able to capture the suspense that will occur when it appears that the forces of the Antichrist and the coalition of world forces will final capture the Land of Israel and will be closing in on the city of Jerusalem.  The Jerusalem we will see at that moment will not be a “city set on a hill” with rays of light and hope to all mankind. It will not be a city in which God’s chosen and covenanted people will be a radiant light of goodness and truth.  The prophet of Revelation states,

 

Revelation 11:8 – “When they (two witnesses) finish their testimony, the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit will make war against them, overcome them, and kill them.  And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.”

 

Here is the one spot on this planet that the Lord of hosts has given custody to His chosen people.  History has repeated itself over and over, whenever, the children of Jacob have control of the city of Jerusalem and follow the precepts of their Lord, the land prospers and grows.  Whenever the Jews and all of their ancestors choose to rebel against the Lord of hosts, the productivity of the land declines and exile soon takes them away from their land. 

 

Over and over, the echo of their past haunts them as they hear, “If the Lord be your God, follow Him”.  They were not to negotiate God’s will for the nations of the earth to decide their fate and the fate of their land.  They were to follow the Lord.  The Nation of Israel is at the brink of that same decision today. 

 

The slavish will of Prime Minister Arial Sharon to follow George Bush instead of the will of their God will cause future judgment upon Israel and the Land. God’s will was not to be determined by the Hellenistic doctrine of democracy.  They were not to seek justice in the international court of opinion.  They were to be ‘just’ as their Lord had commanded.  Will God’s chosen people ever get it together and follow their Lord? 

 

Many are praying for an answer to that question.  The fate of the Nation of Israel appears to be in the balance.  The tide of redemption and destruction will swing back and forth.  In the future, we will see the global telecommunication networks as they focus all of their resources to capture the ongoing struggle between the ‘two witnesses’ and the forces of globalism. These two witnesses appear to have such formidable inter-dimensional power and then… their lives will be final snuffed out. The tantric dancing of Islamic terrorists over the charred remains of a construction worker in Iraq are only a foretaste of what is coming in the future. 

 

Here were two of the ‘chosen ones’ of the Lord who have every power to command the elements of the heavens to rain down upon their enemies.  Lightning and plagues were at the stroke of their fingertips.  If they could not stop the march of global control and oppression, who can?  All hope appears to be gone. 

 

With the bodies of the two witnesses lying in state in the streets of Jerusalem for three and a half-days, the ascendant power of satanism, universal religious control, and global political oppression appear to be complete.  Satan may have lost his war in the heavens but by all physical appearance, he has won control of this planet earth.  Then the finger of the Lord intervenes again;                            

 

Revelation 11:11 (The Seventh Trumpet of the Seventh Seal)   - “Now after the three-and-a-half days the breath of life from God entered them, (resurrection of the two witnesses) and they stood on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them.  And they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, ‘Come up here.’ And they ascended to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies saw them. In the same hour there was a great earthquake and a tenth of the city fell. In the earthquake seven thousand people were killed, and the rest were afraid and gave glory to the God of heaven.

 

The second woe is completed and the third and final woe will come quickly. 

 

Revelation 11:15 – “Then the seventh angel sounded:  And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!”  And the twenty-four elders who sat before God on their thrones fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying,

 

‘We give You thanks, O Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was and who is to come, because You have taken your great power and reigned.  The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that You should reward your servants the prophets and the saints.  And those who fear Your name, small and great, and should destroy those who destroy the earth.’

 

“Then the temple of God was opened in heaven, and the ark of His covenant was seen in His temple and there were lightnings, noises, thunderings, an earthquake, and great hail.

 

The Oracle of Habakkuk

 

The Oracle of Habakkuk will be pronounced upon God’s people;

 

Habakkuk 2:2 - “Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who read it.  For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end (a destined time) it will speak (in breathless haste), and it will not lie, though it tarries, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry. 

 

The Lord of hosts was speaking of a future appointed time in which a certain message was to be engraved and preserved in stone.

 

Habakkuk 2:4 – “Behold the proud, His soul is not upright in him; but the just shall live by his faith.  Indeed because he transgresses by wine, he is a proud man.  And he does not stay at home. Because he enlarges his desire as hell and he is like death and cannot be satisfied.  He gathers to himself all nations and heaps up for himself all peoples. 

 

It is time to take personal inventory.  Are you proud, insolent, stubborn or devoted to righteous indignation?  Does your stubbornness center on ‘the bottle of wine or strong drink’?  Does your ‘restlessness’, dissatisfaction, ‘never at peace’ keep you away from ‘home’ where relationships are set up, protected and nurtured?  Does your life have the aura of ‘greedy hell on earth’, ever longing and never getting?  Do you seek to gather more power and control, seeking solace in bars, country clubs, resorts, executive boards, institutional and national cloakrooms of power and authority? Then listen to the five woes!

 

Habakkuk 2:6, 9, 12, 15, 19, 20 -

  1. “Woe to him who increases what is not his…
  2. “Woe to him who covets evil gain for his house that he may set his nest on high that he may be delivered from the power of disaster!”…
  3. “Woe to him who builds a town with bloodshed, who establishes a city by iniquity?”…
  4. “Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbor, pressing him to your bottle, even to make him drunk, that you may look upon his nakedness!...
  5. “Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Awake!’ to silent stone, ‘Arise! It shall teach!’ Behold it is overlaid with gold and silver, yet in it there is not breath at all…

 

“But the Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him.”

 

When you sit comfortably in your church pew preparing to doze during the sermon, remember while you are singing the traditional doxology, that the words of the doxology were preceded by five woes given to the prophet Habakkuk.

 

Will your conscience be pricked?  Did the 20% annual increases in your pension plan mesmerize you that the Lord was blessing you and that easy money was now for yours to keep?  Did it ever suggest to you that it would eventually lead to a collapse in the stock market?  What about that great investment that beat all monetary returns in the marketplace?  Did it not suggest to you that it could be fraudulent and feeding the hands of the terrorists in the world today?

 

Do you sit in the councils of cities, states or at our nation’s capital while laws of oppression are enacted upon the poor?  Does your desire for inexpensive gas give our nation justification to create nations out of bloodshed?  Does your desire for wealth give you justification to wreck the environment and rape the natural resources of our planet earth?  Does your desire to pamper your emotional and sexual life with music, alcohol and immoral sex with amoral relationships help to elevate your spiritual life?  Does your BMW, country club card, feathered ivory towered degree become the center of your life and existence?  Does your gold gilded position on a church or institutional board let you preen your feathers that you truly are creating goodness in our progressively evil society?

 

The Lord of hosts has only one request: come silent before Me and watch!  Come silent before Me and listen!  Yet do we only doze and slumber?

 

The Earthquakes at the Cross as

a ‘Shadow Type’ of the Coming of the Messiah  

 

The earthquakes at the time of the death of Jesus affected the whole earth.  They did catastrophic damage to the temple; affected forever how the Jews did their temple sacrifices; affected their judgment and court proceeding in the Great Sanhedrin and affected the identity of the Jewish people and their relationship with their God.  The earthquakes also alerted to the Jewish people, “the Lord your God is speaking, are you listening?”

 

Let us now re-look at the geological clues that happened during the crucifixion and resurrection of Yahshua, ben Yosef. 

 

Matthew 27:45-54 – “Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? That is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” 

 

Some of those who stood there, when they heard that, said, “This Man is calling for Elijah!”  Immediately one of them ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink. 

 

The rest said, “Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to save Him.” 

 

“And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit

 

First Earthquake

“Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised;

Second Earthquake

“And coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.

 

So when the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying. “Truly this was the Son of God!”

 

In Part One of this series, published in BibleSearchers Reflections, Jesus’ Death, the Earthquake and the Omens to ‘The Jews’, I wrote,

 

BibleSearchers Reflections - The angelic hosts bowed their heads in shame and sorrow as they watched first the prophet of Israel addressing the daughters of Jerusalem of their impending and future sorrow.  There they saw him as the future high priest and tzaddik, an advocate for His people as Yahshua plead with His Abba (Father) to forgive His murderers of their deeds.  As a son of Man, He tenderly sought to provide a guardian for his mother Mary to protect and shelter her through her grief and sorrow.  They also saw Him as a loving Savior who through Him forgiveness would be given not only for the sins of a sorrowful and repentant thief but for the sins of all mankind throughout the ages. 

 

At the sixth hour (noon), the earth bowed its head in sorrow as this planet tilted on its axis and the sun with its radiant sunshine swiftly moved down below the horizon.  A deathly pallor hung over Jerusalem and hovered over the body of Yahshua. It was as if the sun refused to look upon the Son of God and all the inanimate natural world went into convulsions.  Even the atoms seemed to be paralyzed in the presence of Cosmic death.”

 

In the Sixth Seal we see almost the same catastrophic events that were exhibited during the crucifixion of our Lord:

 

Revelation 6:12-14 –There was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood.  And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind.  Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. 

 

What are we seeing?  No, this was not just an earthquake.  Jerusalem has felt the consequences of many earthquakes recorded in the Bible in the last three thousand years.  Around the globe, every year it is predicted that an 8-9 MG earthquake will occur somewhere on this planet.  Yet, this earthquake in Revelation is a “great earthquake”, associated with volcanic eruptions around the globe that will start the tectonic remodeling process of this earth.  The atmospheric ash will darken or shield the sun and the moon will appear as blood.  Also at this same time, this planet appears to be heading into a cometary shower with meteorites and bolides raining and exploding over and upon the earth.  The earth is reeling and shuttering.

 

Are we seeing a cometary impact that initiates the beginning of the shift of tectonic plates?  Are we entering a new era of crustal instability, polar reversals and tectonic plates separating under our earth?

 

Here is a key to when the time of tribulation and Satan’s Wrath will end on earth and the Great Wrath of God will begin.  It will center on one global event; “and every mountain and island was moved out of its place”.  (Revelation 6:14) 

 

Have you ever considered what this means and the implication of what will be happening on this earth?  From the end of the sixth seal until the end of the seven last plagues written in Revelation prior to the coming of the Messiah, a new catastrophic era will visit this planet.  Will this be the total destruction of all life of this earth? No! 

 

As a people, we Americans want to play the time of the end in fast motion and in our good ol’ American impatient way. Get it over fast, so we can get on with the show.  Let’s have Jesus come quickly and forget about any of the earth changes that must happen before He comes. Some theologians want to place the earthquake and the catastrophic events of the sixth seal at the second coming of Jesus. This not only does violence to the holy script by giving spiritual interpretations without any literal application, but it also suggests we want to keep things simple so we do not have to go through any agony.  Is it not better to try to understand what the Lord of hosts is actually saying and seek to comprehend what He will accomplish?  Let us now compare the events of the sixth seal earthquake with the seventh trumpet of the seventh seal at the second coming of the Lord and how they relate to the earthquakes at the crucifixion and resurrection of Yahshua. 

 

When we look at the earthquakes at the death and resurrection of Jesus we see a double earthquake that occurred exactly three and one-half days apart.  We can also document the historical evidence that this was a global earthquake and not just a local earthquake in Jerusalem. 

 

When we look at the earthquakes at the sixth seal and the seventh trumpet, we also witness two earthquakes like the double earthquakes at the death and resurrection of Yahshua.  Do the three and one-half days between the death and resurrection of Christ have a symbolic reference to the time of the end?  Could it suggest that there will be three and one-half years between the sealing of God’s and Satan’s people in the sixth seal and the restoration of Israel and resurrection of the saints during the earthquakes at the seventh trumpet of the Lord?

 

Let us listen to the prophet of Revelation.  He wrote what the angel revealed to him about the seventh trumpet or vial plague angel,

 

Revelation 16:17 (The Seventh Vial or bowl plague) – “Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple of heaven from the throne, saying, “It is done!”  And there were noises and thunderings and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth

 

Now the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell.  And great Babylon was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath. Then every island fled away, and the mountains were not found.   And great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent.  Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since that plague was exceedingly great. “

 

Compare now the two great earthquakes.   

 

First Earthquake – Sixth Seal

Revelation 6:14 - every mountain and island was moved out of its place.” 

 

Second Earthquake – Seventh Seal, Seventh Trumpet

Revelation 16:20 – “every island fled away and the mountains were not found.

 

Are You Ready for the Coming of the Messiah?

 

This has been a long journey yet a fulfilling one.  We start with the first coming of the Yahshua the anointed one and end with the second coming of the Son of Man as the Moshiach (Messiah)

 

Do we have to be apologetic because these are Christian concepts?  No!  They did not originate with the Gentile ChristiansAll the typology, shadow-pictures and concepts concerning the first and the second messiahs are Hebrew-Judaic concepts.  The authors of every oracle and prophetic book of the Tanakh (Old Testament) were Hebrews of the House of Jacob.  The authors of every book in the New Testament (Brit Hadassah) were written by Jewish members of the Hebrew Nazarene Ecclesia.  They were orthodox halachah observing, temple worshipping, Torah observant, Tanakh (Old Testament) believing, festival observing Jews. 

 

The Christian concept of the coming of Yahshua is not a Gentile Roman concept. It is a Jewish Essene-Nazarene concept.  To understand the coming of the Moshiach (Messiah) must be done in the context of the Torah and the life, culture and traditions of the Jewish people.

 

As such we appeal that the earthquake that occurred upon the death of Yahshua (Jesus) and the second earthquake that occurred upon the resurrection of Jesus were but shadow pictures of the two much larger earthquakes that will occur at the time of the end; in the days of the Sixth and Seventh Seal of Revelation

 

The Bible is replete with stories, illustrations, repetition of numbers, symbols, and through it all the Lord of hosts invites us to have ‘ears that can hear’ and ‘eyes that can see’.  He also asks us to watch and be ready

 

At that Calvary scene, Yahshua was hanging on the cross, where he was hung by his own spiritual leaders in the land of Judea. In spite of the physical pain that He was suffering, His mind was at peace.  His physical being was in the hand of His Father whom He knew to be infinite in Power, Presence and Knowledge. Yahshua had struggled with the tormented desires of His own personal being. As a human, He was no different than you and I.  As the Son of God, He was in constant communication with His Father in heaven.  He wanted to revolt from the idea of subjecting Himself to pain, suffering, deprivation and spiritual torment.  He knew that He had to suffer through the awful isolation of spiritual separation from His Father, while He was at the mercy of the powers of satanic darkness.  He knew that His Father’s presence was very near but by the very presence of the arch-terrorist who had rebelled from His Father, Yahshua was now enveloped in a shroud of oppression.

 

Yet the faith of our Lord was secure.  He had walked and talked with His Father no different than Adam and Eve had walked and talked with their Maker in the Garden.  The focus of Yahshua on His Father was intense.  He was not here to pursue His own will, to pamper His own feelings, to create glory in His own name, or to create a Davidian dynasty in 1st century Judea.  He was here to do the will of His Father.  He gave to us a living example of how we shall live in the final moments of this great and intense struggle ahead for the total domination and control of this earth.

 

Most of us live in a world in which our lives are centered on our own personal and physical preservation.  Think of it seriously, we are not much different than the Jewish people of old. We fight to preserve our own religious traditions, rituals and the symbols of spiritual life left to us by our forefathers.  More and more we feel that we are on the verge of annihilation and extinction.  Three months without a job, our house mortgage will be in default, our security blanket with layers of catastrophic insurance, liability insurance, life insurance, and personal identity insurance keep a façade of depleting security around our lives.

 

Getting old physically is easy compared to the existential fear of losing our home, our friends and or family.  We feel our lives being stripped away.  Our security shield is springing leaks and our carefully wrought ‘purpose’ in life with all its dreams slowing fading into a void of darkness. 

 

Yet for others, this physical world becomes more transparent, revealing its moth-eaten depravity and decay. All men can perceive the full weight of men’s depravity as they seek to destroy God’s earth and the people who call upon the name of the Lord.  The increasing evidence of satanic control is ever more evident.  As we read in the second seal of Revelation, the peace has been taken from the land.  During this time we will learn to keep our minds focused on our Lord and Redeemer. As we do, our souls become more at peace with our Maker. 

 

We begin to understand that our ideals of a personal utopia were not that grand.  Our  visions of becoming that great spiritual guru, a master physician with the secret to the elixir of life, dream of that physical ‘make-over’ that will vault us to the echelons of the ‘beautiful people’, and our intense longing for our own ‘Walden Pond’ where peace and joy can surround us are now fading in a misty fog.  Is there only a void in my future or is there a hope for a new beginning? 

 

The desire of all mankind has been linked to a dream of that pleasant land called paradise: Eden, Heaven, Promised Land, Shangri-la, Elysian Fields, Valhalla, Golden Age, Land of Enchantment, or the Land of Camelot.  Some of us have that nihilistic urge to grab it all now for ‘tomorrow never comes’. Many visualize a paradise whether it is with ‘seventy virgins’ or a ‘mansion over the hilltop’.  Is this paradise centered on our own personal desires to be a ‘god’ and force our dream of omnipotence on everyone else?  Are we rather prepared to be ‘one with the Father’ and give up our dreams with the faith that His will is not just sufficient but will surpass not just our fondest but our grandest dreams?

 

The vision the Lord left us for our future is one in which either we will trust in His Father and become ‘bondservants’ with Him or trust in our own Machiavellian machinations of life and find our empty house filled with demonic spirits.  This polarity is so contrary to the ideals of democracy and competing negotiations which our world today considers ‘idealism’. We want to negotiate our way to utopia.  We have lowered our dreams and ideals of goodness and greatness and have entered the courts of compromise. You take a little and I’ll take a little and we will both seek happiness with a glass half full. 

 

But the Lord of hosts appeals to us, ‘Trust me!” “Your ways are not My Ways.  I am who I am and there is none like Me. Your idealism cannot match my “Ideals” for you.”

 

You want to preserve an otter in an oil soaked sea but I want to restore for you a renewed earth.  You want to negotiate between extremists to find ‘negotiated peace’ for everyone’s satisfaction, but I am telling you, I will withdraw My Spirit of protection from this earth and let man’s personal desires of domination and control to be revealed and felt in their fullest extent.  In the final end, you will have two choices, submit yourself to the powers of evil or submit yourself to the Eternal One the Author of goodness and righteousness. 

 

Do you believe in a Lord of the universe whose only goal is to swoop down, as a saving Savior, upon this earth and snatch up His chosen ones?  Are we looking for redemption and restoration or just a grand divine rescue operation?  Does God not have the power and authority to redeem and restore His people and His land that He calls His own?  Do you believe that Jesus will let the earth and all the creatures He created with His goodness be destroyed and annihilated by His presence? 

 

Do you truly believe what His prophets of old have repeatedly stated over and over, that the Lord of hosts will come to rule with a rod of iron? If all the inhabitants of this world are transformed into celestial and immortal beings, for who is the Lord to rule over?  The Lord of hosts consistently asks us to ‘watch and be ready’ but what are we to watch for?  If there is a God of order and not a God of chaos, then what are the patterns of His order? 

 

Yes we will watch. In fact the whole world will watch.  Time will appear to be out of our control.  Our physical reality will appear to fade away.  The hour of God’s judgment will have come.  If you have been watching and listening there will be a certain quiet quivering of excitement that resonates throughout your body.  Anticipating the coming of the Messiah will come also with an inward feeling of awe, excitement, relief, anticipation and mourning that you could have not done.

 

And then the seventh shofar of trumpet of the Lord will sound and echo around the globe.  The voice of the Lord of hosts will shout out in the seventy languages of the earth, “It is finished”.  A great panorama will begin to unfold before our eyes.

  

It will be surreal yet the force of its impact will sink deep into your soul.  The islands of the sea will begin to sink below the waves.  The mighty civilizations on the islands of the sea: Japan, the Philippines, Hawaii, the Aleutian Islands, Great Britain, Cypress, Madagascar, Cyprus, and Taiwan will disappear and carry their civilizations with them. 

 

Yet the impact will not be as great as when the great mountain chains around the earth begin to collapse: the Rockies, the Andes, to the Himalayas.  The continents will begin to creak and groan with a horrible din that will continue for days.  The continental tectonic plates will begin separating.  The vast subterranean crustal plates which were pushing against each other with unbelievable forces will begin to return the continents back home to the land that it once was, Pangea.  The Lord of hosts will be rearranging His house that was destroyed in the Great Flood of Noah.  God will be redeeming His people and restoring His land. 

 

The land of Pangea, the former Garden of Eden, will once again be restored.  The eastern coast of the United States will be suddenly moving closer to the western coast of Europe.  The Mediterranean Valley will experience a massive uplift with the peak uplift in Jerusalem which will become the highest mountain in all the earth. 

 

What will your response be to listen to the breathless stammer of an anchorman on international T.V.  We will be informed that imminent scientists are watching closely the two main continental plates of America and Euro-Africa as they are moving closer towards each other in meters per day?  During this time, the Atlantic Ocean will get smaller and smaller.

 

The mighty forces of the tectonic plates that collided against each other with massive uplifts are suddenly relieved of that vast continental pressure. As the tectonic plate pressure is relieved the mountains will settled down, thousands of feet at a time. 

 

Where will we be during these days?  Will these events all end in the destruction of all mankind?  The geologists speak of several global annihilations of all species.  The Bible does not except the destruction of this earth in one great global catastrophe by the floods and water in the days of Noah? 

 

The Super-continent called Pangea – drawing by Robert Mock MD

 

Maybe it is much easier to think that we will be sent on an interplanetary journey.  Yes, we will be caught up into the clouds to be with our Lord, but the text doesn’t say where we will go afterwards. (1 Thessalonians 4:15-18)

 

When Christ arose from the grave in His glorified body, He was still living on this earth. He ate fish in the Upper Room and ministered to His disciples in Galilee.  Oh yes, He could walk through walls and went to visit His Father in heaven. Yes, He was a glorified inter-dimensional Being, not tainted with sin and the curse of being trapped in this three dimensional world.  His disciples could perceive the majesty of His glorified Being.  He bade them to follow His example.  His commission to them was not to conquer the world in My name but to make disciples of every nation and tongue and people. 

 

Here we see the grand design of the plan of salvation: Paradise Lost à Paradise Restored.  We see this restoration unfold literally as spoken by the prophet of old. 

 

Isaiah 66:14-16, 18-20 - “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, the Lord will judge all flesh; and the slain of the Lord shall be many….”

 

“For I know their works and their thoughts.  It shall be that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and see My glory. I will set a sign among them; and those among them who escape I will send to the nations: to Tarshish and Pul and Lud, who draw the bow, and Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands afar off who have not heard My fame nor seen My glory.  And they shall declare My glory among the Gentiles. 

 

“Then they shall bring all your brethren for an offering to the Lord out of all nations, on horses and in chariots and in litters, on mules and on camels, to My holy mountain Jerusalem, says the Lord, “as the children of Israel bearing an offering in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord.”

 

The earth renewed, the New Earth, will still be in the future, a future place that will remain before the eyes of our Lord.

 

Isaiah 66:22 – “For as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before Me,” says the Lord. “So shall your descendants and your name remain.  And it shall come to pass that from one New Moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, all flesh shall come to worship before Me,” say the Lord.

 

The earth will be restored and returned to the era of the golden age, Pangea.  We will celebrate the New Moons and the Sabbaths (Shabbats).  These will include the festival and the seventh-day Sabbath.  Yes the hierarchy of the solar system, the sun, the moon and the stars in the heavens will remain the same. 

 

We will learn the way of the Lord, Torah.  We will learn to walk the walk with our Lord, halachah.  We will learn and experience how to keep the festivals of the Lord, this time from the Creator of the festivals.

 

Lest we forget and seek to walk in our ‘old’ ways and re-live the former life of power, greed and control that had control and oppressed our world, the Lord of hosts will leave for us a visual reminder of a past that we do not want to repeat;

 

Isaiah 66:24 – “And they shall go forth and look upon the corpses of the men who have transgressed against Me.  For their worm does not die, and their fire is not quenched. They shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”

 

In the age of the Messiah, we will learn to walk the life of Torah and we will learn it directly from our Lord and Savior, the Son of the Living God, who will teach us with the rod of iron or the two edged sword between His mouth.  The life of cause in which the effect will be instant will teach us quickly right from wrong. 

 

This is not an era of eternal bliss with the pampering of the physical body, but an era of true freedom.  Man will learn to become responsible for his own actions.  This will be an era in which knowledge and wisdom will merge.  Gone will be the days in which wise men with minimal knowledge lived.  Gone will be the day when scientists, philosophers, economists, sociologists and theologians will have great knowledge but no wisdom. 

 

The Lord of hosts and the God of Abraham, Isaac and God invite us:

 

Isaiah 1:18 – “Come now, and let us reason together,” says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken…

 

The Lord of hosts invites all of us to have a vision of the latter days.  God’s holy land will be restored.  The land of oppression and war will be transformed. 

 

Isaiah 2:1-4 – “Now it shall come to pass in the latter days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow to it.

 

“Many people shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths”  

 

For out of Zion shall go forth the law (Torah) and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.  He shall judge between the nations and rebuke many people; they shall beat their swords into plow shares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up sword against nations; neither shall they learn war anymore.  O house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the Lord.”

 

The Moschiach of Israel to the Jews and the Second Coming of Jesus to the Christians, the Lord of hosts will come to dwell with His own on that season of Succot.  What a grand reception that will be.  Yahshua will be the ruler of this world and Israel will become the international teaching center on Torah; how to walk and talk with the Father of our Lord, Yahshua ben Yosef.  

 

Return to Part One

Jesus’ Death, the Earthquake and the Omens to ‘The Jews’

Introduction

The Rending of the Temple Veil

Omens that Began at the Death of Jesus

The Sanhedrin banished from the Chamber of Hewn Stones

Forty Years of Omens on the Jewish People

The Lord’s Lot came to the Left Hand

The Crimson Red Cord would not turn White

The Lamp on the Menorah refused to give any Light

The Doors of the Hekel open on their Own

The Star, the Comet and the Lamb birthed to the Red Heifer

 

Return to Part Two  

The Earthquake and the Restoration of “The Land”

The Earthquake at the Crucifixion and the Restoration of “The Land”

The Earthquake replayed in the Final Drama at the Day of the Lord

Testimony of the Ancients

 

Go to Beginning