Prophecy Update Newsletter
IN TODAY'S NEWSLETTER...
Hoofbeats of the Four Horsemen? - By Jan Markell - www.olivetreeviews.org
According to Lifeway Research, many pastors are apparently having an "aha" moment due to the tide of our times. It's about time. I am now hope-filled. They are seeing current events today as things the Bible forecast for the end-of-days. But I maintain their pulpits could still be silent. Let's be optimistic. When real church resumes, the pulpits will boldly announce that we are in the last days and Jesus is coming soon. Get your houses in order! Darrell Bock, New Testament professor at Dallas Seminary, noted that the Bible has several lists of potential signs of Jesus' return, such as the Olivet Discourse passages, and some include concepts of global sickness. These are Tribulation references. "Numerous biblical texts speak of disturbances in the creation that disorient and trouble people," said Bock. "These disturbances have quite a range with earthquakes and wars being the most common. Jesus mentions plagues or pestilence explicitly in Luke 21." Three out of four pastors in the survey have noted that world and church events have meaning today. They include the rise in apostasy, the love of believers growing cold, the decline in traditional morals, national conflicts, natural disasters, famines, and even the rise in anti-Semitism. Even if they are Tribulation events, they are casting a shadow on the Church Age. So is a new day in the church approaching thanks to some kind of a wake-up call? Almost 25 years ago, the church-growth movement said teaching any kind of eschatology would not grow the church. Pastors were encouraged to keep quiet about the soon return of the Lord. Pastor Rick Warren even said in his Purpose Driven Life book that teaching Bible prophecy would distract you from your purpose and make you unfit for the Kingdom of God. Pastors listened to him! In the information produced by Lifeway Research, Joel Rosenberg states, "For too long, many pastors have shied away from teaching on birth pangs and events leading up to the Second Coming of the Lord, but the current pandemic demonstrates the need for solid, non-sensational preaching done in a biblical manner." The Lifeway report reveals that more than half the pastors expect Jesus to return in their lifetime. So why on earth are their pulpits not proclaiming this? But there is more to the survey! Almost 70% of those surveyed believe the modern re-birth of Israel and the re-gathering of millions of Jewish people were fulfillments of prophecies in the Bible. That's great news but that was 72 years ago. Why haven't you been preaching that, pastors? More than that, 40% of the pastors surveyed believe that the establishment of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem two years ago was a sign of the last days! This is great sermon material! It could get a church fired up! But most pulpits I hear about are silent on the topic. The most frequent e-mail Olive Tree Ministries receives has to do with this topic: Where can I find a prophecy-preaching, relevant issues-focused church? Where can I find a church that is warning of things to come instead of emphasizing your best life now? Brent Miller, Jr. of Ingenuity Films made the new Rapture-themed film production, Before the Wrath, because his research, which also tapped into Lifeway, revealed that 98% of the church will not teach on anything end-time related. Both eschatology and Israel are marginalized. You read that right: 98%. Let's add one more equation into our discussion and that is what should be obvious to every observer. The book of Revelation tells us there is coming a one-world system run by the Antichrist. That new world order requires a crisis-a global crisis, not a local crisis. We have it-a global pandemic. Isn't this more fuel for a discussion? The world is in meltdown mode right now and people are asking a lot of questions. We don't even know if life as we once knew it will ever happen again. It may not! Pastors, are you talking about this? The Church is to be removed before the revealing of the lawless one, the Antichrist. I maintain he is just over the horizon, raring to go. And the four horsemen of the apocalypse may be training on some race track somewhere! You can almost hear their hoofbeats. Pastors, don't be silent! Maybe this is truly a new day for you. Seize the opportunity. Please see that all things are falling into place. Be excited. Be truthful. Don't marginalize such important news. Connect the dots for your people. Jesus is returning any moment. Please stop the silence of the pulpits. A Day's Wage For A Loaf Of Bread - By Dan Baker/DivideRight.com - https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=3976 "When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, 'Come'. And I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on him had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard as it were a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, 'A quart of wheat for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine." Revelation 6:6 The verse above is the description of the 3rd of 7 seal judgments of the 7 year tribulation, or 70th Week of Daniel. My goal here is to bear out the possibility that we are now living in the circumstances that will lead to the fulfillment of this verse in the tribulation period. These circumstances are being driven by what is called Modern Monetary Theory, which is now being fully implemented by our government and the rest of the world. I'll get into this in a minute. You can find various perspectives regarding the meaning of the above passage. It is pretty much universal belief that a denarius was a about a day's wage when John wrote Revelation. Matthew 20:2 seems to confirm it. And a quart of wheat would make a loaf of bread. What is not obvious is what the scales, oil and wine represent. Some interpret this passage as famine with hyperinflation. Seems reasonable. Although the 4th seal is the judgment death-by-famine-and-pestilence, and not the 3rd seal. That brings into question the scales, oil and wine and their meaning. I interpret this verse symbolically. The scales are clearly symbolic of something, as are the oil and wine. Some say the scales represent famine because it would be necessary to measure out the wheat and barley carefully and precisely, due to scarcity. Some say they represent judgment. From what I can tell, this is primarily because our symbol of justice is lady liberty holding a sword and scales. I think perhaps the scales represent balance and fairness, or justness. I also have an idea that the oil and wine represent plenty and abundance. Bread was a basic staple, but oil and wine were luxuries. This passage may be describing a situation where hyperinflation is rampant and those with little can barely pay for basic necessities. However, in this not-so-distant period, the wealthy are not suffering, and still can have their treats. Today in the U.S. and the world, economic inequality, whether measured through the gaps in income or wealth between richer and poorer households, continues to widen. According to the Pew Research Center, "the wealth gap among upper-income families and middle- and lower-income families is sharper than the income gap and is growing more rapidly". The Brookings Institute says, "the top one percent of the usual income distribution holds over $25 trillion in wealth, which exceeds the wealth of the bottom 80 percent. That is more than all the goods and services produced in the U.S. economy in 2018". In Scripture, one of the purposes for the Year of Jubilee, was to prevent the majority of wealth from winding up in the hands of just a few. You can find my article about it on my website. So, in my hypothesis, what you have in this verse is the lower income strata struggling to survive while the elite wealthy are living their lives essentially unchanged. The scales then would represent a lack of balance and fairness. Modern Monetary Theory is Now the Rule Until recently, I had no idea about this theory. Now that I understand what it is, so many things make sense. I understand why authorities have no problem printing and spending more money to solve any problem that arises. I understand why Bernie Sanders and other radical leftists have no problem advocating for universal healthcare, universal government paychecks, universal EVERYTHING! In short, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is the belief that by printing more money, any economic problem can be mitigated (I'm getting sick of that word). It is the anti-orthodox, macro-economic framework which says that any 'monetarily sovereign' country does not need taxes or borrowing for spending since they can print as much as they need and are the monopoly issuers of the currency. A monetary sovereign country is one that has exclusive, unlimited power to create their sovereign currencies. The U.S., U.K, Canada, Australia, Japan, China and the European Union are entities that are monetarily sovereign. Because the U.S. is monetarily sovereign, it never needs to tax or borrow, according to the premise of the theory. It can just just print money to pay it's bills. Theoretically, the country can never be pushed into insolvency. To quote one source, "Everything you believe about your personal finances -- debts, deficits, spending, affordability, saving, and budgeting -- are inappropriate to U.S. federal finances. For this reason, your personal intuition about U.S. financing likely is wrong." Traditional thinking would say that's nuts. But according to investopedia.com, MMT supporters say, "large government debt isn't the precursor to collapse we have been led to believe it is. Countries like the U.S. can sustain much greater deficits without cause for concern, and in fact a small deficit or surplus can be extremely harmful and cause a recession since deficit spending is what builds people's savings." In this theory, taxes are actually a mechanism to take money out of the money supply to control inflation! In other words, tax revenues are simply destroyed, or erased from the money supply! Conventional thinking would say that the natural consequence of this policy is hyper-inflation. But MMT'ers would say nay, you can just adjust policies to correct inflation. Does the Fed rate come to mind? Right now, the Fed Rate is .25%. That's the rate banks can borrow money. The lower the rate, the cheaper borrowed money is (and the more commercial and personal debt increases), and the slower inflation would creep. Do some research on it. Investopedia gives a very nice explanation. The Coronavirus Play So now comes the coronavirus. My spidey sense is at 100%. I try to get a 30,000 foot spiritual view of the situation. This germ panic has prompted governments to declare a lockdown of the entire world economy. The result of this lockdown is the most unprecedented (I know that's redundant) printing-fest of fiat currency in the history of the world. Trillions of new dollars are being printed to ameliorate the economic hardships of the man-made economic shutdown. Recently, White House economic advisor, Larry Kudlow said that the U.S. economic stimulus package will reach $6 trillion. $4 trillion would be immediate liquidity (that means cheap borrowing and bloating of the money supply) and the other $2 trillion would be paychecks, essentially. Kudlow called it, "the single largest Main Street assistance program in the history of the United States". Duh The world is at full tilt printing new money. Can you see the picture developing and the rationale behind my interpretation of Revelation 6:6? Massive debt, hyperinflation, incredible wealth gap, economic depression. What if the rapture happened right...now? Nearing Midnight: More Monetary Madness - Todd Strandberg - https://www.raptureready.com/category/nearing-midnight/ With each passing day of the coronavirus crisis, it's become more obvious that we can't remain in this state of lockdown. The damage already inflicted on the economy is tremendous. We are still seeing record moves in the financial markets that are off the scale. Oil prices spiked 25 percent after President Trump tweeted that Saudi Arabia and Russia would cut production by 10 to 15 million barrels per day. Incidentally, it was the biggest one-day percentage surge in the price of oil in history. The Treasury currently has a record cash balance of $750 Billion. After a historic flood of bill issuance, the money will be issued to taxpayers. On the down side, the nation's debt went from $23 to $24 trillion, which is the quickest time it has gone through a trillion-dollar milestone. On Mar 26th, there was an unprecedented 3.3 million surge in initial jobless claims; a week later came an even more unprecedented report, adding a stunning 6.648 million in initial jobless claims. Last Thursday there were another 6.9 million people filing jobless claims. Before this coronavirus mess, the old record was half a million in a single week. In the space of three weeks, 16 million new Americans are claiming unemployment benefits. The peak total number of people drawing unemployment in the Great Recession of 2009 was 6.35 million. The Fed has announced it will buy investment-grade corporate debt for the first time in history. The Fed also announced that it will be directly buying investment-grade corporate debt ETFs. It has also launched a plan to buy US debt directly from foreign governments. The folks at the Fed are of the belief that they can print an unlimited amount of dollars. "There is an infinite amount of cash at the Federal Reserve," Neel Kashkari, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, told Scott Pelley of CBS on March 22, adding: "We will do whatever we need to do to make sure there is enough cash in the financial system." After just passing the $2.2 trillion stimulus package, lawmakers are realizing they need more money. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is floating ideas including another direct payment to Americans, expanded paid sick leave and infrastructure projects. This Democratic-led bailout will likely have a price tag of $1 trillion. Key Republicans are signaling that they may not be willing to accept another major spending measure. Some analysts suggested that Republican reluctance to spend on public relief may not persist if, as expected, future reports continue the trend of enormous increases in unemployment and declines in economic growth. If unemployment hits 15%, we'll likely see bailout four followed by bailout five. The issuance of vast amounts of money has negative consequences. The FT reports that Chase has temporarily stopped accepting applications for small business loans outside the government's Paycheck Protection Program. A Chase spokeswoman told the FT that the bank was now devoting all of its small business underwriting resources to processing these applications and had "temporarily suspended" taking other applications from small businesses. The bank was continuing to process non-PPP applications already in train, she said, and would revisit the issue of new applications at a later date. I witnessed the decline in civil order with my own eyes. Last week I was standing in my front yard and heard four loud bangs. I looked up into the trees on a nearby hill and saw four flashing cop cars. That was the first time in my life that I've witnessed a shooting at a crime scene. I fear Benton, AR, is soon going to sound like the fourth of July on any given night. Covid-19 has lit the fuse on an economic-debt time-bomb. I think a bigger bomb that is going to hit the global economy is the sudden loss of millions of Christians in the rapture. The world will be in total chaos, and people will be ready for any leader that promises to restore order. "And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?" (Rev 13:1-4). Digital Worship May Create America's Next Spiritual Awakening - by Greg Laurie - https://harvest.org Like everywhere else across America, the church I pastor in Southern California, Harvest Christian Fellowship, had to go exclusively to online services four weeks ago. Scrambling to respond to the abrupt change in circumstance, we were pleasantly surprised when on the first Sunday of quarantine we realized our online attendance exceeded 250,000. But then it just continued to grow. Last week, we had over a million people tune in for church. These are people literally from all around the world, from every age and background, who are missing church. So, to the best of our ability, we are bringing church to them. What's more, hundreds of thousands of them are people whom marketers would refer to as the "target demographic" between the ages of 18 and 34. Since the shutdown started, our millennial viewership is up 235 percent. What exactly is going on here? For decades, the church has been trying, seemingly in vain, to reach America's youngest generations-millennials and Generation Z-with the Gospel. All the while, we've seen headline after headline and poll after poll reminding us that church attendance has been falling, and rapidly. The fastest-growing religion in America is now the "nones," those individuals who aren't necessarily atheists. Maybe they're loosely spiritual, but they profess faith in no specific religion or tradition. Enter a global pandemic. Could it be that simply by responding as best and as quickly as we could to something no one saw coming, we've unwittingly stumbled into part of God's answer to a generational riddle? A millennial friend of mine wrote: "As a millennial I understand in a way a Gen X or a Boomer doesn't (and probably a little less than a Gen Z) what it means to be digitally native. Doesn't it make sense, then, that God would bring about revival, a great new American Awakening, through our telephone and laptop screens?" Consider this: We touch our phones a shocking 2,617 times a day, and 84 percent say they can't go a single day without their phone. Most people under 30 can't even remember a world before cellphones. Perhaps this is why some psychologists refer to millennials as "Generation Panic." They have been so inundated by a world of unrealistic comparisons and "excessive expectations" online that they are afflicted by "a harsh inner critic and an obsessive need to achieve." Meanwhile, many have a form of in-person social anxiety. They've been interacting on social media and message boards like Reddit, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram for so long that while they're extremely fluent in those digital settings, they are much less comfortable with in-person interactions. Some psychologists are now prescribing screen detoxes and screen-free zones to help our young people cope with the anxieties of life and relationships. This is obviously problematic, taken on the whole, but God will use any opening he can get. Again, my millennial friend told me: "Just sitting alone in my living room, watching Sunday service with no one watching me, with no pressure to behave or perform, I had an encounter with God that was truly powerful." In a perfect world, they would all be part of a great congregation with a loving pastor, accompanied by a spiritually supportive community. But we don't live in a perfect world. We live in a world of rampant anxiety and a global pandemic. But here is the most surprising thing to me about this new, burgeoning online congregation. At the end of my message, I extended an opportunity for people to pray and ask Jesus Christ to come into their lives. At last count, over 31,000 have responded. That's in four weeks. You've heard of "life imitating art." Well, this is virtual reality becoming actual reality. Maybe it's a new piece to an ever-evolving puzzle: how to say something old to a new audience. Just as Paul wrote letters, as Gutenberg used the printing press and as Billy Graham used film and television, the church is called to engage the un-churched and under-churched, using whatever useful tools we have at our disposal. The new wave of video technology allows a preacher like me to bring the Gospel into your living room in a way that is more personal and intimate than ever before. It's also a medium millions of young people are very comfortable with. Don't misunderstand me. Nothing takes the place of the local church and gathering and worshipping in person. I am also alarmed by some of the overreach on the part of some government authorities who are not letting Christians gather even for a drive-in service on Easter morning. Nevertheless, we are in the fourth week of having the doors of our church building closed, and yet the doors for the church have never been more open. Harvest Christian Fellowship is already planning and looking forward to gathering with our congregation in person again, hopefully in the very near future. But in the meantime, while we are all still sheltering in place, we are seeing something take place that looks an awful lot to me like a spiritual awakening. Let's hope and pray that it continues. America is long overdue. Daily Jot: Who's attacking WHO - Bill Wilson - www.dailyjot.com I almost fell out of my chair when I read what Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said on Tuesday's broadcast of the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. Schumer stated that President Trump won't make the situation in the United States better by criticizing the World Health Organization and all the president's energy seems to be focused on attacking other people. Schumer said, "He goes after the W.H.O. What good is it? How is it going to make the country better by going after the W.H.O. one day or the press one day or the governors one day or Pelosi one day or me one day? That's all he seems to-that's seems to [be] where his energy is. At the same time, we don't have a regime of testing." The height of hypocrisy. Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the news media have been attacking the President relentlessly without offering a single bit of advice on how to resolve this COVID-19 issue. Where are the questions from the news media, even the so-called conservative news media, to the Democratic leadership about what they would do to improve the situation? None. Crickets. The focus of the President's opposition MUST be that he did not act soon enough to stop the spread of COVID-19 because they have no other reason to blame him. They MUST make that stick in the minds and hearts of all Americans, otherwise they have no grounds to criticize. Angry that the President showed a video chronologically documenting his actions and his oppositions criticisms, they continue to attack the President and offer no solutions. All criticism and conspiracy theories aside, this President and his administration have been more transparent than any modern administration about what is being done to fight the COVID-19 virus. They have held news conferences every day for weeks-news conferences that the news media does not want to attend and cover because America can see the raw, real-time answers to their increasingly ignorant questions. Why is the news media not asking the Democratic Leadership what they would do differently? Why is the news media not asking the Democratic Leadership why they choose to not work with the President to solve the challenge instead of wasting their time criticizing him while people die? We are finding out more facts about the spread of this plague. The World Health Organization actually helped the spread of the disease by not wanting to close the borders. The Democratic leadership in America also helped spread the disease by politically opposing the closing of America's borders. If the President would have acted sooner, the disease would not have spread so much, but what was he doing at the time? He was fighting to stay in office because the Democrats were trying to remove him based on trumped up charges. This blame game is ridiculous. The focus should be on getting people healthy and back to work. Job's discourse on the wicked ended in Job 21:24 with the question, "How then can you comfort me with vain words, since falsehood remains in your answers?" If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Daily Devotion: HOPE: Holding on with Patient Expectation - by Greg Laurie - www.harvest.org And he said: 'I cried out to the LORD because of my affliction, and He answered me.'-Jonah 2:2 When someone asks me to pray for them, I like to include Scripture as part of my prayer. For example, if someone says they need prayer for wisdom, I'll pray something along these lines: "Lord, you promised in Scripture that if anyone lacks wisdom, let them ask of You, and you will give it generously. So now, Lord, we pray for wisdom." Or maybe someone is battling fear. I'll pray, "Lord, you promised in Philippians that we should not worry about anything but should pray about everything. You promised the peace of God that passes all human understanding will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. We lay hold of that promise and pray for that now." That is something Jonah did from inside the belly of the fish. He quoted Scripture. I don't think he had scrolls to read from. But he carried God's Word in his heart. In the second chapter of Jonah, we see that he quoted from the Book of Psalms, eight times. When I quote Scripture in my prayers, I'm not doing it to remind God of what He said. Rather, it's to remind those I'm praying for of what God said. Jonah said, "When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer went up to You, into Your holy temple" (2:7 NKJV). Jonah began to lose hope. And his hope was restored in a relationship with God. The same is true for us today. So what do you put your hope in? Don't put your hope in people. People will disappoint you. Parents will disappoint you. Children will disappoint you. Friends will disappoint you. Don't put your hope in money or in technology. They will disappoint you. Don't put your hope in any human solutions. Put your hope in Jesus Christ. FROM THE HEART
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