Daniel's Fight and Ours

We know neither the day nor the hour when the Lord Jesus will return, but only that His return is certain. Lying to oneself and to others is also a salient sin of the last days. Already we can see across cultures an avoidance of the Holy Spirit, Who is called the Spirit of Truth in John 15:26. This is reflected in the avoidance of the Holy Bible, the written Word of Truth. It is also reflected in the denigration of the names of God and of Jesus, Who is the living Truth (John 14:6). Revelation 9:21 lists four sins to which humanity clings even through the Great Tribulation: murders, sorceries (Greek pharmakos, indicating drug-induced origin), fornication (I understand this as a general terms that includes all form of sexual sin outside of monogamy) and thefts. Are the foundations for world-wide sins of these sorts already well laid? ... I suspect that world-wide judgment may arrive before my normal life span would be completed, although I do not know this. ... God has the power to speed up, slow down or even stop time, as He did for Joshua and Israel in Joshua 10:12-13. As a sign He even reversed time for King Hezekiah as recorded in 2 Kings 20:9-11. So we must be prepared either to live a normal life span ... or to face the full fury of humanity whipped up by Satan as part of his futile struggle to overthrow God as the Sovereign Lord over all Creation. Therefore I believe it prudent to dust off Old Testament prophecy written just before and during the judgments of Israel and Judah as miniature analogies to [the future] struggle and to the Last Judgment to come. Daniel wrote concerning the judgment and lived through the Exile himself. Zephaniah and then Habakkuk wrote shortly before the judgment of Judah. I hope and pray that the reader will reflect on the similarities between the times of these prophets and our own times, even though our technologies are far more advanced ...

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