By: Atty. Marlo T. Cristobal
The US-Israel armed attack against Iran last February 28 simply dramatically sets the stage and unfolds the drama of God prophesies way back from eternity about wars among nations and our perilous times.
God upon His throne in eternity fully forwarned humanity that its “last days” — our present age — would usher in the beginning of its sorrows (Please read 2 Timothy 3:1-2, that confirms reference to our current times, in relation to Daniel12:4). For this is the period when “nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.” (Please read Matthew 24:7, NKJV).
Such divine assertions in the Bible overwhelm and captivate the human mind since they reflect now world events with surgical precision, like the current Middle East war that is engulfing a wider war theater in the Gulf States of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other places, a further validation of God’s pronouncement of “You will hear of wars” (Please read Matthew 24:6). And there are talks or rumors that North Korea, China, Russia, Japan, and many other countries, will join the fray and take sides, a stupendous testament to God’s further words, “You will hear . . . rumors of wars.” (Matthew 24:6).
This Middle East war catapults up high in the sky thousands of crisscrossing ballistic missiles, drones and jet fighter bombers that constantly and intensely blast precious human resources, assets and wealth into instant powder and smoke when they should serve as constant and strong engines for economic and social progress for the earth’s nations. Their massive and quick destruction will now instead certainly begin the dreaded famines God spoke of, “And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.(Matthew 24:7).
Famines have started to rear their ugly head as inflation unimpededly spirals and transportation problems bestir, all to welcome starvation and misery of people. Pestilences started to deadly plague humanity in the 14th century and subsequently slackened until recently when they dramatically came back, like the biblical demon who went away came back with seven more, as Covid 19 cursed humanity with a reported cases of 779 million. Earthquakes have been cursing humanity reportedly around 500,000 occurrences each year worldwide.
Above world spectacles are crystal-clear proofs and expressions of the deeply humbling avowal of God supremacy over human affairs and all His creations when He asserted, “My counsel shall stand.” (Please don’t fail to read Isaiah 46:10, NKJV, to grasp this quotation’s full wisdom and context)). Which is actually His way of saying He alone can tell the future before it even happens, and everything He purposes will unalterablely come to pass.
There were world wars before this Middle East military conflict, of course, but l zeroed in on the latter because of its clear and apparent penultimate Bible signification considering its blinding “epic fury” that takes the appearance of a science fiction no less and its mighty and blistering high-tech armaments that instantly pulverize and vaporize their targets, missiles that even incredibly engage in a “dog fight” up in the sky and bombs that penetrate a 200-meter deep bunkers in stony mountains with undergrounds heavily concretized for reinforcement. Upon this stunning sight of consummate advance of science (‘increase in knowledge,” in God’s term, Daniel 12:4, NLT) in armaments unmatched in human history, God likewise prophesied in the Book of Daniel that, “knowledge will increase” when “the time of the end” supervenes (Please read Daniel 12:4, NLT)
What prompt men to rush into all these wars? God provides the specific reasons: because men have become “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, … unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, ….” (Please don’t fail to read 2Timothy 3:1-5). And because of all these human vices we now live in what God calls, “perilous times,” which ushers in what He describes more in time specifity, “in the last days.”
If you study closer the character and ways of the leaders of the warring nations, they clearly display undiluted guilt of several of the sins abovementioned, foremost and brazen of which is “lovers of money.” The production of armaments and materiels for war is a multi-billion-dollar industry that reaps multi-billion-dollar profits which absolutely give no quarter to life, freedom and property of people.
Same story at home. Leaders in our Executive and Legislative departments of our government are consummate lovers of money who contrived a scheme to rob the people they have sworn to serve in a magnitude so gargantuan and sustained duration that it is unmatched, l would say, in the political history of mankind and bespeaks a total and shameless absence of moral compunction that gives absolutely no quarter to life, mercy and decency. We can only hope God will give these vile robbers and their cronies and defenders a quick time of reckoning in this “perilous times” God condemns but they heartlessly thrust us into.
But does this catastrophic war brought on by the latest and cutting edge technology of war apparatus precisely “in the last days” and “the time of the end” God speaks of for our current times mean the termination of humanity and the earth?
To the faint hearted and to those of diseased hearts prone to heart attack, be at peace. While God sternly warns our current world its ongoing “last days,” He is quick to calm us and says, “but the end is not yet.” (Matthew 24:6, NKJV). For what we will have with these wars is only “the beginning of sorrows.” (Matthew 24:8, NKJV).
Furthermore, we have yet to live on what many Christians sects term “rupture.” There is no such term in the Bible, it is just a mere invention of the wayward thoughts of christians. What we have is, and this maybe what they mean by “rupture,” the scenario when the righteous among the dead and the living will be caught up together in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Together with Christ, they will rule the earth for a thousand years. (Please read 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 and Revelation 20:4)
The term “last days” is a mere descriptive expression that emphasizes that the earth is compulsorily and irrevocably due to end because, as the Bible tells, it is an old, old world of humanity. Independent studies of science report that the earth is already about 4.5 billion years in existence!
