If we look at the melded timeline, it looks like there is a huge “togo effort,” i.e., so many of Daniel’s and John’s prophecies have not been fulfilled.  But there were two phases or waves in Daniel, and the first wave was fulfilled by the time Jesus ascended on high. The second wave correlates/converges with all the Revelation prophecies.  So, as I mentioned in the January 12 blog post, “Daniel was given about 50 prophecies, with 40 of them fulfilled thus far.  John was also given about 50 prophecies and (subject to pre-, mid-, or post-trib beliefs) they have yet to be fulfilled.”  Forty of the prophecies were fulfilled in ~~six hundred years.  But due to technological advances and an unprecedented explosion of data/info (Daniel 12:4), I believe that the remaining fifty could be fulfilled in less than a decade if God gave the go-ahead. 

No man knows the day or the hour, however, Jesus told us to be on the alert for specific signs. So God wanted to give us heads up.  Do we need to predict the exact day that the temperature is going to break 100 degrees in Dallas this summer to know, with complete certainty (sans only in 1906 or 1973), that that day is coming? No.  We can see when it’s creeping up us by discerning the signs:  The soil dries out sooner.  The plants are wilting—the people are wilting.  The grass is getting that rice-crispy feel/sound. Electricity and water usage are increasing.  And we can prepare for the inevitable–we can bring the summer clothes out of storage; we can make sure our air conditioners are operating at peak; we can change the sprinkler timer settings; we can make sure the pool is ready to go. 

“Another way to picture this is to imagine you’re at a play.  You have taken your seat in the audience, and before the curtain goes up for Act One you can hear sounds behind the curtain.  The stage is being set for the beginning of the play.  The props are in place and the actors take their positions.  These events are not the play itself but are a natural, necessary preparation for it.  The setting of the stage creates anticipation for the raising of the curtain.”¹ 

So let’s look at the prevailing worldwide socio-religious landscape and its potential/propensity for an eschatological scenario.

“We have the technology:”  The whole world knows how many COVID-19 confirmed cases and how many deaths have happened—from the smallest city in the world (Hum in Croatia), to the Tristan de Cunha (an archipelago of small islands, off South Africa, believed to be the most remote place in the world).  Even the “last places on earth with no Internet” (Telegraph 9 September 2019 e-article) are contributing to and tracking the statistics.  E.g., we know Greenland has been infection-free for two weeks. 

Given the current ramp rate, in a matter of a couple of years, people at the remotest corners of the earth would be able to watch the murder of the two witnesses in Jerusalem—via cell phones as it was happening!—and the hardy partying would begin. (Rev 11:10)

And we can’t overlook the incredible data analytics and complex modelling programs that are churning out these curve flattening projections.  Fifty or sixty years ago, we would have needed an entire building to house the IBM computers required to run these high-end calculations.  A networked desktop workstation can enable any eager PhD candidate to do the job today.      

Extended media reach:  COVID-19 has demonstrated that the entire world can be radically influenced and steered by a unified media message.  We are sitting in our homes, reacting to pre-conditioned, filtered information that is hand fed to us to accomplish specific agendas (that are corporately defined by the elite leadership of the world).  If, instead of toilet paper supply interruptions, nationwide shipping lanes were shut down—or the energy supply—we’d do more than put on surgical masks and anti-bac everything in sight.  My guess is that the majority would do anything our leadership told us to do to restore safety and normalcy.  Many people would follow a world dictator with a god complex today if they could just continue the on-line immersion/escape into revenue generation, entertainment/gaming, comfort shopping…and media shaping.  And if the global breadbaskets were threatened, the masses would submit en masse. 

I watched a TV preacher this past Sunday who was preaching a series on the Protestant Reformation, that happened a mere 500 years ago. 

“You might think that 500 years ago was the good old days. There were no cars, no planes, no plastic, and no industrial pollution. But there were no computers, no internet, no United States, no x-rays, no antibiotics, no anesthetic… and no Bible available to the people.”²

Can you imagine how hard it would have been five hundred years ago for a preacher (priest) to convince people that Jesus’ return was imminent?  Only a figurative, futuristic translation of the anti-Christ’s propagandizing capability would have worked; there is no way that a literal translation would have applied back then.

Religion Primed – for Harvest? for Apostasy?:  Millions of Jewish people have migrated to the nation of Israel that was reborn in a day—and they’re speaking Hebrew which was considered extinct as the spoken/native language and lingua franca;  plus they have been longing for a temple.  (Isaiah 66:8; Zephaniah 3:9) The set of circumstances that would enable the Abomination of Desolation in the Holy Place have not been possible since the expulsion/diaspora of the Jewish people from Israel in 70 AD.  But in April 2020, we’re a couple of years away, if someone could negotiate a Temple Mount treaty between the Israelis and Arabs.  One could say that the treaty brokering has been going on since the days of Isaac and Ishmael.  But this type of prophecy can be fulfilled virtually any second—when the time is right. It’s just a matter of when God chooses to make it happen. 

What about Western Church apostasy?  COVID-19 is unfortunately turning out to be a real test case.  

“Many religious authorities are closing places of worship or limiting public gatherings…In some cases, religious gatherings have proven to be hotbeds for outbreaks…in Washington, DC, a rector tested positive for the virus after performing communion at an Episcopalian church with more than five hundred congregants, all of whom were asked to self-quarantine for two weeks…Religious leaders regularly offer prayers and words of support to their communities; they have doubled down on those messages in recent weeks to ease worries over the virus…Many religious groups continue to provide charity services, including donating medical equipment to under-supplied communities, and leaders have expressed concern for particularly vulnerable groups.”³ 

I think what’s missing here is…crying out to God on a minor or major scale—in lieu of pragmatically “Doing the Five to Stay Alive.”  Granted there was a COVID-19 National Day of Prayer and encouragement from church leaders to get involved.  But in the aftermath, I’m seeing Google links with titles like “God is at work; God is at work in the chaos; COVID-19 is not God’s judgement but a call to live differently; God is pruning the church; We will get through this.”  Nothing like, “Oh God, only You can help us get through this!! Search us, try us, see if there is any offensive way in us; lead us in the way everlasting!!” In my search, I saw a link to “Twenty Prayers to Pray,” and a couple of links to worldwide prayer meetings.  One prayer meeting had a few people in a tv studio maintaining social distancing; and one had been going on since 2012, God bless them.  There were only a handful of hits when I used the search expression “2 Chronicles 7:14 and COVID-19.”  There was one incredible video about that scripture, but it turned out to be 2018 vintage—for a west coast crusade.  Still, it lit a fire in me!

Is this a lukewarm national, if not global, response?  Or just a matter of the enemy quashing the live, in-person assembling of the saints?  Only time will tell.  In the meantime,  2 Chronicles 7:14 and 1 Samuel 2:1-10.  I read them and took ownership. 🙂

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¹Mark L. Hitchcock, The End: A Complete Overview of Bible Prophecy and the End of Days, (Caroll Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2012), 110.

²Youtube:  /watch?v=ruFv7uINl_Q

³Council on Foreign Relations Website:  /in-brief/how-are-major-religions-responding-coronavirus