The end is not yet

Letter 458 (the end is not yet) 18/06/2010

This letter is a little out of character for me, but I feel compelled to share some thoughts that have been stirring in my inner being for the past few days. As you know, the cyber world has been and is increasingly buzzing with various ideas and interpretations based on Yeshua's end-time descriptions and on scriptures from Revelation.

I have been living in Israel for almost 30 years and I don't think one year has passed without the end-time mills grinding their endless rumors. Nevertheless, having said that, I must admit that recently nothing has captivated my attention as much as the 'oil geyser' in the Gulf of Mexico.

In a presentation called "The Waters Cleaved,"* made sometime ago by creation scientist Dr. Grady McMurtry, he explains what happened to the earth during Noah's Flood. McMurtry shows the topography of the bottom of the oceans, and how one continent split up into seven in approximately nine months. This presentation illustrates how the waters that were under the earth surface were being heated to the point of becoming liquid steam, termed "supper hot water." When the built-up pressure (like that of a pressure cooker) had no other outlet, it blew open the crust of the earth. This crack can be seen on any map of the ocean floor.

The point of this letter is not to examine what happen to the earth at the time of the Flood, but to consider what could happen to the earth in our day and age, whether we are now 'officially' in the end times or not. As you are aware, there are vast amounts of oil under, or in, the earth's crust. Some of that oil is being heated just like the waters were, giving off gases and building up the level of pressure. In the context of what is taking place in the Gulf of Mexico, it is hard to ignore Peter's words about the elements melting and the earth burning (ref. 2 Peter 3:10). Interestingly, large gas deposits are continually being discovered off the shores of Israel. Will this prove to be a blessing to our little State?

Two weeks ago we wrote about the opening of the seals. When the sixth seal was opened, "there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood" (Revelation 6:12). Like the great earthquake at the time of Noah, so too there could be another tremor of a similar magnitude that would fracture areas of the earth's crust. In such an event, the super hot oil and gases would be released, along with the lava which together would ignite into a gigantic inferno sending up black poisonous smoke. No doubt these eruptions would block out the sunlight ("blackening" the sun) and cause the moon to appear blood-red, not to mention what would happen to life in those areas (although it is not unlikely that all or some of these conditions would be localized and not spread over the entire earth).

At present we can be thankful that the oil disaster is taking place in a water environment. If it were happening on land, the fire would not be extinguishable. Because of the level of pressure that is behind this volcanic upsurge of oil, the experts say that it is impossible to cap it. As we have seen over the past several years, earthquakes are increasing and intensifying thus as terrible as the oil spill is, it is one more in a series that makes up present-day events. In the midst of Peter's descriptions of the age of tribulation, he asks the following question: "What sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness?" (2 Peter 3:11b).

According to the Word, these large scale disasters are to affect the heavenly bodies (the sun and the moon), which were created, among other reasons, in order to be for "signs and seasons." These "seasons" by in large have been ignored by most of those who were not necessarily strangers to the text (the Scriptures) where these heavenly bodies and their purpose are mentioned. Hence YHVH could remove from view these signs that mark His (greatly neglected) special seasons.

"But if they [the whole house of Israel] confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, with their unfaithfulness in which they were unfaithful to Me, and that they also have walked contrary to Me, and that I also have walked contrary to them and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if their uncircumcised hearts are humbled, and they accept their guilt -- then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Abraham I will remember; I will remember the land (and the earth)" (Leviticus 26:40-42).