ANOTHER LOOK AT THE SIGNS

ANOTHER LOOK AT THE SIGNS

                I believe Scotty Clark was the first one to discover the sign of Revelation 12 in the constellation Virgo, or at least he was the first one to make it popular.  He believes in a pre-tribulation rapture and so he saw the man child as the church (which is the body of Christ) being caught up to God while the woman that gave birth to the church (Israel) flees into the wilderness being pursued by the Dragon (Satan).

                Now, let me say that Scotty is a sincere and deep student of the word who has literally awakened the church around the world with his message and we should respect him. He is not setting dates, He is simply interpreting the signs the best he knows how and his interpretation is a plausible one.

                However, if the rapture doesn’t happen between now and the 23^rd (This Saturday) then we will have to begin to look for other explanations and we should not throw people under the bus, especially Scotty, because he was not setting a date as was Harold Camping, or William Miller or a whole bunch of others. He was simply reporting what he has discovered and sharing it at great risk to himself.

                If we are earnest and sincere studiers of the word, then we need to learn to take our lumps and rejoice in our victories. After all, Jesus said twice in the book of Revelation, “Here is the patience of the saints…” So if nothing apparent happens in the next few days, then we must take an objective look at what God might be telling us.

                Number one, I take the signs in the sun, moon and stars seriously. The Bible clearly tells us that they would occur before the great and awesome day of the Lord. It doesn’t say how long before, but it says before (Joel 2:28-32) and so we have seen a tetrad of blood moons and a total eclipse of the sun and now we are about to see the sign of Revelation 12 in the heavens ( And Revelation 12 says that the heavens is where the sign will appear) and so apart of any setting of dates, I believe that God placed these time clocks in the heavens at creation so that when they occur on His Feast Days ( Moedim) they act as  messages either to the Jews, or to the Gentile nations.

                I could spend the next three pages describing everything that has happened in connection with these signs all of which point to the imminence of our Lord’s return and the imminence of the time of Jacob’s trouble known as the Tribulation or the Great Day of the Lord.

                So, to be objective let us picture this revelation 12 sign without assigning specific names to the figures.  We have three main characters in this chapter. We have a woman with child with a crown of 12 stars over her head. We have the child being born and being caught up to heaven and we have a dragon trying to devour the child as soon as he is born, but the child is caught up into heaven, so the dragon turns to pursue the woman who gave birth to the child.

                Now, in my furtive little mind I suddenly have this picture. The dragon in chapter 12, who happens to have seven heads and ten horns, chases the woman from chapter 12 and into chapter thirteen. Picture it if you will. Chapter 12 and chapter 13 are right across the page from each other and so the dragon chases the woman from one page to the next… and guess what? We see a beast coming out of the sea of humanity having ten horns and seven heads and on his horns were ten diadems and on his heads were blasphemous names.

                So we have in chapter 12 a dragon with seven heads and ten horns. This I believe is a spiritual entity, the devil and Satan. So picture Satan’s spiritual kingdom as having 7 heads and 10 horns, and when he emerges into chapter 13, he is like the spiritual hand being put into a temporal glove with the same shape. We can be pretty sure about this because Rev. 13:4 says that the dragon gives his authority to the Beast. He has become the spiritual power and authority that animates the temporal beast and as we learn through chapter thirteen and in other parts of Revelation, the ten crowns represent ten kings that will reign with the Beast and this beast will have global control for 3 ½ years or 1260 days.

                Now, when Perry Stone was asked about the meaning of the Revelation 12 sign, he pointed us back to the total eclipse of the sun which he said has a most definite meaning since it came on the first of Elul, which indicates a 40 day period of Repentance leading up to Yom Kippur and friends, we have to admit that all hell has broken loose during these 40 days, with records dropping everywhere around the world. America is not the only nation undergoing record breaking floods, hurricanes and earthquakes. It is as if nature has gone on an uncontrolled rampage all over the globe.

                It should be sobering that this total eclipse was seen only over America. We then are the focus of God’s attention. He has blessed us above all other nations and assigned us to take His Gospel into the entire world, which we did at first, but now we have turned our back on God. We have embraced the theory of Evolution throughout our education system and the halls of science. This alone is enough to bring judgment. We deny Him as Creator and that robs Him of His power and authority to save. There is nothing we could do that would directly slap God in the face more than that.

                But we also continue to shed innocent blood by killing millions of unborn children and we have made laws in support of it. Then add to that the laws passed in favor of homosexual marriage ( which God calls an abomination one for which he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah) and the church has largely sat back in silence and allowed our nation to go into perdition while half of the church embraces these abominations along with increasing violence and outright rebellion against God. Our nation is being divided between the seed of God and the seed of Satan and you can readily see that the confrontation is building up to something violent and nation shattering.

                But I fear that the worst judgments are yet ahead of us and right here I would say that I like what Perry Stone had to say about God’s judgments. God’s judgments are not a matter of God taking vengeance upon us. He is not causing the storms or the approaching war. So it is not God’s hand that is causing these things, rather it is when God removes his hand of protection that these calamities come to pass. Have we not as a nation told God to butt out? Well, perhaps HE has done just that.

                For proof of this we only need to turn to Revelation 7. There it says:

                “After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth so that no wind should blow on the earth or on the sea or on any tree. And I saw an angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the seal of the living God; and he cried out with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we have sealed the bond-servants of our God on their foreheads.” Rev. 7:1-3.

                Could it be that we are seeing the four winds being let loose? Could it be that the total eclipse that introduced 40 days of repentance is indeed telling us to make sure that we are sealed by the Holy Spirit and that our names are written in the Lamb’s book of life before the books are closed on the Day of Atonement? (Yom Kippur) Could it be that God has told the angels to begin unloosing the four winds so that we can see that this total eclipse across America is indeed a final warning?

                Whatever all of these signs mean, the last thing we should be doing now is scoffing and whether the rapture occurs or not, we should be thanking Scotty Clark, one of God’s Watchmen, for waking us up. And we should be thanking Paul Begley and Perry Stone and hundreds of other prophetic students and teachers whom though they have differing opinions as to interpretation of these events, are nevertheless trying to make a sleeping church aware of the times.

                I say it is time to stop taking pot shots at everyone that doesn’t see it exactly like we do and to roll up our sleeves and watch and pray like Jesus told us to do and pray that as these things come to pass we will rightly understand them.

                After all, the main theme of Bible prophecy is that the Holy Spirit is preparing a Bride for the Father’s Son and that Bride is making herself ready and Yeshua is coming back for a Bride that is after His kind. And here we remember the story of Abraham as he sent his trusted servant to a far country to find a bride for his son that was after his kind. And when the servant had found her, he gave her gifts and took her back to Isaac who met her in the middle of the fielded just as Yeshua will meet us in the middle of the air.

                The big question then is if we are after His kind. Are we bearing the fruit of His Spirit? Are we washed in the blood of the Lamb? Have we made sure that our wedding garments are spotless and clean? Do we have plenty of oil in our lamps? These things are not difficult to do. We only need to turn to Yeshua with our whole hearts… to invite Him in to cleanse our temples and to make us into houses of prayer. He does all of the work. We just have to live in a state of “Yes.”

                In these 40 days of repentance, we need to turn around… to leave the ways of the world behind and to embrace Yeshua as our very life. After all, even the angels stand in awe at Yeshua’s ability to take sin sick souls and transform them into sons and daughters of God.

                One thing we tend to forget about the book of Revelation is that it is a revelation of Jesus Christ as he transitions from being our High Priest to being Judge and King and He is returning for a Bride that has made herself ready and to put an end to Satan’s kingdom of darkness and misery and despair.

                So, whatever exactly the sign of Revelation means, it is telling us that the time has come and we are engaging in earth’s final events. Even so, come Lord Jesus!