Twenty-One Signs of Doomsday (Update XXVII -- 666)

Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.

The day of the LORD is a very, very bad day, one to be avoided at all cost.  Amos 5:18-20:

18 Woe unto you that desire the day of the LORD! to what end is it for you? the day of the LORD is darkness, and not light.

19 As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him.

20 Shall not the day of the LORD be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?

The day of the LORD approaches—a day of angry judgment.  The way of escape is declared by God, and that way is a person.  John 14:6:

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Jesus declares the way in John 3:3:

Verily, Verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Have you found this way?  Are you born-again—born a second time, this time of the Spirit of God?  Are you ready to make your decision for Jesus Christ?  Click onto “Further With Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Matthew 13:36-42:

36 Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.

37 He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man;

38 The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one;

39 The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.

40 As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world.

41 The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;

42 And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

GOD SAID, Matthew 24:32-34:

32 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:

33 So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.

34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

GOD SAID, Revelation 13:16-18:

16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

MAN SAID:  These foolish doomsday prophets make me laugh!  There is no end to this world, and certainly no judgment day!

Now THE RECORD.  This is GodSaidManSaid feature article 666 that will once again certify the full inerrancy of the Words of God.  All of these features are archived here in text and streaming audio for the edification of the saints and as ammunition in the battle for the souls of men.  Every Thursday eve, God willing, they grow by one.

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Thank you for coming today.  Be of good cheer, “for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  (Luke 12:32)

If our assessment of the budding of the fig tree is correct (see Twenty-One Signs of Doomsday -- Part One), then the antichrist is presently alive somewhere on this earth and is being groomed by his father, the Devil, to rule the world.  We now have the United Nations exerting global authority, the world bank, the world court, and a myriad of other world organizations. 

The organization for a one-world government is in place and the people’s appetite for its authority and its leader is being perfected. 

We are cautioned in the Scriptures not to predict the day and the time of the end, but we are given signs and directed to watch.  The publication date of this feature is November 28, 2013. 

Israel is surrounded and has been marked by its enemies for total annihilation.  Just since January 2013, Israel has launched very dangerous pre-emptive attacks, destroying Russian weapons en route to the Russian-Iranian proxy, Hezbollah.  The headline published October 31, 2013 by WorldNews.NBCNews.com reads: “Israeli attack destroys Russian missiles headed from Syria to Hezbollah, US officials say.”  Excerpts follow:

Israeli military forces destroyed a cache of Russian missiles that the Syrian government was reportedly prepared to deliver to the militant group Hezbollah, U.S. officials confirmed Thursday. 

The officials stressed that the surface-to-surface Russian-made missiles were under Syrian military control in the country’s western port of Latakia, near a Russian naval base there. 

Hezbollah is believed to have an arsenal of tens of thousands of rockets and missiles in Lebanon, much of the weapons coming through Syria. 

Israel has repeatedly struck at targets in Syria this year, including strikes in January, May, and July, believed to be aimed at missile stockpiles or shipments destined for Hezbollah.  It has been unclear what kinds of missiles have been targeted in those attacks.  [End of quote]

October 31, 2013, a Jerusalem Post headline reads, “Reports:  Syrian air base destroyed in missile attack from sea.”  A few clarifying sentences follow:

A Syrian air defense base near the port city of Latakia was completely destroyed on Thursday morning in a missile attack from the sea, Arab media reported. 

Satellite images of the area obtained by Channel 2 show the Russian-made Neva missiles, as well as a SA-3 missile battery, that also includes a command center with radar to track the missiles’ targets and broadcasting antennas to track the missiles as they are launched.  The missiles have a range of 35 km and a 70k warhead.

Last week, Kuwait newspaper Al-Jarida reported that IAF warplanes destroyed a shipment of missiles that were to be delivered to Hezbollah near the Lebanese-Syrian frontier.  [End of quotes]

Several months ago, the U.S. was threatening military action against Syria because of their alleged use of chemical weapons against their own people in their ongoing civil war.  The U.S. military was poised to attack.  One newscaster reported that U.S. and Russian subs were facing off under the water.  That situation appeared to be defused, although an Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear capabilities is truly imminent. 

This past weekend, America announced the easing of sanctions against Iran, whose vow is to annihilate the Jewish people from the face of the earth.  In return for the U.S. easing the sanctions, Iran is to cease their quest for nuclear weapons.  U.S. politicians hail this agreement as a diplomatic victory, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu views it as a colossally dangerous mistake.  He vows that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. 

Things are so volatile that, in just one hour, the battle could begin, which could be the precursor of the very battle of Armageddon which will end the world as we know it.  The temperature of the Middle East is rising.

Things that seemed so bizarre when originally prophesied in the Word of God thousands of years ago are ever so close and even plausible.  Richard Wurmbrand, in his book Proofs of God’s Existence, writes:

The fact is that as science advances, it discovers what was said thousands of years ago in the Bible.  To give just one example:  It was predicted by the Evangelist John in Revelation 21 that a city, called the New Jerusalem, about 2,500 km high and wide and deep, would come to Earth out of heaven.  For 2 millennia, science has denied such a possibility.  Now we launch skylabs from our tiny planet and seriously talk about space-“cities.”   [End of quote]

When Jesus Christ returns to this earth at the great battle of Armageddon, Revelation 6 records that the heavens will part and roll back like a scroll.  Such a statement sounds bizarre, but scientists now theorize it is possible to tear space. 

Over 1900 years ago when the book of Revelation was penned, things were different.  Electricity had yet to be discovered. There were no steamships, locomotives, automobiles, airplanes, spaceships, telephones, radios, or TVs.  There was no internet. Personal computers, GPS tracking devices,  scanning systems, or sophisticated data managing systems did not exist, yet Revelation 13 prophesies of the ominous mark of the beast.  The following paragraphs are from the GodSaidManSaid feature Twenty-One Signs of Doomsday -- Part Three:

Revelation 13:16-18:

16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

When this passage was penned, there were no checking accounts, direct-deposit transactions, electronic transfers, charge cards, debit cards, computerized banking, scanning systems, and more.  In the above passage, the Word of God prophesies of a new system of commerce to which the whole world will be forced to comply.  This new system of commerce appears to be the perfect moneyless society where consumers no longer deal in hard cash.  All financial transactions are conducted electronically under a consumer account number.  This would be a marvelous idea if it wasn’t for those who would take control of it. Several trial runs of the moneyless society have been undertaken in segregated communities in America—not for religious reasons, but simply to measure their feasibility.  Such an electronic banking system would greatly reduce the cost of banking, personal theft, bad checks, bad credit, and more, even bankruptcy.  This would, in turn, reduce the cost of goods, improve the world’s standard of living, and enhance personal safety—a great idea.  With today’s technology, this cardless system could easily be accomplished.  It could eliminate the carrying of personal identification cards by simply embedding a code or identification chip of some kind in the right hand or under the skin in the forehead of an individual.  This identifying chip located in your person could also give the government the ability, with global positioning systems, to locate you anywhere on this globe.   Criminals could run but couldn’t hide—a good idea—except:

The world’s societies will all be controlled economically by the antichrist.  Unless you receive the number of the beast, which is 666, you will not be able to buy or sell.  [End of quote]

The following excerpts are from Dr. Henry Morris’ book, The Revelation Record:

And here is the clue:  “Count the number of the beast.”  But what is that?  The previous verse tells us that it is “the number of a man.” 

That is, the beast is not a kingdom, but a man, and that man has a name, and his name has a number.  We are to count the number of that man’s name. 

But how does one count the number of a man’s name?  In the English language, such an instruction would seem absurd, but not in the Hebrew or Greek language.  In English, there are certain written characters (the Arabic numeral) for the different numbers.  In Hebrew, and Greek, however (the original languages of the Old and New Testaments respectively), each symbol used for a letter of the alphabet was also used for a number. 

Since the Book of Revelation was written in Greek, it is probably the Greek language in which the instruction applies specifically.  Every letter in Greek has a corresponding numerical value, so that each word likewise has a numerical value equal to the sum of the values of each letter in the word.  Thus the Greek letter alpha (α) was also used for the number “one,” beta (β) was used for “two,” iota (ι) means “ten,” rho (ρ) means “hundred,” and so on. 

To “count” the number of a name means, obviously, to simply add up the numbers attached to all the letters in a name.  If the man’s name is Greek, this would be a straightforward operation.  If his name is in some other language, then his name can be easily transliterated into Greek.  [End of quote]

Grant Jeffrey, in his book Countdown to the Apocalypse, weighs in on 666:

Already, North Americans live in a 97% cashless society.  Less than 3% of the money in our economy exists as either paper currency or coins.  John, in the book of Revelation, prophesies that the number 666 will be placed in (beneath the skin?) the right hands or in the foreheads as a way to enforce people’s allegiance to the Antichrist as their god and to control people throughout the Antichrist’s world empire. 

Such an invasive technology is not far from being reality.  Companies are developing sophisticated technology that uses tiny radio-frequency identification chips, which could hold data and records on your complete identity.  These chips could contain your biometric ID and your medical and financial records, and they are small enough to be placed beneath your skin.  A miniature computer chip, the size of a large grain of rice, that can hold up to five gigabytes of information already exists.  This chip could store as much information as is contained in thirty sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  Your complete financial, medical, legal, and personal records could easily be held in such an ID chip, and it could be accessed and read from a distance by electronic scanners.  BusinessWeek magazine reported that MasterCard International was testing a “smart card” computer chip that includes information about your private identity, including your fingerprints and can be embedded in a credit card. 

The new VeriChip, a beneath-the-skin radio frequency chip, can be implanted and will contain comprehensive information about an individual, together with a GPS locator system that will allow an interested party or institution not only to locate an individual but to identify the person, along with his or her financial, medical, and even criminal records.  Already, certain card scanners used in stores and banks can scan your fingerprint and compare it to the information stored on certain credit cards as a way to prevent credit-card fraud and identity theft.  [End of quote]

The info above from Mr. Jeffrey’s book was written in 2008.  Things have changed dramatically.  In the past year, people have been shocked to discover that every part of their life is being tracked by the U.S. government, by Google, Facebook, Twitter, and sundry other data-mining organizations.  J. Lanier, in the November 2013 issue of Scientific American, is discussing your privacy in the digital age.  Several ideas have been lifted from his feature article, “How Should We Think about Privacy?”  Excerpts follow that convey the gist of the article and the state-of-the-digital-art today.  Mr. Lanier:

Some cyberactivists argue that we should eliminate secrets entirely.  But young techies who declare that sharing is wonderful are often obsessive about blocking the spybots that infest most Web sites or using encryption to communicate electronically. In this, the young techies and the biggest tech companies are similar.  Facebook and its competitors promote openness and transparency to their users, but hide predictive models of those users in deep, dark basements.  [End of quote]

Those who are in the marketing industry find that most people are shocked to discover what is known about them.  We know their skin color, annual income, marital status, entertainment choices, educational status, credit status, magazines read, balance owed on their cars and houses, how much each monthly payment is, and even the interest rates on their loans.  We know their net worth, and so much more.  A headline in the feature in Scientific American reads, “A stupendous amount of information about our private lives is being stored, analyzed, and acted on in advance of a demonstrated valid use for it.” 

Lanier continues:

If an observer with a suitably massive computer obtained enough personal information about someone, that observer could hypothetically predict and manipulate that person’s thoughts and actions.  If today’s connected devices might not be up to the task, tomorrow’s will be.  [End of quote]

Those who frequent the internet are familiar with marketing manipulations.  Internet tracking information known as cookies track your past web activity, such as your search for a Ford F-150 pickup, etc., and consequently, your next foray into the World Wide Web comes complete with an ad that pops up for the Ford F-150—and today, that technique is elementary. 

Lanier writes on:

So suppose some future generation of hyperconvenient consumer electronics takes the form of a patch on the back of the neck [and let me add: an info chip inserted under the skin of the right hand or forehead] that directly taps into the brain to know, prior to self-awareness, that one is about to ponder which nearby café to visit.  (Bringing relief to this darkest of dilemmas has become the normative challenge for consumer technology in our times.) 

Many of the components to create such a service exist already.  At laboratories such as neuroscientist Jack Gallant’s at the University of California, Berkeley, it is already possible to infer what someone is seeing, or even imagining, or about to say, merely by performing “big data” statistics correlating present functional magnetic resonance imaging measurements in the brain with the circumstances of previous measurements.  Mind reading, of a sort, has therefore already been accomplished, based on statistics alone.  [End of quote]

Around ten years ago, I sat in on a marketing meeting concerning digital consumer targeting.  This technique was not so much a type of mind-reading, but more of mind-control.  The then-new technology using GPS targeting and the consumer’s cell phone allowed the promoter, for example Subway, to send a message to that consumer’s phone at hungry time when the consumer was in very close proximity to the restaurant.  The obvious idea was to direct the consumer’s path. 

Again from “How Should We Think about Privacy:”

The point of this thought experiment, which has a long pedigree in science fiction, is that computing and statistics could effectively simulate mind control.  It is arguable that a regime of cloud-driven recommendation engines in ever more intimate portable devices could get us part of the way in the next few years to the mind-control scenario just described. 

With enough data and computation, it is possible to extrapolate the future of a security, the behavior of a person, or really any smoothly varying phenomenon in the world—for a time. 

Similarly, when selling a system that gathers information about citizens, a government agency—or more likely, a private contractor serving an agency—might make colorful claims about catching criminals or terrorists before they strike by observing and analyzing the entire world.  The terminology of such programs (“Total Information Awareness,” for instance) reveals a desire for a God-like, all-seeing perch.  [End of quotes]

Technology and the chip just makes good sense.  This loadable/downloadable digital device can house all your vital information accurately. It can regulate all commercial transactions and house your (and your family’s) medical history.  You can’t lose it; it will protect your identity and is easily scannable.  Two thousand years ago, such an idea was unimaginable, but today it is easily doable and soon to be in play.  Jesus Christ is the only way of escape.  Click onto Further With Jesus and make the decision that will last forever. 

GOD SAID, Matthew 13:36-42:

36 Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.

37 He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man;

38 The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one;

39 The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.

40 As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world.

41 The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;

42 And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

GOD SAID, Matthew 24:32-34:

32 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:

33 So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.

34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

GOD SAID, Revelation 13:16-18:

16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

MAN SAID:  These foolish doomsday prophets make me laugh!  There is no end to this world, and certainly no judgment day!

Now you have THE RECORD.

       

Continue reading

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

GodSaidManSaid, Twenty-One Signs of Doomsday -- Part Three

Jeffrey, G., Countdown to the Apocalypse, Waterbrook Press, 2008

Lanier, J., “How Should We Think about Privacy,” Scientific American, November 2013

Miklaszewski, J., “Israeli attack destroys Russian missiles headed from Syria to Hezbollah, US officials say,” WorldNews.NBCNews.com, Oct. 31, 2013

Morris, H., The Revelation Record, Tyndale, 1983

Okbi, Y., “Reports: Syrian air base destroyed in missile attack from sea,” Jerusalem Post, Oct. 31, 2013

Wurmbrand, R., Proofs of God’s Existence, The Voice of the Martyrs, Inc., 1988

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