The perils of forgetting
By Hal Lindsey
During the 50-year Cold War, all sides considered the use of
thermonuclear weapons unthinkable. We know that some of the creators
of the Soviet thermonuclear arsenal went into exile in the gulags
rather than continue working on them.
Ion Mihai Pacepa wrote in the Washington Times, "It is worth
remembering that Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet hydrogen
bomb, chose to live in a Soviet gulag instead of continuing to develop
the power of death."
Sakharov explained in 1968: "I wanted to alert the world to the grave
perils threatening the human race of thermonuclear extinction,
ecological catastrophe, famine."
Even Igor Kurchatov, the KGB academician who headed the Soviet nuclear
program from 1943 until his death in 1960, expressed deep qualms of
conscience about helping to create weapons of mass destruction.
He warned in an article written together with several other Soviet
nuclear scientists not long before he died, "The rate of growth of
atomic explosives is such that in just a few years the stockpile will
be large enough to create conditions under which the existence of life
on Earth will be impossible."
Since those grave announcements were made, the world has plunged into
much greater nuclear peril than they knew.
Russia has a greater arsenal of more sophisticated thermonuclear
missiles today than in years past. China has greatly enlarged both its
nuclear arsenal and its ability to transport them – especially to the
United States.
A totally irresponsible government, North Korea, has both nuclear
warheads and missiles capable of hitting even some parts of the United
States and Europe. The long-term religiously based hostility between
Pakistan and India makes their possession of nuclear-tipped missiles
extremely frightening.
Both have military plans that consider a nuclear war conceivable and
winnable. They may be the first to fight a nuclear war since its use
at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Unless something bold and daring is soon done, Iran will have
nuclear-tipped missiles. Their version of Islam considers "martyrdom
in the cause of Allah" to be the ultimate act of faith.
Nuclear martyrdom is not an unacceptable concept to the Mad Mullahs of
Tehran. And if Iran gets nuclear weapons – count on it – other Muslim
nations will get them, too.
All of this is fitting into a larger and more familiar pattern – one
that students of Bible prophecy have seen for a long time. The events
of the last three-and-a-half years before Christ returns are spelled
out in all their graphic horror in the Bible.
This period is called "the Great Tribulation." Prophecies of this
period are strewn all over the Bible and are correlated with the
events that surround Messiah Jesus' return to Earth. Isaiah foresaw
this as follows:
Behold, the Lord lays the earth waste, devastates it, distorts its
surface and scatters its inhabitants ... The earth is also polluted by
its inhabitants, for they transgressed laws, violated statutes, broke
the everlasting covenant. Therefore, a curse devours the earth, and
those who live in it are held guilty. Therefore, THE INHABITANTS OF
THE EARTH ARE BURNED, AND FEW MEN ARE LEFT.
– Isaiah 24:1, 5-6 (NAS)
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Behold, THE DAY OF THE LORD is coming, Cruel, with fury and burning
anger, to make the land a desolation; And He will exterminate its
sinners from it. For the stars of heaven and their constellations will
not flash forth their light; the sun will be dark when it rises and
the moon will not shed its light. Thus I will punish the world for its
evil and the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end to the
arrogance of the proud and abase the haughtiness of the ruthless. I
WILL MAKE MORTAL MAN SCARCER THAN PURE GOLD AND MANKIND THAN THE GOLD
OF OPHIR.
– Isaiah 13:9-12 (NAS)
Note that both of these prophecies refer to the final great judgment
of the whole world that accompanies the return of Jesus the Messiah.
Both point out that Earth's population that survives will be few in
number. Both speak of fire devouring the Earth and its people.
Ezekiel foresees this same period as he describes Russia, the power
from the extreme north that leads Iran and a Muslim confederacy
against Israel:
You will come from your place out of the remote parts of the north,
you and many peoples with you, all of them riding on horses, a great
assembly and a mighty army; and you will come up against My people
Israel like a cloud to cover the land. It shall come about in the last
days that I will bring you against My land, so that the nations may
know Me when I am sanctified through you before their eyes, O Gog ...
"I will call for a sword against him on all My mountains," declares
the Lord God. "Every man's sword will be against his brother. With
pestilence and with blood I will enter into judgment with him; and I
will rain on him and on his troops, and on the many peoples who are
with him, a torrential rain, with hailstones, fire and brimstone."
– Ezekiel 38:15-6, 21-22 (NAS)
I certainly believe that God can supernaturally rain these things upon
men. But I also believe that God allows man to destroy himself with
weapons of his own invention.
The book of Revelation also describes this same time period:
And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sat on it, it was
granted to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one
another; and a GREAT SWORD was given to him ... When the Lamb broke
the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature
saying, "Come."
I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the
name Death; and Hades was following with him. AUTHORITY WAS GIVEN TO
THEM OVER A FOURTH OF THE EARTH, to kill with sword and with famine
and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.
– Revelation 6:4, 7-8
Revelation 9, verses 17 and 18, predict that 200 million soldiers from
Asia will kill a third of Earth's remaining population. They will do
it with "fire and smoke and brimstone."
I believe that the world is now set up for this final chapter before
the Messiah comes and destroys this present world order and sets up
God's Kingdom.
The real issue is: Are you ready?
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