Global SITREP C8-18: The Great Darkening - What it Really Means For This Earth! - PART II

20 August 2018: So we proceed with Part II of this subject. 

Eschatology Today believes it would be remiss to not begin with a brief side-bar regarding the brethren of Berea, Macedonia, due to the invoking that term we use today which carries the name of their city. 

How many are aware of the phrase "first to the Jew, then the Greek (Gentile)"? We all know it comes from Paul in Romans 1:16. We should also know that when the Apostles departed Israel to preach the Gospel their first stop wherever they went was to the local synagogue in the various foreign lands. The Jews were in diaspora all across the ancient world well before the Romans sack Jerusalem in 70 AD. Many Jewish communities, like the one in Berea, Macedonia had been there for as many as four centuries prior to the time of Jesus Christ on this earth. Jewish colonies existed throughout Asia Minor, Greece and ultimately Rome itself. The Book of Daniel contained the prophecy of the coming of the Greek Empire of Alexander, and its eventual division into four lesser kingdoms. Paul was himself a Hellenized Jew living is Tarsus, Seleucid Empire. 

So, it was to this Jewish diaspora that the Apostles first presented the Gospel of Jesus Christ as Messiah. The intense political upheaval within the Macedonian-Greek Empire after the death of Alexander the Great in the 2nd Century BC led to a pronounced revival of Jewish messianism. So, little wonder that Paul and Silas in presenting the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Bereans in their synagogue received the word they preached after searching their Jewish Scriptures. See: Acts 17:10-15. "...they received the word in all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so." This is what we should do also on a day to day basis to determine if something we read online is so, Eschatology Today included. There is no better example of a Jewish or Gentile Christian than those of ancient Berea, Macedonia.

In true Bereanism, more references to the unprecedented event have been found and need to be shared. In the second chapter of the prophet Haggai's book, there are a pair of distinct references indicating that shortly after the 3rd Temple is standing in Jerusalem the events discussed in this now two-part series will take place. In Haggai 2:6  and 2:22 there are what I believe a dual-purpose prophetic passages concerning the Lord's shaking of heaven and earth and judgment upon nations while the temple stands in Jerusalem.

Also direct your attention toward Hebrews 12:26 where the prophetic promise of a greater shaking is found: "Yet once more i will shake not only the earth, but also heaven." Verse 27 amplifies this by saying: (emphasis added) "Now this, "Yet once more," indicates the removal of those things being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain."

Then we have Isaiah 24:1-6. Many commentators of years past would explain this language as simply an ancient Hebrew prophet venting, as if he were going off on some kind of ancient Jewish rant. An "it's what they do" kind of thing. To that I say nonsense. The ancient prophets ALL spoke with the authority of God by the Holy Spirit. They spoke what He wanted to be written down. None of this is to be taken as merely figurative Hebrew language. 

And then there is a reference to the great darkening and the great shaking of heaven and earth in the very distinctive past tense. The reference is by John of Patmos, and it is found in Revelation 20:11 where we read, "Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them."

Another thought to consider. The others planets in our solar system. Mercury, Venus, Mars. The so-called wandering stars. Since the Lord shakes the heavens and the earth is moved out of its place, it stands to reason the other planets would not be immune to the Lord's handiwork.

The study continues...