End Times Globalization
[Ed. Note: these blogs on the "End Times" are best used in Bible study groups where people have the chance to look up and discuss the scriptural references provided.]
World events have never before have lined up with biblical prophecy on such a massively global scale. This agreement between the Bible and current events involves the complex world of geopolitics, which includes Israel and the increasing Mideast conflicts surrounding it, and China as the global giant, and Russia as the great military aggressor, and Western Civilization tying the world together under a peaceful government. But this biblical alignment is also evident in the global culture, which has never been seen before. It's truly astonishing how all these conditions are coming together so quickly, in such a necessary manner, and yet how unaware most Christians seem to be of these fulfilled prophesies in the Modern Era.
In many respects it's good news to see the Bible's prophesies coming to fruition since it means God will not stand by and watch the modern world destroy this beautiful Earth, which hangs like a fire-blue sapphire in the heavenlies. It's difficult to believe that God will allow this globe to warm itself to death and build up massive poisoning from plastics and microplastics that scientists now say saturate the human body. Instead, Jesus the King of Kings will intervene and stop the destruction. But across the globe, Modern Humankind is rapidly pushing the planet towards the End Times.
What are the End Times?
Jesus described the advent of the End Times this way:
"This Good News of the Kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come. Matthew 24:14 (NASB)
"Then end will come," Jesus said, which means "End Times". It eventually culminates in Armageddon, which describes a cataclysmic series of wars surrounding the Mideast, and specifically surrounding Israel. But first, the "Good News of the Kingdom" gets "preached in the whole world," to "all the nations," Jesus said. There's little doubt this has been happening throughout the modern era of global communications, and especially through the Internet. For more than a century the Bible has been translated, broadcast and thoroughly distributed across the globe, fulfilling this key, global precondition. It includes the worldwide missionary movement that began in the 19th Century. But, even more so today, "this gospel of the kingdom" has been "preached" to the most remote peoples on earth, and it continues to escalate through greater global communications made possible by tens of thousands of satellites thrown into low earth orbit (LEO) by various Internet providers. The European Union, Amazon and SpaceX are just a few of the many companies creating LEO global networks.
"Globalization" is another way to describe "End Times". Jesus said, "this gospel…shall be preached in the whole world…to all the nations," which clearly points to the rise of Global Communications. Globalization is a tremendous force shaping the 21st Century. Almost all the great pressures today are international issues, like the southern "Border Crisis" and refugee movements in Europe, the Ukrainian war, the COVID pandemic, Global Warming, the Global Economy, and the list goes on. There are no longer any isolated nations on earth, so every nation's business immediately becomes a global concern, and every nation's voice is heard.
Globalization surrounds nearly every biblical prophecy about the End Times since the global unification of humankind causes the great shipwrecks where God must step in and save humankind. (See Matt. 24:30; Rev. 1:7; Ps. 82:8; Is. 11:12; Zech. 12:3; Zech 14:2; Dan. 2:44; Rev. 13:3) We have already seen how fragile the world has become through the Global Economy, like the 2008 instability on Wall Street which dragged down banks and economies across the globe overnight. The COVID virus demonstrated the fragility of the new Global Era by triggering national shutdowns across the globe.
Two Points in Human Time
Bible prophecy is focused on two distinct points in the human timeline – the "First Advent" of the Messiah, and the "Second Advent", or the second coming of the Messiah, which is the End Times. Future prophecy is only a part of the overall human timeline which God sketches out for our attention. Some of it is history, and some is future prophecy, but all of it is vital and important for humankind to observe, since only the God of the Bible can explain where history fits into the world's future…
"Remember the former things long past, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, 'My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure'; Isaiah 46:9-10
The human timeline is not cyclical, as some believe, where "history repeats itself." On the contrary, the human timeline is linear. It stretches across those towering monuments of history, which are the First and Second Advent of the Messiah, both centered on Jesus the Christ-Messiah (which simply means "Jesus the King"). Understanding the Second Advent means understanding the First Advent. "Remember the former things long past," God said, because it proves "there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning," and history reveals how "My purpose will be established." To understand God's timeline is to know God's purpose on Earth.
The greatest disparity between the First and Second Advents is the issue of justice. In the First Advent Jesus came as a lowly servant, unwilling to act as the world's judge and unwilling to establish global justice. Instead, Jesus came to offer clemency to humankind before God establishes His justice on earth. Jesus said,
"For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him." John 3:17
This is God's Clemency, which means "the world might be saved" from God's judgement. This extended period of God's Clemency describes "This Present Age" and explains the long gap between the First Advent and the End Times. Peter describes this period of God's Clemency this way…
The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:9
By contrast, in the Second Advent, God establishes global, true justice, which is heard today in the great cry for Social Justice. The cry for justice is rising in intensity across the globe today, but no human government or consortium of governments will ever establish Social Justice, according to biblical prophecy. Only when God steps in as the international judge will Social Justice appear. God asserts His judgement when the chaos of Globalization makes it impossible for God to wait any longer, and then, finally, He must save humankind and this planet from self-destruction.
Self-Destruction
It is the human penchant for self-destruction that makes Globalization such a precarious time in human history. The breakdown of international barriers and the unification of humankind is the greatest trigger for the End Times. The prospect of humankind rising to a state of unified, self-rule has been the great dream of secularist thinkers, and the Bible says that dream will be realized in the End Times. But that dream will become a nightmare. At the beginning of the Bible, God put the brakes on human unification in order to preserve human life. It happened when humans were coming together to build the Tower of Babel. At that time,
The LORD said, "Look, they are one people, and they all have the same language…and now nothing which they devise to do will be impossible for them." Genesis 11:6
Once unified, there will be no end to the greatness humans can attain, God said. The human capacity for engineering great feats is truly remarkable. But humans also engineer great religious systems that exclude God with manmade "myths and fables" that end up worshipping the greatness of humankind, not God, the Bible says. Everyone is born with a heart of rebellion against God and a penchant for evil, so "nothing which they devise to do will be impossible for them" also applies to evil and destructive powers that humans can unleash. Human engineering has unleashed truly destructive technologies as Globalization has increased. In order to save humankind from itself, the Lord compelled mass migrations of people across the world, using language as the great barrier…
Its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth. Genesis 11:9
Language is no longer a barrier preventing the unification of humankind, thanks to brilliant human engineering. More important, global unity has become a great necessity compelled by the confluence of our massive global population and so many problems triggered by runaway, modern technologies.
This planet has been sitting on a time bomb of self-destruction for more than a half century. How much longer will the world avoid nuclear war? During the current war in the Ukraine, Putin has repeatedly used the nuclear threat, which hangs over all conflicts today between nations holding the nuclear threat in their arsenals. As the Bible describes Armageddon, it sounds like the horrors of nuclear war, predicted thousands of years before anyone could conceive of such destruction. Isaiah 13:6-9 describes Armageddon ("the Day of the Lord") as a moment of massive, global destruction where people look at each other, "their faces on fire." How is this possible? The same mass destruction is also described like this…
their flesh will rot while they stand on their feet, and their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongue will rot in their mouth. Zechariah 14:12
Today we understand how people's "flesh will rot while they stand on their feet" and "their eyes will rot" and "tongue will rot" before hitting the ground, and how people can see each other's "faces on fire." It's called thermonuclear warfare. Until WWII, such descriptions of warfare made no sense. (See also Is. 13:9-13; Joel 2:31; Matt. 24:21-22, 29; Mark 13:24; Rev. 6:12; 8:10-13.)
After the Atomic Bomb was invented the famous atomic physicist Niels Bohr said, "We are in a completely new situation that cannot be resolved by war." Even while the world's greatest scientists were developing the Atomic Bomb, during WWII Bohr warned President Roosevelt the bomb "was a far deeper interference with the natural course of events than anything ever before attempted, and it would completely
change all future conditions of warfare." Why? "When nuclear weapons spread to other countries, as they certainly will," he warned, "no one would be able any longer to win. A spasm of mutual destruction would be possible. But not war." (See The Making of the Atomic Bomb, p.532.) War truly describes "the natural course of events" in human history. It's also true that "no one would be able any longer to win" a war after the Atomic Bomb appeared, as Bohr said. True enough, there have been a long list of unfinished wars plaguing the world, like the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War and other so-called "police actions" around the world. No longer is it possible for one country to invade and conquer another country in the classical sense of war since the nuclear threat hangs over the whole globe. How long can the world resist "the natural course of events" and resist full-scale warfare, even though it means "a spasm of mutual destruction"?
Today, with nuclear proliferation spreading across the globe, the nuclear threat is more potent than ever before. Unstable regimes like North Korea and Iran now have The Bomb. Sworn enemies like India and Pakistan have it. Israel has it. The "Doomsday Clock" maintained by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is now "at 100 seconds to midnight for third year in a row," reported the Washington Post (1/20/2022). "Steady is not good news," the scientists told the Post. "The clock first moved to 100 seconds in 2020…The clock, which metaphorically counts the time until the end of the world, remains at the closest point it has ever been to midnight…The unchanged time reflects the judgment of the board that we are stuck in a perilous moment that brings neither stability nor security," the Post said.
What has been saving humankind from destroying itself? From the beginning, in Genesis 11, the Bible records how God has been working to save humankind from self-destruction, but ultimately, it says, as the End Times approach, God will remove "the one who restrains" (2 Thess. 2:7). Exactly what or who is this Restrainer? This must be addressed next, because it is growing increasingly clear the Restrainer is getting removed and Planet Earth is losing its protection against the End Times.