The Seven Last Plagues. Part 2.

        In our previous article, we saw that when God sent plagues upon other nations it was because these nations fought against God and sought to destroy His people the Israelites. God had no alternatives but to protect His people.

        These devastations were intended to be the ‘voice’ of God telling all nations that He alone is God of the entire universe and there is none other.  He alone should be worshipped by all the earth.  All the nations at that time were animists worshipping nature and performing grotesque sacrifices to please their false gods.  The destruction of the animistic nation of Egypt revealing the only true God became known far and wide among the nations of the earth and some acknowledged that the God of Israel alone was the only true God.  When the people of Israel under the leadership of Joshua sent spies into Jericho before they destroyed that mighty city, the spies hid in a prostitute’s house who related to them how all of Jericho were very much afraid of the Hebrews because they heard of the huge destruction that the God of Israel unleashed upon the mighty Egyptians.  The people of Jericho acknowledged that ‘the LORD your God he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath.’  Read the story in Joshua 2:6-11. 

        It is never God’s purpose to destroy humanity; it is always His desire to draw people back to Him as the only being that merits worship, praise and adoration, and the only One that can take away their sins and rebellion towards Him.  We read in Isaiah. 45:22 “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.”  Therefore we can say that God’s punishment of the nations is because they sought to remove Him from society and live as they desired and sought to prohibit His people from communicating the good news of restoration and redemption.  Before God destroyed the first earth with a global flood the verdict was: “the earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.” Gen. 6:11, 12.

        As we read the comments above, they beg the question, had God previously determined what was or was not an acceptable lifestyle?  The answer of course is yes, indeed.  In Genesis 2:16, 17 we read where God told Adam (and Eve) that they were under obligation to not eat of a certain tree, otherwise, they would have to die. In Gen. 2:1-3 we read that Adam and Eve were told that the seventh day was a sign of God’s creatorship and that He blessed that day and sanctified it, setting it aside for holy use such as worship.  We read in Gen. 16:28 that God chided the people of Israel for breaking His commandments and laws, indicating that the people already knew of commandments and laws given by God; a testimony to this is found in Gen. 26:5, God says of Abraham that he obeyed His voice and kept His charge, His commandments, His statutes, and His laws. The time gap between Abraham and Moses was about 245 years

        The destruction of the earth, therefore, by the global flood was precisely due to the rejection of these laws and commandments.  If anyone has any doubt about this he just has to read Romans 1:18-32, and Jude 1:14-16 these give us some insight into the wickedness of men both before and after the flood.  These two references above sync perfectly with Gen. 6:1-32 where God makes plain to Noah that He will destroy the first earth due to the intensity of violence, evil, and rejection of God.

        As Churchill once said, ‘those who do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.’[1]  It is a sad reality that indeed we will find ourselves repeating the mistakes and actions of the past when we failed to call to memory of these pernicious acts of history.  This means, therefore, in this present world, human society is following the steps of the wicked generations that brought on woe, sadness, and global destruction.  Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because they rejected the commandments of God; in fact, God’s conversation with Abraham revealed that there were not even ten individuals in those cities that were obedient to God’s commandments, Gn. 18:24-32.  Even the Lord Jesus said that as it was in the days of Noah and Lot so will it be in the days before the Son of man returns, Luke 17:26, 28-30.

        Let us now return to the seven last plagues that God will commission to fall upon this earth just before Jesus returns.  Having seen that God sends plagues and destruction upon people to preserve the lives of His innocent followers, and to preserve righteousness on the earth, can we see any justification for the divine, global destruction of our world today by these seven last plagues?  Yes, we can.  In Revelation 13:11-17, we read that a certain government (which we know to be the United States, the USA) will promote the once powerful Roman Catholic Church in our world today, making it just as powerful as it was in the Middle Ages.  This United States will through miracles (will make fire come down from heaven in the sight of men) deceive the people of the earth forcing them to worship on Sunday (called the image of the beast) as united religion led by the Vatican will dictate, and those that refuse to do so will be persecuted and eventually killed (Rev. 13:15-17).

        Many biblical scholars recognize that the designation of receiving a mark “in their right hand or in their foreheads” to simply mean compliance with this Sunday law, either because they wish to obey the law even though they may not agree with it, or because they fully agree with it, that is, that everyone should fully accept Sunday observance as a human right without question.  This will be the ‘mantra’ of the Vatican, and the entire earth will agree with that-except an independent group who believe that the Bible alone should determine who, when, and how humanity should worship and that it should be an entirely free choice of every individual.  And as far as choosing a day to worship on, that day is already given to humanity by God.  And that day of worship is a memorial of Creation, it is the seventh day, Saturday.  Read it in Gen. 2:1-3.

        Revelation 13:18 goes on to explain that this “mark of the beast” represents the number of the beast and that this number of the beast is 666. In ancient Rome, whose language was Latin, people, dates and titles, were often given a numerical value according to the letters of their names or titles.  The pope, for example, had and still has many titles and one of these was “Vicarious Filii Dei” meaning, “Vicar (Representative) of the Son of God.”[2]^,[3] When one adds a numerical value to each letter in this title (as did the Reformers in the Protestant Reformation) one comes up with the numerical value of 666.  For a fuller understanding of this please read my article titled The Papacy and 666.[4]  Now since the United States and united religions under the leadership of the Vatican will, at the pain of persecution and death, force the world to pay homage to their form of worship, what should God do to preserve His people?

        This question has been answered in Revelation 14:9-10; Rev. 15:1-8; Rev. 16 and Rev. 17, and Rev. 18:1-6.  Just as under Covid-19 the governments offered to severely persecute the unvaccinated and those who were not following their false and unscientific ‘narrative,’ so will God use his armaments of nature to destroy the wicked and preserve His people.  The tables will be turned and the innocent will survive.  In these texts above we see God, the Creator of heaven and earth, actually pleading with humanity to return to Him before it is forever too late and to be converted so that they may inherit the new system that He will set up on earth for all the righteous (Rev. 21:1-8).

        The plagues, then, will be God’s final intervention on behalf of His people.  Human probation shall have been closed. There will be only two classes of people living at that time, those who reject God and follow the laws of men and those who obey God and follow his commandments.  Rev. 14:12 summarizes it this way, “here is the patience (perseverance) of the saints, here are they that keep the commandments of God and have the faith of Jesus.”  Revelation 12:17 puts even more succinctly: “And the dragon (satan) was angry with the woman (representing God’s church) and went to make war against the remnant of her seed which keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus.”

        The rejectors of God’s love, mercy, and forgiveness will, unfortunately, be destroyed and sin and iniquity will never more raise their ugly head in all of God’s universe.  Folks, you cannot afford to miss out on this. God assures us in His word that the “eye has not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the mind of man, the things that God has prepared for those that love Him.”  How can one not reciprocate this marvellous gesture of God?  In our next article, we will look at the plagues themselves.

[1]Winston Churchill in a speech in the British parliament in 1948. It is said that Churchill was paraphrasing George Santayana a Spanish-American philosopher born in 1863. https://www.quora.com/When-did-Churchill-say-those-who-fail-to-learn-from-history-are-doomed-to-repeat-it.

[2] Edwin de Kock, The Truth About 666, vol. 1 (Pub. By Edwin de Kock, Edinburg, Texas, 78541, 2^nd revision, 2013), Acknowledgements, p.6, 51-64

[3] P. D. Stuart, Codeword Barbelon: danger in the Vatican, (Pub. By Lux-Verbi Books, Enfield Middlesex, UK, ed. 2008), see the index, SV.  vicarious Filii Dei.

[4] Edwin de Kock, The Truth About 666, vol. 1 (Pub. By Edwin de Kock, Edinburg, Texas, 78541, 2^nd revision, 2013).

If you have any comments or questions please contact Pr. Ron Henderson at ronhende@outlook.com.

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