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End Time Events - The Miscellaneous Signs
Per the miscellaneous signs listed in my previous article, Jesus literally tells the apostles face to face what the signs are that will let us know when He is about ready to come back to our earth for His second coming. The verse is from the gospel of Matthew and it reads as follows: "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age? And Jesus answered and said to them: "Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My Name, saying 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom And there will famines, pestilences and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come." (Matthew 24:3-14) 2. Another verse on the false christs and false prophets that will come is also found in Matthew. It reads:"For false christs and false prophets will ariseand show great signs and wonders, so as to deceive, if possible, the elect." (Matthew 24:24)3. Paul also talks about the state of man in the latter days and how bad man is going to get. Here is the verse: "But know this, that in the LAST DAYS perilous times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power." (2 Timothy 3:1)4. Paul also states in the latter days that some Christians will be departing from the faith due to the influence of demons. The verse is found in 1 Timothy."Now the Spirit expressly says that in LATTER TIMES some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons." (1 Timothy 4:1)5. Here is the verse about end time prophecy being sealed up until the end of time - at which time this verse implies that God will then be opening up our understanding of it. This is an angel speaking to Daniel in the Old Testament after he just got done giving him visions and knowledge of what was coming at the end of times. And he said, "Go your way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end ... and none of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand." (Daniel 12:9) All of the above are what I call the miscellaneous signs that will start to take place as we start to approach the time of Jesus' 2nd coming to our earth. The next 7 are specific events that will take place in perfect chronological order. Only one of these events has come to pass at this time, the other 6 have not. The 7 year Great Tribulation will be the countdown to when Jesus will come back. This 7 year Great Tribulation will be the last 7 years on earth before Jesus comes back to us in His second coming. There's an event that will occur right in the middle of the Great Tribulation called the "Abomination of Desolation." Once this events takes place, the Bible tells us that there will then be exactly 42 months before Jesus comes back to our earth for His second coming - three and half years from the time of this one event. The "Abomination of Desolation" will be when the Antichrist seats himself up in the rebuilt Jewish Temple to proclaim himself to be God. This event will be very easy to pick up once it happens with the technology that we now have in place to pick up news events as it is actually occurring throughout the world. In my next series of end time articles, I will give a brief explanation of the other 7 key events that will be occurring - with one of them having already occurred. This is the 2nd part of a 22 part series on the end times. Article written by Michael Bradley of Bible Knowledge Ministries. Their website is a resource of Bible Knowledge, articles, commentary and teaching. They currently have over 100 Bible articles. All free of charge.
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There is a small assortment of bags strung around the sides, but no fancy speedballs or floor-to-ceiling bags, such that you could justify turning up just to have a workout on the bags. There are a few pieces of weights equipment too, but again not enough to allow them to become a serious point of focus. No. The whole structure is designed to channel you into the ring. Everything else is just padding. That's the way it should be in a real gym. I wore my clerical shirt and collar the first time I went there. Even now I don't think it was an entirely stupid thing to have done. I wanted to be up-front about who I was and where I was coming from. Even so, I hadn't really thought through the effect that this was going to have on the other boys at the gym, most of whom were, initially, very reluctant to hit me. They got over it though, particularly after they realised that I had no qualms about hitting them. Within a couple of weeks I was coming home each night bruised and bleeding from head to toe, and I knew I was one of the lads. Is it just me, or does every man need to go through something like this at some time in his life ? to know the joy of falling into your bed aching with the wounds that your sparring partner has inflicted on you that evening, and sleeping soundly in the knowledge that your ring brother is likewise doing his best to sleep off the impression that you made on him? I had many a glorious sparring session during those first weeks and months at Mundine's. They weren't pretty to watch I suppose, but they were epic struggles of the human spirit so far as I was concerned. There are few things in life more deeply satisfying than a good fight. A hard night in the ring is an enormous catharsis for a man who is struggling with life, but it's more than that too. When you step into a ring you're making a decision to take control of your own destiny. The forces that oppose you are no longer vague powers that threaten to overwhelm you from a distance - the law, the courts, the system. No. Your opposition takes on a clear material form in the shape of the other man advancing on you from the other corner. To get into that ring and to stay in that ring is to make a decision to give it a go ? to put your body on the line and to stand up to the punishment like a man. Fighting is more than a sport. It's a way of life. It is the defiant decision to confront your pain directly and not to be overcome by it. Mundine's gym taught me that, or at least it played a significant role. There was another vital lesson I learnt at Mundine's - perhaps even more important than what I learned about fighting. I learnt to respect the fight community. The fight community is a culture all of its own, and was certainly spawned on an entirely different planet to the church community. I'm sure that some Anglican church-goers must have wondered why there are so many doctors and accountants in their congregations and so few fighters. The truth is that most church people just don't speak the same language as fighters. The converse is also true. The fight community, as far as I can see, has very little idea of what the church is on about. I don't mean that fighters aren't spiritual guys. On the contrary, some of the most godly and inspirational men I have met have been fighters. And yet they have no point of contact with the established church. The two groups just don't understand each other at all. Never was this made clearer to me than on my fourth visit to Mundine's gym. I had turned up quietly in my tracksuit and was wandering over to the bench at the side of the ring where we tended to leave our gear while we were training. A group of guys were huddled there talking, and there was nothing particularly private about the volume of their conversation. I think they were discussing relationship problems, though I didn't overhear everything. What I couldn't help hearing was one guy say very clearly 'So I grabbed her, and I punched her in the fuckin' head'. He said it loudly and enacted a downwards punching motion as he said it. Then he noticed me standing nearby and suddenly felt very self-conscious. 'Oh, sorry Father' he said. And then he corrected himself. 'I punched her ... (and he said it very slowly and deliberately) ... in the head'. If I'd had my wits about me that night I would have said something clever like 'I don't think the Lord really gives a fuck about your language brother, but I think He does care about your wife.' As it was, I didn't say anything. I think I responded with a feeble smile. At the time, I just couldn't work out how this guy had ever got it into his head that, as a priest, I would be more concerned about the fact that he swore than I would be about the fact that he beat his wife? Nowadays I take that sort of perception for granted. I think it's the church that has to bear the responsibility for the communication breakdown. So much of the church nowadays reeks of a sort of insipid middle-class moralism that really does care more about smoking and swearing than it does about domestic violence or world hunger. I don't think the Lord Jesus or St Paul ever intended to spawn any of these Christianized golf clubs that call themselves churches. Personally, I suspect that Jesus and the apostles would feel more at home in the average boxing gym today than they would in the average church. Of course they wouldn't like the threats and the violence, but they would love the honesty. Fighters are very honest people. One guy, again from the Mundine gym, summed it up for me. 'Around here nobody stabs anybody in the back', he said to me. Then he pointed to his heart and added emphatically: 'You stab here!' That's why I have so much respect for the fight culture. 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