1948, 1967, 2014

6th Trumpet Happening Soon?

Worth a Watch

My Thoughts on Peter the Roman, the Prophecy of St. Malachy, and Revelation 17

All Christians know it will happen: Jesus Christ will return someday and the world will end as we know it. He'll reign for 1,000 years before one last battle with the enemy, and then a new Heaven and new Earth will appear. But there are many things which must come to pass before these final events can unfold: the Antichrist, the Rapture, and Armageddon, to name a few. There is heated debate over the specific order these events will happen in. And people have been declaring "The End Is Near!" for centuries.

However, there is evidence that we are finally seeing events happen as described in the book of Revelation. An Endtime scholar named Irvin Baxter makes an excellent argument that 5 of the 7 trumpets in Revelation chapters 8-9 have already sounded, and that we are waiting for the dreaded 6th trumpet, in which 33% of humanity will perish in a world war, presumably via the use of nuclear weapons.

If you go beyond American media sources and look at international news, you'll notice that we're basically on the verge of WWIII. There's tension between China and Japan over territories in the South Pacific and South China Sea. Taiwan wants out of China. North Korea wants to invade South Korea and launch nuclear missiles at the U.S. There is massive civil unrest in numerous African nations, the likes of which have never been seen before. The U.S. and Israel are poised to invade an already tumultuous Syria, and Russia and Iran will defend the standing Syrian government if we do. The U.S. and Israel want to invade Iran, as they get closer and closer to nuclear power. Russia and China will both see an invasion of Iran as a threat to their own security. The U.K., France, and other western European powers will support the U.S. and its actions, while the Muslim world will side with Syria, Iran, Russia, and China.

So let's look beyond the fact that Harold Camping predicted the end of the world in 2011. Let's look beyond the fact that the Mayan calendar ended in 2012. Those events may have been a smokescreen to blind us to the truth. How easy is it now for someone to say, "See, every time someone predicts the end of the world, it doesn't happen."? And it is true, according to scripture, that no one will know the day or the hour of Christ's return. But we can know the season. And maybe somehow the ancient Maya did see 2012 as the beginning of the end. It does seem like we've entered into a new era involving "rumors of wars" and natural disasters and "signs in the heavens" in the form of asteroid fly-by's, meteorite explosions, and solar flares.

And on top of it all, there's the 12th century Prophecy of St. Malachy. By itself, I'd never put my faith in an extra-Biblical prophecy, but because it has been highly accurate thus far, and because it does seem to line up with the Word of God as described in Revelation 17, it's worth paying some attention to.

According to this "Prophecy of the Popes," there's only one pope left: Peter the Roman, or Petrus Romanus. And the aforementioned Irvin Baxter makes a Biblical case that the next pope might be the False Prophet. Furthermore, the fact that Pope Benedict XVI resigned should raise a few eyebrows because it's the first time this has happened in 598 years, and it may imply that there are other "forces" at work coercing Benedict to adhere to a predetermined timetable. True, he did hint at a possible resignation almost a year ago, but this may have been simply lessen the shock of his actual resignation announcement. But more importantly, both the biblical book of Revelation and the final piece of this Prophecy of St. Malachy blatantly state that Rome, "The City of Seven Hills," will be destroyed—and Malachy predicts it will be during the reign of Peter the Roman.

In addition to all of these red flags, there are other papal prophecies hinting at the same kind of events, most notably the vision of Pope Pius X. And again, by itself, you can't take any extra-Biblical prophecy at face value—but when it lines up with and corroborates the Word of God, there might be something to it.

I am not a Catholic. I am a Christian. I believe Jesus Christ is Lord. And I believe there are many Catholics who can say that and mean it, too. But it seems pretty obvious to me that the woman wearing purple and scarlet and sitting on The City of Seven Hills in Revelation 17 is the Roman Catholic Church. And God is apparently not pleased with this chick. With good reason. So everybody, get right with God. Ask Jesus to forgive you for your sins, repent, and be baptized. Believe that He is the Son of God, Savior of Mankind, and Lord of all. I know, it's easier said than done to just change your beliefs. But maybe if you're unable to do it now, when you see the city of Rome destroyed in the coming months or years, you will be able to make that leap of faith. The end is coming. Get ready. May the peace of God be with you all.

In closing, I'd also like to say:  if aliens show up in the next couple years, DON'T TRUST THEM!

Some Interesting Information

A Synopsis of M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening" (2008)

The Gist of "The Happening"

Angry foliage rebels against humanity to repay us for our wanton disregard of plantkind. Magical tree-gas forces masses of New Yorkers to commit suicide, prompting Zooey Deschanel and Marky Mark to flee for their lives. While shrubs and saplings get medieval on the asses of unsuspecting east-coasters, the highly-forgettable main characters hide in an old Pennsylvania farmhouse until the plants have killed off just enough humans to make rush hour on I-95 bearable for a while. In the end, the pissed-off vegetation turns its sights toward the French, but no one cares because the Americans are safe.

Watson

So this week on Jeopardy! IBM's supercomputer, Watson, destroyed the two winningest players in the history of the game show, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. (He didn't destroy them literally. I mean he won the game by a sizeable margin. We're still a couple years away from computers and robots destroying us literally.)

It's been years since a similar supercomputer showdown happened between Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue. The world chess champion was defeated by a computer.

But we all know that recognizing the billions of variations of words and human speech, lingo, nicknames, and subtext is far more difficult for an intelligence that deals in nothing but oodles of "1's" and "0's" than recognizing the combinations of moves on a chess board, despite the fact that there are millions of possible scenarios and outcomes.

Since I've discovered that not very many people have ever looked at this blog, I'm not going to delve too deeply into my philosophies about artificial intelligence. Instead, I shall post a link to this article.

Here's some food for thought: the modern laptop has way more processing power and memory than those gigantic room-sized computers just a few decades back. Imagine that in another few decades, computers with the capacity of Watson will be inside our iPads, phones, laptops, cars, appliances, and whatever else they can manage to stick a computer into.

If you consider that, and the fact that moving, walking robots are improving with every passing year, an android like "Data" from Star Trek: TNG might not be that far fetched after all...

photo courtesy of wcizmowski/morgueFile