Important Takeaways:

• Luke 21:11 KJV – “And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.“
• [David Reagan] The Signs of the Times
• The Bible provides us with many signs we are to watch for that will signal the soon return of Jesus. As I have studied them, I have found it useful to put them into categories. They naturally seem to fall into six groups:
  • 1) The Signs of Nature
  • 2) The Signs of Society
  • 3) Spiritual Signs
  • 4) The Signs of World Politics
  • 5) The Signs of Technology
  • 6) The Signs of Israel
• A Category Held in Contempt
• The category of signs that receives the least respect is the signs of nature. There are two reasons for this, one that is conceptual and another that is philosophical.
• The conceptual problem resides in the fact that there have always been signs of nature. So, when confronted with the prophesied signs of nature, many people shrug their shoulders and ask, “What else is new? There have always been tornados, hurricanes, and earthquakes.”
• What they overlook is that Jesus said these signs would be like “birth pangs” (Matthew 24:8), which means they will increase in frequency and intensity the closer we get to the Lord’s return. And that is exactly what appears to be happening today.
• God and Signs of Nature
• Sometimes, God uses signs of nature to underline the importance of major events. Thus, at the birth of Jesus, God placed a special light in the heavens, probably a manifestation of His Shekinah glory. When Jesus was crucified, the earth experienced three hours of darkness and a major earthquake. And the Bible says that when Jesus returns, the world will experience the greatest earthquake in its history. Every island will be moved, valleys will be lifted, mountains will be lowered, and the city of Jerusalem will be lifted up like a jewel, possibly becoming the highest place on earth (Revelation 16:18-21 and Isaiah 40:3-5).
• More often, God uses signs of nature as remedial judgments to call nations to repentance. Both the Bible and history attest to the fact that God has a pattern of dealing with nations. To begin with, He is the one who establishes nations, and He is the one who takes them down (Daniel 2:20-21). When a nation rebels against God, He responds first by raising up prophetic voices to call the nation to repentance—
• If a nation refuses to listen to the prophetic voices, God will then send remedial judgments. These can take many forms. Deuteronomy 28 mentions economic failure, rebellion of youth, an epidemic of divorce, confusion in government, foreign domination, and military defeat. The chapter also mentions natural disasters like drought, crop failure, and pestilence. Biblical history indicates that rulers can be remedial judgments. In other words, God often judges nations by giving them the kind of leaders they deserve.
• Finally, if a nation digs in against God and sets its jaw against His calls to repentance, a point of no return will be reached — often referred to as “when the wound becomes incurable” (Nahum 3:19, Jeremiah 30:12, and Micah 1:9). At this point, the Lord will deliver the nation from judgment to destruction. That destruction may occur quickly, as with Babylon and the Soviet Union, or it may occur gradually over a period of time, as with the Roman Empire and the United States today.
• Examples of Remedial Judgments
  • Take, for example, the plagues with which God afflicted Egypt in order to convince Pharaoh that he should release the children of Israel from captivity. The Lord sent plagues of frogs, gnats, flies, and locusts. In addition, He contaminated the nation’s water, afflicted the livestock with pestilence, struck the people with sores and boils, engulfed the land in a thick darkness, and finally took the lives of the firstborn of both men and livestock.
  • When King Ahab led the Israelites into the worship of a pagan god, the Lord raised up the prophet Elijah to call the king and his people to repentance. When they ignored Elijah, the Lord then put a remedial judgment on the land in the form of a severe three and a half year drought (1 Kings 17 and 18).
  • The book of Joel tells about a locust invasion that afflicted Judah. This was one of the worst calamities that could befall an agricultural society. It appears that people began bemoaning their “bad luck.” That’s when God sent the prophet Joel to inform them that the disaster had nothing to do with luck. Joel boldly proclaimed that the locusts had been sent by God to call the people to repentance. He warned that if they did not repent, the Lord would send something even worse—an enemy army. The people ignored Joel and the prophets who followed him, and God ultimately sent the army, delivering them from judgment to destruction.
  • The Nature of God
    • God has continued throughout history to use signs of nature to call nations to repentance. Some people say, “Oh no, God doesn’t do that anymore because this is the ‘Age of Grace.’”
    • Well, the first problem with that statement is that it implies there was a previous time of no grace. The fact of the matter is that there is only one way of salvation that has ever existed: namely, grace through faith (Joel 2:32).
    • Furthermore, the Bible says God is “the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). There is no such thing as the Old Testament God of wrath and the New Testament God of grace. God does not change (Malachi 3:6).
    • The Old Testament God of wrath is the one who showed grace toward the wicked city of Ninevah when its people repented in response to the message of Jonah. The New Testament God of grace is the one who warned the church at Thyatira that if it continued to tolerate a false prophetess, He would “cast her upon a bed of sickness and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation.” Further, He threatened to “kill her children with pestilence” (Revelation 2:22-23).
  • The Role of Satan
    • Some counter by trying to argue that natural calamities come from Satan and not God. But the Bible teaches that God is sovereign. Satan is not free to do anything he pleases. When he wanted to torment Job, he had to ask God’s permission, and when he was granted permission, God laid down rules about what he could and could not do (Job 1:6-12).
  • Crucial Questions
    • Are all natural calamities a product of Man’s sin? Yes, absolutely. The original creation was perfect. Natural calamities are a result of the curse that God placed on the creation in response to Man’s sin. When Jesus returns, the curse will be lifted, and natural calamities will cease.
    • Do all natural calamities represent remedial judgments of God? No, most are products of the natural processes of our weather systems.
    • How, then, can we determine when a natural calamity is a remedial judgment? One important factor is the timing of the event as it relates to the sins of the nation. Another factor is the magnitude of the event. Remedial judgments are designed to have great shock value in order to capture people’s attention and force them to think with an eternal perspective. The most important factor is God’s Spirit witnessing to the spirits of those to whom He has given the gift of prophetic discernment. They will be motivated to speak forth with a united voice.
  • The Example of the United States
    • We can see all these principles operating in the history of our own nation. We were founded as a Christian nation, committed to Christian values, and God greatly blessed us. But in the 1960s, we began to thumb our nose at God as a cultural revolution was launched. Our society quickly descended into a cesspool of sexual promiscuity, drug abuse, abortion on demand, legalized gambling, rampant blasphemy, and a flood of pornography. Our national slogan became, “If it feels good, do it!” We adopted a hedonistic lifestyle, calling evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20).
    • God responded by raising up prophetic voices to call the nation to repentance. One of those was Dave Wilkerson, pastor of Times Square Church in New York City. I called him “God’s Jeremiah to America.” In the 70s he began writing a series of books in which he clearly outlined the sins of America and warned of judgments from God if we did not repent. Like Jeremiah, his popularity plummeted because people—even church people—did not want to hear his “doomsday message.”
    • When the prophetic voices were ignored, God began to place remedial judgments on our nation — things like our defeat in the Vietnam War, the AIDS epidemic, the plague of sexually transmitted diseases, the scourge of homosexuality, and natural disasters in the form of monster earthquakes and killer tornados and hurricanes.
    • The culmination of the remedial judgments seemed to come with the 9/11 terrorist assault in 2001 when two symbols of American pride were attacked: the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The towers stood as symbols of our wealth; the Pentagon symbolized our military power.
    • I believe this event was a wake-up call from God for our nation to repent. Instead, like a drowsy man who doesn’t want to wake up, we merely rolled over and hit the snooze button on the alarm clock.
  • A New Factor
    • I don’t think there is any doubt that our national sins have called down remedial judgments from God. But what I think we may have failed to realize is that since 1991, many of the judgments we have experienced have been directly related to our mistreatment of Israel.
    • The Bible says that God will bless those who bless Israel, and He will curse those who curse Israel (Genesis 12:3). The Bible also says that he who touches Israel touches “the apple of God’s eye” (Zechariah 2:8).
    • I believe that many of our blessings as a nation have been due to the fact that we have historically been a safe haven for the Jewish people. Also, we have been Israel’s best friend ever since the nation came back into being in 1948.
    • But the Bible says that in the end times, all the nations of the world will come together against Israel over the issue of Jerusalem (Zechariah 12:3). And in the early 90s, we began to turn against Israel in our determination to maintain access to Arab oil.
  • The Decisive Year
    • The turning point was in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, and Russian Jews began flooding into Israel at the rate of 2,000 to 3,000 a day for one year. The tiny nation of Israel was overwhelmed by the refugees. The Israeli government appealed to the World Bank for a $5 billion loan. The bank said it would grant the loan only if the U. S. guaranteed it. The Bush Administration agreed to underwrite the loan on one condition: the Israelis had to go to the bargaining table and start trading land for peace.
    • Yes, we were the ones who forced Israel into adopting the suicidal policy of appeasement, and we have been twisting their arm ever since, pressuring them to divide up the land which God gave them as an everlasting possession. Keep in mind that we can apply enormous pressure because our veto in the United Nations Security Council is the only thing standing between Israel and economic sanctions that could easily and quickly destroy the Israeli economy.
  • Facing the Consequences of Dividing Israel
    • In February of 2004 a White House correspondent named William Koenig published a book entitled, “Eye to Eye.” It was subtitled, “Facing the Consequences of Dividing Israel.” The thesis of the book was that many of the natural calamities, economic setbacks, and political crises experienced by the United States since 1991 had been directly related to actions we took to force Israel to surrender territory to the Arabs.
    • Looking back, his book had a very startling cover. It showed President Bush looking over his right shoulder at a hurricane, and in the eye of the hurricane was a Star of David, the symbol of Israel. Hurricane Katrina did not occur until a year later in August of 2005.
  • The Gaza Withdrawal
    • Take, for example, Hurricane Katrina. It was directly related to our demand that Israel surrender Gaza. That withdrawal began on August 7, 2005, and continued through the 22nd. During that time, nearly 9,000 Israelis were uprooted from their land and homes. Many had been living in the area for as long as 35 years.
    • It was a heart-wrenching event to watch women and children manhandled, synagogues violated, Torah scrolls desecrated, houses bulldozed, graves dug up, and farms destroyed. Entire Jewish communities were forcibly removed from land which God has given to the Jewish people as an everlasting possession (Psalm 105:8-11).
    • The economic impact on the Israeli economy was overwhelming. The farms in Gaza represented 70% of Israel’s organic produce, 60% of the nation’s exported herbs, 15% of its total agricultural exports, 60% of its exported cherry tomato crop, and $120 million of its flower exports.
    • While this travesty was taking place, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice began applying more pressure with the following statement: “Everyone empathizes with what the Israelis are facing . . . but it cannot be Gaza only.”
  • The Supernatural Response
    • The withdrawal ended on August 22, and on the very next day, the government of Bermuda announced that a tropical depression had formed off its coast. Dubbed “Katrina,” the storm quickly developed into the most powerful hurricane in modern history. It slammed into New Orleans and the Mississippi coast four days later on the 27th. The hurricane disrupted 25% of our crude oil production and destroyed our nation’s largest port (the 5th largest in the world in terms of tonnage).
  • Déja Vu All Over Again
    • Like Katrina, I believe the latest hurricanes (Helene and Milton) are God’s response to our mistreatment of Israel. We have tolerated anti-Semitic demonstrations, and our government has shown indifference toward Israel as the nation fights for its very existence on six fronts: Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, Gaza, Yemen, and Iran.
    • President Biden has talked tough about backing Israel, but his words have proved hollow. He is holding up the shipment of military supplies approved by Congress. And behind the scenes, he is pressing the Israeli Prime Minister to pursue a policy of appeasement toward the terrorist groups attacking Israel, instead of seeking their annihilation. The bottom line is that Biden is more interested in helping Kamala win the votes of Muslims in the state of Minnesota than helping Israel win its war.
  • Attempts to Respond Spiritually
    • In response to Katrina, the Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, called for a statewide day of prayer: “As we face the devastation wrought by Katrina, as we search for those in need, as we comfort those in pain, and as we begin the long task of rebuilding, we turn to God for strength, hope, and comfort.”
    • Noble words. But notice, there was no call to repentance.
    • In like manner, President Bush called for a national day of prayer on September 8. He asked the nation to pray for the victims and to reach out to them in compassion. Again, noble words, but no expression of repentance.
  • A Call to Prayer
    • We as a nation have set our jaw against God. We are tempting Him to move us from judgment to destruction. Our God is so merciful. He is patiently sending us one wake-up call after another because He never pours out His wrath without warning.
    • Pray that our eyes will be opened and our hearts melted. Pray for a great national revival. Pray too for the hearts of our leaders to be opened to the significance of Israel in Bible prophecy.

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