Sequestration, world commerce, and the coming antichrist economy

 Reblogged from Elizabeth Prata´s the-end-time.blogspot.com

 

If there is such a thing as a 'reverse miracle' the global economy these last five years is it. In 2008 when the global crash startled the world and the housing bubble imploded, and jobs went away, it seemed that the house of cards that is world finance and commerce would collapse. It didn't. And all these five years, it hasn't. This defies logic, tradition, and all economic principles.

 

 

 

(Above, A crowd gathers at New York City's Federal Hall opposite the Stock Exchange at the news of the crash - 1929 AP / Wide World Photos Time - 75 Years)
  

Or does it?

What has to change is our perception of what an economic crash is. If you live in America like I do, we have a notion that economic crashes suddenly occur, like the October Wall Street stock market crash of 1929. We often think of the crash happening in October and then immediately of the lines outside banks to get disappearing deposits and right away the Okies traveling away from the Dust bowl states. But it all unfolded much more slowly than that.

Oct 10, 2008, Source

But what most people do not know is that the 1929 crash was similar to the 2008 crash in that it was but one marker of an ailing, upside down economy. Bankers and Brokers didn't realize the depth and extent of the crash and that it would spark a 10-year Depression.

Time Magazine reported on the 1929 October crash, "As the story goes, the opening bell was never heard on Black Tuesday because the shouts of "Sell! Sell! Sell!" drowned it out. In the first thirty minutes, 3 million shares changed hands and with them, another $2 million disappeared into thin air. Phone lines clogged. The volume of Western Union telegrams traveling across the country tripled. The ticker tape ran so far behind the actual transactions that some traders simply let it run out. Trades happened so quickly that although people knew they were losing money, they didn't know how much."

And that is what we remember of the most devastating and terror-ridden moment in America's financial and economic history. But the crash continued-

As a matter of fact, the Market recovered on October 30, regaining 12% of losses. Time reported, "In total, $25 billion — some $319 billion in today's dollars — was lost in the 1929 crash. Stocks continued to fall over subsequent weeks, finally bottoming out on November 13, 1929. The market recovered for a few months and then slid again, gliding swiftly and steadily with the rest of the country into the Great Depression. Companies incurred huge layoffs, unemployment skyrocketed, wages plummeted and the economy went into a tailspin. While World War II helped pull the country out of a Depression by the early 1940s, the stock market wouldn't recover to its pre-crash numbers until 1954."

After the crash of 1929 it wasn't until 1932-1933 that the economy hit rock bottom. This timeline has the facts about why 1933 was the worst year of the Depression for the common man. So you can easily see that the crash was not a one-day event but took years to unfold, rebound and for the stock market to recover..

Like 1929, the 2008 economic crash followed a speculative boom. The era was so speculative and the attitude was so optimistic, that the entire era is called The Roaring Twenties. The era was dynamic, vibrant, creative, and was undergirded by sustained economic prosperity. This attitude was not prevalent just in America, but also Europe. France's name for the era was The Crazy Years. Britain called it the Golden Twenties.

The president of the Chase National Bank said at the time of the crash, "We are reaping the natural fruit of the orgy of speculation in which millions of people have indulged. It was inevitable, because of the tremendous increase in the number of stockholders in recent years, that the number of sellers would be greater than ever when the boom ended and selling took the place of buying." (Wikipedia)

Economist Albert Scardino said in 1987, "The panic of October 1929 has come to serve as a symbol of the economic contraction that gripped the world during the next decade."

As an aside, when economists say "contraction", I think of the contraction of a woman in labor. (Matthew 24:8).

The same conditions that sparked the crash of 1929, wild speculation and bloated spending, sparked the 2008 crash, but like the unfolding Depression of the 1930, it unfolds slowly. The crash is actually a long period of decline, not a one-day event. We have been 'crashing' since October 2008. We are in a crash right now. Let's take a look at the present-day facts.

Wal-Mart is undergoing a silent sales disaster. The Daily Beast reports, Wal-Mart customers have disappeared, will they take the economy with them?
"Where are all the customers?" asks an internal Walmart email published by Bloomberg last week. "And where's their money?" Another email states "In case you haven't seen a sales report these days, February [month to date] sales are a total disaster . . . the worst start to a month I have seen in my ~7 years with the company." Brad Plumer notes that Walmart sales are often a bellwether for the rest of the economy. Should we be freaking out?"

Yes. Yes we should.

Why? The higher payroll tax kicked in this January. Higher payroll taxes mean less money for consumers and less money for consumers means, well, they spend less. The Economic Collapse blog says "The Big Dogs of Wall Street are starting to get very nervous".

And according to a CNN article, corporate insiders are now selling nine times more of their own shares than they are buying...  These corporate insiders have one word for investors: sell. Insiders were nine times more likely to sell shares of their companies than buy new ones last week, according to the Vickers Weekly Insider report by Argus Research. We wonder why corporate bigwigs like Google's Eric Schmidt is selling nearly half of his stock in the company.

The crashing economy is seen not just in consumer spending, stocks, and retail, but in government. The United States has not passed a budget in years. Heritage reports, "The House and Senate have not agreed on a budget resolution since April 29, 2009 (though the House has passed budgets the past two years). If current trends continue, the end of the 113th Congress will mark five straight years without a congressional budget. ... The temporary tax policies of recent years, the debt ceiling debacle of 2011, and the short-term “solution” of last year’s fiscal cliff have only worsened the budgetary dysfunction. Congress now faces across-the-board spending cuts (sequestration) on March 1, another deadline March 27 for funding government operations, and another debt ceiling vote in May. Halfway into the fiscal year, major budget decisions remain in flux. These incoherent practices have yielded no entitlement reform—indispensable for getting deficits and debt under control—but they have produced a $618 billion tax increase."

Caption- Some of the 6,000 men who queued up for jobs offered by a New York employment agency - 1930 (135 found jobs; by 1932 almost 30% of the American workforce was unemployed) Corbis / Bettmann - UPI

Pentagon informs Congress of plans to furlough 800K civilian workers
"The Pentagon notified Congress on Wednesday it will be furloughing its civilian workforce of 800,000 employees if sequestration goes into effect March 1."

Sequestration defined: "Under sequestration, an amount of money equal to the difference between the cap set in the Budget Resolution and the amount actually appropriated is "sequestered" by the Treasury and not handed over to the agencies to which it was originally appropriated by Congress."

As we already know, there is trouble everywhere. The UK lost its credit rating yesterday. Forbes reported,  "Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the sovereign credit rating of the U.K. on Friday, stripping its coveted triple-A status one notch to AA1. The agency blamed U.K.’s rising debt levels, adding that there was “a deterioration in the shock-absorption capacity of the government’s balance sheet, which is unlikely to reverse before 2016.” Forbes asks the $64 question, 'Is the US next?'

Imagine what the loss of pay for 800,000 workers would do to our economy, already staggered by loss of jobs and cash flow. In other words, under sequestration, all money flow comes to a forced halt and during a depression voluntary money flow comes to a halt. Like retail spending--

CBS News reports, "The entire economy is headed for trouble in just eight days -- when massive across-the-board cuts in the federal budget are scheduled to kick in automatically. The cuts were designed to be so deep and harmful, that they would force the president and Congress to find a better way. But they haven't. Just for example, there would be $46 billion cut from the Defense Department and benefit cuts for 4.7 million long-term unemployed."

Retail is failing, and this is a marker of the crash.

Best Buy is forecasting 200 to 250 store closings
Sears Holding Corp. forecast store closings: Kmart 175 to 225, Sears 100 to 125
J.C. Penney, forecast store closings: 300 to 350
Office Depot, forecast store closings: 125 to 150
Barnes & Noble, forecast store closings: 190 to 240, per company comments
Gamestop, forecast store closings: 500 to 600
OfficeMax, forecast store closings: 150 to 175
RadioShack, forecast store closings: 450 to 550

In addition to closings, we hear about layoffs.

Blockbuster recently announced that this year they will be closing about 300 stores and eliminating about 3,000 jobs. Toy manufacturer Hasbro recently announced that they will be shrinking their workforce by about 10 percent. And we already heard about the Walmart email that said February was the worst month, ever.

So what does this all mean? It means God is doing a work! Did you know that the bible has a lot to say about finances and economy? There are verses which instruct us on personal level and on a national level. For example, Proverbs 22:16 says,

"Whoever oppresses the poor to increase his own wealth, or gives to the rich, will only come to poverty." The NLT makes it even clearer. "A person who gets ahead by oppressing the poor or by showering gifts on the rich will end in poverty." Tell that to the Occupy Wall Street people...

But now I am going to contradict myself. The Great Depression seems to have begun in October 1929 and the stock market did not recover until 1954. These things take a long time to set up, to occur and to recover from. They are long cycles. (Kondratiev wave). The one exception to the slow cycle of up and  down will be the Tribulation. Why? It will be a time like no other before or since, (Matthew 24:21).

In my opinion, the fact that the global merging of all national economies into one economic force (Revelation 13:16-17) under the management of one man, (Revelation 13:5-8), bespeaks that something massive has to have happened for the people to accept such dramatic moves. And it has to happen fast, because the Tribulation is only 7 years, and since Revelation is mostly chronological, by the time Revelation 13 occurs, it is midway through the entire period. We read in Revelation 13:5 that authority is given to the antichrist for 42 months (3.5 years).

There will be an economy in the Tribulation, it will be vigorous and will trade in all the usual things like flour (Revelation 6:6) but there will also be a trade for luxuries (Revelation 18). There will be people rich enough to buy these luxuries. So much so, that the merchants selling them become incredibly wealthy.

WHAT will have happened that will reduce the world into an entire economic and financial restructuring within just 3.5 years? (first half of the Tribulation). Something terrible and dramatic. It only takes three and a half years for the global economy to be turned completely upside down, restructured and by the time the antichrist comes along, for the world to accept his proposal of a one world government- and enact it!

Of course, the beginning of the events that would cause the acceptance of the one world economy may begin prior to the Tribulation, but given the last five years of slow decline (despite warnings of the 'fiscal cliff) I don't think so. Personally I believe it will be one or more of the following that will cause the final and/or sudden economic collapse:

1. The rapture. If enough consumers who hold withhold their money from retail circulation could cause panic in Walmart execs during just one month, what will the sudden removal of all the Christians' economic input cause the world economy?

2. War. And not just any war- but nuclear war and/or EMP. The coming wars of Isaiah 17, Isaiah 19, Psalm 83 and Ezekiel 38-39 may not occur just in the Tribulation. There is nothing about the prophecy that says these wars have to happen during the 7 years of judgment (except by the very end of the Ezekiel 38-39 Gog/Magog war the Tribulation will have begun, because the Jews are brought back to covenant with God, (Ez 39:7) and the world knows that God is judging the world. (Ez 38:16, 23). Those prophesied wars contain intimations that they will be nuclear. I wrote about that last week. With war often comes...disease.

3. Disease outbreak. The 1918-20 Spanish flu pandemic was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic which infected 500 million people across the world, including remote Pacific islands and the Arctic, and killed 50 to 100 million of them—1 to 3 percent of the world's population at the time—making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. (source). Most of the deaths in the US took place within only 9 months. The sudden removal of human capital, either through death or illness from which they later recovered, was dramatic. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that a pandemic similar to the 1918 flu would decrease annual U.S. GDP levels by 5% if it happened in today's economy. There were mandatory closings of schools, churches, theatres, and places of public assemblage toward the end of the year in 1918. The entertainment industry was hit hardest.

For example, legal gambling in the US is a 90Billion dollar industry. Factor in other entertainment such as cable, internet, film, music etc and you have a trillion dollar industry. An outbreak of disease could put a severe dent on all that, just as it did in 1918. As a matter of fact, officials are worried about an outbreak of tuberculosis in LA. And yesterday it's reported that a Long Island teen died of a mysterious illness while on a school trip to Disneyland

4. All of the above. All these events could happen simultaneously or nearly so. It is not possible to go through the removal of millions in the blink of an eye, and/or war, and/or pestilential outbreak on a global scale and not have other segments of the global infrastructure such as economy be impacted too.

5. Other. God is creative. I do not know what else He may have planned that will cause the world's economy to fail or at least come to the point where the population of the planet accepts an entire restructuring. Who expected the 9.0 quake and tsunami in Japan? Who expected the Pope to resign? Who thought Obama would be re-elected for another 4 years? Who thought that a massive sinkhole in Bayou Corne or a BP multi-month oil breach would occur?

We Christians can look forward to the rapture and will escape all these things. We see the rapture in Revelation 4. The Church is seen in Heaven in Revelation 5. The wrath begins in Revelation 6. No matter how close the wrath is, the rapture is closer!

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Evil men and impostors

Reblogged from Elizabeth Prata´s  the-end-time.blogspot.com

 

"Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived." (2 Timothy 3:12-13)

There is a lot packed into these two verses! Our Lord is truly great in the way He speaks in such depth in so few words!

The verse is connected with a comma and the word "while". It is plain- Christians are going to be persecuted. And persecution is going to happen because evil men and impostors flood the world and the church in ever increasing numbers. So no, it is not your imagination that things are getting worse. It is because they are getting worse.

The verse says evil men "and impostors" will go on. The word impostors is Greek, "goētes". This is translated as "shameless cheat pretending to use supernatural power; an actor (cheap impostor), looking for self-gain, i.e. posing to be someone he isn't...'a charlatan', used only in 2 Tim 3:13, refers to a seducer (properly, a wailer) – a fraud who "sounds off" like a whining enchanter. This person uses their verbal spells and incantations to give the (false) impression they can do miracles."

The entire comment is linked to the description at the start, a long list Paul records for Timothy, and us, to be warned by. He'd  mentioned Jannes and Jambres, two of Pharaoh's sorcerers who (for a while) copied God's miracles He performed through Moses. What we should be wary of is the fact that we're being told that these aforementioned evil men are going to use their verbal skills to deceive, and I'm not just talking about the obvious ones like Benny Hinn or Joyce Meyer. Or even Joel Osteen. These were sorcerers who can charm you and deceive you like no others. Remember, the two that Paul mentioned copied God's miracles one for one during the first few plagues! They are powerfully deceptive.

Paul had said that the deceivers are evil. MacArthur wrote, "They are evil. That's poneros, it's used of Satan in Matthew 13:19, they're as malicious and wicked as he is."

OK, so that's pretty evil.

And they are going to get worse and worse. Each individual man will wax worse and worse, and the general deceptions will get worse and worse. Attendant with the deceptions will come persecution.

Barnes Notes explains,

"But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse - That is, it is the character of such men to do this; they may be expected to do it. This is the general law of depravity - that if men are not converted, they are always growing worse, and sinking deeper into iniquity. Their progress will be certain, though it may be gradual, since "nemo repente turpissimus." The connection here is this: that Timothy was not to expect that he would be exempt from persecution 2 Timothy 3:12, by any change for the better in the wicked men referred to. He was to anticipate in them the operation of the general law in regard to bad men and seducers - that they would grow worse and worse. From this fact, he was to regard it as certain that he, as well as others, would be liable to be persecuted. The word rendered "seducers" occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. It means, properly, a "juggler, or diviner;" and then, a "deceiver, or impostor." Here it refers to those who by seductive arts, lead persons into error."

The Latin phrase 'nemo repente turpissimus' is translated "No man becomes a villain all at once."

And the last part of the verse, 'being deceived" is explained thus by Barnes Notes,

And being deceived - Under delusion themselves. The advocates of error are often themselves as really under deception, as those whom they impose upon. They are often sincere in the belief of error, and then they are under a delusion; or, if they are insincere, they are equally deluded in supposing that they can make error pass for truth before God, or can deceive the Searcher of hearts. The worst victims of delusion are those who attempt to delude others."

MacArthur wrote,

These are dangerous times...dangerous times. The closer we come to the time of our Lord's return, the worse men get. And the worse their influence gets and the accumulation of all the lies and false teaching mounts and escalates and we're in dangerous times. And dangerous times call for strong people."

Are you strong? Jesus said in Matthew 12:29

Or how can someone enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house."

You ARE strong! Barnes tells us, "A man could not break into the house of a strong man and take his property unless he had rendered the man himself helpless. If he had taken his goods, it would therefore be sufficient proof that he had bound the man. So I, says he, have taken this "property - this possessed person" - from the dominion of Satan. It is clear proof that I have subdued "Satan himself," the "strong" being that had him in possession."

Jesus is the strong One in you! He has busted satan out of your house (your body) and delivered you from the dominion of darkness! There is no one more strong that Jesus, and it is He that is in you. He is the best,t he top, the most, the superlative among all superlatives. There is no possible way you could be stronger than to rely on the Strong One who is inside you and loves you and made you His child. It is He that is in us who resists satan and overcomes that old serpent. No charms or deceivers can come if you rely on Jesus because even though things on the outside of us go from bad to worse, HE IS ALWAYS THE SAME. (Hebrews 13:8)

Victory in Jesus!

But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

1 Corinthians 15:57

Restoring Planet Earth

Table of contents for From Here To Eternity

1. Judging Planet Earth
2. The Second Coming
3. Restoring Planet Earth

This Week’s Feature Article by Jack Kelley
Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Matt. 19:28)
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new.” Then He said, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.” (Rev. 21:5-6)


The end times judgments will be devastating in the extreme, and the Lord warned that if He didn’t bring them to a close at the appointed time, not a single soul would survive (Matt. 24:22). But for the sake of the elect, He will bring them to a close and when He does the restoration of Earth will begin.
I believe one of the ancillary functions of the end times judgments will be to begin the process of returning Earth to the condition it was in just after the creation.  It’s as if the Great Tribulation is the demolition phase of the restoration. This is hinted at by phrases like “every island fled away and the mountains could not be found” (Rev. 16:20) and “there was no longer any sea” (Rev. 21:1).  And speaking of the Lord’s current whereabouts,  Peter told the people, He must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets. (Acts 3:21)

Comparing verses like these with the return of long life spans indicated in Isaiah 65:20, I think most of the present seas will either return to their underground origins or rise into the upper atmosphere to re-establish the water vapor canopy that once surrounded Earth (Gen. 1:6-7) and helped enable the long pre-flood lives.
The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon; they will see the glory of the LORD, the splendor of our God.
The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs.  In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow (Isaiah 35:1-2, 7).
I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs. I will put in the desert the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive. I will set pines in the wasteland, the fir and the cypress together, so that people may see and know, may consider and understand, that the hand of the LORD has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it.(Isaiah 41:18-20)

The mountains will be lowered, and the sea floor elevated.  Streams and rivers will flow through lands that have been parched for thousands of years. The great desserts will become verdant plains again.  The current tilt of the Earth’s axis causes extreme differences in the world’s weather and makes large areas uninhabitable. I believe this will be corrected at the time of the 2nd Coming. The axis will become upright again and the year shortened to its original 360 days. Earth will once again enjoy a world wide sub-tropical climate like it did before Adam lost it and the terrible effects of sin were loosed upon it. This is something the creation has been waiting for ever since.

The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. (Romans 8:19-21)

And this restoration won’t be limited to the Earth alone.  A massive spontaneous healing will correct all the imperfections of fallen mankind.  
But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.  And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall (Malachi 4:2). The eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.  The lame will leap like a deer and the mute tongue will shout for joy (Isaiah 35:7)

When the Lord returns in glory the wait will be over, and soon afterward the creation will once again resemble a lush garden. He will make her deserts like Eden, her waste lands like the garden of the Lord (Isaiah 51:3).

Some people are troubled by all this because they’re so in love with the creation as it currently appears. I remember reading about a person asking God to leave her behind at the rapture because she can’t imagine anything being more beautiful than this present Earth, not even Heaven.  People like this are limited in their thinking.  They’re basing the future on the past instead of on the promises of God.  They don’t stop to think that if the Earth is this beautiful while under a curse how much more so will it be when the curse is lifted and it’s restored to its original condition?

In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so I would have told you.  I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am (John 14:2-3).
Besides, people who think like this don’t realize that the Lord has spent the last 2,000 years “preparing a place for us” in His Father’s house. He’s not coming back to be with us here where we are, He’s coming back to take us there to be with Him where He is. The Church will no longer call Earth home but will dwell with Him in His Father’s house.  Do these folks really think that after the rapture, when we see all eternity spread out before us, we’ll be disappointed with our future and long to return to this fallen creation?

But our focus here is the restoration of Planet Earth, where Israel will once again be the most favored nation. One of the clues we get that the Kingdom Age on Earth features Israel and not the Gentile nations, or even the Church, is that almost all of its descriptive passages are in the Old Testament, and for the most part center around Israel.

From them we learn of the desert bursting into bloom (Isaiah 35:1-2), of the land being so fertile that before they can complete the harvest it will be time to begin planting again (Amos 9:13). Peace will flow like a river and the wealth of the nations like a flooding stream (Isaiah 66:12).  In Jerusalem men and women of ripe old age will sit in streets filled with playing children (Zechariah 8:4-5). And in the country side, “Every man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the LORD Almighty has spoken.” (Micah 4:4)

Peace will prevail in the animal kingdom as well. Predators and prey will live side by side, and their young will lie down together, all of them existing in perfect harmony with each other and with mankind again (Isaiah 11:6-8). This will be another reversal of a post-flood condition, when fear and dread of man fell upon all the beasts of the earth and the birds of the air (Gen. 9:2-3).

And so the time of restoration will have come, and in every way Earth will be like it was in the beginning. Where ever one goes there will be peace on Earth and good will toward men, like the angel Gabriel promised to the shepherds so long ago. The Lord Himself will rule, and people will come from all over the world to learn from Him.
The mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law (Torah) will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. (Isaiah 2:2-4)

But like it has always been, the seed of rebellion will still reside in the heart of natural man.  He’ll be given every conceivable advantage in this, his last best chance to live in peace with God.  But within a generation or two that seed will begin to germinate as the children of Tribulation survivors come of age. Some will choose to follow their parents to the foot of the cross and receive their personal redemption. But with each generation an increasing number won’t. This will happen even though Satan will be bound, the Lord Himself will be their King, and God’s Law will be their law.
You see, there is no condition or circumstance that will allow natural man with his sin nature to live in peace with God. As the end of the Millennial Kingdom Age approaches, unbelievers will vastly out number believers again, especially among the nations. When Satan is released they will rise up as one and march across the breadth of the Earth to surround the camp of God’s people and the city He loves in a final attempt to kick the Lord off the planet. But fire from Heaven will devour them, and Satan will be captured again, this time to be thrown into the lake of fire forever. (Rev. 20:9-10)

After the Millennium, God and man will enjoy a new beginning, called Eternity. We’re not given any information about this because the Bible effectively ends at the end of the Millennium.  A careful reading shows that in Rev. 20, John skipped ahead after verse six to describe the final destinies of Satan and all unbelievers while he was on the subject. (Rev. 20:7-15) Then in Rev. 21:1-27 he went back to the beginning of the Millennium to show us the New Jerusalem, and in Rev. 22:1-5 gave us a glimpse of Millennial life on Earth.  We know this because Rev. 21:1 is a direct quote from Isaiah 65:17 where the context is the Kingdom age in Israel and Rev. 22:1-2 is a summary of Ezekiel 47:1-12, also a millennial passage.

As part of the Church we’ll effectively have a head start on Eternity, as will resurrected believers from both Old Testament times and Daniel’s 70th Week. But we’ll have to wait at least until the rapture to see what it’s going to be like. All we know for now is that it’ll be the greatest adventure ever designed for mankind, and we’ll be first line when the time comes to begin enjoying it.  You can almost hear the footsteps of the Messiah.  01-19-13