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Working out has never been something I have looked forward to in the course of trying–as they say—to prevent the temple from becoming a coliseum. So, I surround myself with audio that helps take my mind off of the discomfort–even the fleeting pains—that come with the sweat equity one must put into keeping this flesh usable for as long as possible in striving for quality of life.
Radio talk shows are usually the format I choose to take my mind from the physical exertion I’ve never found particularly a thing of joy. So, it was with welcome surprise that I heard a week or so ago the well-known talk host, Glenn Beck, filling the airways on my radio at a convenient morning hour. I have since been listening to His syndicated show that recently was chosen to replace other programming on the station to which I’ve tuned for a number of years.
Beck’s religious belief system is Mormonism, and that system doesn’t include any of the beliefs we of the premillennial, pre-trib eschatological view hold. I preface the balance of this commentary with this because of the profound nature of Mr. Beck’s talking points on the strange, troubling times in which America and the world are embroiled.
He believes, I infer from listening to him for these past days, as do I and many of my colleagues and others, that the changes proposed by the impending Obama administration, combined with the national and international economic meltdown, portend something of an apocalyptic future for the planet, should things continue in the same direction. The talk show host seems, as a matter of fact, even more pessimistic in his outlook than many of the pre-trib Christian emailers Todd and I hear from on a daily basis. His thoughts are downright morose in some instances, while he pontificates on things of the future.
Beck was one of the few public voices that predicted (in 1999) that if Osama bin Laden wasn’t captured or killed, New York City skyscrapers would soon have dead bodies in them. This, I’m sure, he based upon the bombing of the twin Trade towers by bin Laden’s cohorts in 1993.
We know, of course, what happened on September 11, 2001.
It was with a chill running down my spine while showering after the workout that I listened to Glenn Beck talk about what he sees for this nation in the near future. While the content of his talk was on the surface disturbing, I have to admit a part of what he said–one line—confirmed in my mind that what he spoke was Holy Spirit engendered and intended to comfort. This, totally without the talk host having any idea of the astounding thing he had just said, I’m almost certain.
Mr. Beck said (I paraphrase) that America is on a track that is taking it at phenomenal speed toward the darkest hours of its history. He said further that he believed that by this time next year–by Christmas, as he refined his thoughts, America will be unrecognizable as she has been known.
He then said something that caused the chill down the spine to feel like “the Tingler” was portrayed to feel in that old Vincent Price horror movie, if anyone remembers that film. Beck said that America’s and the world’s move into that darkest time of history would not come incrementally. That is, things would not simply get worse and worse morally and economically until the point is reached that the world is irretrievably lost. He said that he believed that the country and the world would experience a great cataclysmic event that would be greater than the attacks of 9/11/01. The great, all-consuming crash into the abyss of calamity will come in an instant. I inferred that Mr. Beck was talking along the lines of the geopolitical, not the supernatural.
But, it was his next words that were the most chilling. He said he believed that the event would happen suddenly, and forever change the world for the worse. He said that it would happen–and now I quote him—“in the blink of an eye.”
The Apostle Paul gave the same prediction nearly two millennia ago. He knew nothing of stock markets that could crash, nuclear weapons that are capable of ending all human life on earth, of a nation so blessed--both materially and spiritually--that it far surpasses any civilization in history in ability to disseminate the gospel through technologies that make living life exponentially better than anything Solomon experienced...a nation that continues to degenerate morally into one over which its forefathers would weep bitterly, should they see the levels of debauchery and antithesis to U.S. constitutional governance to which it has fallen.
Paul prophesied a “blink-of-the-eye” moment of change that will disastrously alter forever life on this planet of rebellious earth-dwellers, which is what the KJV calls those who will not accept Christ and turn from their wicked ways: “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51-52).
