Friday Morning Manna
April 24, 2020
Nathaniel Fajardo
email: [email protected]
The Sun and The Moon Will Never Stand Still Again
Looking down from space, it would perhaps appear that that life on earth has come to a standstill because of Covid-19 global pandemic.
But neither time nor prophecy waits for no one. Prepared or unprepared, the few remaining unfulfilled prophecies, the most awesome and stupendous events never yet witnessed or experienced by mankind of earth’s six thousand-year history “shall come to pass.” Much sooner than expected. This Covid-19 global pandemic provides us a painfully graphic picture and equally painful yet invaluable experience and education on what they will be—prepared, unprepared, underprepared or whatever.
One book of the sixty-six books of the Bible seems to have been dedicated to help guide God’s people, and even the world in these closing hours of earth’s probation—if willing (since no other sensible answers will be left standing). The book of Job, when read and studied in its entirety with a spiritual mind will be seen to be a pulling back the curtains revealing to the naked eye the unseen but real spiritual world, and what has been taking place there non-stop, unfolding from the very beginning of the fall what all the actors involved, from Job himself, his wife and last three best friends did not know, understand, and worse, mischaracterized and misinterpreted at that very time the sudden, mysterious personal pandemic and calamities were wildly piling up one after another upon the faithful patriarch. Job, “the perfect and upright man” that he already was, before the devastating and lethal calamities came upon him and his whole large household and his vast riches, became even “more perfect” enlightened and purified by that uber “fiery trial.” You would think that Bible-reading Christians since then should have known better by now, right?
In quick summary, the book of Job reveals that God is fully in control since “yesterday, today and forever,” as from creation to redemption, from generation to generation, from epoch to epoch, from the global cleansing by water-calamity of the Flood to the destruction of sin-cursed earth by the “cleansing fires of the last days” only after the end of the Biblical millennium in heaven, to make way for the eternal “the new heavens and the new earth.”
Some who are aware but still cherish yet unfulfilled earthly plans and dreams to come true, will shut off the conviction. They will mentally shift to hyper denial mode, and hoping against hope, they will convince themselves that “things will return back to normal, in time” even if it means a radical, unrecognizable “new normal.”
Still others who despise God and hate His great moral standard of the Decalogue will plunge even deeper into the very dark deeds that incurred God’s displeasures such as riotous drunkenness, surfeiting, gross immorality leading diseases, hatred, barbaric crimes and untold violence. Note the condition that prevailed in Sodom, a type of today’s condition, just before its corporate/national probation closed for having filled up their cup of iniquity, and the fiery judgment that followed:
“Like the dwellers in the vale of Siddim, the people [in these last days, particularly in the so-called religious world] are dreaming of prosperity and peace [championed by the prosperity-gospel preachers]. ‘Escape for thy life,’ is the warning from the angels of God [now, in the third angel’s message]; but other voices are heard saying, ‘Be not excited; there is no cause for alarm.’ The multitudes cry, ‘Peace and safety,’ while Heaven declares that swift destruction is about to come upon the transgressor. On the night prior to their destruction, the cities of the plain rioted in pleasure, and derided the fears and warnings of the messenger of God; but those scoffers [see 2 Pet. 3: 3-13] perished in the flames; that very night the door of mercy was forever closed to the wicked, careless inhabitants of Sodom. God will not always be mocked; He will not long be trifled with. [Isa. 13: 9 quoted]. The great mass of the world will reject God’s mercy, and will be overwhelmed in swift and irretrievable ruin. But those who heed the warning, shall dwell ‘in the secret place of the Most High,’ and ‘abide under the shadow of the Almighty.’ His truth shall be their shield and buckler. For them is the promise, ‘With long life will I satisfy him, and show him My salvation.’ Ps. 91: 1, 4, 16.”- E.G. White, Patriarchs & Prophets, p. 167.
That’s mankind’s sad history since the fall, marked by every epochal period from before the flood, after in the building of ill-fated typical of Babel in the plains of Shinar where the then-known world united in their iniquity “having one language, and of one speech” (Gen. 11: 1-9) and onward. All these are attested to by the mute yet eloquent testimony of the ruins of past once-glorious empires now consigned to the dustbin of history, as foretold by the prophets of God Almighty, either or both “by pen and voice” as in, “It is written” and “Thus saith the Lord.”
The final closing prophetic events we all are facing, no one excused or spared, prepared or unprepared, are no longer subject to any specific time periods but simply follow a divine chronology. Order and harmony are of God and His followers on earth; confusion, chaos and discord are of Satan and his visible and invisible agencies on earth. “God is a God of order not confusion” (1 Cor. 14: 40, 33; cf. 15: 21-26). Indeed, “order is heaven’s first law.”
Q. Why no longer subject to any specific prophetic time periods, as stubborn time-setters wearing “different hats” yet of the “same birds that flock together” seem so hard of learning? Ans. Because all the prophetic time periods embraced within the 2300-day/year prophecy of Daniel 8: 14, the longest time prophecy of the Bible of 2,300 years, saw its grand terminus in the year 1844.
One major reason why the world and the churches are being warned by a merciful God through is unsurprisingly global covid-19 crisis, revealing that He hand is on the wheels, full-time, never by “autopilot,” is man, in his foolishness and pride, still thinks and acts—since the ill-fated venture of building the tower of Babel on the plains of Shinar after the end of the Flood—as though time stands still or even worse, in its folly, can be manipulated, shrunk or expanded, or reversed somehow.
The One Day Time Really Stood Still
On the fourth day of creation, “God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years.” He made “two great lights,” “the greater light,” our solar system’s sun, “to rule the day” and the lesser light,” planet Earth’s only moon, “to rule the night.” Thus was earth time laid down in the beginning and thus it remains onto the earth-made new after the Biblical millennium. See Isaiah 65: 17-25; 66: 22-24; cf. Rev. 21: 1-27.
That earth time did stand still, however, really took place but it was divinely ordained to be a one-and-done deal, a once-in-an earth-time occurrence. Here it is:
“Then Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, ‘Sun, stand still over Gibeon; and Moon in the valley of Ajalon. So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the people had revenge upon their enemies. Is this not written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst heaven; and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. And there has been no day like that, before it or after it, that the Lord heeded the voice of a man; for the Lord fought for Israel.” Joshua 12: 10: 12-14.
This humanly improbable, transcendental global miracle to answer a very specific need of God’s people during an isolated, pending national disaster brought on by war with their enemies, not a lethal virus pandemic, was focused on a very small geographical area, yet it involved the temporary suspension of the ordained clock-work movements of the celestial bodies of the sun and moon by divine edict, even by the exact same creative fiat that brought them into existence to serve very specific purposes for man’s benefit and the Creator’s glory. (Note: No scriptural information exists as to whether it was earth that temporarily stopped spinning on its axis but because, perhaps, it is the “easier” thing to do versus the moon and the sun, as some may speculate, the only safe and wise thing to do for all finite, humble mortals is to simply trust the omniscience and omnipotence of God immortal!)
That’s who God is, lest any true Bible student may temporarily forget because of fear! And four thousand years after, as the inanimate angry billows threatened to engulf the boat in which His early disciples were on, instantly obeyed His command “Peace, be still,” the sun and moon obeyed their Creator. Therefore, neither the sun nor the moon, which regulate earth time, have not since then and will never stand still ever again because the Creator who created these inanimate heavenly luminaries, by fiat, said so. End of discussion.
So, what has this got to do, according to “the more sure word of prophecy” (2 Pet. 1: 19) with this first-of-a-kind Covid-19 global pandemic, but certainly not “the last-of them”? First, man should be grateful that God, in His mysterious “mercy that endureth forever” is still holding back the four winds of strife till His servants are sealed in their foreheads.” (Rev. 7: 1- 5). In fact, “Though the wicked know it not, they owe even the blessings of this life to the presence, in the world, of God’s people whom they despise and oppress” (DA 306) until their “iniquities have reached unto heaven” (Rev. 18: 1-5) and the “point of no remedy” (2 Chron. 36: 16; Prov. 6: 15; 29: 1) is finally arrived at, as prophesied in the “final apostasy that results in national ruin,” and on to the close of earth’s probation.
Next, it is Satan who is causing all the calamities and disasters, wars, disease, accidents by sea and land, great conflagrations, fierce tornadoes, cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes, every place and in a thousand forms,” past, present and future. But Job’s book was precisely written to reveal to the “eye of faith” and understanding what our literal eyes cannot yet see of what has been taking place in the spirit world since the start of the great controversy between Christ and Satan on earth. It assures us that Satan can only do what God allows him, to serve a divine purpose, and therefore is in full control “yesterday, today and forever.” (Heb. 13: 8, 9).
Since time does not pause even for a moment, hence inexorably moves on, what can we expect by way of prophecy going forward? God’s messenger-servant continues:
“Satan works through the elements also to garner his harvest of unprepared souls. He has studied the secrets of the laboratories of nature [causing mutation of bacteria and viruses into deadly pathogens, etc.], and he uses all his power to control the elements as far as God allows.”- E. G. White, Great Controversy, 1884 ed., p. 407
America is both the focal and pivotal point of end-time prophecy
It is maybe unsurprising that this lethal corona virus pathogen, thought to have (been?) started in the province of Wuhan, China, spreading rapidly globally, is now seemingly wreaking greater damage in the world’s greatest and most advanced nation, America. Why unsurprising? Because America is both the focal and pivotal point of end-time prophecy. Viewed in the grand scheme of things, the three-fold historic and prophetic focus and movement of civilization did not just accidently emerge six thousand years ago in Mesopotamia—the ancient Greek name meaning the land “between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers” which nurtured the first urban civilization. The government of the ancient Sumerians was a pagan theocracy ruled by a religious class; then onward to the New Testament times then shifts to the Old World in the glory of the imperial, then papal Roman empire covering Europe, and on to the final shift westward to the New World in the founding of America. These grand movements were pre-ordained and thus prophesied. Empires and nations have an important role to play in the great controversy and in the plan of redemption. Nothing happens by chance neither by the prowess of man. Note:
“In the annals of human history the growth of nations, the rise and fall of empires, appear as dependent on the will and prowess of man. The shaping of events seems, to a great degree, to be determined by his power, ambition, or caprice [sounds familiar?]. But in the Word of God the curtain is drawn aside, and we behold, behind, above, and through all the play and counterplay of human interests and power and passions, the agencies of the all-merciful One, silently, patiently working out the counsels of His own will.” – Ibid, Education, p. 173.
(To be continued next Friday, God willing!)