One of the things that you will hear a lot once you start studying end times prophecy are “birth pains”, or “sorrows”. Jesus spoke of them during his sermon on the mount as one of the key warnings we should look for.
Mark 13:8 (New King James Version) – 8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be earthquakes in various places, and there will be famines and troubles. These are the beginnings of sorrows.
Anyone who has had a baby or been a part of the process understands this process all to well but for those that haven’t, the contractions during the birth process begin slowly and fairly far apart, the severity of the pain is also small at first and grows exponentially.
This is what Christ was talking about in the sermon on the mount. Once we enter the “last days”, we will see specific signs. We will know that they are the signs by the pattern at which they come. They will start off slow, infrequent and of a small magnitude and ramp up in intensity and become so close together you hardly have a chance to breath between each event.
This is what we have been seeing over the last year or two. It all started shortly after World War II with the creation of Israel (which fulfilled a portion of Ezekiel’s prophecy) and has been magnifying ever since.
The team at Rapture Ready.com has developed an index in which they tried to track this at a high level. I will let Todd, explain in further in the great article below…
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Rapture Index Nears an All-Time High
Mar 7, 2011
If you think we might be a seeing a sharp rise in end-time activity, you would be correct. I’ve never seen a time when so many headlines are being ripped right from Bible prophecy. Over the past two months, Rapture Ready has had a 40-percent rise in its traffic load. A large portion of the hits come from thousands of people looking to see what Bible prophecy has to say about ongoing current events. Many of the key search subjects are related to earthquakes, the weather, the Middle East, and the economy.
The upsurge has had an impact on the Rapture Index. It has been climbing for several years and is now within a few points of its all-time high. The Index has not been this high since January 2003.
The Rapture Index is a type of “Dow Jones Industrial Average” for measuring end-time activity. Since Jesus said we will not know the day of the Rapture, I figured the best way to know where we on God’s prophetic clock is to track the events predicted to occur at the time of our Lord’s return.
There is something very interesting about what is happening with the index now versus how it behaved in the past. A decade ago, the increases occurred in spikes. The index would rocket up and then quickly fall back. Prophetic events would occur, then a low would follow. What we are seeing now is a relentless period of continuous activity.
The yearly lows for the Rapture Index do a very good job of showing how activity is rising. If you look at the list below, you will see a steady rate of increase. One way to examine this trend is to ask: When is the last time we’ve had a year without a major earthquake? In order for the earthquake category to rate as a 1, we would have to go a whole year without a 6.5 or greater trembler occurring in a major, populated area. It wasn’t too long ago that we could go a whole decade without seeing a quake strike a population center. Tropical cyclones have shown a similar surge in activity.
2003 Low 133
2004 Low 135
2005 Low 143
2006 Low 151
2007 Low 154
2008 Low 155
2009 Low 157
2010 Low 168One shortcoming of the Rapture Index is that it doesn’t capture the historic significance of some recent end-time events. It only measures whether activity is rising or falling in frequency. Over the past year, I’ve noticed a dramatic increase in the number of historical events. Last summer, Russia had its worst drought on record, with the all-time hottest recorded temperature occurring in July. Australia’s Queensland territory suffered its worst flooding in the nation’s history, and two months later was hit by the most powerful cyclone ever. If this doesn’t cause the most skeptical people to scratch their heads, I should add that before that, Australia had just experienced its worse drought ever.
Another end-time occurrence that defies easy measure by the Index is morality. I believe it’s because we’ve hit rock bottom in many areas, and there is no room to go any lower. This week, I was at my dentist waiting to get a check-up. I was looking through the latest copy of People magazine and ran across a review of a new Broadway play that Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park, have written. The play is about the adventures of a Mormon missionary in Africa. My eye caught excerpts of the lyrics of a song of unbelievable blasphemy aimed directly at God Himself.
It would be bad enough to speak of God in such a profane way, but all the more shocking is how cheery the reviews are about this gush of raw sewage. Here is how one reviewer spoke of the offense:
“The audience was then delighted by songs with lyrics like “(F-word) you, God,” “(F-word) you God in the (A-word)” and “(F-word) you God in the (C-word).” Each number had the feeling of a traditional Broadway musical, but twisted by the South Park humor.”
Last year, Stone and Parker received death threats when they produced a cartoon with Muhammad wearing a bear costume. They do something a thousand times worse to the God of the Bible, and audiences are delighted, with Christian leaders not even mad enough to issue a token “How dare you?” We are truly in the last of the last days.
“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils” (1 Timothy 4:1). “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13).
— Todd
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