Gods are angry, the beast, and Brimstone Pit

Thunder, lightning stop Obama Memorial Day speech
President Barack Obama's Memorial Day observance was stopped in its tracks on Monday by a torrential downpour accompanied by bolts of lightning and booming thunder.

I laughed when I read Drudge's headline this morning. It was the first thing I thought of when the torrential rain and thunder stopped Obama's speech. But on a larger scale, I find it interesting that the secular world adopts so much biblical language with impunity. Is it the Spirit speaking to them? Do they know what they are doing when they say these things? Do they understand how close to the truth they are? (Left, mythical god Poseidon)

I'd written before that the end time language the European Union was using was too blatant to ignore and that its chosen symbolism either knowingly or unknowingly was straight from the bible. In the here and now, during the past week I've noticed at least three allusions to the bible and unwitting adoption of language straight from prophecy.

Of course, Drudge's "Gods are angry" line is funny and in many Christians' opinion, accurate (if we remove the 's' from God, that is). In the bible, particularly Revelation, when lightning is accompanied by thunder and hail it is a symbol of God's judgments and plagues. (Rev 4:5; 8:5; 16:9)

This week also I learned that in 2004 the deepest underwater volcano was discovered. Scientists named it "Brimstone Pit." We're all familiar with brimstone from the bible. Any preacher who preaches sin and judgment is called a 'fire and brimstone preacher." But the fire and brimstone are very real in God's vocabulary. He used it in the past to smite Sodom for its homosexuality. Peter explicitly says that Sodom and Gomorrah were examples of what will happen again to the ungodly. (2 Peter 2:6), We see this will be so in Revelation, where brimstone is a symbol for eternal torment (Rev 9:10 and 19:20), and judgments of God (Rev 9:17-18; 14:10; Luke 17:29-30). Brimstone is not just an old-fashioned word. It the very real word for sulfur. In the biblical punishments of the past and of the promises of punishments future, God rains down brimstone from the sky. Volcanic eruptions also contain sulfur in its solid and its gaseous state, which, when erupting, rain down fire and brimstone from the sky. And there have been a lot of volcanic eruptions lately. One of the reasons Brimstone Pit was so named is because it emits yellow sulfur almost constantly.

This week also, a news article about BP revealed that BP calls the runaway oil leak under the Gulf of Mexico 'The Beast.' And here, "The BP executive admitted his company had “failed to wrestle the beast to the ground yesterday.” Of course, the Beast from under the sea appears in Revelation 13:1, "And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name" and this is the Antichrist.

Why is it that man is able to accept the connection between earth's events and divine intervention when it prevents their disfavored politician from speaking, yet fail to realize that He is very real and always using His signature vocabulary to get our attention? Is it THAT hard to accept our sin and its consequences from a holy God? Apparently. That divine interventions occur and always have? I guess so. But that blindness will come to an end soon. In the coming Gog-Magog battle, God veritably pokes His head out from the veil between this world and makes Himself known.

"You will advance against my people Israel like a cloud that covers the land. In days to come, O Gog, I will bring you against my land, so that the nations may know me when I show myself holy through you before their eyes." (Ezek. 38:14-16)

It is but a small graduation from Mythopoeic thought- that nature's acts were the result of many divine beings' interventions on the world (Egyptians), to nonmythopeic thought, that the ancient Hebrews' One True God as not a will within nature, but was a force or law behind nature. But there still exists the gap between man's personal sin and the Way out. It takes a submission, though, and that pride is almost too hard to break in this latter day. In the very end that pride will not be broken. (Revelation 16:1) You notice if you read the verse that man knows it is God punishing them, yet they refuse to submit.

Though the Jews will recognize God in the Gog-Magog battle, they still fail to see Jesus as their Redeemer and His work on the cross as the connection between personal sin and His grace. They identify the Antichrist as the redeemer because of his political savvy, intelligence and seeming generosity in allowing them to sacrifice once again in a rebuilt Temple. All external qualities.

Theirs will be a mistake almost leading to their extinction yet is rectified halfway through the Tribulation when they finally accept Jesus as the Savior. Hallelujah!

Yet there is something in the language of God that speaks to the spirit and the soul since the beginning of time.  That language speaks today when secular man 'picks up' on the symbols, adopts them, and understands a glimmer of truth behind them. Revelation contains so many symbols because although languages change, even die out,  pictures don't change. Whether it is 510 BC or 2010 AD, we all know what a beast is. Everyone knows what thunder and lightning are. Everyone knows what brimstone is and does. It is my hope that these glimmers of understanding at the soul level transform into a conscious recognition of His presence in the world, and that man will submit to Him, escaping the bondage that sin holds on so many.