It’s High Time to Wake Up!

We live in a world gone mad. Just look at what’s happened this year alone. The collapse of Tunisia’s government in mid-January triggered a firestorm of protest and violence that is still burning across the Middle East. In Egypt, the United States forced Hosni Mubarak out of power and handed the nation over to the Muslim Brotherhood—a radical transformation theTrumpet.com has predicted for nearly 20 years.

In Libya, a headless coalition of Western nations has attacked the forces of long-time dictator Muammar Qadhafi. This misguided venture essentially aligns the U.S. with a network of Libyan rebels that is infested with al Qaeda operatives.

And al Qaeda’s response to President Obama? Thank you very much. In their latest English-language propaganda publication, called Inspire, one cleric writes, “Our mujahideen brothers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and the rest of the Muslim world will get a chance to breathe again after three decades of suffocation.”

Of course, it is Iran—the number-one state sponsor of terrorism—that stands to benefit most from this rampant spread of radical Islam. Like al Qaeda’s leadership, the mullahs are delighted by the U.S. support for uprisings in Egypt and Libya. With momentum clearly on its side, Iran is now using its proxies to provoke war with Israel and fuel protests in Bahrain and Yemen, where it hopes to topple regimes that have had a long history of supporting American interests.

Iran’s only cause for concern, as Brad Macdonald wrote about yesterday, is in Syria, where a popular uprising threatens the government of Bashar Al-Assad—Iran’s partner in terror. To this point, Assad has managed to maintain control of the unrest by using live ammunition to mow down demonstrators in the streets.

It’s probably the only revolution in the Middle East that could actually advance American interests. And so America, in keeping with its recent string of strategic losses, has offered its unwavering support for Assad. When asked why America was backing the rebels in Libya, but not in Syria, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday that Syria was different and that Bashar Al-Assad was a “reformer.”

Outside of the Middle East, meanwhile, in January, Australia sustained its worst flooding in history—a “biblical disaster,” according to the leading daily in Brisbane. In February, a devastating earthquake in New Zealand pretty much wiped out the central district of Christchurch. A quake of this ferocity is statistically estimated to strike just once every thousand years.

In March, another earthquake off the coast of Japan touched off one of the deadliest tsunamis in history, causing tens of thousands of deaths and leaving the Fukushima power plant teetering on the brink of full-scale nuclear meltdown.

These recent disasters follow hard on the heels of a record-breaking year of “natural” disasters in 2010. Last year, there were more disaster-related deaths than any other year on record. The Associated Press labeled it “the year the Earth struck back.”

And yet—even in the face of the real and frightful prospect of world war and these earthshaking jolts in different places, followed by famine and pestilence—our peoples have drifted into a deep slumber!

This week, during a YouTube interview, a journalist asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the following question: “If you could ask one question of a world leader, what would it be and to whom?” Netanyahu said he would ask Winston Churchill if anything different could have been done in order to awaken the world to the dangers of Nazism.

He speculated on how Churchill might have responded to that question: “Nah—nothing could have been done differently, because ultimately there’s such a thing as the slumber of democracies—they have to be banged on the head.” Netanyahu then said,

I feel that same frustration now, because I’ve been talking for 15 years about the danger of Iranian nuclear terrorism, how they could control the world’s oil supply, and how they threaten our country with obliteration and could do the same with others. You try, and you try, and you try, and I don’t want to say that there’s been no progress—but not the kind of mobilization that is required against something so great.

Without an understanding of Bible prophecy, it would be easy to get frustrated by the slumbering spirit that has drugged America and Britain. Look at how oblivious our people are to the terrifying dangers just ahead of us. Here we are at a time when Bible prophecies are being fulfilled almost by the week, and our peoples are soundly asleep!

We’ve been trumpeting these prophecies for over two decades, following in the footsteps of Herbert W. Armstrong, who prophesied before us for more than 50 years. And now that many of these very prophecies are being fulfilled, one would think our mail bins would be buried under piles of requests; that our phone lines would light up like Las Vegas; that our Web traffic would crash the servers.

Instead, it’s more like a steady trickle of interest—one from a city, two from a family, as the Prophet Jeremiah said. God’s work is still getting done. His warning message of love is still going out to this world.

But the support for that worldwide work is coming from such a tiny group of dedicated families.

Most do not make time for Christ or His good news message of the soon-coming Kingdom of God. They are too busy attending to the cares of this world. As the Apostle Paul said about the perilous times of these “last days,” men would love themselves and pleasure-seeking more than God (2 Timothy 3:1-4). This doesn’t apply to every single individual, of course—but it certainly describes our society in general.

Amid all the Bible prophecies being fulfilled before our eyes, the fact that most people have blindfolded themselves to what is really happening in this world is, in itself, a prophetic sign that we are nearing the return of Jesus Christ!

Notice what Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5:2: “For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.” This means that Jesus Christ will intervene in the affairs of men at a time when most people least expect it!

Phillips translates part of verse 3 as saying, “Catastrophe will sweep down upon them as suddenly and inescapably as birth pangs to a pregnant woman.” All this happens when most people are lulled to sleep by illusions of peace and security. “For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night” (verse 7).

But to the rare individual who sees the great evil of this sin-drenched world, drunk on the pagan customs and traditions of men, and who is willing to forsake the ways of man and to turn to God in repentance, faith and obedience to His laws, summarized by the Ten Commandments, God offers a superabundant supply of love and mercy, life-changing revelation and truth and the only sure hope there is for any individual—as well as for this dying world!

Knowing the times we are living in, as Paul beseeched the brethren in Rome, “now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed” (Romans 13:11).

Now is the time to pour our hearts and energies into the study of God’s Word, to fervently seek God and His direction in our daily prayers and to faithfully abide by His commandments in our day-to-day living.

Look at this world! Look at the obsessive interest and boundless energy it has in pursuing the ways of sin.

Can’t we put some time-consuming, energetic devotion into our love and service to God and His great work?