JUDGMENT DAY: What Is It Really All About?
By Jan Lilleby
How should one go about to try to unwind the great confusion in question of ‘Judgment Day’ – or as often called by people in general: ‘Armageddon’?
I can’t help noticing that in our time…and for quite some time now, we are almost drowning in all kinds of doomsday scenarios in the form of Hollywood films and TV-series spilling the crap all over the place. We are almost getting drowsy and never minded by it all, and it peels off like water on geese.
The world’s general idea of ‘Judgment Day’ is that a full nuke war breaks out and we have ‘Armageddon’ going, just to pick up a Bible topic most people knows.
Taking a look at Internet and all variants on the same topic, there is no end to this!
The world still remember the infamous Jehovah’s Witnesses’ prediction of the world going under and doomsday fulfilled in the year 1975. Well, it didn’t happen, and thousands of ‘Witnesses’ left the cult. Many in fierce anger – especially those who had seriously believed in the hoax and sold off their properties, quitting jobs and taking to the foothills.
The last twenty years or so, Hollywood has exploded in a constant outburst of crap-films on ‘Armageddon’ and all kinds of disaster scenarios.
Who doesn’t remember ‘Independence Day’ with huge UFOs which went burning the big cities around the world…in the usual Hollywood manner? Later came ‘Knowing’ starring Nicolas Cage, ending with the earth burning up by the sun’s expanding in heat. And if we take a nostalgic rear mirror view on the popular ‘Terminator’ films, starring the now aging Arnold Schwarzenegger in his robot-role…and with full nuke threat as a back curtain…we easily fall into laughter over the madly exaggerated acting and toy-like blasting effects, which held the screen in the good old days of Arnie’s stardom.
Arnie himself laughs over his own acting today, I guess…asking himself how he ever got to do such hopeless film roles! I only take a wild guess, no offence.
And in 2010-2011 came the all-time-high disaster movie ‘2012’ – which – reported in many medias – scared the brains out of thousands of people and movie fans all over the world. Well – we all know that such audiences pay to watch such films. They pay to get their minds filled with fiction horrors and doomsday shivers! This film has the scenario of Noah’s flood coming again, and rich people have secretly built for themselves huge sea vessels in the Far East, to escape the flood. We see Los Angeles going under in an immense earth quake, as the acting star in the movie, John Cusack, escapes in a small plane with his family; joining up with a Russian money mogul and his huge air carrier.
And now recently, the new ‘Independence Day 2’ UFO movie is about to be launched, Hollywood is heralding. The film shows a revengeful attack against earth, with super-huge UFOs coming. Also this time, like in the first movie, Jewish scientists are ‘Saving the World’. Starring Jeff Goldblum again, but now as an astronaut sent up in space to blow up the UFOs…again.
In the YouTube there are endlessly insanely doomsday warnings and predictions, one after another – and all of them (which had dates predicted) failed to happen. I don’t know if I really feel so sorry for the religious fools and nut heads who goes about with that waste of time and energy.
In 2011 there was a prediction of doomsday to come May 21, as shown in the photo here. Big billboards advertised this ridiculous hoax. Sect members went to sidewalks carrying copies of the advertisement on them.
The world laughed at them – and thus I can imagine who is behind such misuse of Biblical topics: The Devil. Jesus called him ‘The Father of Lies’.
This article will hopefully contribute in clearing this ‘Judgment Day’ paranoia, as I shall explain this in a Biblical and true manner. The Bible really has a clear word in this matter.
The Armageddon Issue
In the Bible this issue or name is found in Rev 16:16 (ref. to verse 14):
“And they gathered them (the armies in verse 14) together at the place which in Hebrew is called Armageddon”.
This place is a flat plain not far from the Golan Heights in northern Israel, now called Megiddo. The plain is about 28 kilometers long and 15 wide, leaving it about the same size as Manhattan in New York, just to give you an idea. There is no chance and no way that ‘all the armies in the world’ could find space to fight a war in such a small place!
Verse 14 goes:
“….to the rulers and leaders all over the world, to gather them together for the war on the great day of God the Almighty.”
This has been packed together religiously and twisted and turned over the centuries into ‘Judgment Day’. It is based on a totally erroneous translation of the Bible. The mentioned “rulers and leaders all over the world” is an entirely false translation. It should read: Rulers and leaders ALL OVER THE NATION (Israel).
The whole Revelation Book suffers from severe translation errors like this one. Making Israel ‘The whole wide world’. Armageddon will be just a local incident down in Israel in the times shortly before Jesus comes back from heaven in great power and glory. Local, but very intense. All wars are like that when it comes down to it. The stage is here the very same as the one Jesus spoke of in Matt 24:21 – it is the great tribulation time for Israel. This fact we cannot escape. Armageddon can ONLY BE IN ISRAEL.
The Greek word translated here is cosmos. It is used to describe towns, places, nations and the universe. And cosmos has to be used in a clear context only. It can never stand alone. The ‘cosmos’ described in Rev 16 is definitely Israel, namely the plain of Megiddo. See the photo here, in which you can see some of the Golan Heights in the horizon.
Many of you will perhaps recall having seen the disaster movie ‘Armageddon’? Starring Bruce Willis as the hero, blowing up a huge Asteroid in space to save the world. Saving it from Armageddon. Hollywood has a hang to always and without exception, using Bible topics in a wild manner totally out of context. They show Armageddon as something that will hit the entire world. They use the story of Noah and the flood (in the ‘2012’ movie) as something that would happen once again, even though the Bible says it will (God promised this) never be destroyed by any flood again. Most disaster movies predicts a nuke war to be the Biblical Armageddon, but also this is totally out of context and is not supported by the Bible.
The idea of a full worldwide nuke exchange is often, I am sorry to say, used as a tool and crow bar by Pentecostals and other denominations to scare the multitudes into their churches. It is not God Who makes such ideas. It is the Devil, or at best, it is ourselves coming up with such false conceptions of mind.
The result is that such failing doomsday predictions and ‘Sidewalk Cults’ makes the world choking on the Christian faith and preaching. They bring shame and confusion at the cost of the faith, and they do not understand that their behavior is used by the Devil to make people despise Christianity in general.
The land parcel of Israel today, is but a spot on the map the size of one of Norway’s twenty counties, Hedmark. It makes up about 28 000 quadrat kilometers. And just because Bible translators couldn’t do their job, this little spot is in the minds of people turned into ‘The whole wide world’!!
Hey, Pentecostals and Word of Faith, and Jehovah’s Witnesses heretics: Can you please just stop your doomsday hoax, and I mean now!
I am not saying that a new big war could not burst out. Nobody knows anything certain about this, except God and Christ. But Armageddon or Judgment Day remains a scenario that will be restricted to the Megiddo plain up north in Israel.
The End of the Present Dispensation of Grace
In earlier ages, which we can read in the Bible, God held judgment with punishments upon those who had it coming due to their ungodliness, for each of those dispensations that had been. Most Christian preachers know something in that regard.
When Adam and Eve fell in sin in Eden, God called off the administration we now often call ‘The Dispensation of Innocence’, by expelling them from Eden. An angel of the Lord stood guarding the entrance, waving a flaming sword to scare away anyone who would attempt to enter. Adam and Eve were created to remain eternally with God, but were sentenced to death. But God let them live for over 900 years and they had several children, as we know. It is held as truth that our first parents stayed God-fearing and in faith, and was thus saved.
By doing so, God thereby created a new dispensation or administration for the salvation of mankind. We call that second dispensation for ‘The Dispensation of the Conscience’. That dispensation was ended with a judgment, which was the great flood with Noah and the Arch.
God held judgment because of the heavily increase in ungodliness – mostly because of the so-called Giants (in Hebrew: Nephilim). Hybrid human beings emerged from the intercourse between fallen angels and regular women, whom these angelic beings took as wives, having children. They grew immensely huge and were very dangerous and evil-minded. In one of the Apocryphal Books (I think it is Book of Enoch…but I am not certain) it is told that the giants had become as many as about 4,8 million – and that is why God exterminated them by the flood. But also many natural human beings men and women, even children, went under in this flood. God had to do this in order to save mankind from being destroyed by the Nephilim, these hybrid giants and their wild killing sprees.
After that, a new dispensation came, which lasted until the tower of Babel. That dispensation is often called ‘The Dispensation of Mankind’. God also held a new judgment, destroying the tower and sending linguistic confusion upon them.
More dispensations/administrations from God for the salvation of mankind followed, but I will not use more space now for that. This was just to give you an idea…that God making judgments is nothing new in history. He started dispensations of salvation, and He ends the same dispensations as He sees how humankind piles up transgression and sin.
In our time, since Paul the apostle was given the revelation of the free Gospel of Grace by faith in Jesus Christ, – it happened when he was in Rome in 62 AD (see Acts 28:25-31) – we have the dispensation of the Grace of God in Christ, an arrangement which leaves us with God’s unmerited Grace and salvation by faith in Christ alone, no works demanded, according to Eph 2:8. God only want us to believe on Christ, and He has no covenant with us like He had with Israel. Only the free Grace of God and without any law of Moses or any ordinances, just as Paul teaches us in Ephesians and Colossians.
But the present dispensation, of the free Grace salvation, shall be ended by the same God Who established it. This will take place the same day that God sees the collective sins of the fallen Christ-rejecting Israel is piled so high it reaches heaven….and the fierce indignation of the Lord will come against these blasphemers and Jesus-haters. The cup runs over for judgment, and this time it is Israel that has it coming! Check out Dan 8:23.
This because when Israel fell away from God in 62 AD (Acts 28:25-28), He cut all contact with His nation and had them sent into destruction under the Romans. They were scattered in the world in 70 AD, and it had then become the dispensation of the Church, the one new man in Christ, which is His body. We often call this for the dispensation of the free Grace in Christ. We find according to Eph 2:15 that the law of Moses and all the ordinances has been abolished. So therefore there is no longer any covenant for the believer. It is all entirely free. In this dispensation ethnicity has zero relevance, there are no more ‘Jew first, then Gentile’ – see Col 3:11. All those who believe on Jesus Christ are saved.
It all ends right before Christ comes back to earth, the same day He sends down Elijah and Moses to administer the great tribulation in Israel. The two witnesses, as they are called in Rev 11, will prophesy doom and destruction upon the unbelieving Israel – themselves present in the land – one punishment after another, so that the nation will learn that it is God acting again. These signs and plagues are what are contained within the three sevens: The seven seals, the seven trumpets and the seven bowls of God’s wrath plus the three woes. Starting in Rev 6 and on.
The same day that these two reknown prophets come back from heaven, God shall transfer by His divine power His Church on earth, to be with Christ in heaven (Col 3:1-4). We shall be appearing with Christ in heaven in glory.
Those within the ranks of Christianity who have passed away at any time before this happens, will be revived back to life up in heaven with Christ. They will not be raised up from the graves on earth or where ever bodies of Christians are lying.
Paul’s doctrine of resurrection in 1 Cor 15 and 1 Thes 4 is not for the Church, but was for the Messianic believers in the time of the apostles, as they offered Israel the New Covenant. Their hope of salvation was the restored kingdom for Israel on earth, with Jesus as king. But the Church has a heavenly hope, and we shall be with Christ up in the heavens, not in an earthly kingdom. Only Israel was promised this millennial kingdom. Dan 2:44.
So, there are indeed NO JUDGMENT DAY or Armageddon on the day that God takes His Church into heaven with Christ. Such judgment is not coming over the world at all!
It is the long disobedient and blaspheming Talmudic Zionist Israel that will have to face this harsh judgment from God. Moses and Elijah will cast a huge number of plagues and punishments upon them in this period of 3 ½ years – and then they are killed by anti-Christ (see Rev 11:3, 7), and the last 3 1/2 years, a number of immense and scaring signs and disasters will fall, a total of 7 full Jewish calendar years; called the Great Tribulation for Israel. In those last 3 ½ years Israel will not know what is coming upon them. The prophets are taken up into heaven, so no prophet is present to say what is going to happen. Their fear will rise up to the red-hot boiling point….Israeli people will scream to the mountains: Hide us from the wrath of the Lamb!
It will be much like when Moses and Aaron stood before Pharaoh warning him of great disasters if he did not obey and let the Hebrews leave Egypt as free. The disaster hit only Egypt, and not any of the nations near Egypt. Out of the great tribulation, 2/3 of the Israelis will perish (they do not repent) while 1/3 will be saved, for they repent to Christ.
See Zech 13:8, and also Deut 28:62 of the little remnant surviving the tribulation.
The apostles in their writings used the expression of the end of the dispensation, calling this the end of time. That is, the end to the existing order, and expecting thus a new form of governing or dispensation. For the apostles, that was the restored kingdom to Israel (Acts 1:6).
If we jump forward to after the millennial kingdom, such as in Rev 20:7-11 – we find that God once again holds judgment. This time He destroys a rebellion against Jesus’ government in Jerusalem, a rebellion organized by Satan (who is let loose from the Abyss jail) – and fire falls from heaven and consumes the rebels and their forces. Thus a new dispensation for mankind’s salvation is instigated. I recommend you to read this yourself from the Bible.
The apostles had in mind that Israel should be restored and entering the millennial kingdom when Jesus came from heaven. Peter wrote “…us to whom the last times has come…”. Daniel wrote and used the word ‘end of time’. The angel who came to Daniel to explain his visions of tribulation in Israel, used the following word: “..for it has to do with the time of the end.” Dan 8:19. So we call it ‘endtime’ mostly. The end of the tribulation for Israel, as Jesus returns from heaven to be their king.
There is no way that the earth will go under, crack into pieces or burn up…like we see in the ridiculous Hollywood films.
And most enlightened Christian believers are well aware of whom or which group of people owns Hollywood: The jesus-rejecting money-loving Jews. Using every opportunity to defame and blaspheme Christ as well as Christianity.
I hope this has made it easier for you to understand these things, and that you no longer will let yourself get manipulated by fear and unrest. As a Christian you have the greatest of all hopes: Heaven up above, together with Christ in glory.
