Is the End Really Near?

The signs—the last of the four blood moons, the biblical Shemitah, rise of end-time “Babylon,” the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, the dangerous Iranian nuclear deal and a world drowning in debt and dangling on the edge of economic catastrophe—seem unmistakable now.

While harbingers of the apocalypse have been gathering for decades, most of the world has been largely oblivious to the gathering tempest and prophetic warnings.

This is changing with the sudden appearance of global instability—geopolitically, financially and culturally—as the world undergoes a remarkably ominous transformation.

Today, the world is facing moral and social chaos, spiritual deception, proliferation of the occult, a spate of historic natural disasters, worsening worldwide drought, record-breaking extreme weather and the growing risk of a nuclear conflagration.

Franklin Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, says the “defining moment” for America and humanity has arrived.

“As a nation we have arrogantly turned our back on God, and I believe God’s judgment will come against our country,” Graham says.

Now, as the world awaits whether the last of the four blood moons and the biblical Shemitah will bring economic collapse, war, other calamity or the fulfillment of prophecies related to Israel, Rabbi Jonathan Cahn says, “We are now witnessing what appears to be a perfect prophetic storm.”

“For years, I have been warning that America was progressing down a course of apostasy and judgment,” says Cahn, author of the New York Times best-selling books The Harbinger and The Mystery of the Shemitah. “The harbingers have all manifested, the national departure from God is accelerating almost exponentially, America’s relationship with Israel is at an all-time low, and now with the striking down of the biblical definition of marriage, the very order of God, we have a crossed a fateful line. It is all converging.”

In interviews during the past nine months, several dozen highly respected Bible prophecy scholars told Charisma that they agree the world is now experiencing an unparalleled acceleration and convergence in end-time signs.

Dr. Tim LaHaye, Joel C. Rosenberg, Dr. Chuck Missler, Paul McGuire, Pastor Greg Laurie, Dr. Robert Jeffress, Sid Roth, Rabbi Jonathan Bernis, Dr. Thomas Ice, Dr. Ron Rhodes and others said that while they may disagree on the prophetic significance of the blood moons and Shemitah prophecies, they overwhelmingly agree that the world is in the run-up to the end-time events predicted by the biblical prophets.

Dr. Jack Graham says there is little question now that “this very well could be the terminal generation.”

“Everyone senses right now who’s got their ear in Scripture and is listening to the Spirit of God that something great, something cataclysmic, something strategic, is going to happen in the world,” says Dr. Graham, pastor of the 40,000-member Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, one of the largest and fastest-growing megachurches in America. “People are talking about it everywhere that something big is about to happen, and so this is just another element of awareness—the blood moons’ phenomena—that we can’t go on the way we’re going.”

A sizable portion of the public concurs. A recent poll commissioned by Rosenberg, a New York Times best-selling author of numerous prophecy books, found 41 percent of Americans believe events such as the rebirth of the nation of Israel, the growing threat of war in the Middle East, widespread national disasters and the serious threat of a global economic depression are evidence that “we are living in what the Bible calls the last days.”

“The polls show the highest percentage of both Christians and the general public who recognize we may well be living in the very times our Lord and His prophets warned would exist just prior to the end times,” says LaHaye, a renowned prophecy expert, minister and co-author of the Left Behind series of end-time novels that sold 80 million copies.

“Actually, we have many more signs of the coming end of this world than any generation before us. Israel being drawn back into the Holy Land … is the most obvious. However, He gave several others, like the ‘gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come’ (Matt. 24:14). Thrilling reports from the Wycliffe Bible translators … give us just cause for believing we could be living in the last days.”

‘Something Is Coming’

Today, many sense “something is coming” as the last of the four blood moons, the biblical Shemitah, Sir Isaac Newton’s end-time prediction known as “Newton’s Riddle” and other potential prophetic signs converge this fall and throughout 2016.

The blood moons have drawn worldwide media attention. Only three times in the past 500 years have four blood moons occurred back to back and on major Jewish holy days. Each time marked a significant event in Jewish history. In 1493, the Jews had been expelled from Spain, and Columbus had discovered the New World—a sanctuary for Jewish people. In 1948-49, the modern state of Israel was founded. In 1967-68, the Six-Day War was followed by the reunification of Jerusalem to Israel.

The fourth tetrad began April 15, 2014, on Passover. In October last year, the second blood moon appeared on the Feast of Tabernacles or Sukkot. Blood moons this year land on the same holy days, including the final one this September.

“What’s occurring now has only occurred three times in the past 500 years, and each occurrence brought tragedy and triumph for the Jewish people,” says Cornerstone Church Pastor John Hagee, author of the New York Times best-selling book Four Blood Moons.

At the same time, financial experts are expressing concerns that unprecedented levels of worldwide debt and economic turmoil roiling Europe, Asia and other parts of the globe could lead to economic catastrophe.

Cahn has warned that he believes a “great shaking” is coming. In The Harbinger, he revealed that the same nine prophetic manifestations, or harbingers, that appeared in the last days of ancient Israel before its destruction have now reappeared in America. In The Mystery of the Shemitah, Cahn unveiled a seven-year biblical pattern that has marked the greatest stock market crashes in history, the collapse of economies, the rise and fall of nations, world wars, global cataclysms and end-time events. What Cahn describes as the “Super Shemitah”—the Year of Jubilee that comes at the end of seven cycles of the seven-year Shemitah, the Hebrew word for the “release” of debts detailed in Deut. 15:1-3—begins on Yom Kippur, or September 23, and runs through September 2016.

“Whether it comes in this time parameter of the Shemitah or the year following or not, I believe a great shaking is going to come to this land and to the world that will involve the collapsing of the American economy, the financial realm and the removal of blessing and prosperity,” Cahn told those gathered at the Prophecy in the News conference earlier this year in Orlando, Florida.

“The shaking doesn’t have to take place in the Shemitah (year), but I believe we need to be ready. I believe one of the reasons (God) led me to write The Harbinger and led me to write (The Mystery of the Shemitah) is because he wants the dots connected when this comes. Will there be judgment or revival? The answer is there can be both. In fact, there can be revival through judgment. But we have to be ready. The hour is late.”

Dr. Chuck Missler, a prophecy expert, former corporate executive and founder of the Koinonia House ministry, says the biggest threat facing America involves the nation’s historic levels of debt. A recent study by the McKenzie Global Institute found the nation’s total debts, including unfunded liabilities, is not the $17 trillion politicians often cite, but rather $210 trillion—a figure “larger than the estimates of the total wealth of planet Earth,” Missler says.

“It doesn’t take great scholarship to realize that’s unstable, it can’t endure, and those debts will never be repaid by any legitimate currency,” Missler says. “So there is an implosion or collapse of some kind that is inevitable. We don’t know the timing or the form it will it take. … But the people who are bona-fide experts in this area are in agreement that there is a correction overdue.”

Peter Schiff, an economist, frequent guest on national news programs, chief executive officer of Euro Pacific Capital and author of The Real Crash: America’s Coming Bankruptcy, says the financial system is in a “big bubble” that is “going to burst.”

“It will have a terrible impact,” Schiff says. “Americans are able to live beyond their means because of the overvalued dollar. When the dollar collapses, Americans will no longer have that luxury. Our standard of living will be greatly reduced.”

Are Globalists Planning a World State?

Meanwhile, geopolitical and prophecy experts are sounding the alarm that secret trade pacts, laws undermining American sovereignty and upcoming United Nations summits on “sustainable development” and climate change are just a ruse to create what is, in effect, a world state. Critics have described the U.N. plans as a “blueprint for governing the entire planet.”

At the same time, world leaders are calling for a “world political authority” to address climate change, global poverty and other crises. The Guardian described this proposed body as “a kind of super-U.N. to deal with the world’s economic problems and injustices.”

“It almost feels like pages being ripped out of a Left Behind novel,” says Dr. Tom Horn, a prophecy expert, lecturer and radio host.

Recently, U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, criticized President Obama for pushing global trade pacts that would create a “secret Pacific Union”—compromising America’s sovereignty and transferring power to “an elite set who dream of writing rules in foreign capitals.”

“We already see this happening,” says Laurie, pastor of the 15,000-member Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California, and president of Harvest Crusades. “There was a statement by Chuck Hagel, our former secretary of defense, who said he sees a New World Order emerging, and he wasn’t saying it critically. I thought, ‘Wow, he’s really right.’ Things are shifting dramatically around the world.”

Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, executive vice president at the Family Research Council and former U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense, says the world is “definitely moving toward global Marxism.”

“Remember, Karl Marx’s goal was to dethrone God and destroy capitalism,” Boykin says. “Once you remove God, you are on the path to Marxism, and I believe very much that this is an end-time strategy of the enemy.”

The concerns about globalism and the push for “global governance”—a term Hudson Institute Fellow Dr. John Fonte says is merely a “sugar-coated” euphemism for a “world government”—come as people are being conditioned to believe that the answer to humanity’s problems is to have a “one world” society with a global government, cashless society and universal religion. Fonte, author of Sovereignty or Submission: Will Americans Rule Themselves or Be Ruled by Others?, says “an attempt” to create a global political and economic system with a “single global authority” is now underway.

“In a way, this is neo-Nimrodianism—you know the global governance effort,” Fonte told Charisma. “It’s a type of substitute religion—global governance.”

In recent years, prophecy experts have expressed growing alarm at this trend—asking whether the end-time geopolitical, economic and religious system known as “Mystery, Babylon” and “Babylon the Great” in Revelation 17-18 is rising. As examples, they note the New York skyscraper that replaced the Twin Towers destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks is now called the One World Trade Center, and the European Parliament building in Strasbourg, France, was inspired in part by the Tower of Babel—the center of the first world government ruled by Nimrod, an archetype of the Antichrist. The EU employs the Tower of Babel as a symbol of unity and several EU buildings feature paintings and statues of a woman riding the beast—an image from Revelation 17-18.

“Never before since the Tower of Babel have we seen the emergence of what (former Secretary of State) Henry Kissinger called ‘The New International Order,’ the rise of global governance or global government and the plan to unify all the world’s religions into a one world religion,” says Paul McGuire, a prophecy expert, Fox News and History Channel commentator and co-author of The Babylon Code: Solving the Bible’s Greatest End Times Mystery. “In addition, the nation of Israel, miraculously restored as a nation in 1948, is at the center of this push towards globalization as the world community increasingly unites in its attempt to make Jerusalem an international city.”

Dr. Jack Graham says globalization is setting up the world for the “last world dictator—the Antichrist—to control the economy, control people and control the world.” “It’s the next big thing,” he says. “There is no question that there is now the potential of a world government—the New World Order, the kingdom of the Antichrist. All these (recent events) point to this reality.”

In his interpretation of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, the biblical prophet Daniel predicted four great empires would arise in history followed by a final one.

“The Revived Roman Empire is arising now as Daniel predicted,” McGuire says. “It is the final beast and it represents the European Union, and I believe the United States integrated into a trans-Atlantic union, and very possibly, the unification economically of 10 regional global governments called unions around the world.”

The Four Horsemen Are Riding

While only God knows whether the last of the four blood moons, the biblical Shemitah and other events signal the beginning of end-time events, Jim Bakker, host of The Jim Bakker Show, says there are “more fulfilled biblical last days” prophecies converging now than ever before.

“The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are out of the barn. They are riding,” Bakker says. “I believe with all my heart that this year, in the next few months, that it’s the ‘beginning of sorrows.’ I believe we are moving full-blast into that event. America is not going to be the same. The world is not going to be the same.”

As the world watches these events unfold, LaHaye says Jesus encouraged His followers to not let “your heart be troubled” because “I will come again and receive you to Myself that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:1-3).

“Obviously, those who know Him as their Savior and Lord need not worry or be troubled, for we are waiting for His soon call to heaven,” LaHaye says. “How soon? No one knows. But of this I am persuaded: We are very close to the ‘end times.’ ”

Troy Anderson is the executive editor of Charisma and a Pulitzer Prize-nominated investigative journalist, author and speaker. He spent two decades as a reporter, bureau chief, editorial writer and editor at the Los Angeles Daily News and other newspapers. He’s also written for Reuters, Newsmax and Human Events. He’s co-author of The Babylon Code: Solving the Bible’s Greatest End Times Mystery (FaithWords/Hachette). Follow him on Twitter (troymanderson), Facebook (troyandersonwriter) or online at troyanderson.us.

Neill Russell explains “Newton’s Riddle” and why Israel plays a central role in the end times at newton.charismamag.com.