A teenager props his rifle against a tree at a brief rest
stop in a steaming, Central African Republic
jungle. Head down, he sits and remembers life before he was abducted into
Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. He had lived in Uganda
near a missionary compound in the year before he was taken at age 13. The
missionary once quoted, ‘If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free
indeed.’ He knew the missionary spoke of a spiritual freedom—a freedom from
sin. But could he appeal to the divine Christ for physical freedom as well, some
way of escaping the cycle of village plundering and violence Kony has forced
him to be an unwilling accomplice in? The small new testament he has secreted in a cargo pocket describes
Christ as possessing ‘all power in heaven and earth.’ But can the description
be trusted?
Let me shine some light on the subject.
The question, whether asked in a violence shelter, an
African jungle, or there, right there . . . in your chair, is a valid one.
Revelation 11 lets us move aside the curtain of years and
gaze into the future to a time just before the Lord Jesus is to return to
establish unending life, righteousness and safety. Two witnesses will arise who
will prophesy to the hostile masses. If you don’t like them, be careful how you
express your dislike—they have the power to destroy their enemies with fire
proceeding from their mouths. Additionally, they have the power, which they
will use, to afflict the earth with drought and all manner of plagues during
the course of their preaching. When they die, their bodies are not permitted to
be buried but are made to lie where they drop for three and a half days
while the world looks on and
rejoices. Party soon ends, however, as the breath of life returns and they
stand, and then rise to heaven while their dismayed enemies look on.
Did you see it there, easily missed between plague and
resurrection? The entire world—‘peoples and tribes and tongues and nations,’ as
the Bible puts it—will be able to view this spectacle!
It was as recently as the 19th century, eighteen
hundred years after this prophecy was written, that the only pictures viewable
by groups of people at long distances were word pictures painted by the clicking keys of the telegraph. And even these could not reach people groups on a grand scale. Yet this
prophecy predicts the discovery of some video mass communication marvel. Long ago it foresaw the digital technology device hidden in your purse or clipped to your
belt, the one which provided you images of armored vehicles rolling into Ukraine ,
debris fields in the southern Indian Ocean , and mud
slides in Washington state, and
all in the last few days, and all in real time.
I recall the powerful words of God spoken through Isaiah the
Prophet in chapter 46 of his prophecy:
I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and no one is like me.
I declare the end from the beginning,
And from long ago what is not yet done,
Saying: My plan will take place,
And I will do all my will.
God knows we are intelligent beings. After all, He made us
in His image. The faith the Bible requires of us is not a blind faith. It is a faith
that believes God will do what He says he will do. But before we believe, our
minds require proof that God is, and that the Bible is His word. One of the
ways God proves these things to minds rightfully challenging the world’s competing
truth claims is by the instrument of fulfilled prophecy. While Revelation 11 is
not intended to be fulfilled just yet, its predicted technology has arrived.
What’s exciting is, to see it spreading to every corner of the world-every tribe, tongue, and nation-during our
day, in our lifetimes.
Revelation 11 affords us one proof, one among the hundreds
already fulfilled by Christ’s birth and life, of the supernatural character of the Bible. Yet that one proof alone is
enough to kindle hope in hearts all across this planet: in shelters and jungles
and right there, in your chair!
