Billy Graham sounds alarm for 2nd Coming
Famed evangelist sees signs 'converging now for the 1st time'
Published: 10/20/2013
By Troy Anderson
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the fourth story in a seven-part series by veteran journalist Troy Anderson about major evangelists who are turning their attention toward America to help ignite what Billy Graham describes as an end-times “great spiritual awakening.” The first story featured Graham’s warning for America and the second centered on another famed evangelist’s testimony that God spoke to him in a dream last year saying, “America will be saved!” In the third story, Graham told of his fervent prayers for a “fresh awakening” in America.
Just as Noah did in ancient times, world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham is sounding the alarm that the Second Coming is “near” and signs of the end of the age are “converging now for the first time since Jesus made those predictions.”
Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations General Assembly “biblical prophecies are being realized.”
And last week, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., claimed the world has entered the last days.
“When you see up is down and right is wrong, when this is happening, we were told this: that these days would be as the days of Noah,” Bachmann said.
The remarks by Graham, Netanyahu and Bachmann come amid a steadily rising wave of public interest in the end times, as demonstrated by recent polls and New York Times and Amazon.com bestselling books such as “The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery That Holds the Secret of America’s Future,” by Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, and “Four Blood Moons: Something is About to Change,” by Pastor John Hagee.
In September, a poll by the Ventura, Calif.-based Barna Group found 4 in 10 Americans – and 77 percent of evangelical Christians – believe the “world is now living in the biblical end times.”
Now, a new wave of end-times predictions for 2014 and 2015 involving blood moons on Jewish holy days and prophetically significant events on the Shemitah – the ancient biblical year of the Sabbath – are igniting even more interest in humanity’s ultimate fate.
Throw in next year’s reboot of the “Left Behind” film featuring Nicolas Cage and the cinematic destruction of biblical proportions in “Noah,” starring Russell Crowe, and last-days fever is back with a mainstream vengeance.
Jonathan Cahn’s “The Harbinger” reveals an astonishing prophetic mystery unfolding today
“I think we’re on the verge of a global awakening in interest in apocalyptic events,” said Paul McGuire, an internationally recognized prophecy expert who is a regular commentator on Fox News and CNN and appeared on two highly rated History Channel specials, including “7 Signs of the Apocalypse.”
“I see a fuse being lit here, between what Billy Graham, Michele Bachman and Benjamin Netanyahu said, and I think there is going to be an explosion of interest in the end times like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” McGuire said.
Watching the signs
In an exclusive email interview with WND, Graham, 94, who is giving what may be his last message to the world as part of the My Hope America with Billy Graham evangelistic outreach in early November, said the world is “coming toward the end of the age.”
“There’s a great deal to say in the Bible about the signs we’re to watch for and when these signs all converge at one place we can be sure that we’re close to the end of the age,” Graham wrote. “And those signs, in my judgment, are converging now for the first time since Jesus made those predictions.”
In his new book, “The Reason for My Hope: Salvation,” the famed preacher who has delivered the gospel message to more people face-to-face than anyone in history wrote the great hope of the Christian faith rests in the promised return of Christ.
Graham said he now has a burden for “sounding the alarm for humanity to repent and turn from their sin … just as Noah did in ancient days.”
“God keeps his promises, and this is why we can be sure that the return of Christ is near,” Graham said. “Scripture tells us that there will be signs pointing toward the return of the Lord. I believe all these signs are evident today.”
The evangelistic outreach and book come as a number of major evangelists – Graham, his son Franklin Graham, Reinhard Bonnke, Greg Laurie, Luis Palau, Banning Liebscher and others – are turning their attention toward America in the hope of helping ignite what Graham calls an end-times “great spiritual awakening.”
In what the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association describes as the largest outreach in its six-decade history, Graham will give a dynamic and poignant pre-recorded message the week of Nov. 7, his 95th birthday. The My Hope programs will be available for viewing online and on YouTube. The Cross, the primary program in the My Hope series, will be broadcast on the Fox News channel, TBN, Christian networks and local television stations in a number of cities.
The event follows an open letter Graham released in the summer of 2012 titled “My Heart Aches for America.”
In the letter, Graham wondered what his late wife, Ruth, would think of a nation in which “self-centered indulgence, pride and a lack of shame over sin are now emblems of the American lifestyle.”
Graham compared America to the ancient city of Nineveh, the lone superpower of its time. When the prophet Jonah finally traveled to Nineveh and proclaimed God’s warning, the people repented and escaped judgment, Graham wrote, adding he believes the same thing could happen today.
Acceleration
The end-times warnings by Graham, Netanyahu, Bachmann and others come amid a series of events in recent years that have prompted many to ask whether the countdown to Armageddon has begun.
The events include the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the global recession and more recently what some view as an increase in purported end-times signs, including super-earthquakes, mega-tsunamis and gargantuan storms and tornadoes.
“We’re looking at things like the possibility of another global economic meltdown,” said McGuire, an author of 22 prophecy books, including “The Day the Dollar Died” and the upcoming “A Prophecy of the Future of America.”
“Consider the earthquake warnings, the potential volcanic eruption of Yellowstone, the Japanese tsunamis and the radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster traveling across the ocean and contaminating the food supply here on the West Coast, along with massive tornadoes the size of which we’ve never seen in human history,” he said.
McGuire said government and scientific experts are also expressing concerns about the potential of a massive West Coast tsunami, increased solar flare activity and severe climate change.
“The dramatic and unprecedented planetary climate change is something on the level of the apocalyptic predictions of the Bible,” McGuire said. “We’re on the verge right now, because of climate change, of massive food and water shortages, which could affect tens of millions of people worldwide because of the droughts that have occurred. The intense heat and water shortages have dried up the crops, and we are going to see that play out in the near future because of all the freak weather.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/10/billy-graham-sounds-alarm-for-2nd-coming/#XBqP1CKx5dHkgYW6.99
Poster Comment:
The intense heat and water shortages have dried up the crops, and we are going to see that play out in the near future because of all the freak weather.”
