FromNowUntilForeverBook8.5x5.5 REV.indd

a time when “Authority was given to them (death and hades) over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth” (Revelation 6:8).We live in perilous days, though not yet to the degree of the fourth seal. Once this time arrives, martyred saints in heaven will cry out, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, will you refrain from judging and avenging our blood until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6:10), as dictated by the fifth seal. In response to the question, “They were told that they should rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killedeven as they had been, would be completed also” (Revelation 6:11), a verse that provides strong evidence for the fact that members of God’s church will be alive on the earth during the tribulation. The opening of the sixth seal creates a great earthquake, a black sun, a red moon, falling stars, a skyline that rolls up like a scroll (Revelation 6:12-14). Interestingly, these catastrophic events were prophesied centuries before John viewed them. Isaiah writes: “For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash out their light;The sun will be dark when it rises and the moon will not shed its light” (Isaiah 13:10). As Jeremiah records, “I looked on the mountains, and behold, they were quaking, and the hills moved to and fro… For thus says the Lord,‘The whole land shall be a desolation,Yet I will not execute complete destruction’” (Jeremiah 4:24, 27).While some of this language is obviously symbolic, itnevertheless reveals a destructive time of wrath like the world has never seen. And yet, even in the midst of all the destruction that is taking place during those 42 months, there is strong indication that construction will occur. Since the destruction of Temple number two in 70 A.D., the Jews have not had such a sacred

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