As former Associate Editor for the trade magazine Graphic Arts Monthly, covering the commercial printing industry from 1999-2002, I would often hear the word "convergence" used in analysis of how economic, technological, and new media penetration changes were influencing the marketplace and buying decisions.

The dictionary definition for "converge" is, "To approach the same point from different directions; tend toward a meeting or intersection."

These days, I can't help but think of that term as it applies to the crazy times we're living in, indicating the nearing of the Rapture. Specifically, here's some of what I'm looking at:

--The polar ice caps are melting, the oceans are warming and animals of all kinds are suffering and becoming extinct

--Paganism, occultic interest and activity and immorality in general are all becoming more pervasive

--False, apostate preachers and churches abound and are now the norm

--The Bible is no longer taught even in church and even its basic tenets are unfamiliar to the majority

--Both adults and children reject absolute truth and children are being indoctrinated into all forms of moral relativism

--Self-absorption and self-centered behavior is at an alarming peak

--The news media often no longer upholds high standards of objectivity, especially in covering stories with a religious angle, and, instead, promotes various political agendas

--Governments and politicians are increasingly dishonest

--Persecution of Christians in foreign lands is rampant

Just yesterday I read in Christianity Today magazine's free daily e-newsletter that the East African nation of Eritrea jailed 16 pastors and 883 Christians for their faith.

"The Eritrean government—while claiming that it allows freedom of religion—has stepped up its arrests of Christians this year after outlawing independent churches in 2002," the news report read. "Security forces have jailed at least 240 Christians this year. Many of those arrested are held in metal shipping containers. Sweltering in the daytime and cold at night, the containers have no sanitation. Infectious diseases and diarrhea are common."

The other week I read and saved for my files a published report of a new study that warned "humans are damaging the planet at an unprecedented rate and raising risks of abrupt collapses in nature that could spur disease, deforestation or 'dead zones' in the seas."

The Oslo, Norway-based study—involving 1,360 experts in 95 nations and conducted by an agency called Millennium Ecosystem Assessment—claims two-thirds of the ecological systems on which life depends, ranging from clean air to fresh water, has been polluted or over-exploited and that this represents a "stark warning."

“Human activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted,” said the MEA, reporting that 10-30% of mammal, bird and amphibian species were already threatened with extinction.

“Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel. . . This has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on earth. The harmful consequences of this degradation could grow significantly worse in the next 50 years.”

When I read stuff like this—or watch it discussed on TV as I did just last week in an edition of "Nightline with Ted Koppel" devoted to global warming and animal extinction—I often think of a favorite saying of my pastor, who reminds people:

"Darwin got it backwards. Rather than it being from the puddle to paradise, man, because of sin, is going from paradise (where creation started in the Garden of Eden) to the puddle."

Growing up in several different Baptist churches, I was taught enough about the Antichrist and the tribulation period that I remember as a young teenager intently wondering, "How can it possibly happen where the whole world follows an evil guy sent from Satan—sincerely believing he's the ultimate Good Guy—when the Bible warns specifically that this will happen, giving everyone explicit details on what he'll be like, what he'll say and do, and what the conditions on earth will be like at the time of his rise to power?"

Today, I often think, "How can anyone who says the Bible is 'just a book of myths written by men' not be compelled by the fact that all of Scriptures prophetic claims (including 360-plus on Jesus Christ's life alone) have either already come true or show all the markings of coming true in the future times they're predicted to happen in?"

Jesus Christ himself told his disciples to look for these signs of the tribulation period:

Wars and conflict between nations, revolutions, strange natural disasters, unpredictable oceanic events, earthquakes, famines and epidemics in diverse places, many false Christs and false prophets showing signs and wonders, persecution of Christians, rampant immorality and worldwide dissemination of the gospel of the kingdom.

Are any of these not already in the works today?!

In a 1998 book discussing end-times Bible prophecy, "God Divided the Nations," author Noah Hutchings examines the many ways today in which "we are witnessing this Antichrist system taking shape before our eyes."

He writes, "There is a growing awareness in the world that the nations are headed toward a rendezvous with destiny, caught in a whirlpool of situations that are irreversibly sweeping them into a single vortex. National problems become international problems, and then international problems become national problems. Many experts believe that the human race has passed the point of no return, and the only hope is to burn our bridges behind us and plunge on into the future because there is no other course open."

How's that for some pessimism on a boiling hot, sweltering, sunny July afternoon?!

Just as disturbing, Hutchings quotes a passage from an opinion article appearing in the Houston Chronicle, in which a teacher of long-range planning at the University of California, F.M. Esfandiary, advocates,

"In just the last 10 years, we have learned more about our genes and brains, about our planet and resources, and the solar system, than in all previous history. And we are only beginning. . . Powerful forces are revolutionizing life on the planet. Decades from now, the 1980s will be remembered as a time when the world accelerated toward a new age. . . The centralized, bureaucratized infrastructures and congested cities of the industrial age are becoming increasingly superfluous. They will give way to tele-education, tele-medicine, electronic funds, tele-shopping, tele-conferencing. You connect from wherever you are. . . .

"Parents no longer exercise unilateral influence over their children. . . .It matters less and less who is legislator or president. The driving forces of change are increasingly outside government. . . .We cannot switch to new technologies and new resources while holding on to traditional values, the nuclear family, puritan morality, the work ethic, patriotism. No Moral Majority or tradition-bound administration can now stop or even slow down the cumulative, interlocking impact of social and technological advances."

Another thing I often think of hearing ominous predictions about the future—including those from scientists and environmentalists—is how Jesus Christ warns in Matthew 24, "But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
"For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
"And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be."

On a website called SermonAudio.com, devoted to audio sermons and studies from people around the world, are frequently downloaded talks given by an Australian man, Ken Ham, a former biology teacher, who is invited to speak more than 500 times a year to children and adults on matters related to creation vs. evolution. In one of them, he makes the point that no matter how bad things worsen on earth, there will be people who will shirk any notion of cataclysm.

"In II Peter 3, Peter says in the last days there are going to be scoffers who scoff at those of us who believe Jesus is coming again," says Ham, "because the underlying philosophy of the age is going to be that, 'All things continue as they've done since the beginning. Nothing's really changed. What we see out there has gone on for millions of years. The death the suffering and so on has gone one for millions of years. Nothing's really changed,' and they deny that God created; they are willingly ignorant. As it says in verse six, they're willingly ignorant that God judged with a flood, and in verse 10, they're willingly ignorant of the fact the next time God's going to judge by fire."

There's an old adage that says when you see the false as the false, then you begin to see what's true. This is precisely what the Apostle Paul expresses such gratitude for when he writes in I Thess. 2:13,

"For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe."

Paul is the one to tell us that during the tribulation there will be a period of peace and safety at which time the Antichrist will deceive people into believing he's Jesus Christ. After that, "then sudden destruction":

"But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you," advises Paul in I Thess. 5, "For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.
"For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
"But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.
"Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
"Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober."

In a taped sermon on this very subject, my pastor, Richard Jordan (Shorewood Bible Church, Rolling Meadows, Ill.) says, "God's will is that you and I be delivered from this present evil world which is headed for a train wreck and destruction and judgment.

"Now when you understand where you are in the program of God (through dispensational study of the Bible), you understand why things are the way they are—why the world is filled with violence and hatred, why good people suffer, why bad things happen to good people.

"Why? Because the 'whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain until now' (Rom. 8:22) and the day of the release of the curse of creation (from Adam) hasn't come yet. Why? Because God's extended the day of grace another day. He holds these things up.

"We understand the answer to all of these questions that people raise in religion that they have no answer for. So we know some things. We're not 'of the night.' We don't say, 'What's going on?'

"Our program is to be part of the exaltation of Jesus Christ, not the night program of Satan's deception."

Editor's Note: More on this to come, looking specifically at Harry Potter mania. . . .