epicenter

So I just finished Joel Rosenberg's latest book Epicenter. Rosenberg grabbed national attention when many of the fictional accounts in his previous works, The Last Jihad & The Ezekiel Option, seemed to eerily come true. Before 9/11, Rosenberg outlined an almost identical account in which Muslim extremists hijacked a plane and used them as missles to fly into high rises in Denver. The attacked sparked international outrage and led to an American invasion into Iraq over weapons of mass destruction. In the beginning of another work, Rosenberg details the assassination of Yasser Arafat and a deadly attack on a US envoy in Gaza. Within months of the publication, a major attack occured on an enovy in Gaza and Yasser Arafat was dead. Much of the media began covering his work and Rosenberg became an overnight celebrity and was hailed the modern day Nostradomus. How did this guy know all of this was going to happen?

Rosenberg credits common sense and the Bible. He says that the dots have been there all along, but people are refusing the connect them. Secondly and most importantly, Rosenberg argues that the skeleton of all of the events in the Middle East are found in Ezekiel 38-39. While there is no detailed account of these specific events happening in Scripture, Rosenberg took the blueprint from Ezekiel 38-39 and lined them up with his knowledge and experience in natinal intelligence and international diplomacy. The results were his ablitiy to come up with realistic modern day scenarios acted out by countries that Ezekiel links to end time events.

The manifestation of events Rosenberg describes is quite remarkable. No one can doubt the strange link between his predictions and things happening in recent days in our world. But the question I wrestle with all of this is how do I handle the "end times"? Are we really living in the "end times" anyway? What do I believe the Bible says about the end of life on earth? Should I scour the news and look for possible links to prophetic fate of earth? Should I ignore the signs that the world could be over in minutes with the launch of a few nukes? Should I just live life oblivious to what's going on in the world around me? These are the questions I ask myself when I think about the "end times."

And then I refocus. While I like to allow my mind to run free for short amounts of time entertaining all of the wildest imaginations of the end of the earth, I regain my focus and realize that every day I walk be people that need Christ before everything goes down. I guess the questions that I try to focus on when I think about "end times" are these: "If it were to all end tomorrow, would I have loved Christ enough? If it were to all end tomorrow, would I have talked about Christ enough? If it were to all end tomorrow, would other people be ready because of the life I lived?