For most of my adult life, I’ve had dreams about water: water being in places where it isn’t supposed to be, impossibly high waves pelting high-rise beachfront hotels, and water in unusual formations. It’s difficult to describe the images of water piled up and not mixing with other water; perhaps it’s a bit like how the gulf stream flows through the Atlantic Ocean, or how Lake Michigan does not mix with Lake Huron at the Straits of Mackinac.

If you read news outside what’s happening in the US, you’ll learn that China is experiencing historic levels of flooding in many parts of the country. The famed Three Gorges Dam, holding back a reservoir of water so heavy that the dam’s creation impacted the wobble of the earth, is reportedly near a breaking point. If the dam collapses, the tragedy that will unfold will be like nothing the earth has ever seen in recorded history. Reportedly, 450 million people live downstream of the dam. Cities like Wuhan and other industrial centers are in danger of being wiped out of existence. Complicating the potential tragedy for Asia is that many industries and exporters of the world’s goods are in these cities. Exports of pharmaceuticals and other supplies may very well cease as a compounded tragedy upon tragedy, should the dam fail.

That image of compounding, as one thing piling on top of another, I suspect is a familiar feeling to most people in the world right about now. This year alone has felt like one endless stroll through the prophetic books of the Hebrew scripture. Even meme-makers have caught onto this sentiment, with recent memes like “Which chapter of Revelation are we doing today?”

But perhaps there is something spiritual and scriptural that is behind this sense of heaping up, this sense that the metaphorical dams that shore up civilizations have been breached by a flood of hostility, violence, and pent-up injustices that have been held back, but not resolved. The resulting flood that we’re all experiencing is still searching for an end, a bottom, but to this point the waters remain turbulent, creating some necessary new paths but also wreaking destruction along the way.

As a person who has studied the Bible, extra-biblical sources and history for most of my life, over time I have shifted my views on some of what has been presented as prevailing thought on prophetic material, in large part because of my own research into Hebrew and Greek. To be clear: I completely trust God’s Word, because the original canon could not be flawed if it genuinely comes from God. Spend any time in serious consideration of the depth of the Torah alone and you will begin to understand why one of the most well-known of the Hebrew sages, Maimonides, said that ‘in the Torah are hidden every wonder and every mystery.’

Please hear my heart in what I’m about to say: I want the rest of what I say below to be wrong. But the more I study and observe, the more I think these things I’ve read, especially in the last few years, are spot-on.

Photo of flooding in China near the Three Gorges Dam, published June 29, 2020. Photo credit: taiwannews.com.tw.

Ancient Hebrews, even through the early centuries after Christ, followed sabbatical and Jubilee cycles. Every seventh year, the land was supposed to lie fallow, to have its own Sabbath rest; God promised the food supply of the sixth year would last for two years. At the end of the 49 years, or the seventh sabbatical cycle, the nation of Israel would celebrate a Jubilee, where debts were canceled and people returned to the land of their forefathers.

The nation of Israel never really did keep the Jubilees. And God told them they would be judged harshly for failing to keep the sabbath rest aspect of His covenant. Leviticus 26:14 and the verses following in that chapter spells out what happens. It’s not a pretty picture. But it may ring a little familiar, with promises sudden terror, disease, and pestilences in cities. And the warnings come with promises of compounding repetition over years, or ‘seven times more.’

I don’t begin to know or understand all that God is doing. But I do not believe that there will be a soon-coming rapture whisking Christ-followers away from trouble. I wish this were true.

While I do believe that there will be a rapture at some moment in time, I suspect it will be close to the return of Christ. And based on the Jubilee cycles and the visions given to the prophet Daniel, He won’t be coming to earth for quite some time. But He likely will be appearing on the fall feast of Trumpets, which is known in Judaism as ‘the day and time no one knows.’ This feast has this nickname because it officially starts with the sighting of the new moon from Jerusalem. Jesus’ first coming, death, resurrection and bestowing of the Holy Spirit fulfilled the spring feasts in Judaism; I strongly suspect His second coming will fulfill the fall feasts.

At the time of the end, it is predicted that events will unfold similar to the judgments that took place when Moses led the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt. Many of the judgements, including the judgment surrounding the escape of the Hebrews, included water behaving in strange ways. The water ‘stood up in a heap’ while the Hebrews walked through on dry ground. After they safely crossed the sea, the water returned to its former location. This repositioning of the water, as well as a torrential deluge, drowned the Egyptians following close behind.

I think we have at least a few years to go before Christ-followers are whisked away to Heaven. But the time in between is going to be this time of compounding. Our culture and world as a whole have wandered so far away from a biblical standard; how could God not set things right? That’s not justice.

And it’s my opinion, that in the end, the earth will go through a cleansing flood of sorts, in the form of a polar shift. In recent years, the magnetic north pole of the earth has been moving rapidly, and other anomalies have been noted in the magnetic field. The impacts of planetary orbits, gravitational waves in space and sunspot activity are poorly understood, but almost certainly have impacts on the earth. There is actually noted correlation between changes in rates of depression and anxiety and sunspot activity. If the earth’s own moon is responsible for tidal conditions, why wouldn’t other planets or objects in the cosmos similarly impact us?

I know this is a lot to pack into one blog post. I encourage you to read or watch some of the linked material. This is a personal opinion, but it is an informed opinion. I encourage you to read some of the links and pray regularly, so God may guide your actions. I also pray you will not give up hope in our Lord. He gave us warnings and guidelines so we can be prepared, no matter what comes on the Earth.