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G
od has allowed the events in
Cambodia to serve as a
warning- or a micro–
cosm- of what will happen
global/y
in the years ahead: all the
elements are there- riendish, de–
moniaca! persecution ; war, famine,
and pestilence.
The coming Great Tribulation will
be a time of deliberate persecution
and martyrdom.
It
will be a hellish
three-and-a-half-year period during
which there will be no religious free–
doro. As Herbert W. Armstrong
wrote twenty-ñvc ycars ago, in the
Western world church and state will
be united undcr a religious hierarchy,
enforced by the civil police. In the
Eastern world, athcistic communism
will rule. There will be no religious
freedom because only one religion
will be allowed in the West, which
the Bible describes as "MYSTERY
BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER
OF HARLOTS ANO ABOMINATIONS OF
THE EARTH" (Revelation 17:5).
lt
will physically torture those whom tt
considers "heretics": "And l saw the
woman
drunken
with the blood of the
saints, and with the blood of the
martyrs
of J esus ..." (verse 6).
There will be no religious freedom,
there will be no economic freedom
(Revelation 13: 16-18). And there
will be a
famine
of true gospel
preaching (Amos 8: 11-12).
The coming Great Tribulation is
the product of Satan's wrath- it is
not God's wrath. Tt is Satan who
precipitates the Tribulation by tak–
ing out his anger on the human race:
"Woe to the inhabiters of the earth
and of the sea! for the devil is come
down unto you, having great wrath,
because he knoweth that he hath but
a short time" (Revelation 12:12).
The horrors of the Tribulation will
be deliberate, and inspired by the
very devil and his demons. Likewise,
the cruelties perpetrated by the Poi
Pot regime- the tortures, the
butcheries, the executions of sus–
pected enemies by hacking with a
hoe, all bear the earmarks of deliber–
a te
demoniaca/
cruelty.
The Bible time arder of world–
wide events is made clear in the sixth
February 1980
by
Jeff Calkins
chapter of Revelation. War, famine
and pestilence ( Revelation 6: 1-8) all
come before the actual Tribulation
itself: "And when he had opened the
ñfth sea!,
I
saw under the altar the
souls of them that were
slain
for the
word of God ..." (verse
9).
In Cam–
bodia war, famine and pestilence
have
followed
thc period of ñendish,
demoniaca! terror- but they have
nonethdess been real. As U.S. Sena–
ter James Sasser described the scene:
"T he human suffering we found was
so deep and pervasive that
I
don't
have words to adequately describe it.
l have never seen anything like that
and I hope never io see anything like
it again as long as
1
live."
The End of Horrors
Thecoming Great Tribulation
wi/1 end
and so will the local tribulations
already occurring in Southeast Asia.
God will supernaturally intervene to
cut short this most frightful period of
human history by sending Jesus Christ
to
govern
the earth: "And except those
days should
be
shortened,
there should
no
flesh
be saved: but for the elect's
sake those days shall be shortened"
(Matthew 24:22).
The arrival of Christ is the best
news that a weary, exhausted, terror–
ridden earth could ever hear.
lt
means that the beatings, the burn–
ings, the tortures, all the pain and
cruelty inflicted on people, all the
sufferings only touched on in this
article will be forever banned! What
joyous news! No more small babies
with swollen bellies and discolored
hair. No more terrified peasants
fearing to plant rice because soldiers
might come and take it away. No
more hungry stomachs and slave
labor camps. No more dysentery and
malaria. No more sick people forced
to march to their deatbs. No more of
Satan's evil horrors!
God's world will be everything
which the poor four million Cambo–
dians who have died over the Jast five
years never had- but will enjoy, one
day, when they are resurrected. The
words which God inspired describe it
more eloquemly than any human
can: ' 'The wolf also shall dwell with
the lamb, and the leopard shall líe
down with the kid; and the calf and
the young !ion and the fatling
together; and a little child shall lead
them. And the cow and the bear shall
feed; their young ones shall lie down
together: and the lion shall eat straw
like the ox. And the suckjng child
shall play on the hole of the asp, and
the weaned child shall put his hand
on thc cockatrice' den.
"They shall not hurt nor destroy in
al! my holy mountain: for the earth
sha ll be full of the knowledge of the
Lord,
as
t
he wa ters cover the sea"
( lsaiah JI :6-9) . o
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