The Strand Study Bible

MARK

MARK

1598

University, expressed his wonder at such accomplishments when he noted:

No other phenomenon in history is quite so extraordinary as the unique event represented by the Restoration of Israel …. At no other time in world history, so far as it is known, has a people been destroyed, and then come back after a lapse of time and re-established itself. It is utterly out of the question to seek a parallel for the recurrence of Israel’s restoration after 2,500 years of former history. 4 NOTE – There are 7 other irrefutable proofs ( signs ) that we, of the 21 st century, are indeed in the last days before Jesus’ returns: 1. The incredible increase in knowledge ( Dan 12:4 ) Daniel foretold of a day when knowledge would increase at a pace beyond what is possible for the finite mind to grasp. According to the New Age Encyclopedia , the first step toward automatic computation (the computer) came with the invention of the abacus by the Chinese c. 600 BC. The next advance in computation didn’t come for another 2200 years. In 1640 a French physicist, mathematician, and Christian apologist, by the name of Blaise Pascal produced a practical working model of an automatic calculating machine. Two hundred years later in the 1830’s, Charles Babbage, professor at Cambridge University in England, invented what he called his “Analytical Engine,” which became the true preliminary electronic computer. 5 Since the 1950’s and the merging of automatic electronic computation and data processing, knowledge has exploded with an impact that would have dazzled the people of Daniel’s day. Due to the invention of the computer, we are now able to grow in knowledge in geometrical progression. Applied Digital Solutions, located in Palm Beach, Florida, has now developed a chip called “Digital Angel,” which can be tracked via GPS anywhere in the world. According to Revelation 13:16-18, the Antichrist and his false prophet will use this new found technology to keep track of the entire human race –its called the “mark of the beast” (computer chip and bar code 666). Of course, the primary source behind this incredible increase in knowlege is the Internet. David Webber, well-known author and speaker, once noted: It's here, it's now, and because the Internet was built to withstand a nuclear blast, it has no central command authority. That means that nobody owns the Internet, nobody runs it, and nobody has the power to kick anybody off for good. There isn’t even a master switch that can shut it down in case of emergency. Says Clifford Stoll, a Berkeley astronomer, “It’s the closest thing to true anarchy that ever existed.” 6 2. The incredible increase in travel (Dan 12:4) Daniel foretold of a day when travel would increase at the same pace as knowledge. According to the New Age Encyclopedia , huge reservoirs of oil were first discovered in the 1930’s in the Middle East. Production in Ghawar and Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia and in Kuwait began in 1936. Since that time, man has been able to not only travel around the world, but above the world as well –to the moon and back. 5 According to Ezekiel 38:10-12, one day in the very near future a great northern confederacy of materialistic people, led by Russia, will attack Israel ( Rev 6:3-4 ) in order “to take a spoil” of her incalculable wealth in Dead Sea minerals as well as her oil. 3. The incredible increase in earthquakes, famines, and pestilences (Mt 24:6-8) Jesus told his Jewish disciples that right before His return they (the Jewish nation) would notice an increase in wars, famines, pestilences, and earthquakes. There have been over seventy major earthquakes recorded for us throughout history. Of the seventy, over fifty of them have occurred in the last 100 years. Thirty of the seventy have been so destructive that they are in a category all their own. Interestingly enough, of the thirty most destructive earthquakes recorded for us in history, twenty-six of them have occurred in the last 100 years. In fact, more people have died in the last 100 years due to earthquakes (over 2,000,000) than all the other earthquakes combined in recorded history. Deadly diseases (pestilences), such as the AIDS virus grow a thousand times faster than any other disease known to mankind, and are virtually always fatal. Diagnosed for the first time in 1981, AIDS has become the #1 killer of men in N.Y. City. By 1985, AIDS had become one of the most sinister infectious diseases of this or any other century, threatening the world’s general population and assuming the proportions of what epidemiologists (doctors of disease) call a pandemic (an ‘out-of-control-no- way-to-fix-it-disease’). NOTE - Approximately 50 million people have died so far due to AIDS. 4. The invention of television (Rev 11:3-9) According to the New Age Encyclopedia , television studies date back to 1884 when a spirally perforated disk was spun at a rate of 30 times a second. By 1908 basic principles of electronic television were proposed and by 1914 phototubes were introduced. However, it wouldn’t be until 1936 that the world would witness its first TV. 5 Due to RCA (the Radio Corporation of America), which began its first field tests in America in the 1930s, the entire world now has the means whereby it can “see” what is going Because of the tremendous increase in the interfacing of computers and databanks, our world is a shrinking complex of nations. Since the beginning of internetworking of computers and their melding with communication systems 25 years ago, commerce and trade, business and banking have become virtually one! Much of what the scientists envisioned 25 years ago has been accomplished. I would suggest that the birth of the global computer network known as “The Internet” is the technological arm of the New World Order.

on in any other part of the world at any given time. 5. The discovery of atomic energy (Rev 6:7-8 & 9:13-18)

According to the New Age Encyclopedia , the discovery of radioactivity by Antoine Henri Becquerel, together with the discovery of the electron by Sir Joseph John Thomson, and of the X ray by Wilhelm Konrad von Roentgen in the late 1800’s marked the birth of nuclear physics. By 1905 Albert Einstein published three important papers. Among them, the principles of the Special