Life as Usual during Tribulation -- HOW?
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Life as Usual during Tribulation -- HOW?
The CONCLUSION we reached in our study of "Daily Life Cut Short"...
Both Luke 17:24-37 and Revelation chapter 18 prophesy of these "life-as-usual" events, continuing during the Tribulation in some places until they are climatically CUT SHORT on a single day at the End of the Tribulation. So..........
HOW DO SOME PEOPLE MANAGE TO LIVE "LIFE AS USUAL" DURING THE TRIBULATION?
Jesus said about those days,
"for then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall. "And unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days shall be cut short. Mat. 24:21-22
We can see how this occurs in the Book of Revelation. As a result of the first 4 Seal Judgments, 1/4 of earth's population dies. Then at the 6th Trumpet Judgment, another 1/3 die. That amounts to 1/2 of the people on the planet. How could anyone simulate living a "normal" life like those who are "eating and drinking, buying and selling" in Luke 17 and Revelation 18?
Yet, it is happening. And the KEY to "How can this be?" is found in Revelation 9, during that very same Trumpet Judgment that kills 1/3 of all human life remaining on earth. We read,
A third of mankind was killed ... And the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands...Rev. 9:18-20
The "works of their hands" are the "eating, drinking, buying, selling," and all of the life-as-usual activities we read about that are going on in Babylon at the edge of history as Christ is set to Return in Judgment. The "works of their hands" are interwoven with what follows in the rest of the passage, the worship of...
... demons, and the idols of gold and of silver and of brass and of stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk; and they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries nor of their immorality nor of their thefts. Revelation 9:18-21
Notice that the works of their hands involves material objects, the same kind we read about in the Revelation 18:7 passage where the merchants of the earth (buyers and sellers) are trading lavishly in their materialism...to the point where it is said that "your merchants were the great men of the earth, because all the nations were deceived by your sorcery." Revelation 18:23
That is exactly what Revelation 9:18-21 says: The merchants of the earth, who perpetuate the "life as usual" blindness that both Luke 17 and Revelation 18 talk about, are captivated with the sorcery and immorality of the Great City Babylon to the point of worshiping the wealthy produce of their own hands--and get this--to the point of blindly ignoring the DEATH OF 33% OF THE ENTIRE PLANET! Read Revelation 9:18 again ("A third of mankind was killed") and then read Revelation 9:20 again ("And the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands").
I would be absolutely dumbfounded except for these words of our Lord which come to mind...where it was said to Jesus about unbelievers, "if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!" And Jesus' reply? "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead." Luke 16:30-31
In light of Jesus' statement it could be said that "If someone doesn't believe his Bible ("Moses and the Prophets"), neither will he repent if one-third of the world shows up dead in the breaking-news."#6
That is the situation we encounter in Luke 17 and Revelation 18. This is the "worship" of the "works of their hands"--the "buying and selling," the "planting and building"--in a hard-hearted people, Un-Repentant, and willfully-blind to the fact that God has come down to Judge the world. #7
The fact that these people "did not repent" explains their obsession with living life-as-usual up until the very End of the Tribulation.
BELOW: More Than Half of Syria's Population Has Been Killed, Wounded, or Displaced in the Syrian Civil War as of 2016. That is staggering. Syria had a population of 23 million when the war began in 2011. About one-half million have been killed. Yet in Damascus and other Syrian cities LIFE-as-USUAL continues--"buying and selling, eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, planting and building"--in the midst of a war of catastrophic proportion. The scale of the casualties in Syria is like a localized-Tribulation. Even though the Great Tribulation will exceed anything like it in history, we can still see the fact of "life-as-usual" activity which occurs amid war and devastation.
