The famous modernist Russian writer, Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), author of the controversial and arguably perverse novel, Lolita (1955), once rather cynically described human life as "a brief crack between two eternities of darkness" [1]. Such, indeed, must life seem to atheists since they do not believe they had an existence before conception (or some time between conception and birth) and definitely do not believe that they have one after their physical death. All they remember is the darkness of the womb and the grim prospect of a second darkness at death caused by their extinction.

With such an impersonal view of reality either side of mortal life, it is not hard to understand why atheists both pursue life with reckless vigour as well as having suicidal thoughts about the pointlessness of it all when they're sober. They are prisoners of time but with no escape, as they suppose, leaving only their imagination to create a world of make-believe to fall back on them in their latter years as death crowds in on them. It's why many of the greatest minds like Arthur Koestler end up killing themselves, drawing the curtain on life prematurely and robbing them of a wonderful future they might have enjoyed if they had not been so absorbed in themselves.

The Bible does not mince words about death and what lies beyond:

"It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment" (Heb.9:27, NKJV).

It is a grievous and terrifying error to believe that we become extinct at death. Consciousness does not cease with that organ ceasing to produce its 4,500 beats an hour or with the death of the brain once finally starved of oxygen. Life continues. But it does not continue in any old way. We do not pass into some giant sea of collective conscience as the Buddhists or the writer of the fictional Star Wars movies would have us believe. Rather, there is an accounting to be given, a heavenly assessment, not based on self-righteousness but on whether or not we forefeited death and trusted in the Elohim/God-Man, Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ), who purchased immortality for all and forgiveness for the penitent. You may not like that idea but really your opinion will be worthless in the light of Cosmic Reality and Emet (Truth). No man or angel has yet defied the Creator and got away with it. You might as well complain about and argue over the validity of gravity - your jumping out of a 10 storey building to prove your point will only prove your implaccable stupidity.

In the same way that Yahweh gave Ten Commandments, so also He judges those who test Him ten times. Pharaoh defied and therefore tested Yahweh ten times and after the tenth, there was no more grace left. Then came the death of the firstborn. But this judgment for testing the Most High was not restricted just to the heathen Egyptians - the children of Israel did the same thing and received a similar judgment:

"As surely as I live and as surely as the glory of Yahweh fills the whole earth, not one of the [Israelite] men who saw my glory and the miraculous signs I performed in Egypt and in the desert but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times -- not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their forefathers. No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it" (Num.14:20-23, NIV).

The Promised Land was a type of Salvation. Those who did not enter it - all but two men (Joshua and Caleb) - were not saved. No hint of 'once saved, always saved', or 'once delivered, always delivered'. Those first Israelites were delivered by miraculous signs which were types of our deliverance from sin by trusting in Yah'shua (Jesus). It was appointed for those Israelites to die once and then receive judgment. Pharaoh and the Egyptians had the same opportunity and indeed we know that many Egyptians accompanied the Israelites out of Egypt and out of the House of Bondage. Anyone can be saved.

Not so long ago I soberly warned you that half of mankind would perish in the tribulations leading to the Second Coming (see The Great Destruction). According to Howard Pittman, a Baptist minister who died and was taken to heaven, out of every 2,000 souls in the very end times, only 50 - or 2½ per cent - are going to make it to Heaven or be saved, of all categories. If true, that means that at any one time, 97½ per cent of all men and women are not ready to meet Yahweh.

Back in Yah'shua's (Jesus') day, the odds were a little better, apparently. In the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13, we're told that three out of every four people (that's 75 per cent) who even bothered to hear the Besorah (Gospel), turned it down. The rest didn't even bother to listen and made no pretence at hearing the emet (truth). And according to Yah'shua (Jesus) a great many who think and say they are Christian or Messianic believers, will be rejected before the Throne of Yahweh:

"Many will say to me on that day, 'Master, Master, did we not prophesy in Your Name, and in Your Name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'" (Matt.7:22-23, NIV).

So really is it such a strange thing to be told that in the Final Gathering, there are only going to be 900,000 elect throughout the whole world of several billion, of which only a few thousand will be of the 144,000, who will be saved? It follows the scriptural pattern.

If you think you're going to get by in the coming crisis by being as lukewarm like the rest of the 2.2 billion Laodicean Christians/Messianics of this age, you're in for a rude awakening. You can work out the miniscule percentage of true believers amongst professing 'Christians' for yourself - it's only 0.004 per cent! That's four in every 1,000 people calling themselves Christian or Messianic. The remaining 21 of the 25 per 1000 whom Pittman says he saw were saved must therefore be outside the Remnant and do not make it with their physical lives in tact.

There will always be the optimists, and for sure, there are times to be optimistic, but now itn't one of them. Indeed, the sabre-rattling just gets worse and worse as the militaries of the superpowers mobilise for war. The general Election in Russia took place yesterday (wisely brought forward from December) with Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party scoring 53 per cent of the votes, an overwhelming majority in Parliament which makes Russis politically stronger than ever. Now we await the American Presidential Election scheduled for 8 November which promises to polarise America even more than it already is. As Russia gets stronger, America gets weaker. The writing is clearly on the wall.

"Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all" (Luke 17:26-27, NIV).

Without a shadow of a doubt, at least in my own soul, we face a new 587 BC situation. In case you have forgotten, that is when Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. In my adopted country of Sweden we are being told to change the nation to suit the (largely Moslem) immigrants and the message in America, though not so obvious or bold, is pretty much the same. The agenda is the dechristianisation, and political and social destablisation, of the entire West so that the satanic globalists can seize power. Though they will fail this time, the destruction - both material and social - is going to be immense. I wish I could be optimistic but every time I pray I am left with the same spirit of intense grieving. I know what's coming, and I hope you do to so that you can be fully prepared. The fuse is lit and time and a new Ground Zero approaches.

May Yahweh show grace to the Remnant and to all those who desire righteousness is all that I am able to plea for now in Yah'shua's (Jesus') Name. Amen.

Endnotes

[1] Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (Penguin Books, Hammondsworth, Middlesex, England: 1966), p.7