Past or Future?

[Richard Amiel McGough]

For one to appreciate and understand God's coming in clouds of judgment merely requires reading the Old Testament prophets; Jeremiah is a huge one for that.

Just do a keyword search for the word "Cloud" and you'll see what I'm talking about. Jeremiah says, "Look! He comes like the clouds..." and John says, "Behold! He comes with the clouds" Obviously the differences in expressions is one is Hebrew and the other Greek, though both mean the same. But I rely on the Greek scholars to point these things out.

When God sent the nations upon Babylon, it was in the same "Clouds" that Jeremiah and John spoke of. These clouds are figurative for stormy times; in this case, military strikes and disasters. It's very poetic and one must treat the prophesies of God in this sense; not all, but most.

When God sends messages to the prophets in times past, regarding any destruction, poetic language is often used. For instance, when the armies that come upon a nation, or even Jerusalem, is described as "destruction in front and desolation behind..." this simply means that. Vast armies (often numbering by the thousand upon thousands) would come in full destruction, devouring everything in sight, and leaving nothing but a wasteland behind them.

This is the type of destruction that Christ spoke of regarding Jerusalem. In 70AD, all the smaller prophets which prophesied this destruction, came to pass.

Well stated as usual Joe

Folks, I'm going to be gone for a few weeks. I won't be back until the first week of April. I'm headed off to the Academy so I'll rejoin everyone afterwards. I will miss all of you and if I have time, I'll drop a few lines here or there, but from what I hear, the building we'll be in has a dial-up server with 375 people utilizing the same service. So the Internet will be extremely slow.

God bless, pray for my safe journey and return home, and keep me in your hearts and prayers.

God's love and peace to you all. I will miss everyone of you.

Joe

You'll be missed Joe. It's too bad you be gone so long. It seems almost certain that we will have resolved all the biblical questions by the time you get back.

So which "Academy" are you going to? What will you be doing there?

Richard

[TheForgiven]

You'll be missed Joe. It's too bad you be gone so long. It seems almost certain that we will have resolved all the biblical questions by the time you get back.

So which "Academy" are you going to? What will you be doing there?

Richard

Hello everyone. My time is very limited so my posts may be very quick and short. Brother Richard, to answer your question. The "Academy" I'm at right is Gunter NCOA (Non-Commissioned Officers Academy) in Alabama. Here we learn Leadership skill enhancements, Supervisor communication, speech (I hate speech), writing format and edits. There are also traditional things we learn, such as Drilling and Customs and Courtesy's. Many of us older Airmen have to learn the Basic Training Drills all over again.

I'm enjoying so far, although our time is very limited with all the boggled assignments we have to accomplish. And that's the trick too! They don't organize our assignments into a user-friendly schedule; they organize is such a way that you have to look ahead on your own to see when your assignments are do. We also have a lot of reading which is required on a daily basis, prior to lecture day. It's very challenging.

Most would think all you have to do is accomplish the assignments the day prior, but some of the assignments require days of preparation. So it's up to you to find out what's coming due and keep track of all the additional tasks they try throwing at you. I figured out after day 2 that they're merely trying to bog us down with confusion as we try to interpret the schedule; this is to teach us time-management. I'll say this; our breaks are very limited. And I don't mean during the duty day; I'm talking the entire day.

Anyways, I'll respond more to posts later on this week. Today's activities will take me deep into the night, so keep me in your prayers. God bless you all.

Joe