This is a period where the prophets prophesied or predicted the first coming of Christ.
And they also predicted or prophesied about Christ's return over here in Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Zechariah, and many of the minor prophets.
So they're also speaking about this period of time out here in the future.
Jesus, at his first coming, he also describes this period of Matthew 24 that we studied last week, Luke 17.
This whole area is what he's explaining over here during his Olivet discourse.
Also, the apostles Paul and John the Revelator, he gave the book of Revelation, is describing this period over here in the future.
Now, as we saw last week, some of these signs have been happening within the last few years.
And it's like what God is doing is that He's getting this giant ball in an arrow, and He's just flinging this arrow by these prophets.
And all of the prophecies are all landing here in this time period, where this is 2008.
I'm not here to predict a date now. I'm not a date sitter.
But it seems that all of the arrows that the Lord is firing into this future is landing up in this time period.
Jesus himself is, all of the arrows from his prophecies are all landing up in this same time period, as well as Paul and John the Revelator.
So all of these prophecies are being fulfilled right in this time period.
You see what I'm saying?
Now, when we see all of the signs of this tribulation period being fulfilled, or start to be fulfilled,
what it does is it pushes the seven years of tribulation closer to us where we are.
Do you follow what I'm saying?
So if we can see the signs of the tribulation period today, how much closer is the rapture of the church?
Because the rapture of the church will happen before the seven years of tribulation begins.
So some of the signs that we can see that JD has covered is this Ezekiel 38,
when Russia invades Israel with Iran, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Turkey.
Now, what I kind of focus on is on the financial and the technology part.
In 1984, I began working for the Hawaii Credit Union League,
and I start to work with a lot of financial institutions, the banks.
Any of you work in the banks here?
No bankers.
Okay, if you're an executive in the banks back in the 80s, 90s, even today,
they will all tell you they've been moving towards a cashless society.
They want to do away with cash, because cash is problems.
There's so much problems with cash.
Now, I was in Safeway the other day, and I went up to the express line.
And I went up to the express line because I just had maybe two or three items to buy.
And it's supposed to be fast, right?
And all of these people in front of me are paying with debit cards.
And I'm the only one standing in line that paid in cash.
And I felt like that dummy in that Visa commercial,
have you seen that he's holding up everything because he's the only one paying with cash?
So back in the 1980s and 90s, when we talked about this coming cashless society,
people used to laugh at me.
I said, no, because we are moving from a cash society.
We're going to go into electronic funds transfer.
And we're going to be using debit cards in the future.
And people couldn't grasp the concept because right now, as I explained last week,
97% of all cash that's being transacted today is digital cash.
Only 3% is actual cash being transacted.
Now, and what these authors have done is what they do is they connect the dots
because they can see the future by just connecting the dots.
You draw logical conclusions about what the future will hold of a cashless society
and the need for one because there's counterfeiting problems,
there's money laundering problems, the problems of drugs and prostitution
and all the crimes, bank holdups, liquor store robberies.
Cash is a major problem in our society.
They say, if you do away with cash, you'll eliminate 95% of all crime.
And this is where the antichrist will come into the scene and say, I have the answer.
Go into this cashless form of transactions.
Now, are we there yet?
I wanted to show a few slides of where I think we are.
A lot of places around the world are moving rapidly to this cashless system of exchange.
And in Japan, what they have is what they call e-cards.
And do you know that you can actually do cash transactions with a cell phone?
You can point your cell phone at a vending machine and you can get drinks or even food out of a vending machine.
So eventually we are going to this complete cashless system.
Now, recently we've been seeing this problem of immigration problem,
of a new identification with illegal immigrants coming across from Mexico.
In CNN and Fox News, they've been covering this illegal immigration problem
and they need for a new identification card.
Now, back in the 1980s, there was this guy, a columnist named William Sapphire,
who did an editorial about this coming national ID card back in the 80s.
And Christians were up in arms about this new national ID card
because William Sapphire had said in this article, this tattoo will be pressed upon your forehead.
And what that tattoo meant was a barcoded tattoo.
And what I have here is a barcode from anything off long stores or time supermarket or wherever.
How many of you know that the barcode is actually 666?
Now, in every product in a supermarket or in longs, you have a barcode that identifies a product.
The numbers here, the 6 numbers here represent the manufacturer's number
and the 6 numbers on this side represents the product number.
But these numbers, these barcodes on the outside and in the middle do not have any number representation.
Those numbers are actual 6s.
These are what they call guard bars over here in the outside, in the middle, and on the other side.
When you get onto the Internet, you type what? W-W-W, right?
Zola Levitt, a Hebrew scholar, a number of years said that when you're typing W-W-W to get onto the Internet,
in actuality, is you're typing 666 to get into the Internet.
Now, this beast that was in Belgium, it was a huge master computer that could identify every person on the world.
The beast stood for Belgium Economic Accounting Surveillance Terminal.
And this is a complete master computer that can identify every person in the world.
See, during the time of the 1100s to 1500s, would it be possible for Christ to return during this time period?
Of course not. There could be no world leader until today.
Because how would a world leader rule the world in the year of the time of Columbus?
He would have to sail from Europe to Asia. How long would that take? Years.
But see, the time of the rule of Antichrist will be only between three and a half to seven years, depending on your interpretation.
But no more than seven years of his rule on planet Earth.
So the world leader could only take place in this generation, where we have satellite technology.
He could preach from Washington DC, or he could preach from Europe, of everyone worshiping him.
So the technology puts us right into this time period.
So you can see that everything from here, from the book of Revelation, is pushing us closer and closer to this time period of where we are in 2008.
Now how close are we? I don't know. I mean, I'm not here to predict the date.
