Human history is an old book that is still being written to tell the story of our place in a very big universe. Woven into the pages of individual lives, and the growth of nations, is a search for significance and meaning. A baby of tender flesh is born and grows gray, a nation rises and declines, and to each comes circumstances good and terrible. If a "golden thread" of meaning is not discovered running through and securing the variety of our life circumstances, then the bitter, aimless winds of Ecclesiastes blow with cyclone force and topple individuals and nations.

The historic search for God's presence amid the circumstances of the human community is vast and varied. Religious cults and rites seeking to express and interpret the meaning of God are indigenous to all periods of history. Tribes and peoples have sought to find the golden thread of meaning that ties together the particularities of their communal existence. Each tragedy, each blessing, and every significant event must finally be rooted within an infinite reference point. Without this referent, no society of individuals can remain cohesive as a unique people, clan, cultus, or nation.

It is not possible for finite hands to grasp an infinite point of reference. Transcendent truth is beyond our reach. It is essential for human life, but cannot be achieved by human efforts. In the search for relevancy, transcendent truth will be neglected to a society's demise, or a society will use its imagination to perversely fabricate transcendent truth, or it will receive it as a gift from the hand of God. All religions of the world, but for one, have sought for significance by rooting their respective societies within forces that they have imagined to be veiled within nature. The gods of natural man are known through the revelations of nature. The Judeo-Christian community, however, is the only people within history to have been given cohesive revelations concerning transcendent truth and God's intervention within the events of man and nature.

The Judeo-Christian community, with soiled hands, records the Golden Thread of meaning. It makes the provocative claim that meaning touches history by God's work within, and through, the community's presence within the pages of history. God reveals the greater design, and He does this by shaping one community of faith for the sake of all earth's people.

The Judeo-Christian community continues to lay claim to that special revelatory role within history. It is itself the only thread by which all other natural revelations, or cultic interpretations, can have meaning. This revelation is formed by the sure Word of God as it defined Israel, the community of Jesus Christ, and finally the people of every tribe and nation. This Word of God has two primary functions within the world. It both shapes the Judeo-Christian community of faith, and it calls to the world outside of this community of faith.

The model of prophetic literature within the Major and Minor Prophets displays this two-fold intention. The classical, four-part formula for Old Testament prophecy includes "Oracles against Israel" and the "Oracles against the nations." The former was voiced against the conduct of Israel, and the latter was directed to the unbelieving nations that surrounded Israel. In both cases, the prophet of THE LORD introduced meaning within the tragedies and blessings as they occurred, or would occur within the future. The Bible is a book of meaning. It records events transformed by the power of God's Word mouthed within prophetic lips of flesh and blood.

No proclaimers from the past fascinate us more than the Old Testament prophets. These figures offering fire and figs, judgment and blessing, reveal God's Word by connecting significant events to God's past revelations and on-going providential care. When the Church, with all human history, moves into end-time tribulation, the events of that period will be woven into the Golden Thread. This is the goal and inspiration reflected within this prophecy.

The Omega Prophecy proclaims God's transcendent truth as it clarifies the meaning hidden behind the events that carry history to its final conclusion. It interprets those events that are even now moving mankind towards destruction by connecting them to the providential care of God expressed through the Golden Thread.

The Golden Thread of meaning for the Old Testament community grew out of the fibers formed within actual events, interpreted by the prophets, as God shaped His covenant people by using blessings and curses to mold their character. With the coming of Jesus Christ, the Golden Thread became a Providential Net thrown out to gather the nations within God's covenant to Abraham. In Jesus, God fulfilled His Word that all nations would be blessed through Israel.

The Christian community continues under God's covenant of grace rooted in the cross and open tomb. Abraham, Moses, and the prophets desired to see the fulfillment of God's covenant with Israel. When Christ died and rose from death, human history experienced completion. The pages written from the time of the early Christian community into the wet ink of the ongoing Church will not change that ending which the risen Christ has written. When Christ said, "It is finished," He spoke of His work that completed the human saga.

Yet the quest for understanding continues as we journey along the way to our appointed destination. Each human heart experiences a variety of events that create an appetite for meaning. God is in control as history is moved to realize its conclusion, but how is the Church to understand the meaning of God's grace as the planet experiences catastrophic events?

According to the Bible, the finished work of Christ includes a new heaven and earth. The old order of things will pass away. Human depravity will violate the planet for one last terrible savagery. At this dark hour, God ordains that the Golden thread of meaning, now a net of providential care for all who would believe, should protect His elect from overwhelming despair and confusion. The light of grace will shine, even when the Church has diminished its power to affect the human heart. Anyone who would give a prophetic word today does well to remember that God told His prophets not to expect a willing ear. Old Testament prophets often stood alone.

The true prophetic word will be challenged and denied, but also mimicked by those who can read the political landscape. There are many outside of Christendom who are predicting a bleak future. So too in the past, the prophet of THE LORD predicted events that could, and often were, forecasted by others who understood the social climate. The difference between the prophet of YAHWEH ("THE LORD"), and both the secular and false prophets, lies in the fact that YAHWEH's prophets gave meaning to the events in light of God's past revelations--events were shaped within the continuum of God's providential care for Israel. This providential care for Israel was defined by two major revelations that THE LORD had given to His chosen people.

The first revelation was established within a covenant that God made with Abraham. God promised Abraham that he and his offspring were to be His covenant people; a people who would be blessed, and also serve to bless the world (Genesis 12:3)--a promise which set the significance and scope for the nation of Israel and explains why God did not forsake them even when they rebelled against Him.

The second revelation was voiced through the mouth of Moses for the house of Israel. Moses set before the people a "blessing and a curse" (Deut. 11:26-28). God would respond to Israel's relationship with Him--be it good or ill. Therefore, every benefit or tragedy within Israel's history had a direct relationship to God's mighty acts--a Golden Thread of meaning was established in the blessings or curses which interpreted Israel's circumstances within a singular, ordained history. Without these two revelations, Israel's history would have been irrelevant, and as a nation, Israel would have perished amid the plurality.

God's Word defines the people and the times. At every Kairotic Time -- momentous occasion -- God saw to it that Israel and her neighbors had a reference point within His providence. At these historic times of high moment, false and true prophetic words were given to satisfy the human need for relevancy. It is not surprising, then, that Jews, Christians, and many nations are now seeking to answer questions mouthed within an unsteady, nuclear and biotech generation.

The prophets proclaimed a revealed insight into the hearts of Israel's people. Most often, they sight the corrupted hearts of Israel and her forefathers, and the consequence of God's judgment that ensued their apostasy. The prophets of THE LORD speak a word, often framed in poetic form and imagery, which outlines devastation for the wicked, and consolation for the faithful remnant.

The Omega Prophecy makes use of the classical form and imagery of Old Testament prophetic writings. It is poetical, and composed using the four classical parts to this genre of biblical writing. Part One: Chapters One and Two address the prophetic "Call." Part Two: Chapters Three and Four express the "Oracles against Israel"--here redacted into an admonition to The Church of Christendom. Part Three: Chapters Five and Six contain the "Oracles against the nations" as they lay out the global ramifications to the present world situation. And finally, Part Four: Chapter Seven offers consolation to the faithful remnant of God, even during the blackest of circumstances within our history. The faithful remnant will remain steadfast, even if The Church appears to fail.

All of the individual members within the remnant of God are part of The Church, but not all members of The Church are within the remnant of God. Human reason may separate the "invisible church" (as it defines "true believers") from the visible presence of the Church in the world, but the world sees only that one Church which bears the name of Christ.

The world has neither the means nor desire to measure which individuals or denominations are more faithful to the work and teachings of Christ Jesus, and those that are less faithful. Since The Church exists for the sake of mission in the world, when one part of it suffers the whole body suffers in its evangelical message. Any prophetic word must be spoken to the whole body of both sound and unsound members.

The Omega Prophecy therefore is an address to The Church as she is composed of both the remnant and the worldly. It is intended to strengthen the resolve of the faithful that they might continue their much-needed caretaking within the world. It is also a word of admonition and warning to those who are within The Church but of the world.

The Omega Prophecy is an address to "the Church" in all its spiritual wealth and worldly poverty. It proclaims the human heart to be an instrument of health or harm for the fabric of history. If the human heart becomes cut off from God's governance, as it is increasingly so today, history will be harmed. And again, as the technologies for doing harm become capable of destroying large population centers, the magnitude of the harm escalates astronomically.

The Church can bless society by providing an atmosphere that nurtures a life-affirming and sustaining environment. Or the Church can become lost in the corrupted values of its culture, and become ineffective in reaching hearts for God. Today the Church is increasingly not nurturing hearts for God. Instead it is promulgating a worldview which is propagating civilization's greatest enemy, the terrorist. Because the Church speaks with less and less confidence concerning God's supernatural revelations pertaining to life and morality, it consequently furthers that day when terrorism will bring about the demise of humanity.

Even as I write, the fabrics within global societies are unraveling, and the peoples of the world are becoming unclear concerning the virtuous and the good. Each man does what is right in his own eyes, and any call to repentance is seen as an act of repression against minority expression. Those who seek to hold fast to God's transcendent truth are battered by hostile winds within the culture. My hope is that The Omega Prophecy will strengthen the resolve of the faithful, even as it must condemn much that the Church has wrongly adopted from the world.

This prophecy will burn bitterly upon a worldly palate, for it is a work of fire and figs. To the world it is fire consuming the paper-thin constructions of a society whose diet is devoid of transcendent truth. To the faithful it is a fig "of lament and mourning and woe," like the word once eaten by Ezekiel, but becomes "as sweet as honey." If my soiled efforts simply magnify the meaning of the Transcendent becoming Immanent, giving glory to Incarnate Christ, then I am content.

Finally, this work emerges in the throws of birthing-pains. A Roman Catholic nun, as she died of cancer, told a sister who kept watch at her side, "If a child new the discomfort and pain of being delivered, it might chose to stay within the womb and never experience the greater, beautiful world outside. I am being delivered, and I shall see the greatest world of all."

The Omega Prophecy is also the product of pain--and hope. My prayer is that it makes clear the finished work of Christ that is prophesied to come within the birthing-pains of a new creation. God remains steadfast, and will give to His saints the fruit of the cross, which is an open tomb and an eternal life freed from all elements of corruption. To God--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be all glory!


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[All contents copyright © 1980, 1998 David Anderson]