Chapter 8
8
The End of the Age and the Return of Christ
‘They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky,
with power and great glory.´ (Matthew 24:30)
Through the visions and prophecies that the Holy Spirit gave us we were warned repeatedly that the end of the present age and the return of the Lord are very near. The Holy Spirit made this truth so vivid and so real to us that there was no doubt in any of our minds about how important this message was.
Jesus told a parable about a farmer who planted his field with good seed, but his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, so that when the wheat grew it was mixed with weeds. Rather than pull out the weeds and risk destroying the wheat the farmer waited until the harvest time to deal with the weeds (see Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43). Just as in this parable, the Lord showed us that the end of the earth will come – the harvest – when the Kingdom of the devil is at its worst and the Kingdom of God on earth is at its best, in its purest form. The Bible also teaches that evil will reach its climax through an evil world ruler who is possessed by the devil – indeed an incarnation of the devil himself. This superman will be destroyed by the Lord at His return.1
There may be those who take exception to these remarks, but, without discussing them in detail, I will relate, as best I can, the visions and revelations given to the Adullam children, who knew little or nothing of end-time theology.
Disease and wars
Time after time the children prophesied that a time of famine, disease, war and desolation is coming. During this time the people of God will be persecuted but God will equip and protect them through the crisis. The Scriptures refer to this time as the Great Tribulation.
One boy saw our schoolteacher trying to buy some rice. There was such a huge crowd surrounding the granary that the teacher had to push with the crowd in order to have any hope of being successful. Each person was permitted to buy only one measure of rice.
One uneducated boy was transported in a vision to our ‘civilised´ countries and saw people preparing for war, making bombs and other weapons of destruction.
Visions of the devil and the Antichrist
The children were given visions of the devil as a dragon with seven heads. One boy saw angels fighting with him and seven of his angels. The devil and his angels were overcome and thrown out of heaven to the earth.2
Adullam boys and girls saw visions of the superman the world is hoping for – the subject of worship of many of the world´s religions. They saw the devil take the form of a strong handsome man, in the peak of his manhood, and come to earth as the Antichrist.
They also had visions of the image which, according to biblical prophecy, the Antichrist will erect as an object of worship, the image that will be able to speak and to deceive the world.3 I asked them how they knew this handsome and powerful man was the Antichrist. They said that a great number of demons followed him wherever he went and obeyed his every command.
The Antichrist was also seen on a wide open plain as a great beast with seven heads. I asked them again how they knew this was the Antichrist, and the children said the angels told them. As I have already explained, these visions were given to the children, as they were to John, through angels while they were in a trance and, like him, they carried on a conversation with the angels who were able to explain to them many things they did not understand.
Those who love God are persecuted
During the terrifying reign of this evil superman those who loved God were standing firm and bearing witness to God despite great hardship and danger. The children saw that the two witnesses in Jerusalem and the Christians were given great supernatural power, in order to be able to resist and fight against the power of darkness during that awful time. There has never been a time on earth like it: the devil and all his angels, having been turned loose on the earth, will run riot and cause as much destruction and havoc as possible, because they know they only have a short time. At that time no one but a true Spirit-filled Christian will be able to stand even for one day against such satanic power which will demonstrate itself in supernatural miracles and manifestations.
But the children saw Christians filled with even greater supernatural power. They had visions of them preaching the gospel boldly in the face of great persecution with such power that, at a word from them, their enemies were struck down with plagues or death. They were moving in the power the Lord had promised His disciples:
‘I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.´ (John 14:12)
In some cases, if a town rejected the gospel after Christians had witnessed in it, when they were some distance away, fire would fall from heaven and destroy it, as it had done at Sodom and Gomorrah. When persecution was particularly severe, they were sometimes carried away physically by the Holy Spirit, as Philip had been and as the prophets supposed Elijah had been.4 In times of hunger and need manna, fruit and other food were miraculously provided, and angels ministered to them.
The Christians had the power to preach to tribes who had never heard the gospel in their own languages. We were able to glimpse how this might be true when in their visions the boys and girls were preaching in the Spirit. When one speaker preached to the people of a tribe whose language he or she did not know, another interpreted (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:28). Both spoke in other languages. One spoke a few sentences, then the other interpreted. They were preaching to people of every tribe and language.5
The children´s visions of the gospel being preached in supernatural power seem to me to be in line with the prophecies in the Scriptures. I think we may well expect that, in the end days, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit will be far greater than what the first disciples experienced on the Day of Pentecost.
The final world war
At the conclusion of history, when there will be the most perfect and supernatural Church the world has ever seen and when there will be the greatest concentration of Satan´s demonic power and devil-controlled human power that any age or earth has ever experienced, the Adullam children saw the Antichrist marshalling his forces for the final world war.
They also saw the war in the spirit realm. In these visions, they saw a man on a white horse leading an army of angels who were all dressed in white. They also saw a rider on a red horse: this rider was dressed in the most beautiful darkly coloured clothes and was followed by a large number of black demons.
They also received some visions of the war on earth. The children saw battleships being destroyed by bombs dropped from aeroplanes, with the loss of both the ships and all on board. They saw armies from all over the earth engaged in the most terrible conflicts. As the children stood and watched, they witnessed countless people being killed by poison gas and deadly instruments of war. At first the dead were buried, but as time went on there were too many dead bodies to cope with: they were piled up in great mounds or left to rot like manure, as the prophet had foretold they would.6
The sudden return of Christ
Everything was interrupted by Christ´s sudden return. The sun became dark and the moon turned the colour of blood.7 The stars fell out of the sky in great showers. The heavens shook and seemed to roll up like a scroll. There was a massive earthquake that ripped the earth apart. Great chasms appeared and people were swallowed alive. Because of the vigorous shaking houses just fell down, collapsing like dolls´ houses, killing the inhabitants or burying them alive.
While these things were taking place in heaven and on earth the Lord appeared in the heavens. Old and young, rich and poor were overcome with a deadly fear and ran for their lives. People fled from their shops empty-handed, without a thought for the valuables that a few moments earlier had seemed so important. Families rushed from their homes without even a glance back at the luxuries that had been their life´s passion. In that moment all men and women had only one purpose in mind: to run from the presence of the returning Judge; to find a place to hide from the King of kings. Some of those who managed to avoid the collapsing houses or who did not fall down the cracks in the earth tried to run to the mountains for safety; some jumped into the rivers and died; some killed themselves.
There was the sound of wails and shrieks everywhere. There was chaos and terror. Anything to escape from the anger of the Lamb, for the great day of His anger had come.
The great supper of God
‘And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in mid-air, “Come, gather together for the great supper of God, so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, small and great.”´ (Revelation 19:17, 18)
The birds and the animals were invited to eat the unburied corpses that lay scattered over the ruined earth. Birds, scavengers, wild animals and dogs were seen feeding on the carcasses.
While the children were witnessing this great feast we could hear their remarks and see their movements as the scene was described and acted out in front of us. One might say: ‘Look at that eagle eating that rich man. It´s picking his rich clothes off his body. Look at that! It has taken a piece of flesh and flown away.´ Then another: ‘Oh, look over there – a vulture and a crow both eating that man. The vulture has the most courage. He just picks and picks away, gorging himself, never taking time to look up, but the crow is afraid; he takes a bit and then looks around to see if he is in danger. Do you see that? Look at those birds standing on that well-dressed man and digging into him.´
Then the boys, as if in silent agreement, suddenly all turned their backs on the disgusting scene, making it clear by their actions as well as their words just how abhorrent these final scenes will be. The rich and mighty of the earth – the leaders among people, the business giants, the industrial magnates, the generals, the world religious leaders – will be there, not as honoured guests but as the food of the scavengers of the earth which they have exploited in their selfish luxury.
The Adullam children have seen and vividly described the terrible scenes that will mark the climax of our civilisation. They have witnessed the outcome of all our futile human endeavours. These simple children believe what is written in the Word of God without a doubt, because they have been shown it by God and His angels.
The fate of the Antichrist and the devil
The children saw the Lord and His angels putting chains around the hands and the feet of the Antichrist and preparing to throw him alive into hell.
There were also visions in which the devil was taken alive to the mouth of the pit of hell. A lid, like the lid of a box, opened and the devil was thrown down a black shaft of what looked like a well, into the abyss; the lid was closed, and the Lord locked it with a great key.8
Those who love God are taken to heaven
We have described how the return of Christ will affect those who have rejected Him. There were equally clear visions relating to those who love Him. The children saw the heavens open and the Lord come down in glory surrounded by all His angels. The angels heading up the procession blew beautiful trumpets, and those following on behind maintained perfect order, each one keeping in his proper place and rank. As the Lord descended towards the earth there were the most amazing scenes of graves bursting open as if there had been an explosion. Bodies coming out of the graves were suddenly transformed by resurrection life. In some cases bones were seen coming together (as the children expressed it in their Chinese idiom: ‘one bone from the east and one from the west´). Now in their resurrection bodies these people were caught up to meet the Lord in the air.9
One boy saw a funeral procession taking a Christian to be buried. On the way to the burial ground the trumpet sounded and the Lord came down from heaven. The coffin opened, the dead man sat up and, as he was taken up into the air, his body was transformed.
I have already spoken of the children‘s visions of people we knew, dressed in white and enjoying Paradise, as well as of the heroes of the Bible. The Scriptures teach us that between death and the resurrection the saints have spiritual bodies and are clothed in white before the time of the resurrection.10 I cross-questioned the children because I wanted to know how they knew whether the people they saw in heaven had resurrection bodies, or not. They said they did not know until the angels told them that they were only seeing these people´s souls, not their bodies, which had not yet been resurrected. I questioned them over and over again on these matters, and always received the same answers: they always saw the people in heaven dressed in white; they never had wings; all the angels had wings; there was no difficulty in distinguishing between the people and the angels.
The wedding supper of the Lamb11
Great tables were laid out in Paradise among the magnificent trees, flowers, birds and animals. This place of indescribable beauty and harmony was filled with intense joy as the inhabitants of heaven and the angels praised the Lord, dancing, singing and playing trumpets and harps. Some of the children acted out these scenes in front of us. They hurried to their heavenly home to fetch their harp or trumpet before joining in the Spirit-inspired music in this greatest of all celebrations, the climax of all the hopes of the ages. Great choirs of people sang, danced and praised the King, while others hurried about preparing the tables or the seats, or carrying the golden plates of food. There was an abundance of food, everything having its own exquisite and unique flavour, and exceeding anything that could be imagined.
When everything was ready, the call went out and those who had been saved from every age gathered around the tables to celebrate the wedding of the King´s Great Son. The greatest joy came when the rejects and outcasts from every corner of the earth – the beggars, the sinners, the prostitutes – sat down at this celebration feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Then came the moment everyone had been waiting for: the Son Himself came in and sat down at the tables where He was surrounded by the beautiful and pure Bride, which He had won with His own blood. Then He drank wine with them, as He had promised He would.12
The Day of Judgement
The children saw the Judge upon the throne and they saw too the books in which the actions of every man and woman are recorded. Those who had been saved by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ were separated out from the crowd and stood together on one side, while those whose names were not in the Book of Life were gathered together on the other side. The one company was destined to enter the Kingdom of God and eternal life, while the other group was doomed to go into the fire prepared for the devil and his angels.13
The new heaven and the new earth
A few of the children were privileged to have visions of the new heaven and the new earth. The new heaven was so filled with shekinah glory that the children could not see it very distinctly.
The New Jerusalem occupied the central position in the new earth. They saw the heavenly city with its Paradise as it is now, but it had descended onto the new earth. The new earth was very like Paradise. It was the earth that God had intended for His children. It had been renewed14 and will never pass away. On this earth God will live with His people again; He will be their God and they will be His people.
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