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The Mystery of Catastrophe

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The Mystery of Catastrophe Praise for THE MYSTERY OF CATASTROPHE The Mystery of Catastrophe inspires and encourages the reader to embrace God’s priorities and His sovereign will for the world today. The authors give helpful insight informed by their understanding and experience of God working in and through global disasters. A must read for understanding the times and making sense of what appears to be senseless. As an Albanian pastor and Evangelical I have witnessed first-hand many of the stories told in this book. —ZEFJAN NIKOLLA, PASTOR OF EMANUEL EVANGELICAL CHURCH AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF WILBERFORCE FOUNDATION, ALBANIA The philosophical centuries old topic of the suffering of the innocent has been one of central themes in many discourses. The Mystery of Catastrophe brings into light God’s purpose in calamities. After the tragedy Kosovo experienced in 1999, God opened new horizons for this nation. This is a perfect example of how God will use the suffering yet to come under a new religious political ruling system of the antichrist. The Mystery of Catastrophe walks the reader down the eschatological road of biblical prophecies to offer meaning and hope to the suffering. This a must-read book that comes at the right time. —PASTOR DRITON KRASNIQI, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE KOSOVO PROTESTANT EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE Christians have been trying to go to the ends of the earth to make disciples for years. And now God is bringing the world to Christians. The Mystery of Catastrophe is a profound look at how God uses catastrophes and crisis to scatter unbelievers throughout the world. This book will challenge your thinking on refugees and the end times. — HUGH O. MACLELLAN, CHAIRMAN EMERITUS, THE MACLELLAN FOUNDATION The Mystery of Catastrophe is a critically important and genuinely prophetic word for this hour. Not only does it identify the great challenges of the last days, but much more importantly, it lays out a clear Gospel-centered response.” —JOSEPH FARAH, CEO WND THE MYSTERY OF CATASTROPHE Copyright © 2018 by Joel Richardson and Nathan Graves All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means—whether electronic, digital, mechanical, or otherwise—without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture references are from the New American Standard Version (NASB). Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Scripture marked niv is from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, niv® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture marked esv is from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version. esv® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Scripture marked isv Copyright © 1995-2014 by isv Foundation. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INTERNATIONALLY. Used by permission of Davidson Press, LLC. Book designed by Mark Karis Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-949729-00-9 eBook ISBN: 978-1-949729-03-0 Printed in the United States of America To my wife, Lorraine, the love of my life, and to the greatest earthly gifts God ever gave to me—my two sons, Josiah and Justin Contents Acknowledgements x Preface xi PART 1 A BIBLICAL THEOLOGY OF CATASTROPHE Nathan Graves 1 Introduction 3 1 Biblical History of Catastrophe 7 2 His Way Is in the Whirlwind 25 3 The Mystery of Catastrophe 35 4 Present-Day Examples 47 5 The Big Picture of Catastrophe 57 PART 2 WHAT COMES NEXT? Joel Richardson 69 6 A World of Catastrophe 71 7 The Last Reich 81 8 The Spirit of Antichrist 99 9 The Lord’s Purpose for the Antichrist 121 10 Our Response 137 PART 3 HOW THEN SHALL WE RESPOND? Nathan Graves 151 11 The Grand Climax 153 12 Rising to the Times 165 13 A Missionary for the Times 179 Notes 192 Acknowledgements I WANT TO THANK my Savior Jesus Christ first of all, for so great a salvation He lavished on me and for putting this book in my heart. I thank my wife, Lorraine, for all her prayers, encouragement, support, and helpful insights. Special thanks to James Beery, my dear and pre- cious friend, mentor, high school football coach, and English teacher who gave me a love for writing and has modeled for me the life of a godly man. Finally, I want to thank Joel Richardson, a man of God who believed in me, supported me, and gave me this amazing opportunity to share with you what burns deeply in my heart. NATHAN GRAVES AS ALWAYS, I would like to thank my wife, Amy, for her unwavering support. Many thanks to Geoffrey Stone for your critical assistance and editorial oversight. It’s deeply appreciated. Much thanks to Mark Karis for another great cover design. To all those partners who continue to support the work the Lord has given us to accomplish, and who so faithfully cover my family and me in prayer, I simply cannot thank you enough. May the Lord return all of the blessings that you’ve given to me back on to you in multiplied abundance. Finally, thanks to Nathan Graves for your partnership and great patience with this project. May the Lord use it mightily for His purposes. JOEL RICHARDSON x Preface I FIRST MET NATHAN GRAVES in 2014, in what is now called the Republic of Northern Macedonia. At that time, Nathan and his wife, Lor- raine, had been working in Albania for nearly twenty-one years. Nathan organized a strategic conference in the Balkans addressing the great chal- lenges faced by the evangelical churches. I speak at a lot of conferences and in churches all over the world. This particular event was not simply impressive—it was inspired. To understand the power of what took place that year, one first needs to understand a few things about the Balkans. The Balkan Peninsula is a part of the world that most Americans know very little about. Occupying the whole of southeastern Europe, today it is comprised of around thirteen countries. Throughout this region, there are a multiplicity of ethnic, religious, and social identities—and divisions. During the Cold War, much of this region was somewhat unified under the banner of Yugoslavia. During the 1990s a series of wars ripped the region apart. In fact, the very term Balkanize has come to refer to the breaking up of a region into smaller and more hostile units. During this period of splintering and war, more than 150,000 people died. It was also during this time that the evangelical movement began to make its first solid inroads in the area. This is when Nathan and his young family moved to the region. In a baptism by fire so to speak, they gave themselves to a place where the soil was soaked with blood and the people were deeply divided. xi Preface Although some time had passed, the painful memories of the nineties, remained. In many cases, the painful memories and divisions went back centuries. Today, there is still a tremendous amount of fear, prejudice, and division along national, ethnic, and religious lines. In some of the countries, the Muslim population is nearly 90 percent, whereas in other countries, Eastern Orthodox Christianity is dominant. Although the evangelical movement is firmly established there, they remain a minority, and are often looked at with suspicion. This is why I was so impressed with Nathan’s leadership skills in organizing such a conference in that region. He had managed to gather more than two hundred prominent Christian leaders from nearly every nation in the Balkans. Even more impressive was the fact that there was nearly an equal number of Pentecostals as there were Baptists. Anyone who has been in ministry long knows that mixed denominational meetings rarely happen smoothly. Because of his commitment to the kingdom of God, however, Nathan managed to organize and pull off the impossible. In the back of the room, several booths were set up for the many languages that were simultaneously translated throughout the confer- ence. The few days that we gathered were among some of the most powerful, anointed, and blessed times of worship and fellowship that I have ever experienced. There was also a certain prophetic nature to the event. Among the primary purposes of the gathering was to discuss how evangelical leaders throughout the region could strategize and partner together to reach out to their Muslim neighbors and stand up to the creeping shadow of radical Islamization. I was blessed to be one of the keynote speakers and share some of the insights that I’ve gained by giving myself to this great challenge for the past few decades. It was during this conference that I began to discern that Nathan would become a strategic partner in my own ministry. A year earlier I had traveled deep into the Rhodopy Mountains of Bulgaria to visit a small church that is reaching out to the many remote Muslim villages there. It was during that trip that I came to realize how strategically important the Balkans are. These fractured nations, often forgotten by many in the xii Preface West, represent the door from the Middle East to Europe. Today, there is a very real spiritual, as well as geo-political, battle for control of that tremendously important gateway. I realized then that the Balkans will play a tremendously important strategic role in the work of proclaiming the gospel to all nations before Jesus returns. Thus, it was not a shock when the very next year, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the emerging dictator in Turkey, opened the floodgates and allowed over a million refugees from the Syrian conflict and greater Middle East to begin pouring into the Balkans toward western Europe.
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