but if we're talking about - when really the SHTF and all hell breaks loose -Being There wrote: ↑January 20th, 2023, 8:33 amI think this whole Scamdemic in these past few years,BeNotDeceived wrote: ↑January 15th, 2023, 10:53 am Ya know the stuff,
When does it hit the fan?
About 5 years from now I hope to retire.
How long will our current state of bliss continue?
has given us a pretty good hint - of just how close we are -
to when the S - REALLY - HTF.
Isaiah gives us a hint of the timing - of when it may start -in what Season. ********
The Lord will use His servant - His left hand - The King of Assyria/Babylon -
to hurl to the ground (the Drunkards of Ephraim (church leaders)
Isaiah 28
Ephraim and its prophets reap disaster for being delusional and for rejecting divine revelation.
1 Woe to the garlands of glory of the drunkards of Ephraim!
Their crowning splendor has become as fading wreaths on the heads of the opulent overcome with wine.
Chapters 28-31, which form a didactic unit comprising Part VI of Isaiah’s Seven-Part Structure (Isaiah 28-31; 55-59), each commence with a “woe” or covenant curse.
Ephraim’s chief sins of pride and drunkenness catch up with Israel’s birthright tribe in Jehovah’s Day of Judgment. Instead of acknowledging current inconvenient truths, the people of Ephraim look back on past glories earned in more righteous times as if they still apply today. Ephraim’s self-deception, stemming from intoxication with “wine” at the highest levels, compounds the hard times that lie ahead (v 7; Isaiah 56:10-12).
Isaiah 28
2 My Lord has in store one mighty and strong: as a ravaging hailstorm sweeping down,
or like an inundating deluge of mighty waters, he will hurl them to the ground by his hand.
The imagery of “a ravaging hailstorm sweeping down” and of “an inundating deluge of mighty waters”
identifies the king of Assyria/Babylon and his alliance of aggressor nations (Isaiah 8:7-8; 17:12; 18:2).
Although Jehovah provides a refuge for a repentant remnant of his people against the storms of their enemies
(Isaiah 4:6; 25:4-5; 57:13), he empowers the archtyrant—
Jehovah’s (left) hand—over “the drunkards of Ephraim” to cast their illustriousness to the ground
3 The proud garlands of the drunkards of Ephraim shall be trodden underfoot.
********
4 And the fading wreaths, the crowns of glory on the heads of the opulent,
shall be like the first-ripe fruit before summer harvest:
he who sees it devours it the moment he has hold of it.
Ideas that link the king of Assyria/Babylon to these verses are Jehovah’s people being “trodden underfoot” (Isaiah 10:5-6; 63:6)
and the timing of Assyria’s assault as early summer (Isaiah 16:9-10; 18:5).
Ephraim’s former “crowns of glory”—now mere “fading wreaths” on the heads of a later generation—aren’t enough to prevent Assyria’s desolating invasion. The enemy alliance promptly “devours” or “swallows up” (yibla‘enna) Ephraim’s produce. Jehovah’s Day of Judgment humbles Ephraim’s