Heart Attacks coming Soon!

When I was growing up, to read the Sunday comics enveloped in the Chicago Sun Times was a great pastime. One particular comic involved this Mandrake the Magician character who would often show up with a supernatural bent. It would be giant hands extending from the clouds, or perhaps a portion of his torso with bare feet touching the ground, a kind of heaven touching earth event. So much for Mandrake. 

Nostradame^[1](1560’s) was noted for his rather dark predictions of future events, wars, plagues, catastrophes, etc. that he received during trance moments of an occult nature. Today, many adherents believe his predictions were/ are spot-on accurate. Such foretelling is not an experience of all men or women. But I suppose if a preponderance of predictions do come to pass, than the individual is less a Mandrake prophet, and more the genuine article.

There are two prophetic utterances in the Bible that some people might find ludicrous. Yet, if there is any, and I mean anypossibility of fulfillment, the outcome is magnanimous! Close to the end of Jesus’ earthly walk he makes the statement concerning the future,  “Men’s hearts shall fail them for fear of the things they see coming upon the earth.”^[2]

Throughout history there have been many situations that could make one faint. After the prophet Mohammed established the tenants of Islam, the crescent sword took the heads of many infidels. During the Dark Ages, the organized Church of Rome conducted sweeping ‘trials’ and cruel punishments against those felt to be infidels of the Church! Wars and rumors of wars happened right up to the dawn of the 20^thCentury.

Ruthless men had for centuries enacted torture, atrocities and death against their fellow man. The Atomic Bomb changed the playing field somewhat; carnage could be widespread and devastating without ever staining one’s hands with the blood of the infidel!

In all these periods, I am sure there were some men who died of heart attack for whatever the stress and strain and trial of it all. But Jesus’ words seem to be larger than the moment, as though he was talking about the consummate end to life on earth as we know it. (My take on it.) Such may be true because Jesus had a wider field of vision then we do, he sees eternity! Proximal periods along the eternity trail may be what we see. In any event, he knows the end from the beginning!

Think about your life. The bravado and machismo of Hollywood movies, television series and the god-like idolization of sports figures that in another life would be vying for that top gladiator position at the local coliseum. Nothing seems to frighten us, mankind smashes the atom, Higgs-Boson to be found, and perhaps, the illusive God particle… the stuff that makes up the mass of the universe we can’t account for. 

And what the Hell, lets just blow up things and destroy, it seems to be what humankind is good at! We create nothing! Like Shiva, Hindu god of destruction and chaos dancing outside CERN visitor center, we are good at destroying, only sometimes do we put the pieces back together. 

Ok, Jesus forewarned us that something so unexpected and unearthly will transpire, the fear of which causes men to literally drop dead on the spot! Could the second prophetic utterance then be what he is referring to? The prophet Isaiah, said,

And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree.

This same situation is reiterated again in Revelation 6:14,

 And heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

If what Jesus referred to is the destruction prophesied by Isaiah above, then we do have reason to fear; unlike Shiva, the true God and Lord of the universe will destroy in order to create a new heaven and earth! Are you prepared for that day or do you merely laugh and brush off the notion of imminent heart failure?

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^[1]https://www.biography.com/scholar/nostradamus

^[2]Scripture found in KJV bible, Luke 21:6