by Michael G. Mickey
(7-8-07)

We're told, in Luke 21:11, that "fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven" near the time of Christ's return. That passage of Scripture was the first thing that popped into my mind as I looked over a Fox News story that almost reads like a trailer for a science fiction thriller.

The story reads, in part:

A new NASA satellite has recorded the first detailed images from space of a mysterious type of cloud called "night-shining" or "noctilucent."

The clouds are on the move, brightening and creeping out of polar regions, and researchers don't know why.

"It is clear that these clouds are changing, a sign that a part of our atmosphere is changing and we do not understand how, why or what it means," said atmospheric scientists James Russell III of Hampton University in Hampton, Va.

Okay, people. Seriously. Does anyone other than me, in light of everything going on in the world around us pointing toward the soon-coming return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, find it more than a little exciting that mysterious glow-in-the-dark clouds are on the move, brightening and creeping out of the polar regions and scientists have no idea whatsoever is causing the phenomena?

I don't want to read more into this than is warranted but we know that there are going to be clouds present when the greatest air evacuation in human history occurs in fulfillment of God's Word. We also know that this air evacuation - the Rapture of the Church - is going to be followed by the introduction of a grand lie that will explain the event away.

The Rapture will occur and "then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved."

All those left behind in the aftermath of the Rapture of the Church are going to be easy prey for the Antichrist in light of the signs and lying wonders he will produce. Why will this be true? Because those left behind will all have been thoroughly deceived by Satan already! Many of them will have rejected faith in Jesus Christ so many times in pursuit of their own fleshly lusts that they will continue to digest whatever they're told as they always have, as long as it's a story that keeps them from having to submit themselves to the will of God!

And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2nd Thessalonians 2:11-12)

Are the mysterious shining clouds that NASA is presently seeing and finds itself perplexed by going to play a role of any kind in the future fulfillment of Bible prophecy? I don't know but I can certainly see how they could and that's what puts a tingle in my spine and a jolt of joy in my heart! At the very least, these glowing clouds are a great and, thus far at least, unexplainable sign in the heavens.

Wouldn't it be fantastic if the puzzling and luminescent clouds NASA is seeing creep out of the polar regions slowly covered the entire earth and then there was a loud sound after which the mysterious shining clouds and millions of people around the world vanished without a trace?

It's thoughts like that which keep me coming to my desk each day, watching for events like this one to appear in the news - events taking place in the world around us that have significance in relation to Bible prophecy and allow us to dream of a shining day that is coming for all of us who long to be in the presence of our Savior.

Now dream a little....

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Wherefore comfort one another with these words.