A Little Last Days Speculation

This post is going to be somewhat different from the usual. I’m working through trying to understand some scriptures that apply to our day, and looking at what’s happening to see if they correlate. I am not unique in this particular interest. There are a multitude of YouTube channels dedicated to this. There are speeches and sermons and books galore.

But one of the benefits of this blog, for me, is that it helps clarify my thoughts. I clarify what I think by writing it out and trying to order things. And anyone who reads it is along for that ride, and hopefully also benefits from it.

So, with that, welcome to some last days speculation.

 

Let the Studies Begin

For me there has always been a back burner interest in the last days. But the emphasis at church had always been that we need to live our daily lives to be ready to meet God. That would most likely come through death. But maybe 20 years out we might imagine the Savior’s Second Coming. Always 20 years out. A moving goal post.

Until 2020. The pandemic was a wake up call for me. Was that one of the plagues foretold for the last days? When you read about those things in Revelation, they seem more dire. This was a bad illness. But it was treatable—although treatments were withheld. The economy and life in general were shut down for a good long while. Churches and temples were closed. In fact, the reaction to the pandemic seemed more of a plague than the pandemic itself. And then came the so-called vaccine—experimental, forced upon us, ostensibly to let society open back up—but it didn’t actually prevent illness or spread and couldn’t actually meet the definition of a vaccine. And lately health issues from the vaccine are the main news. Meanwhile the virus itself has mutated into the endemic status of a bad cold.

I may talk about the possibility that this was a particular apocalyptic plague some other day. For now, let’s just say it was a catalyst to get my attention. Sometime early in the lockdown, late spring of 2020, I saw a couple of videos that really got my attention.[i] They were speculating that the Second Coming could be much sooner than 20 years away. It might be within 10, or maybe 3-4 years. And I got excited. Great—more than dreadful—I thought. We can last through almost anything for a few more years.

This was comforting to me, as I watched the decay of our constitutional republic, which I love and have dedicated a lot of my time to preserving. It is unthinkable that we should have to tolerate a socialist dictatorship on this promised land for decades into the future, after all we have done to preserve freedom, prosperity, and civilization. May the Lord come quickly! Hosanna! (which means come and rescue, among other meanings).

As I began to study, I’ve found that there are a lot of people doing similar study, fitting it in among their daily lives, or maybe letting it take over. We’re supposed to watch and be ready. Those of us who have taken up this study sometimes even call ourselves watchers.[ii] Even if we don’t know the day nor the hour of His coming, we can see the signs and the season. It will be like a woman in travail; you don’t know the day nor the hour, but you feel the preparatory birthing pains, and recognize when they get harder and more frequent, so you know the time is imminent.

See, by the way, Revelation 12: 1-2. If you’re into looking at signs in the heavens, you might be aware that in September of 2017 the constellation of Virgo had Jupiter, the royal planet, birthed from the womb area after about nine months inside, while Virgo was “crowned” with twelve stars. You can, if you know how better than I do, find this on constellation trackers.

sign of woman in the heavens constellation,
screenshot from here

I’ve learned a lot since 2020, and I’m just scratching the surface. What I’m recognizing is that reading the scriptures, especially something as symbolic as Revelation or the dreams of Daniel, is open to interpretation. I try to find official sources when I can—in my Church, what do the prophets say about particular verses? And what do other Christians say? And what do other religions believe about these last days? At the bottom I’ll share some resources. There are plenty to keep a person occupied for all the time we have left.

I want to look at just one segment, relating I think to this nation, America.

 

The Two Beasts

Let’s look at Revelation 13, starting in verse 1 [note that I’m using the King James Version of the Bible, linking to ChurchofJesusChrist.org, which has a lot of helpful footnote links]:

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

La Bête de la Mer, a medieval tapestry depicting John the Revelator
seeing the dragon and the sea beast from Rev. 13

The beast coming out of the sea, if I understand the symbolism, means it crosses the oceans, covering multiple nations, or maybe all nations. The Joseph Smith Translation of this verse says, “And I saw another sign, in the likeness of the kingdoms of the earth: a beast rise up out of the sea, and he stood upon the sand of the sea, having seven heads….” I think that’s a clearer way to look at the verse.

Verse 2 further describes this beast, a leopard’s body, feet of a bear, mouth of a lion. Then,

And the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.

The dragon refers to the devil. This beast, or multi-national entity, is empowered by Satan.

Verse 3 gets interesting. One of the heads gets a deadly wound, and then is healed, amazing all the world. I’ve speculated that in the 20^th Century we thought we had defeated the Marxist ideologies that led to so much mass murder—in addition to war and famine. Now, it’s as though these socialist ideas are revived to become mainstream, even here in America. Maybe that’s the head that the world thought was dead but that revived.

There’s a footnote in verse 4 for beast, describing it as Babylon. Symbolically, Babylon is Satan’s kingdom; Zion is God’s kingdom. As Neal A. Maxwell used to say,

“Let us once and for all establish our residence in Zion

and give up the summer cottage in Babylon.”

So, the beast represents Satan’s kingdom, an international entity, perhaps a cabal of many nations and organizations, given power to do evil.

I want to come back to a subsequent verse or two. But further down in the chapter is another beast, starting in verse 11:

And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.

This beast, this symbolic animal, has two horns like a lamb. But it is not a lamb—certainly not the Lamb. It speaks as a dragon—and as we know from just above, the dragon is Satan. It speaks the Devil’s words. It speaks falsely. Verse 12 tells what this false speaking land beast does:

And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.

Verses go on to say this beast deceives the people of the earth, directing them to do the bidding of that other beast, the sea beast. This land beast can create images that seem incredible and convince many.

I call this land beast the propaganda beast.[iii] The liar. It says whatever the message of that sea beast might be. The worldwide cabal is given voice and image by the propaganda beast.

There are plenty of people who look at these verses and see one or the other of them as “the anti-Christ.” They are certainly both anti-Christ. But I do not believe these verses say we are to expect to see a particular person embodying them. I think the worldwide cabal is something we are actually seeing today. We could try to name the various heads and crowns and horns, but I don’t think it’s necessary to do more than say, Yes, there is certainly a worldwide cabal, and it’s as fierce and ugly as that symbolic description.

As for the land beast, the false speaker, I think we’re looking at mainstream media (speaking the lies), plus Hollywood (creating the image), plus academia (inculcating the lies)—anything that gives the lie that empowers that sea beast, or worldwide cabal. Propaganda beast seems to cover it, although that does sound milder than it is.

This combination of the two working in tandem does great damage, described in verse 15:

And he [the propaganda beast] had power to give life unto the image of the beast [the sea beast], that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.

Cancel culture—figuratively killing anyone that doesn’t go along with the prescribed lies—could be one meaning. The loss of ability to work or function in society might be another. It could also mean literal death to some—at some point maybe to many. There’s more about being able to buy and sell—only if you take upon yourself the “mark” of the beast, which has to mean choosing to go along with the beast. That is, choosing Babylon instead of Zion; it can’t be inadvertent, it seems to me.

I want to back up to verse 5, talking about the sea beast again:

And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.

I was thinking about that forty and two months recently, which is what I’m really speculating about here today.

There are people who have put together timelines, using the numbers in scriptures. Forty-two months is 3 ½ years, which comes up a few times in last days scriptures. Forty-two months also comes up a couple of chapters earlier, referring to the two prophets raised up to Israel, who will walk in Jerusalem, witnessing and prophesying of God, and protecting Israel for forty-two months, before being killed and then rising again just before the Savior’s coming. I don’t know if that forty-two months coincides with this forty-two months of the beast’s reign, or any other 3 1/2- year segment. I just don’t know.

But I’m looking at this Chapter 13 time in conjunction with another possible last days thing.

 

The Eagle

There’s a prophecy in Esdras 2, or the second book of Ezra, an apocryphal book I was unaware of until my 2020 studies began. I’m looking at Chapters 11 and 12 mainly, a prophecy often called Ezra’s Eagle. One common interpretation of it is that it refers to America, in the last century or so. I’ve resisted this, but there are parts that may be true. The main image is a 3-headed eagle, which soars over the earth, influencing everywhere. Sounds like America, with its three co-equal branches of government. However, every interpretation I’ve heard says, rather casually, that those three eagle heads don’t depict the three branches of government, but three individuals who control things.[iv] I just say, no, that’s not how symbolic representation works. Why represent a nation with a three-headed eagle that has nothing to do with the nation’s three heads? So, let’s just agree this represents America, and maybe I’m right about the three branches of government.

As an aside, the three heads don’t survive; one is killed in sleep, and another gets eaten by the remaining head. Symbolically speaking, I’d say what you see is the legislative branch giving its work over to the executive branch through the regulatory state, and then the executive branch killing off the judicial branch through executive orders and a corrupt department of justice, plus all the corrupt three-letter agencies. Just a thought.

Image taken as screenshot from here.

The eagle is somewhat bedraggled. On one side it has a wing with feathers attached. Some are long, some are short, one is quite long. The interpretation chapter says these are rulers who come in turn, rule, then don’t show up again. A short feather means that rule was cut short. If you start with Herbert Hoover, these feathers line up to be the US presidents from him through Obama on that side. A regular long feather can go with a four-year or an eight-year presidency; either way it is a complete presidency. The short feathers happen to coincide with JFK and Nixon, and the really long one is FDR, who was elected four times, before the law was made to limit the president to two terms.

I can’t tell you why they start with Hoover. I heard a completely different interpretation recently in which there are parallels to the kings of northern ancient Israel. So, who knows. Anyway, if the modern America interpretation holds, there are a few more feathers on the other wing. The first one is a short feather, meaning it is an incomplete presidency. The second one is also a short feather, and is to be even shorter than the one before it. Some say there are two more feathers, but it looks to me like after the two attached feathers, then come two feathers that are loose, trying to attach, or rule, but unable.

So, if the other side completed with Obama, then the first short feather on the other side is Trump. When I first heard this interpretation, I resisted just because it looked like that meant removal from office because of death or impeachment. I think he’d already been through a failed impeachment attempt by then. What I didn’t anticipate was that he might actually be elected but unable to complete his presidency because of a stolen election. And I do believe that is what happened. It strains credulity to think a senile old man who didn’t campaign got more votes than anyone in history. And there’s plenty more to say about that, but I’ve mostly said it before.

So, if that interpretation of Ezra’s Eagle is accurate (a big if), then we should expect the Biden presidency to last a shorter amount of time than the full four years (that should have been eight) of Trump. Four years is forty-eight months. You know what is shorter than forty-eight months? Forty-two months.

Total speculation here, but what if the Biden presidency is the forty-two months of sea beast (the worldwide cabal) giving a mouth (and not much else) speaking what the sea beast gives the mouth to say, including blasphemies, or false doctrine, as the footnote indicates?

False doctrines might include things like “abortion is a woman’s right,” “gender is mutable, but sexual orientation is not,” “using fossil fuels is going to end life as we know it,” and “all white people are racist but black people can’t be racist.” I’m sure you can think of some more.

That would mean somewhere around late summer of 2024, the Biden presidency ends. I don’t know how. I do not wish him dead, nor do I predict that will be the way. Impeachment seems much more likely for someone as corrupt as he is. If it turns out he indeed caused the sabotage of the Nord Stream Pipeline, that is an act of war. Doing so unilaterally as president, putting the entire nation at risk, is treason. Add in the proof from the Hunter Biden laptop that he has taken money to favor foreign nations against US interests, and impeachment seems inevitable.

If that should happen about that time, then what? I don’t know. It’s only a couple of months before the 2024 election. I cannot accept (I cannot stomach the idea of) a Kamala Harris presidency, even for a few months. And the prophecy, if accurate, would say there would not be another attached feather after Biden. What then?

Well, maybe rule by the King of Kings, who has returned. That would be how I’d like to see it play out.

If things go longer, then one thing we could be looking at is a breakup of the United States. There’s what could be considered last days prophecy in the Book of Mormon, which we’re told is a parallel for our day, how precise we do not know. But in the years prior to the Savior’s coming to the Nephites on this continent following his resurrection, the people destroyed their government (which had been an elected government) and broken up into tribes. Are we going to see that? Breaking up into individual states? Or is the intersectionality going on now a kind of tribalism?

Everything seems easier to see in retrospect—like that sign of the woman in heaven we saw in  2017, coinciding with an eclipse and the biblically proportioned floods in Houston called Hurricane Harvey, which certainly got our attention here.

Earthquakes are picking up. Birthing pains, are they? Maybe. There’s snow on the beach in California as I write this, which is pretty weird. In 2020 there were so many weird things, we started referring to them as apocalypse bingo. It included summer snow in China, and locusts, and murder hornets, and fires over large swaths of he earth.

Do we really need to wait until things are cinematically apocalyptic looking? Or are we seeing things now? I believe we’ll know soon. And I wish I knew precisely how to define soon.

 

Resources:

As I mention in the footnotes, I started with these two videos:

·        “7 Year Tribulation in the Seventh Seal Timeline,” by Masayoshi Montemayor, on Millennial Reign, March 12, 2020. 

·        “NEW Revelation & Daniel SECOND EDITION (PART 1 of 4)” by Jodi Stoddard 

o   Part 2 

o   Part 3 

o   Part 4 

Here are a few on Ezra’s Eagle:

·        “What Do The Scriptures Say About President Donald J Trump -See Ezra's Eagle?” Last Days Timeline, March 10, 2017

·        “Ezra’s Eagle,” Michael B. Rush, January 31, 2021 

·        “Ezra’s Eagle, The Background,” Christian Homestead, May 26, 2022

·        “Ezra's Eagle Repent America” New Evidences for Joseph Smith, November 14, 2022. 

A few YouTube Channels and Websites:

·        Christian Homestead. Jared Davies puts out content daily. He’s very low-key and casual, but he does good research. He has a spreadsheet available online with a wealth of information he’s tracking, from things Latter-day Saint prophets have said, to earthquakes happening around the world.

·        Watcher Palmer. Scott Palmer talks about a lot of gospel related things, and sometimes things related to what’s going on in the world. His followers are called the Community of Watchers, or COWS, which is fun. Again, low-key, low-budget, and an individual thinker. As I mention in the footnote, I grew up with him from elementary school, and my husband knew him as a missionary, because in the Church it’s a small world.

·        The Last Dispensation.  Troy Ables also covers a wide variety of topics, but often last days. He and Scott Palmer and Jared Davies all know each other and sometimes collaborate on videos. All three are from a Latter-day Saint perspective.

·        The Happy Lady. This is another Latter-day Saint. I’ve only watched a few. They are long. She sounds bubbly and not what I’d expect, but her research is actually pretty fascinating. Sometimes she makes connections where I would not (a lot of numbers have meaning to her, and she sees them everywhere), but that’s OK. There was one I watched on the Sami people and other “lost tribes” that had me wanting to go do a DNA test.  Not all are last days related, but the ones I’ve seen have been.

·        The Watchman with Erick Stakelbeck. This is a Christian guy in the US who covers daily news and all things related to Israel.

·        One for Israel Ministry. This is a ministry of Jewish Christians. It’s an interesting perspective, not typically last days related, I don’t think, but it’s good to understand Jewish customs to help understand last days prophecies.

·        The Temple Institute. This is a website of all things Jewish (not Christian), preparing for the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. It’s fascinating.

 

Scriptures to Get Started and Study Aids:

·        Revelation 

·        Daniel  

·        Doctrine & Covenants 45 

·        Old Testament Student Manual Kings-Malachi 

·        New Testament Student Manual, especially chapters 53-56 on Revelation 

 

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[i] I started with this one by Masayoshi Montemayor, and one by Jodi Stoddard, which were redone and posted in four parts, starting here. Both do timelines, slightly different, showing things happening very soon. Both are from a Latter-day Saint perspective. Both have things that I do not totally agree with, now after more study. But there are some good facts in them, and they’re a good starting place.

[ii] One YouTube channel I follow regularly is Watcher Palmer. (I actually went to school with him, elementary through high school, and my husband knew him as a missionary. Small world.) He and his followers started referring to themselves as the Community of Watchers, or COWS, which allows for some good cow pictures for graphic T-shirts and whatnot.

[iii] I first came to this understanding of the sea beast and the land beast from a lecture by Hyrum Andrus, posted to YouTube around 2017, but was actually from the late 1980s. I saw it in 2020. They all look alike, but I think it is this one. 

[iv] The first introduction I had to Ezra’s Eagle was this video from 2017, which I watched in May 2020. I still resist much of the interpretations, but some of it keeps coming to mind, so I’m entertaining the possibilities.