FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

The End Is Near

(in Jacob Shall Be a Fire)

An inspiring and suspenseful Catholic/Christian tale of the end of days

 

 

 

 

Why write another book about the end times? Arnold Schwarzenegger pretty well covered it in the recent blockbuster film End of Days. Left Behind (Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins) has no less than twelve books on the shelves. A Canticle for Liebowitz (Walter M. Miller Jr.) has been a cult classic for decades in this genre, with That Hideous Strength (C. S. Lewis). Now Michael D. O’Brien has written a superlative story on the apocalypse in Father Elijah. Even Ayn Rand, an atheist no less, but a nice one, wrote what may be the greatest novel of all time, Atlas Shrugged, about the collapse of society from its own evil ways, and its subsequent renewal. In 2003, novelist Cormac McCarthy wrote the heart-wrenching Pulitzer Prize winning apocalypse, The Road, also to be released as a Viggo Mortensen movie. What’s left to do?

 

Even the obtuse questions of theological dispute between Catholics and Left Behind have been well-covered now by Dr. Paul Thigpen in his very enjoyable book The Rapture Trap. The Rapture Trap, by the way, is as good an introduction into the Christian faith as any that have been written.[i] The primary reason for writing Jacob Shall Be a Fire is that modern man seems to have no sense of urgency about the end of days. The message of Jacob is that it is time to act, it is time to “do something” as it says on the Doritos bag.

 

Cleary everyone is dismayed at the new headlines, a horror story that has continued now for decades. But what are we doing about it? Wars, earthquakes, tidal waves, hurricanes, famine…everyone knows the hour is late. It is therefore perhaps more correct to say that the message of Jacob is not so much that it is time to act, but that it is possible to act. In Jacob you get a primer on how to conduct spiritual warfare. There are some fascinating discussions of prophecy, and a good tidy little bit of humor…but Jacob is first and foremost a battle plan, a plan of action for Armageddon. It is disguised as a novel, but Jacob is Our Father’s plan...merciful and forgiving, but terrible in its justice.

 

One point, at least, that most, if not all, theologies do agree upon is that Christians will be present for the crux of Armageddon, the last battle with evil, for we are the instruments of God’s victory in that battle. Jacob, God’s people, will constitute the bonfires (flames of the Holy Spirit) that singe the evil “chaff” of the harvest (Obadiah 1:18; Zechariah 12:6; Malachi 3:19-21). We will be God’s “stately war horse” (Zechariah 10:3; Malachi 3:20-21; Micah 4:13). Our role in the end of days, the role of all God-fearing people, and how to fulfill it, is the primary theme of the book you are about to read. Some sense of urgency for this last battle with evil, that is what I wish to instill in the reader of Jacob, along with full confidence in victory.

 

In the Catholic view, judgment and the harvest have been underway in a real sense for two thousand years since Christ’s victory on the cross. John 12:31: “Now is the time of judgment on this world.” 1 Peter 4:17:  “For it is time for the judgment to begin with the household of God; if it begins with us, how will it end for those who fail to obey the Gospel of God?” Many of the other primary themes of the end times have been ongoing since Christ as well, including his glorious reign from Heaven, the struggle with the Antichrist (1 John 4:3), and the fog of deception imposed by the deceiver of 2 Thessalonians 2; this has all been ongoing. 

 

In Jacob we come to contemplate more fully some of the potential manifestations of the last battle, the plausible meanings of prophetic scripture, and certain dire prophetic forebodings for the future. Following the view suggested by Caritas of Birmingham, AL in the Words of the Harvesters newsletter, vol. #24, Dec. 2005, I, and no doubt many others, now contend that the event of Armageddon is most correctly viewed as having commenced with World War One—almost visibly so, one wants to say. The words of Pope Pius XII at the outbreak of WWII suggest this possibility: “We believe that the present hour is a dread phase of the events foretold by Christ. It seems that darkness is about to fall upon the world. Humanity is in the grip of a supreme crisis.”[ii]

 

It has been hypothesized that at the beginning of WWI Satan was released from the pit ala the vision of Pope Leo XIII. Pope Leo saw Christ and Satan in conversation concerning the devil’s final assault on the Church. This vision occurred just prior to the outbreak of hostilities to commence WWI, in close conjunction with St. Mary’s appearance at Fatima, Portugal in 1917. St. Mary there forewarned of impending disaster if humanity did not return to an active faith via renewed devotion to prayer. One need merely note the moral decline of society since 1950 and the daily news headlines to establish that the tribulation and the great apostasy are both now visibly underway.

 

To see that the manifestation of evil in the horrors of the two world wars was sufficient to ascribe the term “Armageddon,” after having first prayed for spiritual discernment, one need merely review the video documentaries on WWI and WWII. These include the Jewish holocaust and other unthinkable tragedies among civilian populations, such as the tortuous life in the Russian gulags—not to mention the massive military casualties.

 

The spiritual message that rings out over and over again from those films as one views the bodies of mothers and their little children piled in heaps from the Nazi massacres of Jewish families in concentration camps, hundreds of thousands of frozen bodies of young idealistic teenage soldiers of both sides left on the battlefield in Russia and Germany, the young heroic kamikazes of Japan so poignantly summoning the last courage to bravely salute comrades before flying off to certain death, the barely living skeletons in the prisoner of war camps, the unthinkable cruelties Stalin committed against millions of his own people in the gulags during the war, families who froze and starved, some surviving only by consuming corpses of neighbors, friends or family members, the brutal rapes of young girls who were really only children, the horror of thousands of families burned to death or asphyxiated huddled in their cellars when Dresden was fire-bombed into a single massive inferno, the relentless bombing of London, the children horribly mutilated by the atomic blasts in Japan, people watching the skin suddenly melt from their own hands and face having no forewarning or idea of what was happening…the message that rings out over and over again with clarity is “It couldn’t get worse than this.” And the fact of the matter is it couldn’t get any worse. We have been living Armageddon since WWI! No, there are in fact two messages. The other is “This is evil!” And it is. Things so horrific could only come from Satan.

 

Atrocities no less appalling have been recently documented in the Balkans, the Middle East, Indonesia, Sudan/Darfur, selected African, South and Central American nations, as well as many others. As I write these words genocide is being perpetrated against 2.5 million people in selected tribes that are out of political favor in the Sudan. My thesis in Jacob is that these tragedies should be seen as a continuation of the event of Armageddon, initiated with WWI and continuing into the present. The two world wars and later atrocities of the same ilk are more than any other single thing has been in history, more than any other thing could be, Armageddon.

 

Jacob reveals that the total event of Armageddon includes more than the world wars, it includes a substantial invisible battle as well, one which also produces tragedy. The invisible war, too, is well underway: the devil’s final assault. It is less predictable than physical combat; it does not follow a script. Jacob was written for the purpose of instructing Christian and God-fearing people how to fight and win this invisible component of the last battle against Satan in terms general enough to be effective against whatever form the struggle may suddenly take. It is a users manual for spiritual warfare, a survival guide for Armageddon.

 

There have been key moments in history where mankind has stood at important crossroads, but none more critical than the dread hour we now face. With the advent of Armageddon we must finally face the truth. It is time. We must put on the armor of God and stride forward to victory. We must renounce evil and affirm Christ and all that is good once and for all. Forward Christian soldiers!

 

Do not fear them, the evil ones, the demons. Fear God only…and love Him…with all your heart, mind, and soul.

 

May God bless and keep you through these difficult times.

 

 

 

Sincerely yours in Christ,

 

Rick Harrison

 

Rick Harrison, MSgt, USAF (Ret.)

Bloomington, Indiana

 

 

 

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Video Documentaries

CBS Video series World War I: The Complete Story

 

AIM International Television, Great Souls series, which includes, among other relevant titles, Elie Wiesel, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Pope John Paul II who lived through terrible events of war and oppression typical of the larger series of tribulation/Armageddon related events since WWI.

 

Paramount Home Video, Shoah series, recollections of survivors of the Nazi death camps.

 

A & E Video series (26 episodes), The World at War

 

NBC, Victory at Sea, distributed by Embassy Home Entertainment, copyright NBC 1952.

 

BBC Video, The Battle of the Atlantic

 

BBC Video, BBC History of World War II Battlefields

 

A & E Biography series, including Joseph Stalin: Red Terror

 

La Mancha Productions/PolyGram video series Battlefield, especially The Battle of Stalingrad

 

PBS Home Video series, Russia’s War: Blood Upon the Snow

 

Questar Video series, Why We Fight (especially Volume 2, The Nazi Strike/The Battle of Russia)

 

ABC News/MPI Home Video, Hiroshima: Why the Bomb was Dropped, Peter Jennings Reporting, An ABC News Special

 

Questar Video series, Brothers in Arms: WWII and the Korean War (especially Volumes 5 & 6, The Korean War—Our Time in Hell)

 

PBS Home Video series, Korean War Stories, Hosted by Walter Cronkite

 

CBS News Video series, Vietnam War with Walter Cronkite

 

WGBH Boston/Central Independent VLUK/Antenne-2 France/LRE Productions  Vietnam: A Television History

 

Human Rights Video Project, Women Make Movies, Calling the Ghosts  (Bosnia/Herzegovina)

 

Image Bearer Pictures, LLC, As We Forgive, survivors of Rwandan genocide prepare to face those who killed their families, directed by Laura Waters Hinson, narrated by Mia Farrow. Gold Winner, Student Academy Awards 2008, Best Documentary.

 

Globalvision, Inc./Chip Taylor Communications, Rights and Wrongs series, Kosovo and Tajikistan

 

PBS Video Frontline series, The Gulf War, Parts I & II

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rick Harrison is a retired MSgt, United States Air Force.  He is newly converted to the Catholic faith, having been raised a Methodist.  He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy, cum laude, with research honors, from Illinois Wesleyan University.  Air Force assignments included Chief, Officer Appointments, Air Reserve Personnel Center; Chief Personnel Readiness, Air Force Flight Test Center; Chief, Manning Control Edwards Air Force Base, Asst. Quality Assurance Evaluator MAGNUM Munitions Storage Area, Kwang-Ju AB Korea; and Missile Maintenance Crew Chief, George Air Force Base.  His two proudest achievements are pictured above. Pictures taken circa 1991-1993. 

 

Visit the author’s Gulf War Illness Web page

 

 

 

 

 

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