A Different Look at the Days of Noah

 

I wanted to share a different way of looking at Noah and his family. When we read about that time period, we often compare it to our own times, but when we're honest, we realize that things were MUCH worse then. Why?  Because God tells us that every single human being alive, from the smallest child, to the oldest adult, except for Noah's family, were completely evil, that every single thought they had was evil!  That can't be said about today, thank God!  And won't be said again, because even during the Tribulation there will be people who are saved. 

But here's the really interesting part. We're introduced to Noah's family after his sons have wives. But where did those women come from? They came from families who's thoughts were totally evil! Yet somehow, the Lord made their hearts soft enough to accept the Truth and come to love Him when they were introduced to it by Noah and his family.  Perhaps it didn't happen until they were engaged.  Maybe they didn't become actually saved until just before God told them to board the Ark. Perhaps, somehow, the truth was put in their hearts a tiny bit at a time over many years before they met Noah's sons, and then it all came together for them. We don't know when it happened, or how it happened, we only know that somehow it did. 

A second interesting point: With all this evil surrounding them constantly, the minds of those in Noah's family were kept clean!  Let me digress here for a moment and remind everyone that when the Bible speaks of our minds, or our hearts, it's actually speaking of both. Each word in the original language means our thoughts and feelings, so both are covered.  I tend to use the words the same way, so when I speak of one, I'm actually speaking of both. 

To recap then, with all the evil around them constantly, the minds and hearts of those in Noah's family were kept clean!  We know how hard that is to do in our own time when things aren't nearly as evil as they were then.  We're constantly bombarded with evil every day by the things we hear and see.  For us, whether we like to admit it or not, it's impossible to keep our minds and hearts pure on our own. Only with the constant help of our Lord can we hope to do that.  And when we fail, we have the promise that when we confess, we will be forgiven and cleansed, so we can start anew.  The same was true in Noah's day - they couldn't have possibly kept their hearts and minds pure without the Lord's intervention and help. 

When we read Philippians 4:4–7 (I hate to break it up and hope you'll take the time to read it all.) we see that the Lord promises to help us do just that: “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:7) Jeremiah 17:9 tells us that our hearts (and minds) are deceitful about everything and beyond cure, meaning only God can make that cure, and He does so as He renews our minds through His Word as we read it each day. In Prov 4:23 and numerous other scriptures we're warned to guard our hearts and minds.  We're told more in many other scriptures, such as: “Discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you.” (Proverbs 2:11) But the bottom line is that we can't do it without God's help. Yes, we have to do our part by being in His word daily, applying it to our lives, and asking for His help in prayer, but the rest, is what God does. 

When we look at Noah and his family, we can see what an amazing job God did in guarding their hearts and minds!  I'm not suggesting that none of them ever sinned during all those years, of course they did!  They were sinful humans just like we are. The difference was that they were saved and God was guarding their hearts and minds to keep them for Himself. 

Ever since I realized this, I've been praying for myself and my loved ones that our amazing God would guard our hearts and minds just like He did for Noah and his family.  I have felt such a peace about it since I started doing this!  With all the evil around us constantly and being shoved into our children's and grandchildren's minds at school and everywhere else, it seemed impossible to have peace that my loved ones would make it through this life without become full of the world's philosophies, and fall for Satan's schemes and traps.  If one didn't get them, there were hundreds more that could. Now I can simply pray that He would guard our minds and hearts so that nothing contrary to His Holy Spirit will rub off on us. That He would prevent the worlds philosophies from corrupting our thoughts, and shield us from our own self centeredness, sin nature, and from our own confused and corrupted thinking. That He would protect us from the corrupt worldview and keep the Truth of His Word in our minds and hearts as He did for Noah and his family.

I just had to share it with you all in the hopes that it would give you the peace of mind that it's given me.

Going Down the Drain?

Since I've been studying the Old Testament a lot lately, I've also been relating what I learn with the times we're now living in as well as with the rapture, tribulation and millennium. I was thinking about creation last night, and how the fall contributed to all that we're experiencing now and wanted to share something with you all that I find really exciting.

I'm sure we're all aware of what evolutionist say about the earth, humans and everything, as we've all been taught it since we were children. I could never accept a lot of it, even before I knew God. It just didn't seem "right" to me. What I'm going to share next, is not exactly stated in the bible, but is extrapolated from what is stated. So it's certainly not gospel truth, but it is quite possible. To me, this makes a whole lot more sense then what the evolutionists say though. I know we talked about one aspect of this on another thread, so some may be familiar to you.

First, just to explain the theory, let me share my notes from a book I have called Tonopah by Christopher A Lane:

Before the fall, Adam and Eve were super extraordinary creatures. They were supremely intelligent, highly advanced, beings that put today's finest scientific minds to shame. Contrary to popular secular thought, they were wise beyond imagination, knowledgeable beyond belief, gifted in understanding the secrets of the universe. Drawing on the full capacity of their complex brains, they were undoubtedly the most brilliant, insightful human beings ever to walk the earth: Godlike in the true sense of the term. Until the fall.

Free will was perhaps their most astonishing trait. God created Adam and Eve with the ability to choose the depth, and quality of their relationship with Him. Unfortunately they chose poorly. Instead of "evolving", many believe that the bible supports an entirely opposite movement: a de-evolution from near perfection to a state of chaos. We see this in the universe itself - the principal of entropy: everything moving from available energy to a state of disorganization. Instead of getting smarter and smarter, becoming more civilized and advanced, mankind is moving backwards, degenerating.

Consider some of the marvels of the ancient world: the great pyramids, the hanging gardens of Babylon, Easter Island.... we can't even figure out how to build these using modern technology. So it's been suggested that aliens from other planets may have helped construct them. But if the theory of de-evolution is true, if ancient man was incredibly advanced rather then primitive....

Adam named and cared for all the animals, so he was apparently quite knowledgeable in the area of veterinary biology. He and Eve took care of the Garden - they must have had a pretty good grasp of animal husbandry and botany. Cain built an entire city. Jubal invented musical instruments, Tubal-Cain invented all manner of bronze and iron tools - and they were starting from scratch. We're talking about a metallurgist ushering in the metal age a few short generations after the creation of the world!

The Fall twisted all of creation: tame creatures became wild; safe, kind beasts became predators; plant eaters began to seek meat. Death entered the system and mankind had to struggle to survive. That was all part of the curse. We're still seeing the results of that today, entire species becoming extinct as the ecosystem sputters and stumbles along, out of control.

Maybe I'm nuts, but that makes a lot of sense to me. I've always felt that mankind was a whole lot smarter then we give him credit to be, back in the beginning. And once sin and death entered the picture, what happened was natural, all that knowledge and intelligence was turned toward evil and so everything became very corrupt in a very short period of time. If you look at the time span between creation and the flood, it's really not all that long, not as long as we've been around since the flood anyway.

So why didn't things get just as bad, just as quickly again? Simply because humans were devolving. By the time the flood was over and they were starting over again, they'd already devolved some so they couldn't have progressed as fast as they did before. Plus, we're told that this time God limited the evil we were able to do and He still does. Even so, one of the very first things to happen once the flood was over, was evil! (Noah got drunk and his son found him naked) Then, also to slow things up, God dispersed people all over the earth instead of allowing them all to be in one big group together. Then He confused the languages so we didn't all speak the same language which further slowed down the progression of evil. So those things and others, helped prevent us from destroying ourselves again quite so quickly, giving God time to call Abraham and begin the line that would ultimately bring Jesus into the world to save us.

Look what's happening now though. Basically, due to technology, (which is not evil in and of itself) we have gotten back the ability to all be together again like we were in the beginning. While we still have nations and we're still spread all over the earth and have different languages, all of that is overcome by technology such as the internet and translation devices etc. Daniel 12:4 tells us that during this time of the end, knowledge will increase and it most certainly has. We haven't gotten smarter, we're still devolving, but we can now share knowledge with each other more then ever, faster then ever, and plot yet more evil.

Think back again to just before the flood and what happened then. We have the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men" getting together and creating a foul race of "giants". This was also during the time that God shows us just how quickly human kind advanced and how very intelligent they were. They most certainly weren't "cavemen." Knowledge was increasing exponentially, and at the same time, so was evil. That's when it got so bad that God decided to destroy it all, even the animals were becoming evil!

Jesus said it would be the same way in our time, the last days, and so it is. Knowledge is increasing exponentially, so much so that encyclopedias are out of date before they can finish printing them, which is why they no longer print them. Knowledge has increased so much that it's impossible for us to keep up with it, even with our technology. And with that knowledge, evil has also increased exponentially as we're all very aware of. Even in the animal kingdom this is true. We see news reports of certain wild and tame animals doing things that were unheard of or very rare before - seeking out, attacking and killing humans, of animals for the very first time (that we know of) having homosexual relations! If you recall, one of the judgments during the tribulation will be animals seeking out, attacking and killing humans, so this is like a mini preview of that judgment.

Now, leaving this a moment, I'd like to go out on a limb with something that came to me recently as I studied. it's about the sons of God and daughters of men. (Gen 6:1-2) Here's a wild idea for you. What if for us, in our time, this is simply showing how the "sons of God", those of us who have been saved and are now children of God, saw the "daughters of men" those who are unsaved, and saw they were "beautiful". In other words we liked what we saw, and "married them" or in other words, yoked ourselves to them - no longer living the way God commands but living like the unsaved do? Isn't this a picture of exactly what's already happened to the majority of the body of Christ? It's a picture of "bad company corrupting good morals, " another thing the Lord warns us about, as well as a picture of what happens when we become "friends with the world" to any degree. It's right after this, in Gen 6:5 that we're told that God sees how great the wickedness on earth had become - like this is the final straw. Could the final straw be that God's people are corrupted or in danger of it? It looks like it just might be so to me.

In Noah's time, God allowed this to continue until at the end only 8 people were saved. Only one man and his family were found to be decent enough that God saved them from the flood. I put it that way because they most certainly weren't perfect.

We've also talked about this, but I think again that this points to the fact that we're going to discover that there's a lot fewer people that are really saved then is normally thought. But, we know for sure that God will indeed take us from this earth before He begins His judgement of it. And we know for sure that while He keeps the body of Christ safe with Him, He will also save a remnant during the tribulation. So we can rejoice in that as well.

One other point I'd like to bring up though and another reason why this resonates with me. Often people wrongly believe that once we're in heaven we will suddenly know all the answers to everything and understand everything. The bible shows this isn't exactly true. What is true is that our minds will no longer be finite and we'll be able to use all of our minds instead of the less then 10% we now use. (which reminds me that even our scientists have discovered that we used to use more of our minds then we do now and that for some reason we've been using less and less as time goes on) Therefore our ability to learn and understand things will be tremendously better then it is now. Better then we can really imagine I suspect. Because of that, things that we "kind of get" but not quite, will become clear to us then, like a veil has been removed from our minds. But, things we never thought to ask about and that actually need some thought and study before understanding, we still won't know. We will have to study them to learn the answers, but once we do, we will certainly be able to learn and understand them. So no, we won't know all things as soon as we get to heaven, but we will have the ability to learn and understand that far surpasses what we can now do or imagine.

I believe that's how Adam and Eve were before the fall - before decay and degeneration and de-evolution set it. After all in Gen 1:26 God tells us that He created mankind to rule over the whole earth and everything in it. He most certainly wouldn't want dummies doing something like that, so to me that says they had to have been very intelligent. Of course many other things in His word point to that as well too. It's exciting to me to know that one day soon we'll be able to use all of our minds again the way the Lord intended us to, without the taint from the Fall.

All of this points again to everything coming full circle and to me shows me yet more of what our Lord meant when He said that these times would be like the days of Noah. What do you think? 

They were supremely intelligent, highly advanced, beings that put today's finest scientific minds to shame. Contrary to popular secular thought, they were wise beyond imagination, knowledgeable beyond belief, gifted in understanding the secrets of the universe. Drawing on the full capacity of their complex brains, they were undoubtedly the most brilliant, insightful human beings ever to walk the earth: Godlike in the true sense of the term. Until the fall.

Every time I consider this, it makes more and more sense to me. God made man in His image and made mankind to be "perfect" in every way. He never gives us a job to do without first giving us the ability to do the job. And He gave them the job of overseeing everything on the earth! Plus, God walked and talked with them every day in the Garden. I would think that would be pretty boring to Him if they were dumb. I think it'd get pretty boring if they were only as intelligent as we are now, actually. But, if they had full use of their brains instead of only using a tiny portion of them like we do, that makes sense then. Even just thinking back a couple thousand years ago when Jesus was here we see a huge difference between what people did then and what they do now with their minds. Back then, Jewish children began memorizing the Torah as soon as they could talk practically so they had it down, word for word by the time they were adults. When the epistles were written, the Christians memorized each one and then sent it on to another church so that church could memorize it. Long before they were put into book form as we have them, the early Christians had memorized every book of the NT verbatim! That's incredible to us, but to them, it wasn't. It was "normal".

On the other end of the spectrum, look at how quickly evil grew too. Because they were so advanced, they were also able to come up with horrible evil. A really stupid person isn't very imaginative and can't generally come up with things that are really evil, but the more intelligent you are, the more evil you can conceive. So even the fact that evil grew as fast as it did, shows their intelligence.

Plus, I'd never really considered or reflected on the fact that the evil contaminated the animals as well as the humans. I knew that sin had corrupted them as well, but just hadn't really thought about it much. But God did say that everything, including the animals were evil by the time of the flood and that's why He wanted to wipe out everything. If they hadn't been evil as well, God could have simply caused every human being to stop breathing and have been done with it. And that brings us to the plants, the vegetation. Even that was corrupted!

Now think of what's going on today. We're seeing more and more allergies to plants and animals, finding more and more plants that are dangerous to us and animals are becoming more dangerous to us as well. Remember the news reports of the little girl and the adult who'd been attacked with a disease that was literally eating their brains??? It was an amoeba!!!

There have been all kinds of weird new diseases caused lately by plants, animals, and who knows what, as well as old ones, so called rare ones, and even ones from third world countries that are now flourishing in civilized countries. With all our knowledge and technology, instead of getting healthier, people are getting sicker and are often told by doctors that they just don't know what's causing their pain or suffering. 

Instead of getting smarter and smarter, becoming more civilized and advanced, mankind is moving backwards, degenerating.

We've talked about this in numerous threads before too. For example, we've often talked about how much smarter children were in previous generations. (kind of like that show, "are you smarter then a 5th grader".) I remember we had a thread in the chat forum years ago that showed either a 4th or 5th grade test that I believe was from the 1950's or so and asked if we could pass it now. None of us could have and none of our kids or grandkids could either!

Now days though instead of realizing just how marvelously we were created to be, most folks would rather believe we used to be apes and aliens came here and did all the neat things we've found from the past.  It gives me a whole new thrill now when I read:

Psalm 139:14 —I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 

What the first Three and a Half years of the Trib will be like

I know some people seem to think that the first half of the Trib will be peaceful but that's simply not biblical.  People generally get that idea from movies and books, but not from the Bible. Think of it this way. I wouldn't even call the way things are now entirely "peaceful" and these things aren't going to get better, they're going to get worse! If nothing else just reading the judgements that are going to happen during this time show it's going to be far from peaceful.  Think about it...between a third and half of the worlds population are going to die during these first 3 and a half years!  And that's AFTER all the people have disappeared from the rapture!  Just realizing that one fact alone should be enough to show that the world is going to be in complete chaos.  If it wasn't, they wouldn't need a "savior"; they wouldn't think they needed the antichrist!  I think another reason that causes some people to think that the first half of the Tribulation will be relatively peaceful is because Jesus called the second half of it the "Great Tribulation". You have to realize why He did that though.  For one thing, the second half will be worse then the first half for everyone, but it will be especially worse for the Jews and that's who Jesus was talking to at that time.  He was letting them know that as bad as the first half is going to be, the second will be even worse.  

Another way you could look at it is this:  Human beings might just be able to survive as a race if we only had to go through the first half of the Tribulation.  I say, "might", because honestly, with all the devastation both supernatural as well as that done by men that the earth itself is going to go through, it's also possible that we could do enough damage even in the first half that could cause enough chain reactions for the earth to be eventually uninhabitable.  But I think it's more likely that we could survive it. But there is no way humans could survive the second half of the Tribulation. If Jesus did not return and make the earth habitable again, all life would soon die off on the earth by the end of the Tribulation.  That's one reason Jesus tells us that no one would survive if the Lord doesn't shorten it. (Matthew 24:22)

The AC will get elected because the people are so afraid, so tired of being afraid and hungry and sick etc that they'll be snatching at straws, they'll be desperate for someone to help them. Of course, we know he's not going to help them, he's only going to make promises to help. The only thing he will do that will make people "think" he's just wonderful and that he CAN help, will be to sign the treaty between Israel and her neighbors. We already know he isn't going to keep that treaty though, and we know he isn't even going to totally enforce it either, even at the beginning. Like I said, that will last only long enough to get him into power.

Let's see what the Bible says will happen during that first half of the trib.

The 7 seals will come first: keep in mind that this is occurring during the FIRST 3 years of the Trib:

Revelation 6:1-17 I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.

When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword. 


During the first part of the Tribulation then, we have the AntiChrist coming on the scene promising peace but giving people war instead.  That's another thing people are often mistaken about.  They think the AC will actually bring peace during the first half, but he won't.  The bible tells us that he lies to the people making them believe that he wants peace and that it's not his fault that the wars break out all over the world.  These wars will affect the entire world, not just parts of it.  Yes, that means even here in the US! No one and no place will be exempt. 

  When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!” 

Now, because of the wars and other problems, we now have famine all over the world.  This is most likely due to the economy failing as well as crops being destroyed by the wars.  The Bible says that the rich people will be OK, but the rest of the world is going to be pretty miserable and hungry.  Hungry, miserable people often start riots, loot stores, and are violent. They rob others to get what they want. (now keep in mind that a huge number of the population has recently disappeared in the rapture, and many of them are in law enforcement agencies. Plus there could be a lot of chaos left from when the rapture happened that will still be a problem.  So now we have a whole lot more crime, plus wars that are quite possibly nuclear, and a lot of hungry, scared, people all over the world, many of which will be the ones behind all the crime, with little to no police available to help stop it all.  Does that sound peaceful to you?  it sure doesn't to me!
 
When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.


Next comes disease and more death.  My guess is that due to the wars obliterating and or poisoning the crops, the animals are going to get sick, possibly rabid and begin attacking people a lot more often then ever before.  Keep in mind too that evil is on the rise.  More and more people will be giving up all restraint and doing anything that pleases them, meaning sin, no matter who it hurts. It will be a time of "anything goes" on the earth. At this point one fourth of the people who were left behind after the rapture will die.  Let's pretend there were only 100,000 people left on the earth after the rapture.  If that were true, then out of that number, 25,000 of them would die!  Now that's not taking into account the number of people who had already died from wars, famine and crime!  What do you think would be a good guess for that number on a world with little police force left?  Let's say 5% of the population which would be another 5,000 people.  So that would leave only 70,000 people left.  The reason I'm using such low numbers is because we can grasp those numbers a lot easier then the actual numbers of the population. So this allows us to at least grasp the huge number of deaths that will be happening.
 
When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed.



And now we come to the martyrs being killed and a huge number of them as well.  Yet more violence.  As you can easily see by now, the world has become a very violent and ugly place to live in.  It's nothing like what we know it as now. Well nothing like what most of us know it as.  Perhaps those people who currently live in places where ISIS is terrorizing and killing so many people can imagine a whole world like that, where there is no safe place to live. 
 
I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The sky receded like a scroll, rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”



Finally, we know that a great earthquake will happen during the first half of the Tribulation as well, which will kill and maim a huge number of the population.  Keep in mind now that none of the other things have stopped happening.  There are still wars, famine, disease, crime, people being killed for their faith in Jesus, and wholesale sin going on constantly.  And we haven't even gotten to any of the Trumpet judgments yet! Scholars differ in just how many of them will happen during the first half of the Tribulation, and a few think they'll all happen in the second half.  So I'm not even going to count any of them, although I do believe that at least the first few of them will happen during the first half of the Tribulation.  So what I'll do is simply list them for you at the end so you can check them out for yourself.

As you can see, during the first 3 and a half years, that's just 42 months, millions of people are going to die! There will be wars, not peace, famine, disease, disasters, unemployment, etc. Food will be scarce and so will money.  People will be living in fear - fear that someone will rob them or kill them, or rape them or beat them. Domestic violence and crime will rise tremendously, as will riots and looting, in part because of all the stress.. This doesn't sound peaceful to me at all! The whole earth will be in utter chaos! I think I can honestly say that the only people on the earth who could be said to be "comfortable" would be those foolish souls who sell out to the Antichrist and work directly for him, staying near him all the time.  While they wouldn't be immune to the judgments, they'd have more money and be part of the rich who would at least still be eating and have a decent roof over their heads, if nothing else.

Remember what happened when Rome fell?  The same kind of things only in smaller measure, just like what's happening now really.  What did Rome do to try to control the masses?  They provided them with "entertainment".  Entertainment that was full of death in the Colosseum. They made it easier for the people to get booze and drugs, and passed laws making it legal for homosexuals to marry.  Homosexuality became the "in" thing after awhile.  Women's lib was introduced as was abortion.  Sounds a lot like us doesn't it?  I've always believed that what happened to Rome was a picture of what was going to happen not just to the US, but ultimately to the world. .

Going back to the Judgements though, if you start at the beginning, each judgment adds to the next and is carried over; in other words, things get progressively worse. How can all of these things have happened and yet everyone is still "comfortable". It simply can't be! People are falling for fantasy rather then reality in this. I think the reason for that is that it's so hard for us to imagine the world being that bad.  We think things are horrible now, but really, compared to the way they'll be then, they're not at all.   Think for a moment about what God said about the people on earth during Noah's time.  He said that every single thought and feeling they had was evil.  Not "most of them", but ALL of them.  Not most of the people, but "all of them" except for Noah and his family.  That's how it will be after the rapture.  All of their thoughts and desires will be evil, except for those of the people who are saved or are being saved. .

The first 3 and a half years won't be as bad as the last 3 and a half but that doesn't mean that people will be comfortable. One reason it will be even worse in the last half of the trib is because the people will still be dealing with the effect all of the previous judgments have had on them as well as with the next new judgments. Plus you have to take into account how things are right this minute. Even now with the problems with the economy, and with the tension in the mid east, and the current wars, and the threats of more wars, the unemployment etc. most of the people are not as "comfortable" as they were before and we know from the financial advisers and well as from the bible that these things are going to get worse, not better. Remember, that one of the things that will happen is the economy will continue to get much worse.  The rich will get richer and the middle class will become the new poor (just like is already beginning to happen) and the poor will get even poorer.  But even the rich won't be living in peace.  They're going to need that wine and booze they can afford to buy, to calm their nerves, because they'll be in constant fear; fear for their lives and fear that their money will be stolen or lost and they'll become one of the poor. 
  
So knowing how things are now and having read some of what is going to happen in the first half of the Trib, there is simply no way that people are going to be at peace and nice and comfy during the first half of it. It's not a pretty picture and certainly not something comfortable to think about, but if we tell people the Truth about it, perhaps then it will be enough to plant some seeds about salvation, and perhaps, if we face the truth about it, it will give us the courage to actually speak up to people who need to hear about Jesus.  

Finally, here are the Trumpet judgments, some or all of which may also happen during the first half of the tribulation. 

Revelation 7:1-4 After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree. Then I saw another angel coming up from the east, having the seal of the living God. He called out in a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm the land and the sea: “Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel.

Revelation 8:1 When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.
 
Revelation 8:7-12 The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down upon the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up.

The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.

The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water— the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.

The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night.

Revelation 9:1-6 The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. And out of the smoke locusts came down upon the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were not given power to kill them, but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes a man. During those days men will seek death, but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.
 
Revelation 9:13-19 The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the horns of the golden altar that is before God. It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. The number of the mounted troops was two hundred million. I heard their number. The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur. A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths. The power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails were like snakes, having heads with which they inflict injury