Jack W. Hayford - E-Quake: A New Approach to Understanding the End Times Mysteries in the Book of Revelation

E QUAKE

A NEW APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING
THE END TIME MYSTERIES
IN THE BOOK OF REVELATION

JACK HAYFORD

Copyright 1999 by Jack W. Hayford

All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this book, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Unless otherwise noted Scripture quotations are from THE NEW KING JAMES VERSION. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Publishers.

Scripture quotations noted The Message are from The Message: The NewTestament in Contemporary English. Copyright 1993 by Eugene H. Peterson.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hayford, Jack W.

E quake : a new approach to understanding the end time mysteries in the book of Revelation / Jack Hayford.
p. cm.

ISBN 0-7852-7472-3 (pbk.)

1. Bible. N.T. RevelationCriticism, interpretation, etc.
I. Title.
BS2825.2.H38 1999
228.06dc21

99-15325
CIP

Printed in the United States of America.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 QPV 04 03 02 01 00 99

CONTENTS

REVELATIONS OF MY OWN

As you open this small book of mine, let me disclose three things.

First, I never planned and didnt want to write a book on the book of Revelation. Then, I had to. I didnt want to because I was certain I would be criticized for refusing to take the usual party line on the subject of Bible prophecyI mean, the line of pretended knowingness, as though traditional charts and interpretations are the last word on this last book of the Bible. They arent, of course. But that doesnt mean I am not certain to disappoint people who find Ive taken a different approach. Naturally, Im not sorry for what Im offering here, but I didnt want to labor with inevitable criticism... until.

Until, second, I was urged over and over, Pastor Jack, this has to be put on paper for people who want something practical and livable out of Revelations pages. Of course! Dont we all?! And frankly, I dont think Jesus ever intended His Revelation to the Church to be otherwise. I cant imagine Him giving us something for the mere cultivation or speculation or nurturing of sensationalized interpretations. Accordingly, I sought and found a nourishing,works-in-your-life approach, and Ive tried to put it here clearly. But theres one more thinga third revelation I must disclose.

The publisher wouldnt let me write it my way.

Let me be clear, Im not complaining, but you deserve to know this because it drastically affects the form in which you are receiving this book. My friend at Thomas Nelson Publishers, Victor Oliver, who has been such a great help and encouragement in this project, said, Jack, I dont want you to write this like you do most of your books. They are fine, but you tend to write to a different audience from the one you preach to every week. By the time you finish editing your books, they may be excellent but they are too academic. I want you to let us publish E Quake right from the transcripts of your Sunday sermons! He insisted on this.

So here you are. With very limited editing and far less exactitude than I would prefer, I am submitting this book with a revelation of a residual fear: Im afraid Im about to discover people will like this simpler form more than my more labored efforts an awkward discovery when youre into your thirty-fifth book!

In any case, please know my gratitude for being able to present this to you in any form whatsoever. I trust this approach, in style as well as content, will be as refreshing as it was in the fall of 1998 when God touched multitudes, in my flock as well as over the media, as I presented these less than perfect studies. (If they seem too colloquial at points, you might revert to one of my earlier tomes!)

Should you desire deeper development of the themes opened up here, I have done far more elaborate chapter-by-chapter cover-ages at other times. Our audiocassette ministry at Living Way (818-779-8000) can service you with those, as well as accompanying study outlines, if you wish.

May our Resurrected, Reigning, and Soon-Coming Savior enrich your heart and life as you and I traverse these pages together.

Sincerely, in Jesus name,

Jack Hayford
Pastor, The Church on the Way
President, The Kings Seminary
14300 Sherman Way
Van Nuys, California 91405

1
THE
BIG
ONE

It was 4:30 A.M. as I slipped back under the covers. I turned over to note that just as I had returned from the bathroom, Anna had risen to make an early-morning visit. I plumped my pillow in the darknessa tiny night-light providing the only glimmer in the roomthen came the explosion.

Indescribable fury! A cataclysmic roar!

Sounds of shattering glass crashing everywhere in the house. Furniture toppling in the room and the sounds of destruction thundering through the whole house.

Horrendous helplessness!

Without there having been the slightest rumble of warning in advance, the room was instantly and powerfully being shaken with a violence that threw me across the bed, forcing me to spin sideways, pushing my body against the headboard. I had no capacity for movement against the seismic forces being unleashed!

Unable to move toward the bathroom where my wife was, I tried to call to herscreaming her name above the grinding shriek of subterranean tides of rock at war with one another. ANNA! ANNA! I didnt know it, but she had been smashed facedown by an irresistible hand as she had started back to bed, and she was also screaming my name. Neither of us could hear the other above the roar, even though we were only fifteen feet apart.

Time seemed suspended. As the incredibly violent shaking continued, I cried out a prayer, Father, sustain us, please! Sustain us by Your strong hand. My mind inquired, Is this theEnd? It was no melodramatic thought: anyone who had experienced other southern California earthquakes knew the difference. This was in a category apart!

The initial shock was less than one minute long, but that seemingly eternal instant emanated shock waves from twelve miles below the floor of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, tearing buildings as if they were paper, splitting freeways as if they were toys, and it became the most expensive natural disasterin American history. Further, the $50 billion expended in the aftermath of the upheaval was nothing in comparison to the agonizing pain in the loss of human life, the thousands injured amid falling debris, flying furniture, and shards of glass.

From Fillmore on the north (fifty miles from downtown) to Anaheim on the south (where the big A at Angels Stadium crashed to the ground nearly fifty miles from the epicenter), the earth shook, split, and thundered. The Los Angeles Coliseum was riddled and rubbled, requiring $33 million in repairs before the fall football season that year.

It was January 17, 19944:31 A.M.the day of the Northridge earthquake.

BEEN THEREDONE THAT

It wasnt as if it was my first ride on a tectonic roller coaster. In February 1971less than two years after our family had moved to the San Fernando Valleya 6.4 magnitude quake had broken the morning stillness at six oclock. I got the worst floor burns since my college basketball days as I tried to crawl down the hall to our childrens bedroom while the house shook back and forth beneath me as though giant hands were shaking me like dice and about to throw me into the air. More than sixty people were killed in that quake, including scores dead when a hospital in Sylmar collapseda six-story-high wall simply disappearing.