Maker's Mark: Time Expired, Part 3.1

At the risk of beating this one to death, there are a few critically important clues that I neglected to include in Part I, Part II or Part III of this series that both lend it credence and expand what I believe to be prophetically useful information our modern eyes have grown blind to seeing.

(There will not, I repeat, NOT be a Part IV!!)    

I drove by the billboard again the other day. Unlike “license plate eschatology”, (which can help confirm, on a very personal level, other urgings and signs from the Holy Spirit) the board is large and prominently placed. Anyone leaving the city of Boston via this route (and it is a major artery) could not possibly miss it.

For reasons I’ll lay out below (and in addition to the fact that the Bible is readily available to anyone in America who cares to read it) that leaves those who view this billboard without excuse.

They cannot say, when it becomes clear to all, very soon, that we have come under judgment, that they were not warned, only that they were disinclined to credit the knowledge that would have enabled them to SEE it as a warning. It is just one among many signs of this type and a big part of the reason I blog at all in this vein.

We are inclined, in this age (and in other ages, in some churches) to make excuses for Biblical illiteracy. Despite the occasional flourish of hyperlinks to Greek and Hebrew root-word references that might give one an impression to the contrary, I am hardly a Bible scholar. I was one of those Biblical illiterates until the fall of 2001 when I began reading it seriously without scoffing while doing so. I still have lots of catching up to do in that vein after 30 years in the secular wilderness.

Yet the more I’ve thought about this, the more I’ve become convinced that, in another era (say, Jonathan Edwards’ time, here in New England) the observation that gave rise to this series would not have been thought “weird” or “out there” at all.

Drawing a connection between this secular edifice, the “Maker” of Genesis, the “Mark” of Cain and the cross, and the expiration of all time and all history in Revelation would have been one of the most ordinary and obvious things to do with a billboard like this were it to have been presented to the average church-goer just five generations ago — and maybe not even that much.

Going further, I don’t think it a stretch to assert that anyone living in this part of the world 200-300 years ago, including even closet secularists, Deists and Unitarians would have seen this in the context I’ve seen it right off the bat. One can imagine it, plopped down in the midst of Enfield, Connecticut in the 1740s as a kind of Rorshach test for folks leaving an Edwards sermon. 90% of them would “get it” immediately.

Thus how can we say that God is not speaking through such things now if, in that time and that place, it would have been regarded as a clear and powerful sign? Does his message change? No. Only we do, as our vision dims to the signs throughout His Creation and the ample clues He has left that — in addition to the Bible, which is more than enough — leave even the illiterate among us without excuse. The cacophonous volume of relativistic culture has been turned up to eleven and beyond, drowning out the quiet whispers that used to steer our great-grandparents’ lives with things like this as a matter of course.

On my second pass Wednesday afternoon, I observed that the red half-moon on the sign (meant to resemble a parking meter) sticks up above the top of the rectangular billboard in roughly the shape of the BHO campaign logo… except this one is bright blood red instead of white. (The red horse of the apocalypse signals war. Though I hate to use racial designations, it is a fact that BHO “rode in” on the white horse of the white vote inclined to excuse the many gaps in his character because of his skin color. Red follows, then black (famine) then ‘chloros’ — death.)

One of the pictures I collected but forgot to post was this one, below. Yes, those are the Twin Towers.

It appears to be from an older advertising campaign for the brand. (This other site has done a yeoman’s job of cataloguing “pre-visions” of 9-11. They confirm the image, dating it to May, 2000 and whether that is precise or not, it must be pre-9-11, for who in their right mind would do such a thing since?)

I still maintain that those who end up being the conveyors of such prophecies are unaware of their role, however if they “predicted” the last one…

I’ll let you finish the thought. To be fair though, the same ad campaign appears to “predict” a debacle in Louisville, Kentucky…

Hmm… Back to the Big Brown meme? (The Kentucky Derby, where he failed in spectacular fashion is contested there.) I’ll confess that one’s a stretch…

Then there is this, the Maker’s Mark seal:

In terms of the surface meaning, the ‘S’ stands for the Samuels’ family — the originators of the brand. The five-pointed star represents “Star Hill” where their distillery is situated. And the IV (Roman numeral four) represents the number of generations they thought had passed since the family began distilling. (It was actually six, but they were stuck with the logo by then.)

With all of that symbolism, it would not be hard to run off in any number of different directions, e.g., Samuel as powerful prophet, pentagram on a hill = occult, seals on covenants, messages and scrolls, and all the stuff I’ve said before about the number four. I’ll assume anyone inclined to do so can run down those possibilities (or non-possibilities) on their own, as the Spirit leads. If you find something, please share.

I was led in s slightly different direction. I’m not saying it’s the right one, but it is at least consistent with the previous themes that are clearly present in this series. What direction is that? WHEAT. (See Part II.) When you pronounce the letters on the seal (SIV) as if they were a word, what does it sound like? Yes, that’s right: sieve. One ‘sieves’ or sifts grain, e.g., wheat. Whether you prefer KJV or ESV, that word shows up exactly twice in scripture in the same two passages. I’ll use the ESV:

Isaiah 30:27-30 — “27 Behold, the name of the LORD comes from afar, burning with his anger, and in thick rising smoke; his lips are full of fury, and his tongue is like a devouring fire; 28 his breath is like an overflowing stream that reaches up to the neck; to sift the nations with the SIEVE of destruction, and to place on the jaws of the peoples a bridle that leads astray. 29 You shall have a song as in the night when a holy feast is kept, and gladness of heart, as when one sets out to the sound of the flute to go to the mountain of the LORD, to the Rock of Israel. 30 And the LORD will cause his majestic voice to be heard and the descending blow of his arm to be seen, in furious anger and a flame of devouring fire, with a cloudburst and storm and hailstones.”

Amos 9:8-10* — “Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from the surface of the ground, except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,” declares the LORD. 9 “For behold, I will command, and shake the house of Israel among all the nations as one shakes with a SIEVE, but no pebble shall fall to the earth. 10 All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, who say, ‘Disaster shall not overtake or meet us.’”

Did that get your attention? Yeah, me too. I urge you to re-read both passages slowly in light of the rest of what I’ve laid out in this series. Though the chances of landing on a judgment-related passage in the Bible are reasonably high, I know of few that are as eerily and consistently specific to the rest of the themes in this series, and to what time it appears to be as these two are.

*Sieve appears in v9 of Amos 9. Nine is the scriptural number of judgment.

The root word in Amos (kev·ä·rä’) is unique in scripture. That nearly always implies special significance. The root word in Isaiah (nä·fä’) connotes not only winnowing, but winnowing from (or on) a lofty height, e.g. as on the threshing floors of ancient Israel and particularly the one David purchased in Jerusalem but also, obviously winnowing by God Himself. Interesting… It is used precisely four times, the first two coming in the book of Joshua, in one instance rendered as “coast” and another as “border”.

Hmm… what countries can you think of that has mostly coastline for border? How about the subset that’s overdue for sieving, sifting and judgment from a lofty place? (I suspect that eliminates Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Vanuatu and Fiji, among others…)

Finally, as we touched on in each of the three previous posts in this series, the “Maker’s Mark” we’re dealing with prophetically here begins with the Mark of Cain, which in turn traces back to the bad seed planted in the minds and DNA of man by the serpent in the Garden. (For a well-researched, mature, though controversial take on where and how the DNA part of that bad seed may have been planted, see Bob Schlenker’s three-part series on Cain’s paternity which he posted last month.)

Because we’re therefore dealing with seeds, and specifically eggs, I found this image, apparently from yet another Maker’s Mark (Christmas-time) ad campaign at least thought-provoking:

And finally, speaking of Cain, note what pops up as an animation when one clicks on the “rebel” in the kitchen on the entertainment portion of the Maker’s Mark website:

Note the four bullet holes (are we seeing a theme here?) In case you can’t read the text on the scroll that emerges from the gun fired by a woman (Eve, much?):

We… have a history of being wanted… the rebel gene does tend to run in the… family… [e.g.] our not-too-distant relative Jesse James… Some tend to remember him for all that mischief he got into. But not us. We prefer to look at him as someone who gathered a pretty loyal following. And we can relate to that…

It’s clever marketing copy, with many double-entendres. I must reiterate: I am NOT in any way suggesting the writers were aware of the deeper meanings I’m outlining in this series. Yet if one reads the prophetic symbolism that runs deep and wide throughout the brand’s marketing campaign, and which appears to have done so for at least a decade — the billboard being only the most recent example — it’s hard not to read this screen and think of Cain.

Like Jesse James, the bad-seed (both DNA and ideas) led him to go in opposition to the law (literally, “outlaw”) and to take that all the way to murder. Soft terms like mischief-maker and rebel may sound positive, even sexy to our modern ears, but they are, at their root, efforts to obscure and gloss over the truth.

I promised there would be no Part IV. I hope also not to have to go to 3.2.

Have a good weekend, everyone. God bless.

UPDATE: Shackleton’s Whisky Dug Up in Antarctica

“…three crates of Scotch whisky and two crates of brandy left beneath the floorboards of a hut by the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton in 1909, at the end of a failed expedition to the South Pole, have been unearthed by a team from the Antarctic Heritage Trust.”

Hmm… 101 years, 3 crates, a guy who symbolically represents the absolute pinnacle of ENDURANCE and leadership and who ensured none were lost…

(H/T: Mrs. Ultraguy)

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