The Day of the Lord
There is a very important concept we all need to understand.
When we look at all the various prophecies like Stan has with prophecy club and we try and put them all together and talk about this is first and then this and then this, we need to understand this concept.
In Geology this is called the "principle of cross cutting relationships" but it definitely applies to Biblical prophecy.
The theory says if I cut a piece of paper with a scissor, and then cut the paper again, cutting through what was previously cut I can determine the relative order of the cuts. Any cut that is cut by another cut must have happened first.
So let's apply this to the prophecies. We can argue that a famine would take place after Noah's flood because at the time they were "eating and drinking". Likewise if Israel is attacked and the US sends armies to defend them, then we can argue that takes place before Armageddon because at Armageddon all the nations fight against Israel.
So we can use common sense to put a number of different prophecies in order of occurrence. The US is the great babylon and she will be destroyed in one hour, that would come after sending troops to Israel but before Armageddon. It would also take place prior to the famine, therefore the famine is after we send troops to help Israel fight.
But here is the second point. We can see things like this and think it will take a decade, or some other reasonable number of years. So now consider a hammer hitting a pane of glass lying on a granite countertop. It smashes and cracks into a thousand pieces with cracks cutting each other. One massive event can cause catastrophic damage in what might look like decades but in reality is one hour.
A massive earthquake that splits the US into three pieces and is the result of a meteor and large tsunami hitting the east coast would be so devastating to the US you would get the collapse of the US dollar and worldwide famine in an instant. Instantly this worldwide Islamic Caliphate working with Russia would become the dominant military power. Europe would immediately be subject to them. One really great earthquake can change everything in an instant. You can look at all the changes and think it takes ten years but in reality it takes one hour.
The term "the day of the Lord" refers to a seven year period of judgment, but perhaps it also refers to one really "great and awesome day" that propels us into this seven year period. Imagine that at the same "day" as this earthquake we also have the rapture! This would not just impact one world government and geopolitical alignment, it would also cause the antichrist to be revealed, the chaos could create a desperate need for the mark of the beast to bring order and stability and to justify draconian measures. The rapture will hit this world like that hammer hitting the pane of glass.
