The Bible tells us that during the Great Tribulation every one on earth will need to have a mark on their arm or forehead in order to buy or sell anything.  You won't be able to use cash...so it will be a cashless system.

Today we are the first generation to have the technology available to make that 2000 year old prophecy come to fruition.

Negative interest rates will play a big part in bringing it on, because when people start pulling their cash to store in their safes rather than pay the bank to hold it....the Central Banks would risk losing control of monetary policy so will have to do away with cash.  This is already happening in Japan.

And finally, it will be argued that cash is bad for society because it is expensive to print, expensive to transport, spreads germs all over the world on dirty paper and is always used to pay for crime, drugs, sex slaves and everything else criminal.

Today we find this article in the Wall Street Journal.

The Sinister Side of Cash

Paper money fuels corruption, terrorism, tax evasion and illegal immigration—so the U.S. should get rid of the $100 bill and other large notes

When I tell people that I have been doing research on why the government should drastically scale back the circulation of cash—paper currency—the most common initial reaction is bewilderment. Why should anyone care about such a mundane topic? But paper currency lies at the heart of some of today’s most intractable public-finance and monetary problems. Getting rid of most of it—that is, moving to a society where cash is used less frequently and mainly for small transactions—could be a big help.

There is little debate among law-enforcement agencies that paper currency, especially large notes such as the U.S. $100 bill, facilitates crime: racketeering, extortion, money laundering, drug and human trafficking, the corruption of public officials, not to mention terrorism. There are substitutes for cash—cryptocurrencies, uncut diamonds, gold coins, prepaid cards—but for many kinds of criminal transactions, cash is still king. It delivers absolute anonymity, portability, liquidity and near-universal acceptance. It is no accident that whenever there is a big-time drug bust, the authorities typically find wads of cash.

Cash is also deeply implicated in tax evasion, which costs the federal government some $500 billion a year in revenue. According to the Internal Revenue Service, a lot of the action is concentrated in small cash-intensive businesses, where it is difficult to verify sales and the self-reporting of income. By contrast, businesses that take payments mostly by check, bank card or electronic transfer know that it is much easier for tax authorities to catch them dissembling. Though the data are much thinner for state and local governments, they too surely lose big-time from tax evasion, perhaps as much as $200 billion a year.

To be clear, I am proposing a “less-cash” society, not a cashless one, at least for the foreseeable future. The first stage of the transition would involve very gradually phasing out large denomination bills that constitute the bulk of the currency supply. Of the more than $4,200 in cash that is circulating outside financial institutions for every man, woman and child in the U.S., almost 80% of it is in $100 bills. In turn, $50 and $20 bills would also be phased out, though $10s, $5s and $1s would be kept indefinitely. Today these smaller bills constitute just 3% of the value of the currency supply.

The point of getting rid of big bills is to make it harder to carry and store large amounts. A million dollars in $100 bills weighs approximately 22 pounds and can fit comfortably into a large shopping bag. With $10 bills, it isn’t so easy. Think of lugging around 220 pounds in a giant chest. Hoarders and tax evaders would find small notes proportionately costlier to count, verify, handle and store. The use of cash could be further discouraged by putting restrictions on the maximum size of cash payments allowed in retail sales.

Here;  http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-sinister-side-of-cash-1472137692

Now here is the exciting part and also the good news!!....Jesus told John in Revelation that the final cashless society will fall under the control of the Antichrist DURING the Great Tribulation.  So if we can see this clear sign today of something that will happen during the Great Tribulation...and Jesus comes and calls His bride to meet him in the clouds AT LEAST 7 YEARS EARLIER....how much closer are we to hearing that trumpet blow and the voice of the archangel?

Hat tip to Tim H.

Pew: America is Giving Up On God

This news from Pew Research should be troubling to us all...but not surprising.

Pew: Americans giving up on God, miracles

Half of Americans who have left their church no longer believe in God, leading a surge of nearly one quarter of the nation who have no affiliation with any religion, according to a new survey.

Pew Research Center said Wednesday that 49 percent of what they term "nones" left their church and religion because they "don't believe." Another 20 percent said they don't like organized religion. Other reasons included "common sense" and a lack of belief in miracles.

The survey is the latest from Pew that demonstrates a growing trend in America: more and more people are junking religion and many are giving up on God.

Pew interviewed several respondents to try and find a reason. Pew Said for example:

"About half of current religious 'nones' who were raised in a religion (49%) indicate that a lack of belief led them to move away from religion. This includes many respondents who mention 'science' as the reason they do not believe in religious teachings, including one who said 'I'm a scientist now, and I don't believe in miracles.' Others reference 'common sense,' 'logic' or a 'lack of evidence' – or simply say they do not believe in God."

Here;  http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/pew-huge-surge-in-americans-who-no-longer-believe-in-god-miracles/article/2600066

The Bible says in Psalms 33:12;
Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people he chose for his inheritance.

Believe me and believe God....it will NOT GO WELL for America as we head down the path of godlessness.  If this trend continues, we can expect to see more murder, more lawlessness, more abortion, more fornication, more perversion, more natural disasters, more financial calamity, more suicide, more hopelessness.

It's just what happens when the majority of citizens reject their Creator and refuse to abide by His Word and a healthy FEAR OF THE LORD.

Gay People Are Not "Born That Way"

It looks like some new science is coming forward claiming that gay people, bi-people, transgender people, queer people, etc...are NOT BORN THAT WAY.

A cross-discipline study has challenged the belief that human sexuality and gender identity are determined by biology and remain fixed, saying that there is no scientific proof of this. The study cautioned against drastic medical treatment for transgender children.

The notion that sexual orientation is predetermined by biology is an important part of the current LGBT discourse. If a person has no choice over whether to be gay or not, society cannot demand that he or she be straight, so the argument goes.

But regardless of its political worth, the “born this way” paradigm is not backed up by sufficient scientific data, according to a new paper published in the autumn issue of the New Atlantis, a journal focusing on political, societal and ethical ramifications of technological advances.

The study does not claim that being gay is a choice, merely that stating the opposite may be wrong.

The 144-page paper was written by Dr. Lawrence S. Mayer, an epidemiologist and biostatistician also trained in psychiatry, who is currently a scholar in residence at the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and Dr. Paul R. McHugh, a renowned psychiatrist, researcher, and educator and former chief of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The paper’s three parts focus on sexual orientation, links between sexuality and mental health, and gender identity.

Drawing on studies in fields varying from neurobiology to social sciences, the authors wrote that “The understanding of sexual orientation as an innate, biologically fixed property of human beings – the idea that people are ‘born that way’ – is not supported by scientific evidence.”

The term ‘sexual orientation’ itself is ambiguous and is used to describe attraction, behavior or identity by different researchers. Sometimes it refers to things such as belonging to a certain community or having certain fantasies.

“It is important, then, that researchers are clear about which of these domains are being studied, and that we keep in mind the researchers’ specified definitions when we interpret their findings,” the paper said.

There are biological factors associated with sexual behavior, the paper acknowledges, but there are no compelling “causal biological explanations for human sexual orientation.” Differences in the brain structures of gay and straight individuals identified by researchers are not necessarily innate and may be the result of environmental or psychological factors.

“The strongest statement that science offers to explain sexual orientation is that some biological factors appear, to an unknown extent, to predispose some individuals to a non-heterosexual orientation,” the paper said.

LGBT individuals are statistically at greater risk of having mental health problems than the general population, the authors say. As a more dramatic example, “the rate of lifetime suicide attempts across all ages of transgender individuals is estimated at 41 percent, compared to under 5 percent in the overall US population.”

https://www.rt.com/news/356848-study-sexual-orientation-fixed/

Ouch!!  What if the very scientists the LGBT community had hoped would help their cause actually come up with data that works against them?  I'm going to guess those scientists will soon get death threats and feces thrown at them.

The Prince of this World has gotten his agenda of same-sex marriage to become the law of the land. Soon he will be working on polygamy, decriminalizing sex with children and legitimizing sex with animals...and you can bet HE WON'T WANT any scientists slowing down that agenda by saying gays aren't born that way.

Humans have a bend towards perversion.  Some people struggle with fornication, some with adultery, some of same-sex attraction...but it all falls outside of God's plan so it is ALL SIN!!  Just because everyone WANTS to do it doesn't make it right in God's eyes.

If you look statistically at the folks who live perverted lifestyles, it becomes obvious in a hurry that they are "receiving in themselves the due penalty" of their perversion.

No, God is Not Transgender

Just when you think things can't get any more bizarre...we find some folks published in the NEW YORK TIMES who are trying to make God into a transgender entity.

In what has to be a new low for the New York Times, the Gray Lady (or should we now say the Bearded Lady?) has published an op-ed piece titled “Is God Transgender?” by a New York rabbi named Mark Sameth. Cousin to a man who “transitioned to a woman” in the 1970s, Sameth contends that “the Hebrew Bible, when read in its original language, offers a highly elastic view of gender.” He marshals many purported examples of gender fluidity in the Hebrew scriptures, in order to argue that religion should not be put in service of “social prejudices” against transgendering. But his treatment of the Bible amounts to propaganda, not scholarship.

Proposing that the God of Israel was worshipped originally as “a dual-gendered deity,” the rabbi asserts, untenably, that the etymological derivation of Yahweh is “He/She” (HUHI). His argument requires that the Tetragrammaton be read, not from right to left (as Hebrew always is), but from left to right:

The four-Hebrew-letter name of God, which scholars refer to as the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, was probably not pronounced “Jehovah” or “Yahweh,” as some have guessed. The Israelite priests would have read the letters in reverse as Hu/Hi—in other words, the hidden name of God was Hebrew for “He/She.”

Similar fallacies proliferate. Sameth writes that “Genesis 24:16 refers to Rebecca as a ‘young man.’” On the contrary: Here and elsewhere where the masculine/generic noun na'ar is used (of Dinah in Gen 34:3, 12; of young women in the legal texts of Deut 22:15-16, 21, 23-29) the context makes quite clear that no ambiguity of gender is implied by the non-use of the feminine na’arah. This instance constitutes either a generic usage (like Greek pais “child” for both male and female) or an orthographic variation in which the use of the final –h to indicate a feminine “a” is optional.

Again, Sameth claims: “In Genesis 9:21, after the flood, Noah repairs to ‘her’ tent.” The use of the suffix –h (usually feminine) with reference to men is common enough in the Hebrew Bible (it is used some fifty-five times) and associated only with a handful of specific words (such as the word for tent)—suggesting not “gender fluidity” but orthographic variations. Outside the Noah-Ham episode (which likely has to do with Ham emasculating his drunken father), the contexts for these other occurrences suggest no ambiguity of gender (e.g., of Abraham pitching his tent in Gen 12:8 and 13:3; and Jacob doing the same in Gen 35:21). By the rabbi's reasoning, half of the protagonists of the Hebrew Bible were presented by biblical authors as candidates for transgender surgery.

Sameth’s propagandistic reasoning goes back to the very beginning. The image of the first human in Genesis 2, who is either male with a female element or sexually undifferentiated (the adam or earthling), from whom God then extracts a part to form woman, is no endorsement of attempts to erase one's birth sex in order to transition to the opposite sex. Sameth's statement that “Genesis 1:27 refers to Adam as ‘them’” is true, but Sameth overlooks the fact that “Adam” is here not a proper name but a description of “the human” or “humankind”: “God created the adam in his image.” Genesis 1:27 goes on to say, “male and female he (God) created them,” which is simply to acknowledge what Sameth denies: the significance of sexual differentiation for humanity.

Sameth opines that in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, “well-expressed gender fluidity was the mark of a civilized person,” and “the gods were thought of as gender-fluid.” In point of fact, there were many strictures against “gender fluidity” in the ancient Near East (e.g., men who assumed the role of women were generally denigrated). That opposition was ratcheted up in Israel, where any toleration of transgenderism was viewed as a mark of infidelity to Yahweh and an idolatrous concession to pagan religion.

Sameth has based his arguments on his left-of-center sex ideology, and not at all on a credible historical reading of the biblical text in context. His Times op-ed piece is historical revisionism at its worst.

Here;  https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2016/08/no-god-isnt-transgender

Obviously, we can't really fathom who, what or how God really is except for what we can read in His Word and what we can learn from His Son and what we can be taught by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.

But here is what we do know....Jesus ALWAYS referred to God the Father as HIS FATHER!!!  Jesus taught us to pray, OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HEAVEN!!  Jesus taught us that our God and His father was HIS FATHER using a masculine term.

But the liberals and their gay agenda will have nothing more to do with those facts.  They don't want to believe the truth and they want to believe the lie.  Simply more evidence of the powerful delusion that must be on its way and is being foreshadowed as we type.

2 Thessalonians 2
11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie

Russia, Turkey and Iran Show Up Together in Another Headline

Ezekiel 38 clearly tells of a time in the very last days when a military coalition will rise up with an intent of destroying Israel.

The coalition is led by Russia and joined by Iran and Turkey.

Now for the first time in human history this unholy union seems to be coming together.

We find this today in the Wall Street Journal mentioning the 'budding alliance of Russia, Iran and Turkey.

The New Dictators’ Club
An echo of the 1930s in the budding alliance of Russia, Iran, Turkey and China.

In the fall of 1940 the governments of Japan, Italy and Germany—bitter enemies in World War I—signed the Tripartite Pact, pledging mutual support to “establish and maintain a new order of things” in Europe and Asia. Within five years, 70 million people would be killed in the effort to build, and then destroy, that new order.

The Pact was the culminating act in a series of nonaggression, friendship and neutrality treaties signed by the dictatorships of the day, sometimes to deceive anxious democracies but more often to divvy up the anticipated spoils of conquest. So it’s worth noting our new era of cooperation between dictatorships—and to think about where it could lead.

The era began in July 2015, when Iran’s Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani paid a visit to Moscow to propose a plan to save Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria from collapse. Iran and Russia are not natural allies, even if they have a common client in Damascus. Iranians have bitter memories of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, and the Kremlin has never been fond of Islamists, even of the Shiite variety.


But what tipped the scales in favor of a joint operation was a shared desire to humiliate the U.S. and kick it out of the Middle East. “America’s long-term scheme for the region is detrimental to all nations and countries, particularly Iran and Russia, and it should be thwarted through vigilance and closer interaction,” Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei told Vladimir Putin during the Russian’s visit to Tehran last November.

Since then, Tehran has agreed to purchase $8 billion in top-shelf Russian weapons and is seeking Moscow’s help to build another 10 nuclear reactors—useful reminders of how the mullahs are spending their sanctions-relief windfall. The two countries have also conducted joint naval exercises in the Caspian Sea. Just last week Russia used Iranian air bases (a little too publicly for Tehran’s taste) to conduct bombing raids on Syria.


All this is happening as the nuclear deal was supposed to be nudging Iran in a more pro-American direction. It’s also happening as Moscow and Ankara are moving toward rapprochement and even a possible alliance, less than a year after the Turks shot down a Russian jet. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim allowed last week that Mr. Assad will remain in power for the foreseeable future, and Russian media outlets are touting the possibility that Russian jets might use the air base at Incirlik to bomb targets in Syria. That all but presumes U.S. withdrawal.

Would Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan forfeit a U.S. alliance for the sake of a condominium with Russia, his country’s historic enemy? The real marvel is that it hasn’t happened already. Washington first proved useless to Ankara by failing to depose Mr. Assad. It’s again proving useless by failing to destroy Islamic State.

Barack Obama went out of his way to court Mr. Erdogan in his first term, but strongmen always have an instinctive contempt for feckless moralists. There’s a reason Turkish newspapers—all of them organs of the state—are whipping Turks into an anti-American frenzy with allegations that retired American generals were behind July’s failed coup. Mr. Erdogan is rapidly Iranianizing his regime on the Khomeini model. Turning the U.S. into a Great Satan is a necessary part of the process.

Then there’s China. On Monday, a Russian military spokesman announced that his country’s Pacific fleet would conduct joint operations with the Chinese navy in the South China Sea. This follows an apparently coordinated effort by the two navies in June to encroach Japanese territorial waters near the disputed Senkaku islands.

Mr. Putin’s relations with Beijing haven’t always been smooth—China is as adept at stealing Russian military technology as it is at hacking U.S. secrets, and the Russians don’t appreciate being treated as junior partners. But the drills in the South China Sea are another reminder that the Kremlin’s overriding foreign policy goal is to hobble and diminish the U.S. It’s a goal Beijing appears to share.

And why not? President Obama and his advisers continue to insist that the world has never been a better, safer, happier place than under their benign stewardship, meaning they no longer even register the continuous embarrassments of their foreign policy. The administration has become the Black Knight from “ Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” comically indifferent to his own dismemberment. Arms and legs all hacked off? “Tis but a scratch!”

Perhaps it’s in every strongman’s nature to seek and admire his political reflection wherever he finds it, whether it’s in a czar, an ayatollah, a sultan or a general secretary. Then again, what mainly unites the leaders of the new dictators’ club is the shared perception that they stand to lose very little in working against a country they detest and a president they contemn.

That’s a perception that is unlikely to change with the next U.S. administration. Readers searching for historical analogies with the present would be wrong to reach for the Tripartite Pact. But the ingredients from which that foul soup was made have now been laid on the table.

Here;  http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-dictators-club-1471908089

The world seems to be heading toward a massive nightmare of war, dictators, famine, civil unrest, civil war, Satanic chaos and the wrath of God....and yet most people in America are simply clueless as to what the Bible says WILL COME.

Even more sad is that most of the church-goers and pulpits in America also seem to be clueless and quiet as to the storm clouds gathering.

It's almost as if there is a famine in the land....not of food or water, but of the knowledge of what the Bible says is coming.

The prophet Amos warned long ago what would happen in the very last days;
“The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine through the land— not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.

Germans Told to Stock Up for a Disaster

It sure seems like the world can sense there is something big happening....or about to happen.

Today we see this headline from MSN;

Germans told to stock up for a disaster

For the first time since the Cold War the German government is advising citizens to stockpile food and water for use in a national emergency.

Some opposition MPs said the new civil defence concept, to go before ministers on Wednesday, was scaremongering.

Citizens are advised to store enough food to last them 10 days, because initially a disaster might put national emergency services beyond reach.

Five days' water - two litres (half a gallon) per person daily - is advised.

The German news website Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ) said the new concept was set out in a 69-page German Interior Ministry document.

The document said "an attack on German territory, requiring conventional defence of the nation, is unlikely". But, it said, a major security threat to the nation in future could not be ruled out, so civil defence measures were necessary.

Soon, Germans began tweeting ironically under the hashtag "Hamsterkaeufe" (panic-buying).

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told a group of schoolchildren that Germany must be prepared to react if water or food reserves were poisoned, or if oil and gas supplies were interrupted.

The parliamentary head of the left-wing Die Linke party, Dietmar Bartsch, criticised the move, saying "you can completely unsettle people with yet another round of proposals, such as hoarding supplies".

The Greens' deputy parliamentary leader, Konstantin von Notz, said it was sensible to update civil defence advice which had not been touched since 1995.

But he warned against mixing up possible military or terrorist scenarios, saying "I can't see any attack scenario that merits a stockpiling of supplies by the population".

Here;  http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/germans-told-to-stock-up-for-a-disaster/ar-BBvUEIF?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=UE07DHP

I will remind you that Jesus told us that life on earth is going to continue as normal (people eating, drinking, marrying, giving in marriage, planting, building, etc...) until He shows up to snatch all his followers away from the Prince of the Earth.

When this happens, the world will be totally perplexed....until a man shows up on scene with the answers that the world is so desperate for.  And the world will follow him....exactly as the Bible predicts.

2 Thessalonians 2
7 For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.

Hat tip to Bill J.

Did the Nephilim Build the Ancient Wonders?

Have you ever looked closely at the Great Pyramids in Egypt?  How could ancient man have used such massive stones to engineer a perfect pyramid?  Until recently, modern man couldn't have built such an enormous structure using stones of that size.

And how could ancient man have known the geometry of the sun's angles and the stars angles to line up that pyramid with such precision to point to the heavenly bodies?

Is it possible that ancient man had some help from the fallen angels?  Is it possible that some of these wicked places were built before the flood maybe getting some help from the Nephilim of Genesis 6?

And finally, is it possible that fallen man is attempting to open the dungeon where God placed those fallen angels who sinned with women in Genesis 6?

Demons are making their presence known more and more in our world. Websites dedicated to the paranormal proliferate on the Internet as well as in movies and TV shows which feature aliens and extraterrestrials.

When God destroyed the earth because of its wickedness, the fallen angels—who started all the trouble could not be drowned because they were spirit beings; so God sent them to a place the Bible describes as Tartarus to await judgment day. Jesus preached to these spirit beings in their prison cells after He arose from the dead as if to say, “Hello, boys . . . I’m back.  I won—you lost!”

Do you remember when the people in the Old Testament tried to build that tower to heaven and how God stopped the construction by giving them different languages? That tower, which we know as the Tower of Babel was not meant to be a literal tower to heaven; the people in those days had better sense to  that they could build a tower to heaven.

That tower was meant to be a “stargate” or portal.  The chief architect of the Tower of Babel  was a great warrior/hunter named Nimrod. Nimrod was a descendant of Noah and is believed to have had Nephilim blood in his veins. After the Flood, Satan had another band of fallen angels breed with the women of earth and it seems that they still around today.

It is now known that certain ancient monuments around the world such as the Great Pyramid of Giza and those in Turkey, Cambodia and Mexico were most probably built by the fallen angels BEFORE the Flood – there is no way human beings could have built those structures and the reason we know this is because those many-ton boulders were all copper-fastened the same way. 

So there was an intelligence in ancient times that knew how to construct these monuments even though they were thousands of miles and thousands of years apart.

The fallen angels left behind forbidden knowledge or arcane technology to be found after the Flood. Ever since Nimrod’s attempt to build the Tower of Babel secret societies including the Freemasons, Illuminati and Bilderbergs have been plotting to break those fallen angels out of their gloomy dungeons to prevent Jesus from establishing His millennial reign on earth.

And guess who will turn the key?

The scientists at CERN. On the border of France and Switzerland, near Geneva, lies the town of Saint-Genis-Pouilly. The ancient Celts—a pagan civilization, built a temple to the god Apollo as this location believing it was a portal or gateway to Hades, the underworld.  Today, Saint-Genis-Pouilly is the site of a modern-day Tower of Babel—the CERN Project.

Physicists tell us there are other worlds or realities in the universe called “dimensions” and these dimensions are linked to one another by whirling vortices called “wormholes.” Do you remember when Elijah was taken to heaven in a whirlwind of fire in 2 Kings 2:11? God opened what seemed to be a wormhole to transport Elijah from earth to heaven since heaven is in another dimension.

The scientists at CERN are preparing to open these wormholes connecting these dimensions in the universe and Christian evangelicals are warning them not to do it because Satan commands the Second Heaven and this will release demons into our world.

In the ninth chapter of the book of Revelation God gives John a vision of the Abyss being opened as demons rise from it “like smoke pouring from a great furnace” and rising with them is the  ruler of the Abyss—Apollyon. So, it seems what these scientists at CERN are getting ready to do is foretold in the ninth chapter of the book of Revelation!     

http://www.raptureready.com/soap2/may23.html

As always, you will have to read the evidence and decide for yourselves whether you believe what this author is saying or not.  What I do know is that the Great Tribulation is going to be unlike anything the world has ever seen and there is MUCH biblical evidence that a supernatural outbreak is going to be a big part of what the left-behind folks are going to experience.

Revelation 9
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. 3 And out of the smoke locusts came down on the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. 4 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. 5 They were not allowed 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. 6 During those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.