The first article is from Peter Kentley in Melbourne of Australian Marketplace Connections Inc.

Comment on Danny Nalliah’s dream of Destruction in Victoria

Comment part a)

My sense is that the first part of the dream looks backwards to killings on the streets of Melbourne, as for example with the King St killings on 18 June 2007. This part of the dream focuses on the outcome of death coming out of ungodly legislation and regulations approving prostitution and table top dancing in Melbourne. These approved behaviours are offensive to God and against his laws and yet they are approved by the state and tolerated by the church. The high danger to society comes when the elected representatives of the people make legal on earth that which is illegal in heaven – in direct defiance of the Lord’s prayer: “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”…

June 18 2007
The Courier Mail
EARLY each morning, the western end of Melbourne’s CBD trades its red-eyed bar patrons for fresh, sober office workers. Drunks call out to women in suits, a man urinates against a wall as the sun rises and polished shoes step around a slow-drying patch of vomit. It’s an uneasy exchange, uncomfortable sometimes, but no one expects to be shot dead on the road. Yesterday morning, a man left a King St nightclub and fired a gun at three people, killing one, at the corner of nearby Flinders Lane and William St. “He was as cool as a cucumber. He just went bang, bang, bang, there was no mucking around,” one witness said. Paramedics tried to save 43-year-old Melbourne lawyer Brendan Keilar but by mid-morning his body lay beneath a white sheet under a sign pointing to the city’s immigration museum. The solicitor had tried to help a woman fighting with the gunman. She and another man, also a passer-by, were critically wounded. The gunman fled along Flinders Lane and a gun was later found at a nearby building site.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21929316-953,00.html

Early in the morning on 18 June, a man was involved in the assault of an exotic dancer, Autumn Daly-Holt, who worked in the nearby Spearmint Rhino club[6]. After seeing her dancing erotically the man assaulted Ms Daly-Holt in a King Street bar called Barcode. Following the assault, the man was alleged to have caught a taxi with Kaera Douglas (a 24 year-old Sydney model and travel consultant) who was a friend of Ms Daly-Holt. The man and Ms Douglas who were said to be involved in an apparent relationship[7], became involved in an argument in which caused the taxi to pull over on the corner of Flinders Lane and Williams Street[8]. Two male bystanders came to the assistance of Ms Douglas after noticing she was in distress. As a result, the two men and Ms Douglas were shot by the male involved. Brendan Keilar aged 43, a solicitor who worked for Norton Gledhill was declared deceased at the scene after paramedics worked on him for over an hour. The remaining victims Kaera Douglas and Paul de Waard (a 25 year-old Dutch backpacker) who was shot twice in the chest and once in the abdomen, were taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital with gunshot wounds to their upper bodies and were listed as being in critical condition. Kaera Douglas since had a kidney removed as a result of her injuries. Both are now listed in a stable condition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Melbourne_CBD_shootings

Comment part b)

My sense of the second part of the dream is that it looked forward to a warning of destructive fires and a call to the church to engage with the cry of God’s heart expressed in 2 Chron 7:14 so that the threat could be avoided. This is entirely consistent with the prophetic nature of Scripture.

The question now being asked is this: can we draw a link in the scriptures between bad religious and political leadership and the wrath of God? In the OT the answer is obviously yes – from Genesis to Malachi. This link is part of the inherent outcome of breaking the law of God. But Jesus said in the NT that he did not come to replace the law but to fulfil it. So how does justice and punishment work under the dispensation of Grace?

In Heb 12 there is a clear link between suffering and discipline. This can be as tough as Jesus sweating drops of blood before the Cross. But what about sin and punishment? This connection is also very clear in the NT, especially in the sermon on the mount.

Then in Heb 12:25-28 the writer is very clear that a population will not escape punishment if they turn away from the living God. And Hebrews prophetically warns that God will shake the system – both heaven and earth – to remove the false and reveal the true.

Today in Australia we are in a time of great shaking. Fires, floods and financial chaos. Things that are false are being removed. Everyone and everything is being tested. Is this the end times? I would say not yet, but prophecy often works through signs or phases before the final event occurs.

Well is there a biblical  link between sinful behaviours in a society and purging fire? We are well aware of the bible’s teaching on refining fire for individuals. We accept that. But what about on a community wide basis?

If we go to Joel 1:15-20 we find a description that applied to Israel, but in kind is almost an exact description of the Victorian fires. So did this description in Joel only apply to Israel, or is it also prophetic for the NT era?

The prophecy of Joel 2:1-32 is quoted by both Jesus in Matt 24:29 and Peter in Acts 2:17. It is clear that this prophecy not only applied to Israel but also projects ahead into the NT era. Joel 2:30-31 in its physical manifestation is almost a dead wringer for the Victorian fires – and the purpose of the fire is a call people to salvation (Joel 2:32).

In this we have to come to grips with the biggest component missing from the church and society today – the fear of God.

Is this passage only speaking of the final end days? In my opinion, no. The Hebrew word “wonders” in Joel 2:30 means signs or tokens of future events. Hence if we deny prophetic warning in the current shaking we deny the necessity of the fear of God and from that we deny the need of salvation and we risk endorsing a widely held misunderstanding that “anything goes” under grace. Paul powerfully argued against this bad teaching in Romans 6.

Finally in Revelation there is a clear link between sin and God’s wrath expressed through fire. In Rev 14:17-20 God has control of the fire of his wrath and its release occurs outside the city to a distance of 300km. This is very similar to Kinglake (outside the city) to Albury. So are the Victorian bushfires the end days of Rev 14. I don’t think so. But are they a warning to be taken seriously? – a warning that we cannot continue to sin against almighty God with impunity! Are these signs a warning of the need of repentance and salvation?

Look at Rev 16:8-9. What can we need to learn from this prophecy? Are the Victorian fires a sign?

Finally I want to draw a link between bad religious and political leadership and catastrophic outcomes. Was there a link between the decisions and behaviours of the religious and political leadership of Israel in the time of Christ and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD70? Was there a prophetic warning?

In Matthew 24 Jesus gave clear warning of the need to flee from a city under evil leadership. When did this occur for the city that made war on the son of God (Rev 17:14)? It was some 40 years after the death of Christ. In that 40 years we had all the evangelism and discipleship of the apostles post Pentecost. So the presence of Christians in Jerusalem did not stop the city being raised to the ground by the Romans. In fact it caused a great dispersion so that the gospel would be spread to the four corners of the world.

Well what’s so bad about the abortion debate in the Victorian parliament?  It’s not just this debate apart from every other evil in the city. It’s also about the widespread denial  of God in the city. It’s about the great lie of today that God is not relevant.  It’s about the straw that broke the camel’s back when a parliament authorised evil behaviours and legislated against the values of heaven. It’s about Victoria passing laws that make legal on earth that which is illegal in heaven, in defiance of the Lord’s prayer. It’s about the representatives of the people cheering laws for death into the Victorian parliament while God’s people in the parliament are in tears of remorse.

It’s about pride and arrogance that would not even pass an amendment of “informed consent” pre-abortion – but passed laws approving the destruction of innocent babies in the state of Victoria. How is it that we are so impacted by the death of 200 people in the bushfires when we don’t care about 440 babies a week being killed in the womb? Babies that God knows from conception and even before conception (Jer 1:5).

It’s about a parliament passing pro-death laws when God is about the sanctity of life.

Can the people of Victoria do whatever they like before God almighty with impunity? And why was so much of the non-Catholic and non-orthodox church missing from this debate? The Anglican church for one voted internally not to hold a formal position in the abortion debate.

So was Danny right to publicise the vision he had before the fires and to issue a call for repentance for our offences before God?

I am not Danny’s judge. However I think his position in the courts of heaven will be a lot stronger than those in the church who are not willing to speak up for God and his ways when the battle is raging.

In conclusion the bush fires were not the fault of those who suffered in the fires. Rather the people of Victoria put themselves at very high risk when they reject God and enact laws and regulations that flaunt the values of heaven. The church is equally complicit where it fails to represent God in the world, as it is called to do in John 17:18.

Let us be thankful that the hand of God was only stayed for 6 hours on Saturday 7 Feb 2009. The heat and wind was only from midday to 6pm. We could have been subject to weather like that for days and the whole State go up in flames (Rev 14:17).

The most important question before us now is embedded in Rev 16:8-9… will we repent and glorify God?