Foreshadow Now, ‘Season of the End Times’:

Blog note. Jesus indicated that ‘fearful sights’ (various natural disasters) would occur leading up to the time known as the Tribulation and Great Tribulation (a combined seven year period of great destruction on earth). Although these types of things have occurred in the past for centuries and thousands of years, they could be identified as the ‘season of the times’ due to the ferociousness of these events. They would be occurring in greater intensity, severity, frequency, size, duration, scope … just like the pains that a woman experiences in labor the farther along she is in the labor process. We are in the ‘season of the times’ that comes just before the seven (7) year Tribulation/Great Tribulation period

… And great earthquakes shall be in diverse places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven. (Luke 21:11).
… And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; (Luke 21:25)
… Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken; (Luke 21:26)
… This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. (2 Timothy 3:1)

Jesus is giving a series of prophecies about what to look for as the age of grace comes to a close. These verses are several of many such prophecies from throughout the Bible. 2017 was the worst year in recorded history for the intensity, frequency, severity, duration and occurrence of a large number of severe natural disasters worldwide. Earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, torrential flooding, unprecedented wildfires in unusual places, devastating droughts, excessive/scorching heat setting records everywhere, record snowfalls in Europe and Russia. Snow in the Arabia. This list can go on. Most studied Eschatologists believe these ‘fearful sights’ and massive natural disasters are all part of the ‘CONVERGENCE’ of signs that this Biblical and prophetic age is closing. Most people who study prophecy are familiar with the routine reference(s) made that these things will be like a woman having labor.

Increasing Perilous Times to be a Migrant, Refugee, Asylum Seeker, Displaced or Homeless person with young children: ‘It’s a Time Bomb’: 23 Die as Virus Hits Packed Homeless Shelters

Nikita Stewart The New York Times•April 14, 2020

NEW YORK — Roy Coleman, a 69-year-old living in a homeless shelter on Wards Island, was taken away by ambulance after showing symptoms of COVID-19. The other shelter residents were relieved — until Coleman was allowed to return last week after testing positive at Harlem Hospital.

At another shelter, Alphonso Syville, 45, said that as much as he tried, he could not block out the incessant coughing that he heard from a man a few feet away.

At Delta Manor, a shelter in the Bronx, Christian Cascone recalled how a roommate confronted another resident who had poor hygiene and would not wash his hands. The resident “said something like, ‘Well, if God chooses for me to die, I’ll die,’” said Cascone, 37.

“My roommate said, ‘Well, the good Lord also wants the rest of us to be healthy, too,’” he said.

While much of New York City is staying inside, a crisis has taken hold among a population for whom social distancing is nearly impossible: the more than 17,000 men and women, many of them already in poor health, who sleep in roughly 100 group or “congregate” shelters for single adults. Most live in dormitories that are fertile fields for the virus, with beds close enough for people sleeping in them to hold hands.

And rather than keeping people away from shelters, the virus has driven them in.

Some inmates released from Rikers Island to control the outbreak in the jail have wound up in shelters. And with the outdoor safety net falling apart — few pedestrians to beg for change; public bathrooms shut; many soup kitchens closed for lack of food and volunteers — the nightly shelter population has consistently reached levels seen only a few times in the last decade and usually only on the most frigid nights of winter.

“When all of those systems simultaneously break down, you’re going to get this influx into congregate situations,” said Joshua Goldfein, a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society. “It’s a time bomb.”

Officially as of Sunday, 23 shelter residents have died in hospitals, among them 14 men and two women from assessment centers and shelters for single adults where multiple, unrelated people share rooms, according to the Department of Homeless Services.

And 371 people in shelters had tested positive for the virus, about 80% of them from the single-adult facilities, though those adults represent less than a quarter of the homeless population. The rest are mostly families who often stay in studiolike units by themselves.

While total prevention is impossible, the city has been scrambling to at least lower the risk.

Paying an average cost of at least $174 a night, it has been renting hotel rooms, empty for lack of tourists, to isolate shelter residents who have symptoms or tested positive as well those potentially exposed. On Saturday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that 2,500 more shelter residents would be moved to hotels by the end of April, in addition to 3,500 who were already sharing rooms in hotels before the virus hit because there was no room in traditional shelters.

Residents who are at least 70 years old and some residents in the 10 most densely packed shelters are also being moved to hotels, whether they have symptoms or not. Some homeless families previously staying in hotels are being moved to make room for those residents.

Steven Banks, the commissioner of social services, said the city also has purchased 24 hand-washing stations and 36 portable toilets to be installed in 12 street locations, for those homeless people who refuse to go to shelters.

Shelters are staggering meal times and temporarily dropping rules that require residents to leave during cleaning, to reduce the chance the residents will go out and then return after having been exposed.

Simply closing the shelters to stop the spread, as if they were dining halls or Broadway theaters, is not an option.

“We’re still open and offering services,” Banks said. “Others have shut their doors.”

The number of New York shelter infections do not capture the scope of the peril; they reflect mainly people who had been so ill that they had to be taken to city hospitals to be tested and treated. The figures do not include people staying in shelters run by charities or other public agencies.

Other cities with significant homeless populations have begun to see similar problems. San Francisco tested everyone inside its largest shelter last week, and so far 81 residents and 10 workers have been confirmed as infected. The city has lifted its ban on tent encampments as long as the tents are at least 6 feet apart.

Even before the pandemic hit, homelessness was an intractable problem for Mayor Bill de Blasio. He took office in 2014 vowing to reduce the number of homeless, but it has only grown, to an estimated 79,000 people, in part because of rising rents beyond the reach of low-income families.

Since 2014, the budget for homeless services has doubled to about $3.2 billion, according to the city comptroller’s office.

The shelter system is a patchwork of 450 buildings, including studios for families with children, hotel rooms with double beds, privately owned but decrepit apartments and cavernous spaces with rows of beds, like the mammoth Bedford-Atlantic Armory shelter in Brooklyn.

The decentralized nature of the system, and the transience of its clients, have made the application of new policies somewhat ragged.

Some residents in shelters and peace officers working in them say some of the preventive measures have not been put into practice or are being ignored by residents.

“If this is a worldwide epidemic, we should have a fair chance to protect ourselves,” said Roberto Mangual, 27, who stays at the Clarke Thomas shelter on Wards Island, where Coleman was allowed to return. “We don’t really have that chance in a men’s shelter, to be honest.”

Coleman said that after he spent a night back at Clarke Thomas, the staff gave him a MetroCard to travel to one of the quarantine hotels in Long Island City, Queens.

After an inquiry by The New York Times, the homeless services department sent a message to shelter providers reminding them that anyone returning from a hospital with symptoms of COVID-19 should be put in isolation and not placed on public transportation.

In a phone interview from the hotel Saturday, Coleman said he believed he had contracted the virus at the shelter. “I was around a lot of people coughing, throwing up, sneezing,” he said.

He said that he was happy to now be in a room by himself, where he said he was getting round-the-clock medical attention. “If I need medication, I call them, and they send up some aspirin,” he said. On Sunday he was moved to another hotel specifically for seniors.

Stephen Mott, chief of staff for HELP USA, which operates Clarke Thomas, said the shelter has been under a great deal of strain but acknowledged that it needed to do better. “We’re up against something huge,” he said. “Things that we used to let slide we can’t let slide anymore.”

At the city-run Catherine Street Shelter in lower Manhattan, where 100 women live, many residents are not taking precautions, like washing their hands and staying 6 feet apart, one woman who lives there said. They brush against each other when walking in a narrow stairwell.

The staff changed the configuration of the cafeteria so that there were only two chairs per table, but some residents simply moved chairs so they could sit together, said the woman, who did not want to be identified because she feared retaliation from staff in the shelter.

Derek Jackson, director of the law enforcement division in Teamsters Local 237, a city employee union, said about 550 peace officers work in the shelter system, and as of early last week, 26 had tested positive. Another 41 shelter workers also had tested positive as of last week, according to the city.

“We’re not sure they are being transparent with how many clients are sick with this disease,” Jackson said of the city homeless agency. “We don’t know who is putting us at risk at the shelters.”

Jackson said the city was slow to provide masks, gloves and other personal protection equipment to the officers.

The homeless services agency has been dealing with the same supply shortages as everyone else, said Banks, the commissioner. Last week, after finding masks to purchase, the agency began distributing 100,000 masks to shelters for employees, including peace officers, and now has an additional shipment of 500,000 masks, along with sanitizer and gloves to give to peace officers. Banks also tapped into Robin Hood, the philanthropic foundation, to donate masks for shelter residents and people living on the street.

But the inability of shelter residents to self-quarantine is still taking a toll. There is no staying at home when you do not have one.

At Opportunity House, a charity-run shelter in Brooklyn, many residents are older and have serious health issues, including problems with vision, said David Gaynor, 60, who is staying there. “Some of the literature, you have to be an ant to read it,” he said.

Camba, which operates Opportunity House, said it is has been taking measures to keep residents safe. “We understand the anxiety that everyone is experiencing,” the nonprofit said in a statement.

Gaynor, who was interviewed while wearing a green bandanna around his neck that he could pull over his mouth, recalled one resident who did not speak English well and had trouble explaining his symptoms.

The staff finally took action when they saw him bowled over and heard the man say the words he knew in English. “Am-bu-lance. Hos-pi-tal,” Gaynor said, enunciating each word.

“Everybody understands sick,” he said.

(Night Watchman Note: What will happen when millions of Christians suddenly ‘disappear’ in the ‘twinkling of an eye”??? Those who may be first-responders, doctors, nurses, support staff, policemen, firefighters, farmers, homeless volunteers, those in the red cross or other emergency aid and relief organizations, in the national guard or military, pharmacies, grocery stores, etc. You get the picture.)

1 Corinthians 15:52

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

Jesus Christ’s Offer of Salvation:

The ABCs of Salvation through Jesus Christ (the Lamb)

A. Admit/Acknowledge/Accept that you are sinner. Ask God’s forgiveness and repent of your sins.

. . . “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23).

. . . “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.” (Romans 3:10).

. . . “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8).

B. Believe Jesus is Lord. Believe that Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be; that He was both fully God and fully man and that we are saved through His death, burial, and resurrection. Put your trust in Him as your only hope of salvation. Become a son or daughter of God by receiving Christ.

. . . “That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:15-17). For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13).

C. Call upon His name, Confess with your heart and with your lips that Jesus is your Lord and Savior.

. . . “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:9-10).

. . . “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (John 1:8-10).

. . . “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. (John 2:2).

. . . “In this was manifested the love of god toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.” (1 John 4:9, 14-15).

. . . “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” (Romans 5:8-10).

. . . “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23).

. . . “Jesus saith unto them, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6).

. . . “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” (Romans 1:16).

. . . “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” (Acts: 4:12).

. . . “Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth for there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:4-6).

. . . “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:9).

. . . “But as many as received him, to them gave the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” (John 1:12).

True Church / Bride of Christ Spared from God’s Wrath:

 Romans 5:8-10. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”

Romans 12:19. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

1 Thessalonians 1:10. And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.

1 Thessalonians 5:9. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,

Romans 8:35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

Jeremiah 30:7. Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.

Revelation 3:10 Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.