@Taurisk , It's interesting that your friend was an artist and also a theist. I came from an essentially atheist family. My elder brother is a successful artist, and a strident atheist, and he has absolutely no truck with religion, although as he rapidly approaches his "Use By" date, his vehemence seems to be moderating, thankfully. I've always thought that artists tend to be atheists, although I realize now that that's not necessarily so.
It sounds like your friend held to the futurist view of Christian eschatology, and I'm hoping that the preterist view is the correct one. However, when I consider the problems we currently face, climate change, increasing overpopulation, brutal wars, masses of refugees searching for better lives, etc. I fear that the futurists might actually be correct.
Do you remember the 1984 movie "Threads" which portrayed the very realistic aftereffects of a nuclear holocaust? I now see videos of the unbelievable destruction and misery currently being endured in Ukraine, and it reminds me of that movie, and it's all very depressing. The Russian military, and especially that Wagner group, are pure evil and I'm very thankful that I was born in Australia and we don't have Russia as a neighbour! Those poor Ukranians are certainly experiencing a dreadful tribulation. Could it be the first of many?
You asked in another post why God didn't stop Hitler.
The ETs demonstrated at Malmstrom, USA in 1967 that they can deactivate nuclear missiles in their silos, and also that they can disrupt nuclear warheads in flight. They also gave the Soviets a sobering demonstration of their powers at a nuclear base in Usovoin, Ukraine in 1987 by ENABLING their missiles and causing a frantic panic to disable them.
https://www.mysterywire.com/ufo/russian-ufo-documents/
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12318039.alien-encounter-sparked-soviet-missile-crisis/
They could have disabled the two atom bombs that fell on Japan, but they didn't, probably because the destruction was confined to the two cities targeted.
They could easily stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine if they wanted to, and put an end to all of the destruction and horror, but they don't ... why? The ETs seem to be content to allow us to fight amongst ourselves providing we don't threaten to destroy the entire planet with a nuclear conflagration. Perhaps the same attitude applied to WW2.
If God had done what you suggested, it would be irrefutable proof of His existence and we wouldn't be having these discussions. Few would be stupid enough to disobey God if they knew that they would be struck down by lightning.
God and Lucifer seem to have come to an agreement that neither of them will provide irrefutable proof of their existence, thus forcing us humans to choose between them, and I suspect that's probably why we were created.
Many decades ago, in my naïve youth, I was invited by a female friend to attend a sort of séance that was to be conducted by another male friend of hers at his home one evening at 8pm. From memory, there were 5 or 6 of us sitting around a table, with the alphabet and numerals on pieces of paper arranged in a circle around an upturned thick glass tumbler in the center, and we each had a finger tip resting lightly on the glass. Various questions were asked and the glass slowly spelled out the answers.
At about 1am half of the group went home leaving just the "medium", or whatever he was, plus my friend and me. I was aware of the belief that we might be unconsciously pushing the glass around, but I certainly wasn't, nor could I see any evidence of pressure being applied by anyone else. The table was timber and the tumbler didn't glide easily across the surface, so I decided to conduct a little test.
I asked the glass what my middle name was. My friend may have known what it was so I consciously and repeatedly thought of my brother's middle name to see if telepathy or something was involved. For several minutes the glass moved randomly around making absolutely no sense at all. That suggested to me that it wasn't being manipulated by my friend and nor was telepathy involved.
I then allowed my mind to go blank and immediately the glass went to the first letter of my middle name and then it progressively spelled out the full name without hesitation or error. My finger tip was barely touching the glass so I certainly wasn't manipulating it, and that freaked me out. I decided that dabbling with the occult was most definitely OFF my agenda from then on.
BTW, are you familiar with the "Antichrist"? That "charismatic individual" that I mentioned in my previous post would probably be the Antichrist, and most people would see him as a saviour, but of course he won't be and he'll be very bad news for us all. If such an individual appears, I'll be very concerned.
