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HIAE-03
220321AM

Here is our third session at the prophetic conference we just finished at Word of Life in Hudson, Florida. Using God’s Word to explain what the Bible prophecy says about these fearful days our world is going through.
These trends are speeding up—the last seconds of the countdown clock of Christ’s return are clicking down.
Each day the prophetic picture Christ painted grows clearer.
Each of these signs was captured by the apostles and prophets between 2,000 and 3,500 years ago.
Now they are happening in our lifetime!
But, in all of history–ONLY our generation has seen EVERY ONE of these events starting to unfold.
All of the yet-to-be-completed prophecies fit within these seven major events. Probably the most exciting of all are the signs of Christ’s Second Coming. There are dozens of them. Jesus described many of them in incredible detail. But here is what I want you to see—Jesus said these signs would not suddenly appear. He said that they would rather become a trend that amplified and strengthened until it became overwhelming like “birth pangs”.
 
Matthew 24:8 (ESV) All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.
 
Let me give you just a handful of the precise, clear, specific predictions that Christ’s Words in this Book give us. You may be startled. Every one of the signs Christ gave are present in your world today. You are the first generation in all of history to experience these trends, these signs—all at once!
What are some of them? We will actually in the days ahead look at these in detail, but here they are in summary.

Transcript

How it all ends. We’re looking at God’s gift to us, that when Jesus was nearing the end of His earthly ministry and in that countdown to the cross, He spends two chapters of the book of Matthew giving His sermon on how it all ends. What we’ve done is, we started in Matthew 6 and we went to Matthew 24, we’re going to be there, and then we’re going to continue into Revelation. In this third part, we’re going to start looking at those birth pangs. What I mean by that is, God has introduced the end first in that prayer that we all know. When we say that thy kingdom come, God is treasuring up all those prayers.

Do you remember what happens to our prayers? Revelation 5:8 says God collects them. Revelation 8:3 says they’re in these bowls and they are in front of His throne. At appropriate times He has angels come and dip out those prayers and ignite them from the coals on the altar that’s before God. Igniting them they hurl them down to the Earth. That’s the answered prayers. God answers all of our prayers. Either yes, no, or wait. The no ones are because we ask as James says, we ask according to our own lusts, and we don’t get because we want what we want instead of what God wants. When we want what God wants, God answers that prayer either immediately or later, thy kingdom come is one of those later ones. That’s when God rights all wrongs. That’s when God finally meets out the justice that sinners really have deserved, but God hadn’t given it to them.

He outlined that in Matthew 24, we saw thy kingdom come in the last couple of days. I alluded to the birth pang trends; we’re going to see that. Then, they’re fully illustrated in the book of Revelation. The book of Revelation is like national geographic. Did you ever like those? Turn the pages, look at the elephants and all the pretty orchids, and butterflies, and everything else. It’s just mostly pictures and a few words. Revelation is the illustration book, for the whole Bible, of all these promises of God.

What did Jesus say? Look at Matthew 24. I’m going to read, starting in verse 8, Matthew 24. What Jesus said, “All these things are the beginning of sorrows.” Ōdin, pains, tied to the deep pain of the travail, another way they translate a birth. I have personally witnessed eight births. Personally. I would be standing next to Bonnie and I’d say, oh, another one’s coming; she goes, I know. They have this fetal monitor and I’m watching all the rising waves of the contractions and everything. I’m just looking at the screen and I’m saying, okay, let’s breathe. Do they have you do that, Lamaze and all that stuff? Do you remember all that? Imagine, Jesus said, “All of these…” what’s that? Verse 6, “You’ll hear of wars and rumors of wars.” Verse 7, “Nation will rise against nation.” “Famines, pestilences,” all of these, “are the beginning of sorrows.” AKA birth pangs.

Move down to verse 33. “So you also, when you see all these things…” What He said is, at the end all the things God said are going to be happening at the Second Coming of Christ will all be operating at the same time. Truly throughout all centuries, everyone has always looked forward to Christ’s return, but to be honest all the things that are present at the Second Coming have not always been operating throughout all these years. For example, it was impossible for everybody on Earth to be killed by humanity until 1945, the advent of weapons of mass destruction with the atomic bomb. Before that you could only kill the people you could get close enough to, to either fire your projectile, or shoot your projectile, or dispense your WW I poison gas and I guess other people have done it. Even in the early conflicts, you could only get so many people with your sword, with your spear, with your whatever; but now, all of a sudden, the unleashing of not only atomic warfare, the Israelis invented the neutron bomb. Isn’t that amazing? A bomb that explodes and kills everyone, and doesn’t ruin anything. Isn’t that amazing? It just irradiates them with all these neutrons that go out and fry the marrow of their bones and dissipate organic life. It leaves the buildings, and the cars, and everything is fine. We started proliferating mass destruction and all the other things we’ll look at.

“When you see all these things, know that it is near – at the doors!” Look at this verse 34, Jesus goes on to say how it all ends by saying, “Assuredly, I say to you, this generation,” the generation that witnesses these things, will be alive as they unfold. It’s very fascinating how long a generation is, and I’m not into all that, so I’m not going to talk on that. I’m just going to say, let’s look at the birth pangs.

 

We’ll start. Basically, what Jesus said is that God the Father gave us specific trends at the end of the world. He says that those trends, that He mentions in the scripture I just read, Matthew 24:8, 30, 33-34 are expanded in Revelation. The ones Jesus gave were these, and I showed you this yesterday, the false christ. There’s going to be the presence of these false christs, these false teachers, that’s going to not just be localized here and there but it’s going to become universal. What’s amazing, thinking about this. When Abraham, his nephew was living in a bad place, nobody knew it was a bad place except traders that came through Sodom and Gomorrah. They went, ooh boy, this is different I’m going to stay away from there or vice versa, I’m going. That’s really wonderful (evil), I want to partake. It was localized. It was in Sodom, it was in Gomorrah, it was in the cities of the plain. Local traders, and travelers, and vacationers from Sodom would take their sodomy with them. It just was there and 99% of the world didn’t know about it. Nowadays you can know about everything anywhere. Almost evil is triumphed online and promulgated. We live in a completely different era where evil is not localized. False christs and false teaching has now become global. Anybody can say anything, push a button, and it’s published on Tik Tok videos.

Do you know what Tik Tok is? It’s not just the sound of a clock. It is the most current, popular, young people form of social media. New York Times, that I read every day, New York Times did an independent analysis of the front page of tick-tock, which is totally driven for whoever you are. You have to sign in and tell some details. They looked at it and they did a great big full-page spread of what comes up on the phone screens of young people on Tik Tok. They said, this quadrant will all be like beastiality, this part will be demonism, this part will be suicidal, this part will be druggies, and this part will be… They said, that is what the minds of our generation of 8 to 13 year old’s and upward are constantly feasting on. Evil. False.

Then He said, war. Like the red horse and famine. Did you hear yesterday when Rich said that corn is up 50%, wheat is up 50%. It’s unbelievable. What we’re seeing is starting to happen even today. I know this is a blip, but we’re getting a foretaste of what is going to become global.

The death. We’ve seen a little bit with the 6 million people that have died of COVID. God says, death is going to be global and it’s going to be a fourth of all the Earth. A forth. You know what that means? That means a minimum of two and a half million people will have to die every day of the great tribulation. Two and a half million. How do you bury them? Where do you bury them? If they’re dying, the people are going to be aghast, and horrified, and it’s going to be destruction. Just think of the magnitude of death.

Martyrdom. Every believer on Earth will be hunted down. The only believers that remain are the ones that God doesn’t allow to be killed. They’re called the 144,000 and the two witnesses, who by the way, end up getting killed and the angel who is impossible to be killed that speaks the Gospel in chapter 14. Every other on Earth believer is executed as they get saved. That’s why they’re beheaded and all that stuff.

The signs of the weather and everything else.

Let’s go through. Basically, what the Bible says is this, the end of the world trends are, they are going to have birth pang characteristics. Which means that they’re going to be greater frequency. I remember with Bonnie, that the peaks would have these troughs between them, of her contractions. There’d be another peak and then there’d be this little delay, and then another one. What happened on the monitor is, they started to get so it was like all peaks. Their frequency became so close together and their intensity completely got her attention. Have any of you had children, it’s a very attention grabbing situation. You aren’t thinking about anything else. Then, the joy of the child coming pushes aside temporarily that horrible pain. The visibility… Bonnie would grimace, I thought I was having the baby and I realized looking at her, she was the one feeling all this and then the greater impact. All of these trends are going to get closer together, stronger. Everyone on Earth is going to be watching them. They’re going to start impacting everyday life so it’s no longer normal.

What do I mean? Global diseases will get more and more lethal? That’s the thing about COVID, the lethality of COVID is nothing compared to what the 1918 influenza virus was. It was lethal. It killed 50 million. We’ve had three years going and we’re on only 6 million. The way the pathogen impacts the population across the spectrum was nothing like it was in the past. They’re just going to get stronger and stronger, more lethal.

Global warming. It’s going to get hotter. They say that Kuwait will be uninhabitable in next 20 years, the oil nation on the Gulf. Why? Because the air temperature is going to too long be past 100. Life just can’t exist when it’s 365 days, 100 degrees and up. Water-based life doesn’t do well. Global warning, whether it’s human caused, divine judgment, or both, it doesn’t matter. Don’t argue about it, but it is global warming. It is warming. It’s gone in cycles and scientists know that. They try and not say that because they want to get their agenda out. Global warming. We happen to be on one of the upticks, which has recorded in tree rings. For thousands of years, we’ve had cycles of drought, and global warming, and solar radiance, and solar gloom, the Maunder Minimum, all this stuff. It’s getting hotter, right now. The water shortage is getting worse. If I lived in Phoenix, if I lived in Vegas, if I live in Los Angeles… Los Angeles is an engineering marvel. There is a river of trucks that comes in every night through the passes, the El Cajon and the other passes, and bring in what that city needs for the day. If there’s any interruption of the river of trucks or all of those huge water irrigation things they bring, Los Angeles would come to a standstill. New York City has that massive underground, carved out of the rock, water retention system that’s great. Stay in New York, don’t live in the desert cities because water shortages. Did you hear about Nebraska? The Navy took over part of the water aquifer and said that there’s a treaty from the 1800’s that the water has to go this way instead of that way, through Colorado and down into the Colorado Basin. I didn’t know Nebraska had a Navy, but it’s gotten to the point where they’re fighting over water upstream. That’s only America, you ought to see what it’s like in India.

Food scarcity. You can read about that today. Conflicts, there’s Ukraine. They are getting bigger and deadlier. Hatred for Christ will only get more personal. You notice that Coinbase, you probably did notice it, Coinbase closed the 25,000 crypto accounts of all the Russians. They shouldn’t have done that, no matter how you feel about it. They’ve crossed a line. All of a sudden, if there’s a current issue that’s huge enough you can do something that’s almost capricious, it’s not the rule of law. Just because you’re upset at the Russians, you’re closing their Coinbase cryptocurrency accounts? Do you understand what that means? As soon as we… as soon as we followers of Christ are a global menace, they’ll close your apple pay, they’ll close your PayPal. I know you guys don’t care; you have cold, hard cash. Soon, it’s going to not be cold or hard. It’s going to be completely digital, and they will not allow your credit card to work. I thought that was interesting. Visa, MasterCard, cutoff all the Russians from using Visa and MasterCard. I filed that away, that’s exactly what the Anti-Christ does to believers.

Has that ever been possible in the history of the world? Not even up through the 80’s, it wasn’t possible. Currency, physical currency has ruled but slowly digital currency. We have too much money. There’s only $2 trillion of paper American dollars. Do you know how much are our total wealth of America is? About 100 trillion. That means there’s 50 times more wealth than there is paper money. If everybody tried to get paper money, it would run out in. That’s how little there is compared to how much wealth we have.

Then, global tracking. I told you about my doorbell. It’s not mine, I don’t like it. It’s Bonnie’s doorbell. It tracks all the faces and tells us who’s at the door.

Basically, this is the book of Revelation. We’re the Church on Earth right now. The next event for us is described as going to our Father’s house, John 14. It is described in Luke 24. In the same way that I’ve gone to Heaven I will so come, Acts 1, the angel said that. 1 Corinthians 15, “in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.” 1 Thessalonians 4, it is “the dead in Christ rise first.” Revelation 3, the wrath is for the Earth dwellers and I’m going to “keep you from the hour.” That’s called the Rapture. What we do is, we go to Heaven and we go to stand in front of the finish line, the Bema seat as described in 1 Corinthians 3. It’s much like Burger King used to be. Do you remember when Burger King used to have the flame deal where it was like a wire mesh that went over fire. They would put hamburger patties on it. As you were ordering, you’d see the flames coming in. At the other end, the Burger King person, wearing their hair net and their gloves, would catch the flame broiled patty. What it was is, all their food went through the fire, that’s what they advertised. It was Burger King. I used to go there every day. I used to love watching the fire and remembering that everything you and I do goes on a conveyor. It’s going to go through the fire. It’s not a Burger King employee, it’s Jesus Christ standing at the other end waiting to see what’s left of my life that doesn’t get burned up.

What gets burned up? Stuff that is good for nothing. It’s not sin, it’s just worthless. It’s like endlessly watching Home Shopping Network or endlessly watching sports or endlessly watching financials. It’s something that’s not bad, it’s not wrong to watch TV. It’s not wrong to watch the Travel Channel or whatever, but does it have any eternal benefit? If you have a small group that talks about all the materialism that you see in the Home Shopping Network, then that’s a very good eternal thing. What if it’s just entertainment? It’s not sin, but you wasted that hour. You wasted that day. That’s what we have to learn. That’s what’s going to be decided at the Bema seat. It says in 2 Corinthians 5, we’re all going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ. We’re going to one by one “receive the things done in the body.”

Everybody likes to hide. Take a picture and a few people always go back. Then, the proud ones come to the front. You always see that. Did you know, at the judgment seat there’s nowhere to hide. We stand. Actually, the Greek word is phanerothenai, were revealed to all. Jesus dumps our life on the conveyor belt, that Burger King had, and He collects what doesn’t burn. He comes to us and presents it. That becomes what we cast at His feet forever. Wow. That’s more important than knowing the national league stats. You understand what I mean? That’s what happens there.

Then the tribulation starts that’s at the bottom. That’s Revelation 6-18. Then, the Second Coming of Christ, fulfilling 1/4th of the Old Testament prophets. That launches Christ’s thousand year rule, which is in chapter 20, verses 1-6. Finally, once and for all, God proves that a perfect environment does not produce perfect people. Do you remember Lyndon Baines Johnson’s great society? That if we just clean up the inner city, all the people will get cleaned up. It still doesn’t work, and it won’t work in the future. God gives them a near perfect Earth, where there are no carnivorous animals, no venomous creatures. Remember all those things you read about in Isaiah? Look what happens. After a thousand years of perfect environment. No pollution, no death, no disease, no dying.

You will live the whole thousand years in youthfulness if you are on the Earth and survive the tribulation and populate the Earth as we read about. Let Satan out of the pit, where he’s confined for a thousand years. In one instant he turns, in chapter 20 verses 7-15, he turns the entire world instantly against God in a perfect environment. What happened? Boom. We have the final Great White Throne Judgment. They who did not receive Christ are cast in the Lake of Fire and we get to dwell in the house of the Lord forever with all the saints of all time. That’s basically what the Lord’s sent to the Church.

Look at this. The book of Revelation is 22 chapters about how to live for God in ever darkening world. Jesus returns to Heaven, that’s right after the cross. There’s the first-generation Church. The Gospels and epistles are finished, spread widely. Then slowly, the apostles are martyred. The second generation Church goes along. Only John the apostle is left. Jesus comes back to visit how the churches are doing, applying in their lives the Gospels, the epistles, the Old Testament. In other words, the word of God.

 

They are living through those men. Caesar Augustus, the birth of Christ. Tiberius, during the ministry of Christ. Caligula, near the launch of Paul’s ministry. Claudius, most of Paul’s great missionary work. By the way, I love Claudius. You notice a little map on the bottom shows how big the empire is. He’s the one that took over Britain, the bottom half of it, and really spread the Gospel to the English speaking world. This was the Roman empire. It was based on the Mediterranean, the Middle Earth, the idea that Rome radiated out all those roads and everything, and right in the center where those churches. Rome had begun moving eastward, the locus, the center of power. It had gone from the Italian peninsula, they kept the Senate there, they kept the Coliseum there, but actual civilization that area that you’re looking at that would be like Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, New York City, Houston, wherever you’re from, Boston, all of the big cities that were most important were there. That was the epicenter of the Roman Empire.

Look what happened. The church at the epicenter had endured centuries of godless, immoral emperors who were acting like Putin. Ruthless. No one restraining them. Revelation was sent to guide believers through hard times like that.

The longest living apostle, see… God orchestrated this, John was central to Christ’s ministry. He’s the one that Jesus loved, was there that Jesus leaned His head on. He was central to God’s New Testament plan. He’s the one that got to take care of Mary. He’s the one that Jesus told Peter; I have special plans for him. Peter, why don’t you worry about your own thing? Don’t worry about John. I’ve got a plan for him. From the beginning he was pointed out, that he would be the last living link to God the Son in human flesh, so important so he could write this book. An entire generation of churches in Asia, in the epicenter, like we’re living in the epicenter, America’s kind of the epicenter of the world. Even though no one likes us, and even though we are more in debt than everybody else, we still are the dominant language, currency, influence from media, to everything. John served the largest church. Eusebius says, Ephesus had upwards of 50,000 believers and John was pastoring there. Mary died there. He wrote the premiere Gospel, the last Gospel, the Gospel by John. Then he wrote three vital epistles.

Then God says, I want you to write this. The book of Revelation. I want you to give to that church in the epicenter, the ending, how it all ends. They think they’re in the ending. I want them to know how to behave for Me. How to not have your life get ruined and burned up in the fires of 1 Corinthians 3. Revelation, because of the plurality to the churches, wasn’t just to the seven. It was to all churches throughout all times. You’ll have to come to the Bible Institute course to get all the details. I’m just summarizing them for you. It’s for all of us today.

This is what I’d like to do, if it works. Bonnie and I got to spend October and November teaching Paul’s life and letters, all 13 of his epistles. We taught them for about six weeks in Greece. Then, we taught them for two more weeks in Rome. Can you imagine teaching the book of Romans in Rome to students? It was magnificent. Part of it was, we got to travel between the islands of Greece and teach on different islands. It was marvelous. To teach Titus on Crete, where Paul wrote to Titus on Crete, and everything. I took this clip of Patmos for you, let’s see if it works.

(Video starts) What does God think someone one needs when they’re struggling, and alone, and in danger? The book of Revelation was written to someone just like that. The Apostle John was on a rocky, barren island called Patmos on the Aegean Sea. That’s exactly where we are right now on the rocky, baren, and seaside island on the Aegean Sea. John remembered the loss of all of his beloved brothers in ministry. The apostles have each been hunted down and martyred by the Empire. He was the last one. They got him, and they put him here in exile. As the years went by, he began to remember. He remembered his beloved city was gone. Destroyed. Leveled. The hundreds of thousands of fellow Jews massacred or sold into slavery. Here he was old, weak, alone, and in danger.

What does God think you need when the Empire is against you and hunting you down, and when the world seems to be headed toward destruction? It sounds like the times we live in. If you’re listening to the news at all, about global warming and water scarcity and the environment being destroyed by humanities industries and CO2 admission emissions, it’s true. The Earth is shaking and drowning and dying, just like it says in God’s word. What’s the most encouraging thing that God could send to the Apostle John? It was this book of Revelation. He said, you’re blessed if you read it, and you’re blessed if you hear it, and you’re blessed if you keep the things that are written in it. That’s what this course is about. We’re looking at the book of Revelation. We’re looking at every chapter, we’re looking into every word, we’re looking at every truth, and doctrine, and attribute of God. We’re seeing God’s roadmap of the future, but most of all we’re getting the blessing of being encouraged as God tells us what’s ahead. The fact that He knows right where we are. He knew John was here on a rocky island. He knows your address today. That’s what we need to trust; His presence, His care, and His plan. What did joy. (End of Video)

What a joy, because there’s a global panic attack coming. You think this is bad right now? We’re watching wheat, and gas at $130 a barrel. They are saying it is going to go to $200 this month. What does that mean? Did you know that everything’s made of oil? Think about it, even our fertilizer that fertilizes our plants comes from burning natural gas to make those nitrogens that are used in it. Everything. Everything you eat is somehow touched by oil. There’s a panic attack coming. In fact, this is how Jesus described it. Look at Luke 21, look at the red part, verse 26. “Men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things, which are coming on the Earth.” That’s the global panic attack.

I just pulled out the NOAA chart of disasters, droughts and freezes, and cyclones and everything, just for the last 40 years. I know it’s just the last 40 years, the NOAA hasn’t kept track. I wish I could pull it back 2000 years. I think what we’d see is this, that there are these cycles. Look at the trajectory. That’s what most stockbrokers say they’re going to do with your funds, make them big. God is making the disasters to get the world’s attention.

Last August we had the largest earthquake that shook the US in 50 years, hit off the Alaskan coast. It reminds us that the Earth is shaking and dying. I clipped this out of the news. This is all the people fleeing Alaska. It reminded me of Luke 21 that says, there’ll be great earthquakes in various places. As they were driving to flee Alaska, the road was buckling. Your car had to drop a foot or two, you had to get a little speed going so you could get over and just hope it didn’t buckle up when you ran into it.

What are the things that are the trends? God says, number one, there’d be the trend of global travel. An explosion of travel, many will run to and fro. Basically, all of this. The same kind of boat that Jonah fled from God in was the one that Paul sailed around the Mediterranean. Nothing changed in those thousand years. Columbus rode a very similar boat that Paul would have ridden. They were just basically wooden boats was sails. Then Ben Franklin, when the French were helping us in the Revolution, same kind of boat until about 150 years ago. Then the steam engine came about. Then rapidly, internal combustion and then the automobile. Then, they figured out how to put one on a light structure, and put a little propeller on it, and they started having airplanes. They realized that you could make explosions controlled and push things with it. They started rockets. Now we have 4+ billion, 4.5 billion people that flew in 2019 before COVID. Bonnie and I fly all the time, the employees are saying that the amount of people flying is exceeding pre pandemic levels. We’re just right back to the global travel.

How about the explosion of knowledge? It says knowledge will increase. I want to show you an object lesson. Do you see my phone here? Everybody see this? Let me read to you what Apple says about it. Just my phone, Apple’s description, has in it this little corner right here. By the way, this isn’t the newest one, this is just before the newest one. See that little corner here? That has a camera with 11.8 billion transistors and a 16 core neural engine. Neural? I thought that was our brain, so it’s built like our brain? This corner of my phone, not the whole phone, just this little corner can do 11 trillion operations a second, also known as a teraflop. Let’s have a little perspective. 15 years ago teraflop calculations, that’s trillions of calculations per second, that’s what a teraflop is, we’re only possibly to be done by building size government funded computers that Japan, the US, and the EU had. That’s where they did weather models. They did atomic explosion models. They did all kinds of models like that. What only vast sovereign states could have, every one of us can have in our pocket. A computer. Do you know what that means? It means their computers are doing far more, the sovereign state computers.

You know what it’s done? We can start finding stuff out that is very bad to know. Right now they’re calculating, they have all these sensors all over the world where they keep track of insect populations. Do you know what this is? By the way, this is not Hal Lindsey or your favorite prophetic person. This is, the governments of the world are noticing that all the insects are dying. In fact, I have the headline down here, if I can get down to it. An entomologist from the University of Connecticut says, they told the Associated Press, insects are absolutely the fabric by which mother nature and the tree of life are built. The canary in the coal mine. The indicator of apocalypse coming is what’s going on with the most minute and fragile elements of the whole process, which are the insects.

When I was a little boy and you drove to church on Wednesday night in August, your whole windshield was bugs. Any of you remember that? Bug bug, bug, bug, bug hitting. You used to have to stop at the gas station on vacation and dad was out there cleaning that windshield. Do you clean your windshield much from bugs anymore? During the mayfly explosion, maybe now and then. Bugs are dying at a rate of 1% to 2% a year and have been for 30 years. They’re charting this all over the world. The Germans are most scared about it.

How about this? They started setting up a little sensors in the Himalayas and they found that… the Himalayas, the Tibetan plateau that’s about as remote as you can get from… it’s filled with enough plastic that is nano-particle size, that if you weren’t wearing your oxygen mask you would be ingesting plastic, filling your lungs, going through the alveoli, into your circulation, pumping around and going through to every cell. Did you know, all of us have a measurable amount of plastic, and I don’t mean the valve you had put in or the replacement. I’m talking about, we have breathed in and eaten. You ought to read this article, it’s enough to make you sick. That’s just one tiny example of the global explosion of knowledge that’s making people afraid.

 

How about global weather? What the Lord says is there’s going to be distress among people. They’re going to be perplexed. The weather, the sea, the waves. It’s just going to be, what’s going to happen next? That’s actually, how’s this all is going to end? What’s going to happen next? Do you know what they said this morning? The Word of Life staff was all right here. There was a devotional prayer time this morning. One of the reports was, it was really a blessing, that there was a team associated with Word of Life that runs a prayer booth at a flea market. There was a long line of people that were waiting for someone that knows the Lord to pray for them. That, talk about being on the cutting edge. I think you ought to, instead of thinking about selling your depression glass and occupied China/ Japanese stuff junk at a flea market, you ought to start a prayer booth. That’s what our world is looking for. What’s going on?

This is last year, California had 49 degree centigrade heat wave. We don’t like centigrade, but you know what? That was hot. In Canada, people were dying in their apartments in Canada. They don’t have air conditioning because it’s the beautiful north woods stuff. It was 70 people in Toronto, and you heard about all the ones that died in British Columbia. The islands off of the African coast, Algeria. Algeria was so hot that it made the pavement imprint. When you walked on the blacktop your feet sunk in. You know how it is, it’s just impossible. Greece. Bonnie and I were there. You should have seen the wildfires between our conference center and Athens. It looked like the end of the world. It looked like an apocalyptic scene. It came down so fast. It exploded all their propane tanks. People ran into the Aegean Sea and ducked under the water trying to survive because of the fires that came. It was so hot and dry. Sweden. Look at how red Sweden is. That’s where they moved the server farms of Facebook so that they can cool them just with the cold water. It’s not cool enough anymore up there. Of course, Japan had a heat wave in the largest city in the world, Tokyo. All the people died in their apartments because the air conditioning couldn’t keep up.

I liked this, I clipped it off the NOAA. That is last year’s derecho. It’ll keep playing it. It went from South Dakota to Ohio 770 miles in 14 hours. It produced so much damage. I didn’t even know what was going on, Bonnie and I were actually driving to one of our 52 Greatest Chapter small group sites where I was teaching. As we were driving, we kept looking out the windows and we were crossing Iowa and all the cornfields were down. I went, they didn’t harvest it this year, they just pushed them down? I wonder why? For 60 miles the cornfields were laying down. We got to our hotel, wherever it was, and they said, boy, good thing you got here today. Yesterday, that thing went through, and it took out all of our power. It’s destroyed, look at that, millions of acres of corn and soybeans. Why do you think Revelation 6 says that one of the hallmarks of the tribulation is going to be starvation stalking the Earth?

I don’t need to talk about the wildfires, except this is how satellites and God see the Earth. Look at the whole west coast on fire last year. That’s smoke out into the Pacific, halfway to Hawaii.

Then of course, the solar storms. Bloomberg is even noticing it, the premier new service for investors. Solar storms are back there threatening power grids. Four weeks ago, Elon Musk, who’s famous for helping Ukraine, lost 40 satellites from a solar flare. 40 in one flare. What does that supposed to do to us, scare us?

What’s repeated 46 times in Revelation? With all these dangerous trends increasing God wants us convinced. He wrote this book to convince us, He’s on the throne. Do you see that? All those little dots, the orange, yellow, gold ones are the throne. Look at that big red column. That’s chapter 4. That’s the most throne-ing of all.

If you study Revelation, it’s the only book of the Bible that has all 25 of God’s attributes. Systematic theologians have determined that there are 25 communicable and incommunicable attributes of God. If you remember your systematic theology, every one of those… independence and changeless (this is what God is), eternity, omnipresence, unity, spirituality, invisibility, omniscience, truthfulness, goodness, love. All of those are not only mentioned in Revelation, they’re illustrated in Revelation, and they’re connected to God who is seen Jesus Christ, the exact image of the invisible God. All of us know at least these four.

His omnipresence that He’s everywhere, that He knows everything, that He completely loves us, and that He is all powerful. What does God want us to do? The more we see everything falling apart. God wants us to apply His attributes into our life. He wants us to start getting all of our fears into perspective. He wants us to remember He is our creator. You were designed just like you are today. Everything about each of us, the unchangeable parts not our choices, the things that we came with in the package, God picked. He even picked what generation we live in. He even picked what country we live in. Remember Acts 17 says, that He has determined the boundaries and the appointed place for mankind to live over the face of the Earth. You were chosen to be here and so was I. That’s just Creator, that’s true for everybody. Then He bought us and He says, I bought you so that for the rest of your life you will do, what? You will seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and let everything else be added to you because you’re going to answer to Me now. We’re not going to answer whether or not we’re going to Heaven. We’re going to answer, what we did with our one and only precious life. How much of it did we live for Him?

I teach the students and I’ll show you; this is the prayer I wrote for today after studying all this. Did you know I actually studied this and applied to my own life before I share it with you. I don’t want to be a secondhand peddler. I want to actually not try and live up to my preaching, but preach what I am living. That’s what John MacArthur taught me. That was the best thing I learned from him. He says, don’t ever try and live up to your own preaching. He said, only preach what you’re living. That was sobering. I couldn’t preach for quite a few weeks after that, till I caught up. This is what I wrote. Lord, as I remember the truth You taught in the area around the temple. Do you remember? I showed you that chart where He gave all those different things. My heart overflows. You’re the water of life that satisfies me. You’re the light of the world that guides me. You’re my good shepherd. I hear Your voice and I want to follow You. As You remind me of Your plans for the end of the world, I want to respond. I want to be willing to do Your will, I want to be alert, I want to follow You, my good shepherd, to the end of my journey that You have planned. What a joy to know, follow, and serve You. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

We know how it all ends. I can assure you the birth pangs have started because you’re the only generation, we’re the only generation, that the whole world is experiencing events in real time. Everyone’s experiencing Ukraine, around the world. Everyone’s experiencing the food scarcity coming. Everyone’s experiencing the fear of nuclear weapons being unleashed after 70 years. It used to be a pocket here, a pocket there. Everyone.

Let’s bow for a word of prayer. Father, I thank you for choosing, designing us to live in such a time as this. I pray that we would seek first Your kingdom, Your rule in our life, and truly hunger and thirst after Your righteousness. Let everything else be added to us. We trust you with our lives. Let us use our life’s breath that You have given to us, that You redeemed us, to offer back to You. Let us use it for You each day. In the precious name of Jesus we pray. All God’s people said, Amen.

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