HIAE-04
220323AM
Here’s the next session of the 8 Prophetic Conference we taught last week called: How It All Ends. The list of Biblical Signs of Christ’s Return will not actually be full-blown until the Tribulation time.
Each of the signs of Christ’s Return He said–are trends.
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 does it all end? We’re in our fourth part. We’ve looked at Matthew 6, we’ve looked at Matthew 24, we’re headed toward Revelation. God has mapped it all. I never know who was here last time, because I don’t take attendance but open in your Bibles. I’ll review the last three hours by showing you three verses. Matthew 6, starting in verse 9. The Gospel by Matthew chapter 6, verse 9 Jesus said, “In this manner, therefore, pray.” The Lord’s prayer has 73 Greek words. 25 of them are about sin and confession, 1/3 of them. It’s one of the most intensely concentrated truths. In fact, the Lord’s prayer is the most well-known passage in the world. Over 2 billion people know it by heart and yet, it’s the least practiced and understood because it’s basically a framework that centers around this, God’s kingdom coming. Me, keeping my eye on the Lord. Me, living in such a way that I’m dependent on Him. He protects me, supplies me, and I humbly serve Him. We looked at that. Especially at thy kingdom come part.
Then, turn over to Matthew 24. A few chapters later, Jesus gives His closing message. You notice that chapter 24 and 25 are the last public messages that Jesus gives. They were to the disciples, but they were actually sit down teaching messages that were recorded. Then all the rest, in John 14 onward, is just His legacy only for believers, he really put that in. Especially parts of it, not until after Judas, in the Lord’s supper. Notice what it says in chapter 24, verse 8. “These are the beginning of sorrows.” Jesus said the end of the world will be these intensifying birth pangs. Look at verse 33 where it says, “know that it is near…” all things, “it’s near at the doors! Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.” Then look what Jesus said, “Heaven and Earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.” He said the kingdom is coming, Heaven and Earth are going to be gone. Peter described it as melting. The Earth is uncreated and so as the whole universe.
Then we get to Revelation. I’ve been promising Revelation. Look at Revelation 1. Revelation is the most unique book in the Bible. It has 404 verses. It alludes to 800 other parts of the Bible, either directly quoting them or pulling words from them or using visuals. Remember when Joseph had his dream and saw the sun and moon and stars bowing down to him? That, in chapter 12, is an example of drawing from the book of Genesis. Look at the first two verses of Revelation. “The Revelation of Jesus Christ.” Revelation, apokalypsis, means to make something very clearly seen. God said, because it says, “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave.” God wants Jesus Christ to be seen clearly.
The last time all of them had seen Him, it was a little hazy. He was meek and mild. The Jesus that went around teaching, but wasn’t able to stop His own death. He went to the cross. Most of them had this grisly desire and they were just thinking of all that blood. Then, they saw him risen and were scared to death and still didn’t believe. God says, I want everybody to have this correct picture of Christ. That’s what Revelation is, to show us His servants… by the way, that’s cover to cover what the book of Revelation calls people going to Heaven. Bond slaves of Christ. The word is an absolutely purchased slave in the Roman empire. That’s the word God uses for us. He said, I bought you at a price, you belong to Me. You are to be My slave. Servant is an elevated term, it’s really slave, that’s really this word. To show My slaves, and that’s why Paul always addressed in his epistle that he’s the slave of Jesus Christ or bond servant as the Reformers translated, because they felt it was offensive to call peoples slaves, even back in the 16th century. “His servants, things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John, who bore witness to the word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw.” The whole purpose of Revelation is in verse 1, to make Christ real clear and to show us how it’s all going to end, which should change everything.
What we saw next is that there are going to be these birth pangs. They’re going to have the characteristic of that their frequency is going to get closer and closer together. It’s like you can feel it getting closer. They’re going to get stronger. They’re going to be more widely seen and have an impact on humanity, until the point where we get in chapter 6 of Revelation. People are crawling in the storm sewers and caves because they’re so afraid. Yet, they still won’t repent, which is amazing.
Then what we saw as these trends are all the way through. Remember, this is Jesus’ favorite prophet of eschatology. His favorite quoting prophet was Isaiah, but of all of the prophecy prophets He loved Daniel. It’s the only one He names by name, of the prophets. Daniel says, that at “the time of the end; many shall run to and fro.” We looked at the explosion of travel. Global knowledge and I showed you my phone that’s more powerful than huge institutional computers were just 15 years ago. Knowledge has increased.
Then we talked about the weather. I showed you even the derecho that came across last year and how the Earth is just going to be shaken by these events. The next trend is the global communications explosion. Look what Revelation 11 says. I would read it to you except I want to emphasize, that’s why I put them in red. When the two witnesses… remember, God has three waves of witnessing going on. The tribulation is the most Gospel-centric time in history. God sends, first of all, the 144,000 literal, ethnic Jews, normal humans. There are people saved, that they are alive on Earth, that are saved and sealed and protected by God, and deployed like special forces. That’s the first wave. The second wave are the two witnesses. We don’t know who they are and there’s been speculation. Usually it narrows down to Moses, Elijah, and Enoch. They like Elijah and Enoch because they were both transported to Heaven. Yet, Moses and Elijah were at the transfiguration. That’s probably them, but God didn’t tell us. I guess so we had something to talk about. The beast from the Abyss, the Anti-Christ, kills them. Look what it says, “Those from the peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations…” Every time we hear that we’re supposed to go into all the world and share the Gospel with every creature. Then, all of a sudden in Revelation we see those of every tongue and tribe and nation and kindred. This is speaking of, a vast amount on Earth starts seeing their dead bodies.
How many people can really see someone’s dead body? We put a president in state and you can only walk so many people by there to see it. All of a sudden what we see is something that’s different. For “three and a half days,” verse 10 says, “those who dwell on the Earth will rejoice.” Within the three and a half day period, everybody on Earth knows about it.
Obviously there is some global communications explosion. We didn’t even know what the whole Earth looked like till we got satellites. Isn’t it interesting what maps look like when they were mapping from boats? Then we got airplanes. Then, all of a sudden, when we got satellite maps. They had to correct a lot of things because it was always computing, we had to measure the miles. All of a sudden, we got this view like God has, it changed everything. All of a sudden, now we see, that means we’re in a whole new era where events can be seen and heard globally and now instantaneously. “And those who dwell on the Earth,” look at this Amazon is still there. Do you see that in verse 10? What are they doing? What does it say? They’re sending what all over the Earth? Gifts. No, I’m serious. This is serious. The Bible is saying there’s going to be a way to see everything. Everyone on Earth is seeing an event and everybody on Earth is responding to it. They are sending, I don’t know if they’re sending emails or texts or Tik Tok videos, or actually ordering on Amazon, whatever is there then, because those two died.
Speaking of all that, did you know if Netflix was a country it would be bigger than Bangladesh and Russia. About a month ago, 203 million accounts on Netflix. Most people don’t have an account just for themselves because it costs $14.99 so they share it with their family. Do you know what this means? This means that probably over a billion people are subscribing to Netflix. I don’t promote it. It’s the greatest purveyor of demonism and materialism and sensuality and everything else. The world is watching it and it’s huge.
Look at the other one you’ve heard of Facebook, or it’s Meta now. Did you know yesterday at 4:30 pm, the green dots are people that were using their phone to broadcast live. Everyone’s competing to have a little clip of something that goes viral. I thought viral was bad, you got sick from viruses. It means to spread wide and fast. Look at all the green dots. All over Southeastern United States up through Chicago. I see Michigan has some. From the UK all the way over into Turkey, they’re there. Look at Thailand. The whole country is just about green. Vietnam is green. In China they’re even, oh Korea is really. China, a little bit. Philippines is big, but see all the green? Those are the people broadcasting. They’re showing you the weather, they’re showing you their daughter hula-hooping, or whatever. What are the other colors? Those are the people that are watching it. That was yesterday on Facebook at 4:30 pm in the afternoon.
Can you imagine when those two witnesses are killed, everybody’s got their phone and they’re talking? They are standing here and their bodies are here. (gasps) One of them is sitting up! Can you imagine? The whole world is watching the resurrection of the two witnesses. It’s happened. Did you know that happened? The smartphones started. What year was that? By the way, when did everybody have a computer in their pocket? 2007. Did you know, that’s only 14 years ago and everything has changed. Everything.
To the point that, look at this, 73% of all adults in America can’t imagine going a whole day without the screen. You know what God says? You’re going to have to learn because in Revelation 18, He turns them all off. He turns off the music. He turns off the electricity. He turns off everything and it’s going to drive people crazy. It’s the crescendo.
Then we saw the trend of global pandemics. Matthew 24, but especially Luke 20. It says the same thing. “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines,” and Luke puts in the word pestilences. That’s a nasty word, but you know what we should think of right away? Look, the whole world has stopped in its tracks for two years. Unbelievable. You have lived through the first truly global event. Right now, I would say, we’re in the second truly global event, which is Ukrainian war. Those two things have captivated every country on Earth like nothing else in history. Not even WW II. WW II, people were sometimes days and weeks and months behind events. They found some Japanese soldiers on some of the 8,000 islands out there in the Philippines or 10,000. The Philippines has thousands of islands. They found some decades after the war ended, they we’re still there. Their bullets were rusted, but they had their headband on, and they were still following Hirohito. No one told them it was over.
This is a reminder of global communication and the way that we can communicate bad things. One of the doctors said during COVID, nobody paid any attention. He says, everyone’s so worried about COVID. He says, you know what? Ebola is evolving, just like the COVID 19 virus. He says, within the next two or three or four iterations, if we don’t learn what to do Ebola will start spreading like that. Ebola is not like getting a little COVID. You remember? When we had one case in Dallas, it was like three or four years ago, the person was hauled out of their Dallas apartment. They were carried on their couch because their body was emitting blood from everywhere it could emit blood. They just didn’t know what to do. The hazmat suit people carried the person out on the couch. Can you imagine if that’s what we were facing instead of, wear a mask because someone might breathe droplets on you. Unbelievable what we’re facing.
The sixth trend is global digital money. It used to be, I used to teach on this and I talk about digital money and people said, no, no, no, no, I use cash. No longer can we say that? Truly, everything is going digital or already has gone. People are slowly acquiescing to it and they’re getting used to it. The touchless, it really helped her in COVID, that you could just wave your card near the reader and not let them, with their nasty germy hands, touch your card or stick it in where everybody else’s card was. Who knows where it was in their pocket. We can just wave our chip enhance card, or even our phone and use Apple pay or iPay or whatever. Let’s go back to why it’s interesting. “He,” the Anti-Christ, “causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on the right hand or on the foreheads.”
Let me ask you, let’s do a little expositional Bible study, is the mark of the beast an injection of a vaccine, according to the Bible? Yes or no. Let’s be a little louder. The mark on their right hand or their forehead is caused by the Anti-Christ, right then in Revelation 13:16. Can the mark of the beast be a vaccination according to the Bible? Yes or no? No. That shows the effects of television preachers. There are so many people that are saying the vaccine has luciferian, or I don’t even know how they pronounce it, and all this other stuff. It’s genetically modifying people. Let me just say this, it probably has all those things. It is nothing to do with the mark of the beast. The mark of the beast is a literal mark on people’s hands and foreheads.
The word that John used was exactly… Remember the first law of interpretation? Theologically, we call it the first canon of textual interpretation is, that the audience that received the word of God as the initial recipients is the primary way to interpret any passage of scripture. What did the Apostle John communicate to the seven churches that Jesus wanted Him to communicate, 2000 years ago? How did they understand his words? That’s the highest form of interpretation. That’s your first level. Everything else is lesser. That’s the word used for the mark that every prostitute had in her brothel, they were marked. You could tell where they were from. It’s the mark every soldier had. They were tattooed with the SPQR, the Senate and the People of Rome was on every Roman Legionnaire, SPQR. It’s also what every slave had. You bought slaves like you bought a blender. You’d go to the market, and you’d get number 131. In fact, slaves didn’t even have names. Do you know how a slave was named? By his birth order. You can see that in the Bible. Paul said, and Quartus greets you, and so does Tertius. Do you know what Tertius means? Third. What does Quartus mean? Fourth. Slaves didn’t have names. They were first second, third, fourth, fifth, six, born. They were tattooed with their number at the slave market. You could say, I bought 31 and then at home you’d say, what’s your name? He says, I was third. Okay, Tertius go do this, go wash the clothes. This word is a literal mark.
Yes, people get microchips. Does that mean they’re getting the mark of the beast? Will the Anti-Christ use a microchip? I don’t know, probably. No one is going to take the mark of the beast unknowingly, according to the Bible. It’s going to be a willful marking to either join the legions, to be put into a house of prostitution, or to become a slave. Those people knew they were marked. They knew they were giving allegiance to someone. That’s what the Anti-Christ does, but look how he does it. It’s a number that you can’t “buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” What it’s talking about is digitalized money. That you can’t buy or sell unless he authorizes it, but it’s tied with this number. Do you know what all of us have done? We’ve all started using credit cards. We’ve all started opening accounts that have account numbers. We’ve all started letting our money go digitally. Because of that, look what has happened.
With all of that, on their right hand or forehead, in order to secure all this electronic money that you can’t see. It’s not a bag of grain. It’s not a pile of coins. We have allowed ourselves, whether you know it or not, right now about 200 million of Americans have been scraped off the internet and your faces are in the Palo Alto company that does this for the government, your faces have joined everybody else’s faces and have become a part of this biometric identification. India is doing it for their elections, they are biometrically identifying all the billion, 200 million Indians. China already has it completely. You can walk down the street and jaywalk in Shanghai and at your home, on a billboard, it will say Bill Yang jaywalked. The cameras see you wherever you are in the city. They know where you live and they publicly shame you at home so that your neighbors will say, Bill Yang, why did you jaywalk downtown? You go, I won’t do it anymore. That’s where we’ve gotten to.
A big step forward happened in COVID. Do you remember the contact tracing announcing? It was on April 10th, 2020. Apple and Google volunteered to take the information they already have on you. On Google, all your searches and everything else, your name and whatever else you’ve told them about, and your phone. Apple. Google got your searches and. Apple got your location, everything else. They said, we’re going to do contact tracing so that if anybody around you at the office gets sick we’ll know whether you were at the office. We’re going to let everybody know. That just went right by because everyone was buying N 95 masks at that moment and wasn’t even thinking what contact tracing means.
It’s come out. Facial recognition is probably second in America, only to China. Only China has more facial recognition than we do. It has tied together all those traffic cams, basically what you see on Jason Bourne. All those thrillers are not even as much as what’s really going on. They actually, if you read this article, this is a fascinating article on this. That was on MSNBC but it’s from Wired. Wired says it’s unbelievable, the level of computing they’ve got, where they actually know people that are on parole and they’re tracking them through the major cities. The American Civil Liberties Union is starting to file a lot of suits about this, because you know what they’re saying? It’s discriminatory because so many percent of the people that are on parole are this racial identity, most of the people that they’re tracking are also, and so it’s very discriminatory. The police have found it fantastic because when there’s a robbery, they already know the eight people that are on parole that were actually on that street, they go get them, and they find out which one really did the robbery. It’s a little frightening to think about.
There’s Bonnie’s doorbell right there in the upper left. That’s tracking who’s visiting. If you buy a car, if you’re in a rental car of course they’re tracking every place you go. They’ll even call you. My son rented a car to go visit his grandfather who had Alzheimer’s and he crossed too many states. A US Marshall met him at an exit somewhere and said, what are you doing son, with this car? He said, I’m going to see my grandpa in upstate New York. He said, but you’ve driven all the way from Colorado. He says yeah, I couldn’t afford the airplane. They went okay. They knew right where he was. They knew what exit he was at because cars and the newer car you have, the more trackable it is. Your business cars have it in it. Look at all those things. Alexa and everything else over there that’s listening all the time. Bonnie and I rent cars all over the world. We drive in 30 different countries. I was talking to Bonnie and I turned and I said, do you know if you have a couple of unanswered emails? The car said, unanswered emails, will search. I said, did you turn that on? She said, no. The car was listening. I don’t even remember what country we were in when that happened. I thought, wow. Look on the right. Your phone is always tracking your location, the phone company. During the capital riots they knew right where people were, all they had to do is subpoena those records from Nine X or Verizon or whatever they’re called. They knew right where everybody was, where their phone was at least.
All of that reminds us that Revelation 13 said 2,000 years ago, the world leader called the Anti-Christ is going to say you can’t buy or sell if you don’t have my mark. If you don’t have allegiance to me, I’m cutting off your digital money.
China’s gone a step further. They launched a new app where you can report people for expressing mistaken opinions. Just wait until what we believe is a mistaken opinion. People that hate Christ and Christianity, and the exclusivity of the Gospel can say, I overheard at Panera two ladies talking, the one lady implied the other lady was a sinner, that’s negative. You can report mistaken opinions in China. I bet it won’t be long, we’ll copy that.
Of course, while we weren’t looking even though it’s crashed a few times, cryptocurrency is now worth more than all US currency in circulation. People love digital money. They love having it. It’s so encrypted and so everything, then block chained that you can’t get under their mattress and dig a hole through whatever and steal their money. It is more secure they feel. That’s going to play right into this… I just got this yesterday, look March 7th. Russia sanctions: Tech cutoff is bad. We banned them from Netflix and Prime and who needs that you can go get a DVD, and we’ve blocked them from being able to be Tweeting, and everything else. When Visa and MasterCard suspended the Russians, it’s unbearable. They’re going to swap over to Chinese card services. That’s what they said yesterday. Did you catch that? Because America doesn’t like it, whether it’s moral or immoral, or right or wrong, because America doesn’t like what Russia is doing. We control, not only Visa and MasterCard, but most of the financial transactions of the world flow through Omaha, Nebraska. It’s the great clearing house of all credit transactions. It’s not the Stock Exchange and it’s not a commodity but personal credit. Omaha is the hub and it goes through there in, amazing, trillions of dollars. We just said, on the map, anybody that’s inside the Russian thing, there goes your Visa and MasterCard. That is probably the single strongest jolt. All of a sudden the Russians said, something’s up? No one’s ever done this before. It’s just the start of the capabilities.
Here’s another one, the seventh. Weapons of global human death and destruction. This is what Jesus said, “There will be great tribulation, such as not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be.” This is a unique event, the Tribulation. “And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved.” Wow. You notice that it’s talking about the destruction of human bodies, all the different ways. Let’s think about that. I was saved in 1962 because I finally put two and two together. I was very aware I was a sinner, but I wasn’t afraid of anything soon impending doom, until they made us crawl under our desk every day and practice putting our hands like this to get ready for the Russians sending atomic bombs on our little school in Haslett, Michigan. All of a sudden, I went home and I said to my mom, they’re talking to us about we might get bombed. She said, uh huh. That night she did the Bible story the same way she’d done it every night, that I had known growing up. She would read our Bible story and our whole family would be there. My mom would read it and at the end she’d say, and Karen is going to Heaven, and Sharon is going to Heaven, and Johnny’s not. I used to always just say, I’m going to bed. It didn’t bother me a bit until that night. I sat there and I went, what did you do? She smiled. She said, you were listening, weren’t you? The getting under your desk and covering your head scared you enough that you’re listening, aren’t you? She took me into the only quiet room in our house, because we only had 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 rooms. The only room in our house was the bathroom, the fifth room. She shut both doors and put her Bible on the toilet. She made me get on my knees in front of the toilet. I’ve only done that when I vomited. It was really a big experience. She opened to John 3:16 and led me to Christ, because of the left.
This is a satellite picture from last month. That is a field of ICBM’s that the Chinese are building. The Chinese are actually ahead of us right now. Hypersonic missiles. Theirs, just a few weeks ago, went around the Earth four times, a hundred thousand miles. It went around and then hit its target. It was traveling unbelievably, unstoppably fast. Look at that, that’s just one of their nuclear sites.
Another thing that recently happened, do you remember last August or whenever it was when, no it was last May, when the first artificial intelligence war was fought on Earth. Everyone was complaining because Israel was not suffering casualties, Israel wasn’t losing anything. They weren’t losing tanks. They weren’t losing planes. They weren’t losing soldiers. They were shooting down every missile that was coming except a couple, I think they had a 99.?% or 98%. The world was saying, this is a lopsided war. They finally confessed their operation against Hamas was the world’s first artificial intelligence war and they let the machines dictate everything. Where are the missiles hit, what ones they knocked out, where their soldiers went, and they totally analyzed, and actually ran circles around the Hamas. It was unbelievable. It’s sad. It’s warfare. It’s death. It’s destruction. It’s whatever, but it was a whole new arena.
Then let’s see, what month is that, that’s August. That was the biggest deployment of our Navy. All the red are our fleets, the first and the seventh, I’m not Navy but all the sixth fleet, all that stuff. It was war games. But look at the headlines, the biggest us Navy war games in 40 years to prepare for WW III. That was last August. WW III? Across 17 time zones. Amid tensions with, now that’s the important part. I put it in red. Russia, China, and Iran. Why is it important? Because the final war, that’s in Revelation 16, involves the armies of the East, China and whoever else. Korea, At least North Korea will be with them, I don’t know who else. I don’t know when this was going to happen, but China for sure, and Iran and Russia. God identifies in chapter 38.
Before Ukraine, these were the headlines we had. Putin is deploying fearsome Russian robot armies. See those little missiles on the side? We started watching them, this was the first day. Do you remember that headline? Countdown to WW III, Russia missile blitz. Oil was at $100. It’s a lot higher than that now. I wrote, seeing the future God has written down. We’re seeing it unfold, this amplification of wars.
Pretty soon, this was the next day’s headline. Those are thermobaric missiles. What does that mean? That means that they emit a little stream of vaporized gasoline, and then they ignite it. That concussive blast sucks all the oxygen out of the air, combusts it with the vapor of the gasoline and actually explodes people internally. It’s a banned weapon. What I should say, it’s gross. On the left of the screen it shows that’s what they were driving in convoys and bringing in from Belarus, and from Crimea, and everything to use on Ukrainian people. God says, watch out the wars, and rumors of wars are just going to get stronger and stronger.
We’re seeing it, but it’s not just warfare. Look at this. It says in Revelation 9, “But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by the plagues,” the horseman and demons, “didn’t repent of worshiping demons, and idols.” “And they didn’t repent of their murders.” Look at this headline. When is that? April 16th. American horror story. Map reveals where 54 mass shootings erupted over the past month as CNN host says there’s an active shooter situation. You have Philadelphia, Essex, Baltimore, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Wilmington. All of those had mass shootings in one month. We’re not the murder capital of the world, but we have a lot of murders in America. What does Revelation say? That’s what it’s going to be. It’s not going to just be 54 active shooter, mass shootings in America. It’s going to be the whole world gets to the point, where like the COVID fatigue has made people have road rage and every other kind of rage, the closing in of the end of the Tribulation is going to make people rise up and just be murderous to each other.
It also said they won’t repent of their sorceries. That word sorcery in Greek, pharmakeia, has to do with drug induced, opening the mind, to demonic things. That’s what sorcery means. It involves drugs, demons, and the human body. The gateway opening up through the pharmakeia, through the drug. That’s part of this list of these five sins of Revelation 9. I thought it was curious that Oregon decriminalized the usage of what used to be criminal penalty drugs. They just said, come to Oregon and shoot up here. They’re now having safe zones and giving you a fresh syringe. What are you cooking up? We’ll give you a fresh syringe for it. I don’t mean to be mocking, but this is where we’re going. We already know Amsterdam was like that, but now we have a whole American state that has become like this. Not just marijuana, we’re talking about hard, opiate drugs intravenous. Amazing. Drug addiction.
Then, I thought this was amazing. It says at the end, after all those horrible things, demons, and murders, and sorceries, and sexual immorality, “or their thefts.” Remember San Francisco? It’s been in the news constantly. The new D.A. decriminalized, anything under $ 2,000 or $1,000 or $1,200. If what you stole didn’t cost more than $1,200, the police can’t touch you. Smash and grab covered San Francisco and it’s going a lot of other places. This is the famous viral video of a guy coming on his bicycle and pedals through the store, filling a bag, adding it up, keeping under a thousand, and drove out. That’s where we’ve come to. That is the tribulation, a flashing light that a society can degenerate to the point that a few of us pay for stuff, and more and more keep it under a thousand.
Then, number eight is a trend of global peace, prosperity, and materialism. Do you remember what brings the Anti-Christ in? Do you remember when the Anti-Christ comes? There’s going to be a pause and this temporary global euphoria of peace. That’s what the white horse is. He comes with no bow and arrow, without warfare. He brings peace to the Earth. People are going to be so desiring peace. They want safety, they just want to be happy, and prosperous, and have stuff. I think it’s amazing, let me just show you a couple things.
This is the capital, the market valuation of Apple computer. It’s $2.1 trillion, which is more than all, but seven countries of the world. There are only seven countries whose GDP, gross domestic product, is higher than the value of one, of a telephone company, of have a computer company. Number one is us, we’re $22 trillion. Number two is China, $16.8 trillion. Japan is $5 trillion GDP. Germany is $4.2. UK is $3.1. India is $2.9. France is $2.9. The next one after that is Italy. Apple is bigger than the entire gross domestic product of Italy. Steve Jobs, unbelievable. By the way, it’s astounding, their manufacturing and everything they’re doing.
This is Amazon. Amazon is only $1.7 trillion. It’s bigger Korea. It’s bigger than Australia. It’s bigger than Spain, and Mexico, and India, and Netherlands, and Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Chile, and a lot of others. In fact, of the 190 countries of the United Nations, Amazon is bigger than 180. Unbelievable where we’ve gotten.
Look at this, talk about prosperity. We’ve gotten to the point where the richest 1% have 48% of every dollar. The next 19%, the normal, average, working people have a 46%. The poorest, 80% of human beings, share 5%. We have a balcony and a main floor. Imagine the main floor is 80% of all the world. I can assure you, all of us sitting here tonight belong in the balcony. We’re somewhere in the blue or the red. Do you know why? You have to make $800 a year or less to be in the green. Do any of you, even on social security, make less than $800? I don’t think so. A year? How do you think the green slice living down here in the flat land, how do you think they look at us up in the balcony who have 80% of the food, 80% of the money, 80% of the electronics, 80% of the medical care. How do you think that plays on the main floor? You understand? It’s like we’re in the box seats that are air conditioned and they’re down here swatting flies, and sweating, and looking up. Have you ever been to a football game and looked up? Or a baseball game and looked at all those corporate boxes where they’re eating, and having shrimp. Cocktail, and drinking, and everything else? Think about, that’s where we’ve gotten to in the world.
This especially is touching to me, because I’m preparing, I’m soon going to be teaching through the Minor Prophets, all 12 of them. It’s very convicting to teach through the Minor Prophets and to see what God says the responsibility of the wealthy is to those who are impoverished. That’s part of the whole dynamic.
If you notice, the book of Revelation says, there’s still going to be the uber rich that are having their ivory, and their golden, and their everything else while everybody’s starving to death. They don’t seem to ever get touched until chapter 18. Look what happened during COVID. Everybody, Bezos, and Musk, and Gates, and Zuckerberg, and everybody. Look how much they gained. In fact, it’s almost the trillionaires, almost doubled their billions during COVID. There’s that peace and prosperity movement.
Then, the global hatred for Israel. Zechariah tells us that in the tribulation, Jerusalem will be “a heavy stone for all the peoples,” for the whole world. “All who lift it will surely hurt themselves,” everybody who is trying to do some damage to Israel. Look at that last line. “And all the nations of the Earth will gather against it.” We’re going to come to the point where there is universal hatred of Israel.
Look at headlines like this. July 2018, that was four years ago, but that’s only because I didn’t give you one from today, they do it every day. Top Iranian General says our forces in Syria are just awaiting orders and we will destroy Israel. Anybody can say that out loud and no one challenge it? Do you know, who’s going to be the primary supporter of Iran? The one that’s rampaging in Ukraine right now. In fact, the US government divided up the New Cold War. The green are all those in the Iranian and Russian orbit right now notice, Yemen is rocketing Saudi Arabia. For some reason Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, and UAE, and Bahrain are trying to not be against them.
The final trend, not only global hatred of Israel is global evangelism. Do you know what the Lord says? All the world. All the nations. Up until modern times, we didn’t even know all the world or all the nations. Look what the I M B, that’s International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist, they constantly are updating this map. The red dots are the unreached people. That means, there’s no one in that language group that is a Christian and there’s no scripture in that group. They are unreached. There’s no one that speaks their language that’s a Christian that can go in. There’s no one that’s been able to get the scriptures into their language. Those dots are diminished rapidly because more and more and more young people, and not so young people, are taking up the task of getting the Wycliffe translation of the scripture into every language and tongue and tribe and nation.
When Bonnie and I go to these special conventions of the closed country, missionary doctors, much of it’s being done through medical missions. When we go there, we hear about how they put a hospital right next to a cluster of those red dots. Then the Wycliffe translators, whose wife is a nurse, the husband goes out and works with the village. The country they’re in knows they’re doing it but they say, if you’re going to let Franklin Graham drop another one of those nice hospitals in our place, we’re going to overlook it. As long as you don’t go out with a megaphone and start preaching and proselytizing, as long as you keep it down, they’re letting them do it. The Gospel is going, and those red dots are diminishing.
Real quickly. Let’s turn to the last verse, and then we’re going to go. Look at Hebrews chapter 10, it’s one of my favorite verses. You always wonder, how do you apply all that? All that horrible stuff you just said. I don’t want to live in Oregon. What am I supposed to get as an application? God applies it for us, and I don’t have to. Hebrews 10:24-25 and notice what it says. “Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works.” That is supposed to be the goal of every born again Christian every time they get around another Christian. I told you that Greek word is paroxysm. The Greek word means to convulse someone like the shock paddles, get them operating and functioning and alive. How do you do that? “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together,” like COVID has done, “as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see,” what does your Bible say? “The Day.” What day? “The Day.” The day that Christ returns, the day that He launches this global offensive against humanity, the closer that looks. Boy, those early Christians thought they were in it. When Nero started wrapping Christian’s up in animal skins and dipping them in tar and lighting them alive, burning them to light his banquets, people thought that he was the Anti-Christ. They thought that the end of the world had come. Then, when it got worse and they moved to the huge Circus Maximus in Rome, that’s the spot that witnessed more martyrdoms than any place on Earth. For centuries they were marching them out and massacring them in the Circus Maximus. They thought they were in the end of the world.
What did they do? Did they fight the Romans and try to beat them? Did they hide out? They started gathering and stirring one another up. They said, we don’t know when the Day is going to be. We don’t know when the Lord is going to come in and ride in on that white horse and stop all this. We are going to paroxysmize one another. How do you do that?
Basically, it hasn’t changed. We all need undistracted time listening to God by feeding on His word. We have to be reading the Bible. You know what? When I was a youth pastor, I made a deal with my students. I had 100 in my youth group; I was at Bob Jones university. I was in charge of their on-campus high school, resident dorm students, high school kids. I had all the boys, 100, maybe 110 of them. I said every time I see you, I know every one of you by name, on this 260 acre campus, I’m going to walk straight toward you. I’m going to look you in the eye and say, where did you read in the Bible this morning? What did you read? I would be walking across campus, and I’d see one of my kids coming toward me and they go right up that sidewalk. They’d almost put their neck out of joint. I knew why. Can you guess why? They hadn’t read. An hour or two later, I’d be walking between classes. They were going to run into me. They would stand and block me, and I just walk right by like I didn’t see them. They go, aren’t you going to ask me? I say, ask you what? What I was reading in the Bible. I said, oh was I supposed to ask you that? Is that why you did that hard left on me a couple hours ago? Did you know you can stir people up? I don’t mean be mean. I don’t mean be nauseous and in their face. Just say, hey, God has transformed my life.
How about daily time applying God’s word? It’s not just enough to read it because we are merely hearers of the word. We’re supposed to be what? Doers. Doers means that we’re finding stuff because there are problems we’re struggling with and we’re finding verses about that. Someone that’s further down the road than me might have already found a verse. I like what Ray Stedman used to do at Palo Alto, at Peninsula Bible Church. What he’d do when someone got saved and they’d say, hey, this person’s a heroin addict and he just got saved. He says, oh, come here. Mike used to be. Ray would say, Mike used to be a heroin addict. Go sit by Mike, he’ll tell you how all the temptations that the Devil is going to bring you can overcome. Then someone else would come in and they say, oh, they were in alcoholic. Sue? Come on. Sue weren’t you an alcoholic? A couple of other people would say, we were too. They’d all go together. People were not ashamed of something that they’d already been forgiven and cleansed of. To whom much is forgiven the same what? Loves much and they’re willing to help others. How are you focusing time and applying God’s word to your life? That’s how you paroxysmize someone.
How about always keeping God on the line? Have you ever been to the store and you’re trying to check out, they’re talking on the phone? They go just a second and they set it down, they check you out, and then you go, yeah, someone was here. They can’t stop talking on their phone or whatever they’re doing. Did you know, that’s how we’re supposed to go through life. Pray, it’s the only thing we’re supposed to do ceaselessly. What is it? Pray without ceasing. Do we? No, unless we really need the Lord. Much need, much prayer. A little need, a little prayer.
Finally, this is the one that would transform us. If every gathering of every local church in the world, a part of it was that the people didn’t talk about where they were going to lunch, or their new car and what cruise they are going to go on, how much they don’t like that candidate running for whatever, instead they said hey, when’s the last time you got to give a verbal testimony of Jesus. When did you pass out a tract last? The last time I did was… and it’s really hard for me but I’m praying. I bought this new tract and I’m trying this. That would transform churches. Did you know, you can go to church for a lifetime and never really do anything. It’s like you’re being trained, but no one checks up on whether you’re doing it.
The bottom line is this, are you part of a group that asks you what are you reading and feeding your soul upon? Don’t forsake that assemblage. This is not being a spectator in a church this size. That’s a wonderful thing, but it doesn’t cut it because you can slip in. As a pastor I’ve seen it. People slip in and as soon as you say, in conclusion, they’re leaving because they aren’t going to get near anybody. What God wants us to do is have people we can’t get away from. Maybe they’re in our home. Maybe we’re married to them. Maybe we work with them or were students together. We say, what are you eating? What are you chewing on? Quote me a verse you’re memorizing. They say, I have so much trouble. You say, I do too. You just persist at it because it’s the only way that I can be changed in the likeness of Christ.
What are you breathing? It says that prayer is like breathing to God. What are you praying? What are you beseeching or begging God for? The word beseech means to beg. Do we ever beg Him for anything other than during elections that our candidate wins? We should be begging God for a lot of things. Who are you seeking and sharing the Gospel with?
The way that we can live for God anywhere at any time, no matter what is happening around us. It worked at the worst times for Christianity. An extinction level event took place for three centuries where the entire might of the Roman Empire was arrayed against Christianity. They hunted down every pastor, they destroyed every complete copy of the Bible. They destroyed every meeting place. If the church met in your house, it was destroyed.
I was speaking in Jordan to a group of pastors from Egypt and from Iraq and all over the place, through the Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary. I talked to one man; his name was a Moody. That was how he said his name from Egyptian translated. I said, like DL? He said yeah. That’s what my mom was thinking when she named me that. He said, I’m a church planter. He said, I’m in lower Egypt. I said great, how’s it going? He says, oh. He said, the only problem is every time the police find out they burned the house we’re meeting in. With the people there, they don’t massacre them. They just say, it’s against Egyptian law for you to have a house church, so if you’re having a house church there, we’re going to burn your house. The police come, they evacuate the people, whatever you can carry at the moment, and they burn it. Would you sign up to host the next? Honestly, you want your trailer burned? Are you that committed? That’s why the church in Egypt is flourishing. The people are all talking, they have four or five ahead. When they burn this one, they already know what the next choice is, that person’s house. By the way, you not only host the church, but the people of the burnt houses move in with you.
That’s getting stirred up and that’s how it all ends. That’s the end of the birth pangs. When we come back, Lord willing, if He is still tarrying, we’ll be in Revelation 1 tomorrow. Let’s bow for a word of prayer.
Father, I pray that we would consider one another to stir up love and good works, and so much the more as we see that Day approaching. We do see it approaching, so I pray that You would stir our hearts to just do the basics. To just be in Your word and to let You change us. To be crying out to You for help and trying to share the Gospel. Being honest and transparent with one another and saying it’s really hard, pray for me. Seeing each other as we agonized together, until that Day. In the name of Jesus we pray, and all God’s people said, Amen.
