If the YouTube video above is not available, here are two other ways to view:

2020Rev-11

200421PM

After a lifetime of reading, studying, and teaching the Bible: here’s what the prophetic panorama looks like: TODAY. In this session, I took my 300, virtual-classroom Bible students through an assessment of where we are in the unfolding of prophetic events. It was amazing to see their responses flowing in. These are the 10 END OF DAYS trends Jesus described, and we can see ALL of them CLEARLY.

Transcript

Welcome to chapter six of the book of Revelation. This is our halfway point. We finished Revelation, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Today is what probably most people think Revelation is about. It is about:

  • What’s next.
  • The end times.
  • The trends and everything.

As you see on the slide in front of you, What’s Next For Planet Earth, Hour-11. Then note this subheading, A Current Assessment Of The 10 Trends Of His Coming. Then notice, Matthew 24 and Revelation 6.

This section is most important because this merges Jesus Christ who took who took all of the prophecies, we saw in our first class from Genesis, from the book of Ezekiel, from Daniel, from Isaiah, from Zechariah and He put those into His sermon in Matthew 24. Matthew 24 gives us the same outline of events that we see in Revelation 6. So, it’s very exciting.

Before we get into the scripture remember those seven events, you see them on the side in front of you, the church on Earth with Jesus visiting, the church in Heaven, and the worship. Now we’re looking at what we call the tribulation. It is called a time of great tribulation, but in the Old Testament, it’s called the Day of the Lord or the time of Jacob’s troubles. Then we have chapter 19, the second coming of Christ, the millennium and great white throne and then Heaven.

Here we go, to our text and this is why I love to study prophecy. I’m going to read this to you and Hebrews chapter 10. Then I’m going to pray that this is what happens to our class. Hebrews chapter 10, starting verse 24, “and let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but…” Here’s the key verse, 25 – the ending, “but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.” Exhort as you see the Day, talking about the Day of the Lord.

Let’s bow for word of prayer.

Father, I thank you that we can gather. I thank you for our tiny classroom here. I thank you for all of the students, both in the Bible Institutes enrolled, doing their homework, taking this for credit, as well as all of our friends and others we’ve invited in, those who’ve joined us on YouTube.

I pray that, Hebrews 10:24-25 would be what clings to our mind. When we think about prophecy, it’s not for curiosity sake. It’s for sanctification sake. It’s to be useful to you. Teach us today, in Jesus name. Amen.

You remember earlier in one of our classes, I talked about the basics. I talked about eating, chewing, breathing, and sharing. Those are the basics of the Christian life that the early church was motivated to do when they met each other, to stir up.

  • They would say, Hey, what are you eating? What’s your devotional time in the word?
  • What are you chewing on, the verses? What are memorizing and meditating on that’s sanctifying you?
  • What are you breathing out to God in prayer, asking Him to change in your life and through you.
  • Who are you sharing with? In fact, when’s the last time you shared a gospel witness, a gospel track and sought to share the hope of Christ with some. This is a great time. We’re in a time that’s unprecedented with the whole sheltering at home and all of the social isolation because of the virus.

So, Hebrews 10:24 really overshadows all of our look at prophecy on what’s next?

The question I have for you is:

  • Are you living?
  • Did you live today?
  • Did you get up this morning and think about living like Jesus was coming to get you today?

I’ve animated our chart of those events. Look on the screen in front of you, the church on Earth.  That’s then culminated by the rapture to Heaven, which is in John 14, Luke 24, Acts 1, 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4. That’s Revelation 1-3.  Then you see the church in Heaven, that’s at the Bema seat.

Then you see the tribulation and God gives us the specific details for the tribulation, what’s next, and all of these Old Testament prophecies taken into Christ sermon and illustrated, as we’re going to see in our text.

Go with me in your Bibles, if you’re following along, to Matthew 24. I want to show you some verses there.

  • First of all, Jesus in verse 1 of Matthew 24, is coming out of the temple.
  • He’s on the Mount of Olives, looking with His disciples back across the Valley at the Temple.
  • His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple.
  • Jesus said to them in verse 2, do you see all these things? This was one of the wonders of architecture the ancient world had. The largest unsupported arch.
  • There were so many things that they were looking at that day.
  • Jesus said, as they looked at that construction, amazing, series of buildings that covered 40 acres on top of the Temple Mount, He said to them, “not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”
  • Now that was stunning to them. They said, huh? I don’t understand what you’re saying. It took 46 years to build that; and none of it’s going to be left? Jesus provoked them to want to know.
  • Look at this, what’s next. They said, whoa. Look at this next verse, “as He sat on the Mount of Olives”, verse three, “the disciples came to Him privately saying, ‘tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”

What’s coming next? What are the signs? That’s the signs of the times you’ve always heard of. What Jesus does in Matthew 24, He is pulling in everything that had been previously written in the prophets. What Jesus does is, He actually, instead of giving them signs, He shows them 10 what I call trends.

Now keep reading in verse 8 and that’s the next slide. It says this Matthew 24:8, “All of these are the beginnings of sorrows.” That word is sorrows in my Bible, yours might say birth pangs. Literally, it’s talking about the onset of the contractions that preceded the birth of a baby. That’s the word Jesus used. All of these are just the beginning of the contractions.

And verse 33 says “so you also, when you see all these things…” See what things? See these trends. By the way, I identify from all of these Old Testament passages, 10 trends that the Bible says would become like birth pangs. What are birth pangs?

Look at this, the end of the world trends has three characteristics.

  • Greater frequency,
  • Greater intensity and
  • Greater visibility.

In other words, more people are going to see them. They’re going to get stronger and are going to get closer together. Jesus affirmed in His sermon in Matthew 24, that everything that the Old Testament prophets said was going to happen, are going to start happening before our eyes.

In fact, the question is – one of you asked already. You said, do you think COVID-19 has something to do with the return of Christ? Most certainly I do. It’s a birth pang. Now it’s certainly not the tribulation because the tribulation, as we’ll see in the next class in Revelation 6, is one pandemic. We’re in a pandemic right now. COVID-19 is a pandemic. One pandemic in the Bible kills one fourth of all the people on Earth. How many have died in ours? Slightly more than normal death rates around the planet. Plus, we’re finding a way to stop it. Social isolation, antibodies, the malaria drug. In the tribulation, all of these frequent, intense, visible signs will become unstoppable. That’s how you’re in the tribulation. You can’t stop this avalanche that’s coming towards you.

So, is COVID-19 something to do with the return of Christ? Yeah, it’s just another one of these birth pangs that are going to get closer, stronger, and visibly seen by the whole world.

Real quickly, let me give you the 10 starting with:

  • Travel,
  • Knowledge,
  • Weather
  • Communication
  • Evangelism
  • Pandemics,
  • Digital Tracking and Money
  • Weapons of Global Destruction
  • Peace and Prosperity,
  • The Hatred of Israel.

Number one is in the book of Daniel. If you go to the Old Testament, remember right here, Jesus is quoting from Genesis, Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah, and Zechariah plus little snatches from almost every other book in the Bible. Look at what Daniel says, it’s on your slide, Daniel 12:4.

“But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro…”  Birth pangs. Frequency of travel, the intensity of travel, and total global visibility of travel. Let’s just talk about it.

  • 3000 years ago, David hired wooden boats powered by wind to help bring special wood for his temple. His son Solomon actually built and operated his own fleet of wooden ships that sailed, listen, with wind power to travel extensively between Africa, Europe, and parts of Asia. Jonah walked by foot to a port in Israel 2,800 years ago. So, we’re talking 3000 years ago, people were going by sail power and oaring or paddling power, including David, Solomon, and Jonah.
  • Jonah sailed, bought a ticket, and sailed to a place we would call today Spain, 2000 years ago.
  • Next on your side, the apostle Paul traveled all around the Roman world on mapped highways by foot, by horse, by chariot, or aboard a wooden ship carried by wind power in it sails, 2000 years ago.
  • 500 years ago, Christopher Columbus embarked on a journey across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a sea route to China. He also, probably went to the dock on foot. He probably boarded a wooden ship not unlike that of David, Solomon, Jonah, or Paul. So not much has changed 3000, 2000 years, 500 years.
  • 200 years ago, Benjamin Franklin walked to a dock, boarded a wooden sailing vessel, and went on his trip to France, to try and aid the American revolution. 200 years ago.
  • It was just over a hundred years ago everything began to change abruptly. Just over a hundred years ago with the advent of the steam engine, no longer was man tied to manpower, wind power, horsepower. First the ship, then the locomotive, then the automobile, then the airplane, and the whole world changed.
  • Today, not today because 16,000 airplanes are right now out of service because no one’s flying but in 2019, there are routine scheduled flights from any continent to any continent in a matter of a few hours. Many shall run to and fro, and we do it without thinking no one in the history of this planet ever traveled like we are able to travel. The time that we’re traveling is unprecedented.

That side you see, that last year in 2019. That finished with the beginning of the virus, 4,590,000,000 people flew on airplanes. Wow. Many, frequency, intensity, visibility, no one doubts any this.

By the way, when I do travel on airplanes, I always think about one event that happened to me. On that slide, I remember flying to speak to a conference. As I got on the airplane, I was so happy. It was one of those airplanes that was empty, had just been fixed in the airport hangar and it was being sent back to another city. So, I got on there all alone with my Bible. I couldn’t believe it. I was going to study the whole time and just before the plane took off, another passenger came and sat across the aisle from me. I thought, huh. Why don’t you sit somewhere else?  I sat there in my seat, the plane took off, I got my Bible out and I was studying the Bible, getting ready for a men’s retreat. When all of this, a sudden the man across the aisle started talking to me. It was the last thing I want to do. I was getting ready to teach a group of men, how to live the Christian life and obey the Lord. That was most on my mind. I turned a little bit in my seat. I would just smile, and I’d keep studying.

He kept ringing the call buzzer and the stewardess kept bringing him those little, tiny bottles of alcohol that you can get on an airplane. After two or three of those, he got very conversant and I got turned in my seat. Finally, he said, what are you doing over there?  I said to him, I put my finger down in the Bible where I was. I said, I’m studying the Bible. I hoped that would make him stop talking. He said, Hey I have a question for you. Then I said, what is it? He said, my Hispanic housekeeper doesn’t speak English. Why does she come up to me every time she sees me in the house and look at me and say, you go hell.

I looked at him. I said, because you probably are and I turned in my seat, my back to him and went back to studying the Bible. It was right then that I felt the Holy Spirit’s baseball bat hitting me. I thought, you’re on an airplane, there’s only two of you on the airplane, this guy is scared to death to fly, he’s drinking alcohol, he is talking to you and interrupting you and now we found out that God had sent his Hispanic housekeeper with limited communication ability in English to tell him, he was destined for destruction, he needed salvation. In that instant, I turned to my seat and I started sharing the gospel. It was one of those under one hour flights. Before I got too far, we were already descending. I quickly reached into my pocket, got out my gospel track, wrote my name and phone number on the back, handed it to him. I said, tell me your name, I wrote it down, and I started praying for him.

I ran this way to my next flight. He ran that way to his flight. He was going hunting somewhere and I never saw him again, for six months. Six months later he showed up where I was speaking, came up to me and said, I found you. Then he looked me right in the eye and he said, dad. I’ll never forget that. I said, what happened? He said, as soon as you left and went toward your plane, he said, I went around the corner. I dropped to my knees, took out that track, read it, and followed what it said. Prayed, cried out to the Lord. Eddie said, God saved me, and he’s changed my life.

Did you know, we need to think about the basics, why we’re here on Earth. As we see the end of the world coming, we’re supposed to exhort each other, seeing Christ is coming, to be in the word, to let it change us, to cause us to pray, and to want to share.

  • How are you doing in the basics?
  • Are you in the word?
  • Were you in the word today?
  • Are you reading the chapters that we’re going through?
  • Are you seeking the Lord?
  • Are you asking Him to change you by meditating upon His word?
  • Are you breathing out to Him in prayer saying, Lord guide me, control me, use me?
  • Are you sharing the gospel? See that’s what this course is all about.

Trend number two, here we go, global knowledge. Look what Daniel says on the slide, Daniel 12:4, “and knowledge shall increase”. Knowledge would increase. We’ve gone from kilobytes, to megabytes, to gigabytes, to terabytes, to petabytes, to exabytes and we’re in zettabytes. They say coming after zettabytes, or yottabytes. Sounds like some dessert or something, yottabyte that. Daniel said knowledge shall increase.

There’s one word that should be on your mind when we think of increased knowledge. My phone can connect to Google. I can type in any mathematical equation. Any words and it will find the song it’s from. Any words and it’ll find where it is in the Bible. Any place and it will take me in a map there. Any thought and it will give me everything, the compendium of global knowledge on that topic. It’s in my pocket. I have the sum total of everything that’s known at my fingertips. No king, no emperor, no one in history has what you have on your phone.

Now with, see the second word on your screen, nanometer architecture. What’s that? If I had a quarter here, that’s about the size of the bottom of this marker right here. Nanometer architecture is that right now, they’re making computer chips with 1 billion lines going from left to right and 1 billion lines etched into them going from top to bottom. A nanometer is 1 billionth of an inch and they etch chips, the size of quarters with 1,000,000,000th of an inch wide little lines. That little chip right there can basically hold every book that’s ever been written on Earth. Just about every audio thing that’s ever been recorded on that. Unbelievable right now.

What they’re saying is that on the servers of Silicon Valley, there are four zettabytes of information. What’s a zettabyte? A zettabyte is a 1 with 21 zeros after it. Basically, those four zettabytes of information are equal to 304 million years. Not hours, years of 4k video. Years, 300 million plus years of 4k video with that resolution and the sound. That’s how much people have uploaded on their Facebook and Snapchat and everything else accounts. These chips are making that all searchable at any instant. Knowledge shall increase.

It doesn’t stop there. Travel with frequency, intensity, visibility; unbelievable knowledge. Look at weather. Look what Jesus says on your screen. Luke 21:25-26, “there’ll be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars.” So, people are going to be aware of solar activity, lunar activity, stellar activity, which says something. The whole world is going to be aware of it.

“On the Earth distress of nations, with perplexity”, Luke 25:25, “the seas and the waves roaring. “But look at the result, verse 26 “men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming.”

I’ll never forget when I was standing at a Starbucks, Christmas of 2004. I stood at the Starbucks and I was looking up, it was one of those that’s in a hotel. There was a TV monitor there. I saw a beach house on a shore with a palm tree by it and a wave this high coming toward it. Do you know what I was seeing? That great tsunami of the big Indonesian Earthquake. I was watching, someone was standing there with their phones filming and they had uploaded it. The great tsunami that wiped out all those people. These people were up on a cliff and they filmed it happening.

Look what this verse says, people’s hearts will fail them from fear, seeing the things that are coming on the Earth. What things are they going to see?

God says inescapable climate change is coming. That’s number one, inescapable, unstoppable. There are going to be climate events that are going to get closer together. They’re going to get stronger and everyone’s going to see them. That’s the characteristic of all these trends.

Look at your screen. This is just the daily mail map of last year’s heat wave.

  • California 49 degrees centigrade, that was like 130 degrees in Death Valley.
  • .. A heat wave in Canada? Canada touches the Arctic circle. 70 people died from the heat last summer.
  • In one event, Algeria was 51 degrees in the desert.
  • Sweden had forest fires; they are on the Arctic circle.
  • Greece had wildfire fires where 79 people died running into the GNC because this brush fire came down the Hill in Athens so fast, it killed 79 people.
  • Japan, a huge heat wave in Tokyo with all the air conditioners running, 65 people died.
  • The world is on fire.

The frequency of weather events, the intensity of the droughts and everything else. The visibility, the world is going to be watching. How do you like this? This was last summer. We were there. Record 108 degrees in Paris, 108 degrees. They never recorded 108 degrees in history. There’s going to be global weather events that are going to get closer, stronger, people are going to watch them. What it said in Luke 21 is, people are going to die of heart attacks, seeing what’s coming.

Number four, the trend of global communication, this is what Revelation says. Revelation is talking about the events that Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah, and Isaiah all described.

This is what it says in Revelation 11:9, “then those from the peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations…” What’s that’s code for? Everybody of the world, this visibility, everybody. This is going to be an event that everybody’s going to watch. That’s what it’s saying.

“We’ll see their dead bodies.” Who is this? This is chapter 11 over here in the tribulation in Revelation 11. We have the two witnesses. These prophets from God that call down fire from Heaven and caused there to be no rain on the Earth doing things that Elijah and Moses did. The antichrist who meets them, these two witnesses, is going to do something.

Look what it says, He will “not allow their dead bodies to be put in the graves. And those who dwell on the Earth.” Again, it’s global, the visibility. “Those who dwell on the Earth will rejoice over them, make merry, and send gifts to one another, because these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the Earth.”

When, in history, has it been possible for people anywhere on the Earth to send gifts to everybody? We call it Amazon prime, don’t we? You can buy anything almost anywhere and you can see what’s going on everywhere.

Let me show you one quick slide. That was yesterday at 4:30 PM. All the blue are viewers, and all the green dots are broadcasters, what is that Facebook live? We’re in isolation, quarantine. Bonnie and I watched John MacArthur’s services in Los Angeles on Facebook, yesterday morning service and last night evening service. The little bubbles were coming up. All those people’s hearts and likes and comments were just buzzing across there. Thousands of them.

Look at that map right now, there’s not a continent untouched by Facebook live, people can take their phones and film. What I think is going to happen when those two witnesses are killed and their bodies laying there, people are going to be there and they’re going to be filming. It’s going to be posted and people are going to be watching it live.  All of a sudden, do you remember what happens? After three and a half days, the Lord resurrects them and raptures them out. Oh, I can just see the people with their Facebook live going, Wow! Look at that, I wonder what’s happening.

That’s the world we live in. Did you know, that was explained 2000 years ago, there would be global travel, global explosion of knowledge, global weather events, and global communication – not just audio video, it says they ‘ll see.

Number five, the trend of global evangelism.  Jesus said in Matthew 24, do you remember Matthew 24 kind of summarizes all of these Old Testament prophecies and follows the expansion. Actually Revelation 6 to 18, is just a 13 chapter expansion of Matthew 24. Jesus illustrates in Revelation what He says in Matthew.

Look what He says in Matthew 24:14, “and this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world…” In all the world notice, “all the world as a witness to all the nations…” Do you notice all the all’s? Do you notice the global nature of all these events? When we get right here to the fifth one, evangelism is global. Then the end will come. Mark 13 records the same event. The gospel will first be preached to all the nations. Never before, before our generation was it possible to even know how many people were on the planet? When we’re talking about global evangelism, global? They didn’t even know how many continents there were. It was impossible until our day and now it’s not impossible to get the gospel to every nation, anywhere on the planet. A radio or television wave can go anywhere. It can travel anywhere. The new satellites that Elon Musk is putting up. It’s just unbelievable how totally communicating our world is. Our website, just these classes, regularly are seen by 80 countries. I didn’t even know 80 countries had the ability to watch YouTube. It’s amazing.

Do you remember what Jesus said? Look at Mark 13:10, it will be preached to all nations today. Portions or the entire Bible are in 2,300 languages. That’s over 90%, almost 95% of the world.

Now look at this map of the world. Those little red dots are the unreached people groups. Every one of those have a team that is trying to get the gospel into the hands of someone that speaks that language so they can share it. There are unengaged and unreached people groups.

  • Unengaged means there’s no portion of scripture, no person who speaks their language.
  • Unreached means there’s no one yet we know of, functioning in a local church.

The mission boards have identified all of them. We know the target. We’re taking the gospel to every nation.

Number six, global travel, global knowledge, global weather awareness and fear, global communication, global evangelism. Wow. This is where we are today, the trend of global pandemics. Look what it says a Matthew 24 verse 7 on your slide, “for nation will rise against nation…” By the way, this is the full list of the birth pangs. There’s going to be more and more frequent nations rising its nation, kingdom against kingdom, famine, and there it is…pestilences. Luke 21:10.

For those of you that don’t see that word in Matthew 24, it’s also in Luke 21:11, and Earthquakes in various places. There would be more frequency of quakes, pestilence, pandemics, famines, and war and in intensity. Everyone’s going to know about it, but the way we know we’re in the tribulation is when it’s unstoppable.

Right now, in Africa there’s a plague of locusts that’s taken the food for millions. You know what we’re doing in spite of COVID-19, there are people taking grain to help the people in Africa. That famine is stoppable, but the day is coming in the tribulation when just the pandemic, just this sixth trend will kill a fourth of all people with no possible immunization, no antibodies, nothing. Despite an increase in scientific knowledge deadly diseases, that’s what the Bible calls pestilences or pandemics, would be prevalent. Last month in Michigan, a man with strep throat barely survived multiple amputations because the strep with all of our antibiotics, went into his abdominal cavity. There was not even one dreaded, looming, super close pathogen that we knew that we couldn’t stop, until recent days. The Lord says watch out, when the birth pangs hit the intensity where they’re unstoppable then you know you’re in the tribulation.

Number six pandemics. There’s the COVID-19. I love that beautiful electron microscope view of it.

Do you remember how it spreads so quickly? Through planes. Through people’s contact?

In fact, here’s the page from just two days ago, I follow the Johns Hopkins University page, 2.375 million cases confirmed and total of the how many have died in the United States and everywhere else in the world?

  • It’s global, pandemics.
  • It’s visible to everybody.
  • It was growing in intensely. They think it’s plateauing, but there’s going to be more of them.

Number seven, the sign of digital money and global tracking. Listen to what it says in Revelation 13. Now remember Revelation 7, we meet 144,000. We’re going to talk about those in days ahead. Revelation 11, we hit the two witnesses. In Revelation 13 where we are, we meet the Antichrist. Look what happens when we meet him. Revelation 13:16. He, the Antichrist, the global ruler “causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.”

Now, wait a minute. Notice, number. A lot of people are worried about getting a chip or a barcode or a tattoo or something, and they don’t want to get that. This is not saying avoid having a chip implant or a tattoo or a barcode. What is saying is a number to buy or sell. Guess what? It’s too late. What that means is for the first time in history, we would have digitalized money. We’ve never had digitalized money.

  • We’ve had currency.
  • We’ve had barter,
  • we’ve had exchange with gold and silver and coins.
  • We’ve had all types of ways of transactions until modern times.
  • Just in the last decades where money has become digitalized.

Now, let me just show you the ramifications of what this means. Because of the current COVID-19 pandemic, look at that headline on April 10th, Apple and Google are going to bring COVID-19 contact tracing. Look, what does it say? Read it out loud. What does it say on the screen? Yeah, 3 billion people. Do you know what contact tracing is? Here’s the thumbnail. If you want to read that article it was in Bloomberg.

  • Contact tracing is that my contacts that are in this phone are all known by Apple.
  • They are going to combine their computers with Google’s so that all of the people that have Gmail and are part of YouTube and everything else.
  • that whole vast database with all are about 3 billion people involved with Google and
  • about 1 billion crossovers are involved, have an iPhone.
  • My contacts are going to be in the servers somewhere and when somebody in my contact list is diagnosed as infected with COVID-19, guess what my phone will do.
  • Buzz, your friend…we know where your phone was and their phone was, and your phones were closer than six feet. So, you’re likely to have been exposed. That’s what contact tracing is. It’s eerie.

Bonnie and I, we travel 150,000 miles some years speaking all over the world. We got enough off an airplane at 11:00 PM. I stepped in, to pick up our car, we were in Northern Thailand speaking at a conference. I got Bonnie in her side of the car, I walked around to my side. As I was opening the door my phone vibrated, I thought who would call me at 11 o’clock in Thailand. I looked, and it was a note from Chase Bank. It said fraud department. Did you just spend X number of dollars in Chiang Mai, Thailand? I looked at Bonnie. I said, Chase Banks knows where we are right now and what we’re doing.

There’s coming a time through technology. See on the screen in front of you, MasterCard, PayPal, Square Cash, Visa, Ally Pay, Apple Pay, Venmo. All of these things with contact tracing are all going to be in one massive database with the continuous GPS tracing, triangulating right where our little phone is or our little watches or whatever is going to make it possible through this, look at the next slide.

What is that on their right hand or on their foreheads? What you see there is visual recognition. What’s that? The cameras do a triangular triangulation of our facial features and search a database and in a millisecond, identify who you are. What recently happened just before the social isolation started, there was a gigantic concert going on last fall outside of London. There were cameras as you went into the stadium of all these people going to the concert. They don’t even, we don’t even notice cameras, they’re there all the time. A camera caught a face and triangulated. It sent it down to Interpol who sent back a note saying that’s a guy wanted in Germany and he’s in London. They looked up his ticket and during the concert the British policeman walked up to, out of 80,000 people, and stood at his row, and walked down his row while he was enraptured in the concert and cuffed him. He had no idea that 1 out of 80,000 could be picked out. You know what? One out of 3 billion are going to be picked out in the next few weeks. That’s called contact tracing. COVID-19, Apple/Google initiative. With the Antichrist, Revelation 13:16 says, everyone on Earth will be under his surveillance. If you do not deny Jesus Christ, then he will execute you.

Global digital money and tracking, a trend that’s getting more frequent. It’s happening faster and faster. It’s getting more intense. China now tracks every one of their 1.2 billion people. It’s getting more and more visible to the world, but in the tribulation, it’s unstoppable.

Number eight, the trend of weapons of global destruction. Matthew 24 has something very interesting. There will be great, what does it say, tribulation? So look, the way you know you’re in the tribulation; the way you know that it’s happening is when these trends, as in weapons of mass destruction, become unstoppable.

What does Jesus say is going to happen? Look at this, “there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved.”

That’s what weapon of mass destruction means. Up until this time in biblical times and up until modern times, you only could get someone, that you could get close enough to get them.

  • First it was with your sword or with your slingshot or with your bow and arrow.
  • Later it was with your catapult.
  • Then we got a little further, to our Canon.
  • Then we got our airplanes, but always people could flee.

You couldn’t carpet bomb everywhere. You couldn’t shoot arrows everywhere. You couldn’t get everybody until now.

Look at that slide, the doomsday clock. Most dire warnings since the cold war. What they’re saying is, they’re saying what is on the next map.

Look at how many people have atomic devices. America has 6,550 weapons. They say that it would take only about 24 to 50 to wipe out about 95% of all people.

  • We’ve got 6,550.
  • Russia has 6,850 weapons.
  • North Korea has 15.
  • China has 280
  • India has 135.
  • One of the most volatile areas of the world. Pakistan has 145. They always have to have a little more than India, their arch enemy.
  • Israel has an undetermined number

I will say one thing about Israel. That is that Israel developed something and Israeli scientists, because it was real so small and they have so many foes around them, they developed what’s called the neutron bomb. That is, it’s a bomb where if you hit a city, it doesn’t ruin the city. All it does is kill all organic life within the city, all animals, and people. It leaves the city fine for re-inhabitation.

Neutron bomb, the atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb, germ warfare, weapons of mass destruction. More frequent warfare. More intense warfare. More visible warfare. When warfare becomes unstoppable you know you are in the tribulation.

Global travel, global knowledge, global weather, global communication, evangelism, pandemics, digital money and tracking, weapons of mass destruction. Then there comes a desire for global peace and prosperity and materialism.

Now, just for a minute I want you to think about this. Have as many people died as our foreboding initial forecasts of what was going to happen? By Easter Sunday, we heard that there was going to be this massive amount of people in America dying. It’s a fraction of the amount we heard in all these projections. Yet you have witnessed in the current pandemic, the first time the entire world shut down before the disaster struck. Wow. Why would it be that America has stopped the world’s largest economy. Europe has stopped the world’s second largest economic block. China stopped, the second or third largest economy. Why is all that happening? Because there’s a global desire for peace and prosperity and materialism. We don’t want anything to happen, so we’re willing to stop before it happens.

A global response to a pandemic is unprecedented.  This it’s getting us close to is, when one man says; Hey, do you want the ultimate global prosperity, peace? I’ll settle the Arab – Israeli conflict. I will settle all of the Chinese – American controversy. I will stop all the religious warfare. I will give you peace in the world. That’s why in chapter 6 when we get to it tomorrow, in tomorrow’s class, into Revelation 6, the very first event is the anti-Christ coming on a white horse.

Bringing peace and prosperity to a world right now that has $247 trillion of global debt. It’s a debt bomb and something’s going to happen. If you read Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, any of the European papers, any of the Asian papers, they say this level of debt is unsustainable. In fact, one article in Wall Street said money has lost its meaning, we’re just printing it now.

Here’s the last one, the trend of global hatred for Israel. This is what Zechariah says, remember Jesus talks about what Genesis, Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah, and Zechariah said. “On that day”, Zechariah 12:3, “I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples. All who lift it will surely hurt themselves. And all the nations of the Earth will gather against it.”

Now, did you notice what I emphasized just then? This is what the Bible says. This is how you know the tribulation, how you know it’s shaping up. When the trend, the frequency of the hatred of Israel, the intensity of the hatred of Israel, and the visibility of the hatred of Israel becomes unstoppable. God said that is the alternate trigger that launches.

Let me just show you a few headlines you’re missing because of COVID-19. Top Iranian general: Forces in Syria ‘awaiting orders’ to destroy Israel. Yesterday they showed their new drone fleet. 28 drones, from the American drone they captured a couple of years ago. Now, they’re mass producing it. They are reaper drones that are highly maneuverable, very hard to track, and very laden with explosives. They have a whole fleet of them now. They say, we’re going to launch them at any time to destroy Israel.

Look at this, this was in the wall street journal. They call it the Middle East Cold War. It’s mapped. Russia, plus Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen are against Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, and Israel and its two sides, the Shia and the Sunni.  That’s going to keep getting more frequent, more intense, more visible until it becomes an unstoppable.

Here’s where it is, in scripture; see that slide, Ezekiel 38 and 39 says that Iran is going to be the chief hater of Israel. By the way, in the whole world, they are already, they are going to get a coalition to join them in attacking Israel.

You know, you’re at the end of the world when you see these three characteristics – greater frequency, greater intensity and greater visibility of those birth pangs.

Martin Luther says I have two days on my calendar. Today and the day of Christ’s return. I want to live every day, like the early church, ready for Him to come.

My question for you is: are you getting ready for the greatest day in your life? Do you know what the greatest day of our life is? It says in 2 Corinthians 5, that each one of us get to have a day where we stand all alone, just me in front of Jesus Christ.

  • He’s going to be sitting on His throne and He is going to come down from His throne and stand across from me.
  • There’s going to be a river of fire between me and Him.
  • He’s going to say, okay, I’m ready.
  • I’m going to bring my shopping cart, which contains everything in my life that I live for apart from sin.
  • He’s already washed away all the sin, no record of it, but everything else that I spent my time on invested my life in, I’m going to dump into the river.
  • Jesus is going to take out what doesn’t burn up. That’s what it says in 1 Corinthians 3:10-15. That moment is called the judgment seat of Christ.
  • It says, whatever is not burned, Jesus gives back to me as my reward.
  • He said, this is what you invested your precious one and only life for.
  • That’s going to be the crown that I get to cast at His feet.

What’s next for planet Earth? An intense frequency of these 10 trends. Jesus said, when you see all these things happening at once, the generation that sees all of these things He called the final generation. You and I are alive today. We are the first group in history to see global travel, global knowledge, global weather, global communication, evangelism, pandemics, digital money with tracking, weapons of mass destruction, a global desire to shut down everything to stay safe and prosperous, and a global hatred of Israel.

What should that do? We should be eating chewing and breathing and sharing the basics. Awaiting the day.

Let’s bow for a word of prayer.

Father in Heaven, I thank you for your word to treasure. It’s the only source of communication and revelation about you. You are our only hope. We’re infected most seriously with the sin virus, the S.I.N. virus, and you’re the only hope we have. The only way to know you is through your word. I pray that this class would touch and stir and draw many hearts back to the basics, but most of all to you, as the only hope, our Savior. To that end, we ask in the precious name of Jesus. All God’s people said, Amen.

Slides


Check Out All The Sermons In The Series

You can find all the sermons and short clips from this series, Exploring The Book of Revelation here.

Looking To Study The Bible Like Dr. Barnett?

Dr. Barnett has curated an Amazon page with a large collection of resources he uses in his study of God’s Word. You can check it out here.