In the last installment, we reached two important conclusions:
- JESUS CHRIST IS LIKELY GOING TO RETURN IN THIS GENERATION!!!
- WE ARE RESPONSIBLE TO KNOW THE TIME OF OUR VISITAITON
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.” (Hosea 4:6)
Those words are stark and powerful for the nation that rejects God and His laws. “Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you…. Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.” That day of judgment is appointed for the land that sees fit to ignore God’s word. And so, we have done. For years, we’ve all heard it said, ‘It can’t happen in America.’ We’re too powerful, too self-reliant, – too modern.’ Yet, the great Babylonian Empire fell the day after Daniel read the writing on the wall that prophesied its’ downfall. To some, the notion of divine punishment is even beyond consideration. Yet the Israelites were God’s people. And God turned from them, and allowed the surrounding lands to execute His judgment whenever they strayed from Him into spiritual adultery. What exactly is that, you ask. It is whenever Israel put other gods before Him. We too live in a nation and a culture that once knew God – and now has rejected Him We have replaced Truth with preference, -and Divine Law with tolerance for sin.
Let’s just look at a few examples. According to polls, over half of those claiming to be evangelical born-again Christians believe that Jesus is NOT the only way to the Father. (That’s a contradiction of Christ’s own words.) According to surveys a significant proportion of clergy from mainline Protestant denominations, – Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists, and the like, – reject the main tenets of the Christian Faith. They do not believe that Jesus was God, – that He rose from the dead, was born of a virgin, provided atonement for our sins. Tell me what is the purpose of Christianity if these things are not true.
Then there are the over 60 million legal abortions performed since Roe v Wade. Add to that the fact that the American Roman Catholic bishops said that Jews don’t really need Jesus to be saved. Other whole denominations have changed, – or set aside, – God’s word on homosexuality. They are marrying same-sex couples and have ‘gay’ clergy, and even a sodomite bishop. All in the name of tolerance! The Pope and many in the Catholic world tell us that everyone is a child of God. The evidence that that is untrue can be found in the first Chapter of the Gospel of John. Speaking of Jesus, it reads: “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:10-13) Our political leaders are no better. Shortly after 9/11, born-again President George Bush told us that the Allah worshiped by the Muslims is the same as the God of the Bible. Not to be outdone, then Senator Barack Obama informed us that good Jews and good Muslims will all get to heaven. Yet John 3:18-19 reads: “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” Condemnation, – because men loved darkness.
Now because we know the signs and because can expect the imminent return of Christ and because we know that we are responsible to know the time of our visitation: We can know A DAY IS COMING WHEN EVERYTHING WILL CHANGE! Biblically we can know that we are on the edge of something that the Scripture calls Jacob’s Trouble. “Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it” (Jeremiah 30:7) (KJV) This refers to the Jewish-centric aspect of the 7-year Tribulation that will precede Christ’s Return to rule in glory. Right now, we are living in the prelude to the Last Days, – the time of birth pangs. In fact, we can set aside Scripture for a moment and realize just by looking at the world situation that we live in a time of extreme danger. First, we must understand that we can find historical parallels for the times in which we live. There is an interlocking systemic inevitability about the geopolitical situation today, that rehearses the days that led up to the First World War. Barbara Tuchman’s Guns of August, reveals how no one really wanted that war. Yet it came, driven by alliance and folly on the part of the world’s statesmen. Millions died and our world order was forever changed
The geopolitical landscape is again adrift on a sea of change. Europe has long ago opened its’ borders, forever altering the fabric of its’s culture. They have abandoned the God of the Bible and imported militant-Islamists bent on dominating the society. Over the last four years, America’s purposely-open borders has created a class of undigestible foreigners, unwilling to assimilate. Among them came cadres of enemies from Iran & China & Central and South American gangsters. We have Europe, bent on war with Russia: An unwinnable conflict to be fought over one already lost in Ukraine. We have China aggressively intimidating Taiwan, a nation America has pledged to defend. America and Iran threaten each other. Israel fights against terrorists on many fronts. Rumors of wars! We are drifting toward war on so many fronts. The world looks much as it did in the 1930s.
During that decade we had Germany driving the world toward world war. Today, wee have Globalism and Islamo-Fascism both playing that role. And Radical Islam, whether in the form of the terror networks – or in hegemony-seeking Islamic states such as Iran cultivate a culture of death and confrontation in the service of what they believe will be the ultimate Caliphate that will rule the world. [Not now, but there is a case to be made for a Islamic Antichrist.] Both Nazism and Islam were / are religious and messianic in nature. Hitler was a messiah figure, putting on pagan spectacles such as the Nuremburg rallies, where torchlight and hate drove and channeled the German nation to a frenzy. Der Fuhrer promised a 1,000 year reign, for his Nazi state which in the course of things, managed to transform even that nation’s Christianity into an altered paganized shell of its former self. As for Islam, they are expecting the Mahdi, or Islamic Messiah to emerge out of chaos to assume control of a worldwide caliphate. According to the Islamic holy books it will be centered in Jerusalem. This new Muslim empire is to vanquish and slaughter Christians and Jews, – setting up, – that’s right, – a 1,000 year reign. While Hitler fueled his socialist revolution with anti-Semitism and hate, – Islam is anti-Israel and thrives on a culture of death. The Quran teaches that it is a religious duty to war and slaughter in the name of Islam. [Christ even warned of this as recorded in John 16:2: “…the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service.”
Nazism and radical Islam both use religious motivation to animate their followers to pursue empire. In both cases, they are for the most part, opposed only by a decadent, pleasure-seeking West, – devoid of the will to even maintain its’ cultural heritage in the face of these religiously motivated zealots. Western, Judeo-Christian-centric civilization is falling. It is being set up for the kill. We know, that one day soon, when the Church is called out in the Rapture, the West will fall. The World will fall. And the Antichrist figure will take the stage. We do well to take stock of the times in which we are living. To understand the nearness of OUR TIME OF VISITATION!
Leave a Reply