Text: Matthew 24:36-44
Introduction: The return of Christ is an event Christians have been watching for since the time Christ ascended into heaven in Acts 1:9. Jesus warned us to be ready in Mt. 24:44, and Paul told us of an event we call the Rapture in I Thess. 4, in which Christians will be snatched out of this world and taken up to heaven. It was not until the early 1800s that this belief was written out in a systematic theological study, but it has been a foundational belief of Baptists since the first century. The question is, how close are we?
Many have tried to predict a date for the Lord’s return. William Miller, a Baptist preacher, declared it would be in October of 1843. When it didn’t happen he refigured the date to October 1844. When the Lord didn’t come he was a broken man, but Baptists continued to teach the soon return of the Lord. Others tried to set dates.
Charles Taze Russell founded the Jehovah’s Witnesses and predicted that the Millennial Kingdom of Christ would begin in 1874, and then again in 1914. In 1914 World War 1 broke out and the JW’s declared it the fulfillment of Russell’s prophecy. They actually believe that Jesus, in spirit form, is living in their headquarters in Brooklyn, New York right now. Of course, you can’t talk to Him, and nothing that has happened since 1914 has given us any reason to believe that we are in the millennial reign of Christ. The earth is not at perfect peace, all the sick are not healed, cripples do not leap like deer, and the world is not a garden as described in Isaiah 11 and 35. We lived in Africa for 14 years and I can assure you lions are not lying down with lambs.
When World War 2 broke out some pre-millennial theologians began to wonder if that wasn’t the beginning of the Tribulation period, and since they were still here if they hadn’t somehow misinterpreted the Scripture about a pre-Tribulational rapture. But when the Nazis and the Japanese were defeated they realized they had not missed anything doctrinally. When Israel was restored to its homeland in 1948 it became clear once again that the Lord was still fulfilling biblical prophecy and that the last prophecy prior to the return of the Lord had finally been fulfilled with the emergence of the Jewish state.
Since the establishment of Israel prophetic teaching has been a hot topic among Baptists, Pentecostals and Evangelicals. The imminency of the Rapture has been of primary interest to serious churchgoers and Bible students. Prophetic conferences are going on all the time all across the United States.
In 1991 Saddam Hussein led Iraq to invade Kuwait, which resulted in the First Gulf War. Hussein claimed he was Nebuchadnezzar reincarnated and declared that he was going to rebuild Babylon to its ancient splendor. Immediately many so-called prophecy experts started changing their tunes. Mystery Babylon in Revelation 17:5 and 18:2, 10, 21, has long been considered by Baptists and Protestants to be a reference to Rome. Suddenly the prophecy preachers started teaching that while chapter 17 was still Rome, chapter 18 was a reference to the real Babylon and that Hussein was going to rebuild Babylon and that by the time of the Tribulation period it would become the commercial center of the world.
This sudden change of opinion by so many was surprising. If the Bible is consistent and our doctrine true, why should we suddenly change direction over a single incident without first thinking it through? Figure it out. Even if Saddam Hussein hadn’t been overthrown, it would have taken years just to rebuild Babylon, but to move the center of the commercial world from New York City to Babylon would have taken more than just rebuilding the city. Iraq would have had to become a world power in economics while the U.S. declined, and even then for that to take place would take decades, if not the entire century, and that’s if everything was peaceful and prosperous. But you have to wonder, what does Iraq have to offer that would draw the world’s economic markets to Babylon? And look what happened after 9/11. The attack on the World Trade Center was an attack on not only America’s, but on the world’s commercial markets. And what happened? We dug out and rebuilt, and New York is still the commercial center of the world.
And now after the Second Gulf War, Hussein is gone, and after all the efforts of the Bush Administration to create an independent free Iraq, Obama has thrown it all away by pulling U.S. troops out too soon, and the Iraqi government has been controlled by Iran, and is in danger of falling to ISIS. But these prophecy experts won’t back down and still refer to Revelation 18 as literal Babylon. If that’s the case, we might as well get ready for the long haul because the Rapture is not imminent if we have to wait for Babylon to be rebuilt and become the commercial center of the world.
The truth is, we don’t have to worry about it because that is not a requirement for the Lord’s return. I do think, however, that we need to be watching, and if we are watching, we will see signs of things happening around us that point inevitably to the conclusion that the Rapture is near. I think also, however, that we need to be careful about what we say and how we say it so that we don’t come off sounding like we are setting dates, or setting expectations too high.
I used to talk to Jonathan when he was young about why we had to serve the Lord while there is still time because He is coming. One day Jonathan said in a rather sad tone, I’ll probably never get to grow up anyway because the Lord is coming. I realized then I was emphasizing it too much. Sure the Lord could come at any moment, but we have to live like He’s not coming at all. We still have to occupy till He comes.
The Lord will come when He is ready, regardless of what the critics say. In fact, if you’ve ever heard someone mocking Christians for our belief in a returning Savior, that in itself is a proof that He is coming. Peter wrote about those who say, “Where is the sign of His coming?” and concluded that they are willfully ignorant of the truth (2 Peter 3:4-5). They also prove him to be right. Ironically, as we pointed out last time, some religious leaders also mock the idea of the Rapture, but that doesn’t change anything. Paul gave us very specific details about the event, and the only way we can ignore it is to come up with some spiritual meaning for it. For one, I’ve never heard anyone give a spiritualized meaning for the Rapture, and two, once you go down that slippery slope there’s no stopping. If the Rapture is spiritually speaking, what else is spiritually speaking, and who decides? Anybody who does not believe the Rapture is literal does not take the Bible literally.
I think also we need to be careful how we present our information. I remember hearing preachers when I was a teenager back in the 1960s talking about how sinful the United States was becoming. They would say things like, “I believe someday God will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah for what He allows to go on unpunished in our day.” It sounded real spiritual, but it wasn’t scriptural, and for all that it wasn’t spiritual either.
First of all, God doesn’t have to apologize for anything. His decisions are perfect. Now I know that these men were speaking figuratively to try and point out the wickedness of our society, but that leads to the second point; what we see going on today is so increasingly worse than anything we ever imagined in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and even the 90s, that they don’t even compare. Even with the so-called sexual revolution going on in American culture in the 60s, we were a virtuous society compared with what we are today.
Let’s give it some perspective. Regardless of how loud and influential the gay community is, it is still only 2.5% of the American population, and even with the support of Democrats, liberal media and the courts, we still don’t have entire cities of gay people demanding to have sexual relations with every stranger who visits those cities. As wicked as things are, we still haven’t sunk that low. It may not be long, but we aren’t there yet.
In fact, there are so many technological advances that have taken place in the last fifty years, as well as an alignment of nations that when we look back we can’t help but think the world wasn’t really ready for the Rapture to take place until now. Now, Jesus told them to be ready, and Christians have always looked at the return of the Lord as being imminent, but we really had nothing to go by to show it was near until Israel was reborn in 1948. What that should tell us is that we should be more and more excited as we see certain events take place because it is getting near. The question is are there any other clues that could be telling us how near the return of the Lord is? Well, let’s look at a few things.
I. Modern technological and worldwide developments.
1. The Mark of the Beast, 666, is foretold in Revelation 13:16-18. It comes in the form of either a stamp on the hand or in the forehead. In order to buy or sell in the antichrist’s world you have to have one of these marks. The question has always been what kind of a mark is he going to put on your skin? I remember as a young boy not understanding all this the first time I heard it in Sunday School, but thinking that if I was in that situation, I sure wouldn’t want it on my forehead. Of course, it's not something that any believer in Christ has to worry about because we won't be here.
Then somebody came up with the bar code method of pricing objects in stores. Suddenly it became popular to talk about again. This bar code was supposedly based on a code, which used a different arrangement of six stripes three times. Then reading credit cards by this same method using an electric eye made sense of it. Another advancement was electronic ankle bracelet monitoring devices that can be used to track criminals or pets, and even your young children. But then they came up with the definitive answer: A microchip that could be planted under the skin. It’s no longer a mystery.
2. Another question that long puzzled preachers was the two witnesses in Revelation 11:9. They have power to call down fire from heaven, and for three years they preach the Gospel to every corner of the earth. Finally they are killed and the whole world sees it.
Over time some clues began to filter in that would give us hope in understanding the passage. First Samuel Morse invented the telegraph. Now a message could be sent by wire. Cables were even dropped across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Then along came the wireless and Teletype. No longer did the messages have to be in code. Then came the radio. But even as much as that helped the message spread, it still didn’t allow for people to be able to see the two dead bodies. When photography was invented in 1826 it began to make sense that people worldwide could see it, but even a picture taken then could take weeks to be spread around the globe and according to Revelation the bodies were only going to be lying in the street for three days before they would be miraculously raised up to heaven.
Then came television, which broadcast a picture right into your home, and then with satellite technology a picture could be broadcast around the world in only a few seconds. But the problem remained; televisions are big and bulky, and everybody doesn’t have one. When my wife was a little girl her family didn’t have a television. She and her cousin would go to a neighbor’s that did have TV, and stand outside the window and look in to watch. Now days almost everybody in advanced countries has TVs, but there are still people in the bush, the jungles and the mountains without this technology.
Then came the personal home computer. The Internet today is the most commonly used forum for socializing and passing news. There are Internet cafes everywhere for people who don’t own a PC, and laptops make it possible to carry your computer with you. But even with laptops and Internet cafes sometimes a computer can be too big and bulky to carry all around everywhere to keep up on the news. Then the technology took one more leap forward. Cell phones, I-pads, and I-phones. Now you can reach anybody from almost anywhere in the world at anytime, and they have Internet connections as well. And everybody has one. Little kids have them. Tribal people in the bush in Africa have them. Aetas up here in the jungles have them. Everybody has a cell phone. When the day comes for the two witnesses to be seen, the message will go out by cell phone and in a matter of minutes everybody on earth is going to see it. For the first time in history some of Revelation begins to make sense.
3. Next let us consider the alignment of the nations.
In Daniel chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar had a dream of a great image of a king with a head of gold, shoulders of silver, waste of brass, and legs, feet and toes of iron and clay. In the next couple of weeks we are going to discuss this image so we won’t dwell on it now. But briefly it represents a historical progress of nations ending with a “revived Roman Empire” that will be crushed by Christ at His return.
The revived Roman Empire has ten toes that theologians have long taken to represent ten nations. The groundwork for this revived empire was laid in 1957 with the creation of the European Economic Community, otherwise known as the European Union. When ten countries, all in Western Europe had joined some were thinking the ten toes had been fulfilled. But then the iron curtain came down and countries from the east began to join. There were two legs in Nebuchadnezzar’s image, and the Roman Empire had been divided between east and west in AD 313, so it made sense that half of the toes should come from the east, but now there were more than ten toes. On January 1, 2002 ten of the 12 nations of the EU adopted the euro as a monetary system. The EU has since grown to 25 nations and includes both eastern and western European nations. The Roman Empire at its peak around the second century AD stretched from England across Europe to Turkey, Syria and Palestine, and across North Africa.
The EU today includes Western Europe, Scandinavia,and much of Eastern Europe. Its borders don’t quite match the borders of the old Roman Empire, and it doesn't include the Balkans or North Africa.
So how do the ten toes plus the Middle East and North Africa fit into this picture? In September 2009, the EU signed a treaty in which it created a rotating leadership among the member nations. Prophecy evangelist Jimmy DeYoung claimed that this treaty created ten districts out of the EU, which is the answer to the ten toes. Except that the treaty did not create ten districts, and the existing EU does not fill all of the old Roman Empire borders. I looked up the treaty on the Internet and found that the ten districts DeYoung was talking about is a proposal for future expansion, which will include the Middle East and North Africa. What it means is that the stage is set for a single government to administrate all of Europe and North Africa, which would probably come together very quickly if in response to some kind of worldwide crisis.
4. Interestingly enough, this past week Greece defaulted on its national debt payment and has been removed as a participant in the euro. Does this mean the infrastructure for the Revived Roman Empire is crumbling? I don’t think so. Great Britain, by the way, also does not participate in using the euro, although it is a recognized currency around the world. For example, when you travel to Kenya, at the airport you can purchase your tourist visa by using dollars, pounds, or euros (but not Kenya shillings!).
Revelation 13:16-17 seems to indicate that the antichrist will solve a worldwide economic crisis when he comes to power. With Greece defaulting, could it be the beginning of a chain reaction across Europe with other nations defaulting after Greece?
It remains to be seen, but the commercial center of the world today is New York City. The world’s economy is based on the U.S. dollar, although some nations, like China, are starting to back away from it. The U.S. national debt is today over 18 trillion dollars. By the time the next president is elected it will be over 20 trillion dollars. The U.S. economy right now has almost reached a tipping point. When it gets to the point where the debt payment is higher than incoming revenue, the economy will collapse. And if the U.S. defaults on its debts to several nations around the world, it will likely create a devastating international economic crisis, just the kind of situation that the antichrist is projected to rescue the world from when he comes to power. We are standing on the brink of just such an international financial crisis right now.
5. The question then is with this much information available to us, and our ability to decipher it from the scripture, how will so many people be duped when the antichrist comes? If you’ve read the Left Behind series or seen the videos you might have an idea that there are some who will figure it out and stand up against the antichrist. But that’s not what the Bible teaches. For those who have never heard, there will be a great awakening when the Gospel is preached by the 144,000 witnesses of Revelation 14 in every corner of the earth.
But for those who have lived in so-called Christian nations, where the Gospel has been freely preached, for those who have heard an had opportunity to accept the Lord and rejected Him, 2 Thessalonians 2:10-11 says they will be given over to delusions to believe the lies of the antichrist. To be honest, this isn’t even hard to believe. People already believe in evolution without question. Hollywood movies and TV shows have inundated the public with end of the world scenarios, ghosts, vampires, zombies and aliens. And believe it or not there are undiscerning, uneducated people who believe this stuff.
When Obama was elected president in the United States there were people calling him the messiah and savior. Nearly everything out of his mouth is a lie, yet at least 40% of the US population, including educated politicians and journalists, believe him, and many more without any critical thinking have sold their souls to him because of their political agenda. These people are already blinded by their own deceit. They’ll have no problem believing the antichrist when he takes control.
But for those who may have the power of discernment, if they have rejected Christ and are still here after the Rapture, they will be given delusions to believe the lie.
6. Ezekiel 38-39 describes a great battle that will apparently take place at the beginning of the Tribulation period. In it all the kingdoms to the north will attack Israel.
Two of the nations mentioned are Gog and Magog. It is not really known who these names represent, although through the centuries many scholars have suggested they represent Russia. These kingdoms will have a coalition that will include Mizraim (Egypt), Put (Libya) and Cush (Ethiopia).
Now Egypt and Libya were long time allies of the USSR, but back in the late 1970s, Soviet agents were trying to undermine the government of Anwar Sadat and he through them out. Following the Camp David Accords, Egypt became the closest ally to the United States in the Middle East next to Israel. But that all went away with the Muslim Spring a couple of years ago. The Obama administration turned its back on Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, and backed the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood that overthrew him. But after a year of what Obama called a Democratic government, the Egyptians grew tired of the terrorist government trying to force Sharia law on them and overthrew the Brotherhood. Now Egypt stands alone, with the US having turned its back on her. She is open and ripe for a new relationship with Russia should the time come.
More significantly at the moment, on December 3, 2001, Russia and Ethiopia signed a mutual cooperation agreement. Now Ethiopia would be a small player in any invasion of Palestine, but the important thing to notice is they are in league with the Russians, just as Ezekiel had foretold.
7. Revelation 13:15 says that the Beast (the antichrist) will have the power to give life to an image of himself. This will be an incredible event that will have the world in awe. Through the centuries many scholars have believed that Satan will by then have attained the power to give life. How else could it be explained except as a slight of hand.
Actually, that’s probably what it will be. Satan has no power to create or give life. He has the power to inflict disease and even death apparently (Job 2:6), but only with God’s permission, but there is no evidence that he can actually create life.
For centuries this was a mystery, but not anymore. There are actually several plausible explanations. In the last 60 years or so the development of robotics has made all of this possible. Robotic arms put cars together on assembly lines now, as well as many other types of production, and companies are working on and continually improving humanoid types of robots.
When I was in flight school in 1984 I was selected to be a part of an experimental group flying a carrier-landing simulator. The simulator was located at NAS Jacksonville, Florida. A group of us went down for several days and when we were through we had a day to spare so we went to the Epcot Center at Disney World. There was a program in an auditorium that looked like Independence Hall in Philadelphia on the outside. On the stage they had a program with three players, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams, discussing the writing of the Declaration of Independence. As I recall, Franklin sat at the table when in walked Adams and Jefferson. Then Franklin got up and walked to the center of the stage to make a speech.
So what? So, they were all freestanding, self-balanced robots. No strings attached. They walked, turned, made motions, and their lips moved while talking, on their own. Now they were obviously programed, and there was a sound track for their voices. They were slow and deliberate as they moved so they did not look realistic. But the amazing thing was, they were moving unaided. That was over 30 years ago. I imagine that same technology today could be much more realistic.
Think about it. They now have prosthetic arms and hands for wounded warriors that react to the mental thought of the person they are attached to. So far they can only open and close fingers, but it allows them to pick things up. All of these things are steps in the production of robotics that someday could very well end up being like the android Data on Star Trek; the Next Generation.
There is also the possibility of holographic images. What they can do now is project a light source that shows the image of a person. It is ghostly in nature and can be seen through, but what if some day they are able to project such an image that looks solid? That technology may not be that far off.
Then there is a third possibility. If you ever watched American Idol, you might remember that they had a segment every year called American Idol Gives Back. They raised money by the millions to take to slum areas in various parts of the world to try and help poor people. One year they actually visited the Kibera Slum in Nairobi, and Simon Cowell very sadly said that it was unbelievable.
In 2009 on their give back episode they had a special duet that they advertised for weeks. Celine Dion would be one singer, but the other was a surprise guest. When the moment arrived the backdrop on the stage opened and out of a very bright light walked the two singers and when they reached center stage and the light came up, Celine’s male counterpart was Elvis Presley. It was absolutely phenomenal and unbelievable. But it was a very clever slight of hand. They had an Elvis impersonator who knew all the exact moves that Elvis made when he sang. He sang next to Celine and lip-sinced the music. On TV whenever the camera was from the side or behind it was the impersonator so that they could look at each other and react to each other. But whenever there was a front shot they used footage of Elvis Presley. Now the audience in the auditorium new what was happening, but on big I-mac screens they could see what the world saw. It looked just like Elvis raised from the dead doing a duet with Celine Dion.
Now I don’t know if any of these methods might be what the antichrist will use, but it suggest to us that he will have no problem fooling the world about having the power to bring an image, a statue of himself, to life. The technology to fool the world, especially the lesser-educated third world areas of the world, is there.
8. Third I’d like to consider Revelation 6:12-14. Try to imagine John in AD 95 trying to describe 20th century events that the Lord was revealing to him. These were things he had no understanding of and could not possibly have known how to accurately describe them. Now he reports of an earthquake that will make islands disappear and mountains fall. Back in 2005 the Indonesian earthquake sent a tsunami across the Indian Ocean that killed over 230,000 people. It was massive. South of India is an island nation known as the Maldives. The Maldives islands are so small that the average elevation of the islands is only a few feet. When the tsunami passed over them every island was under a couple of feet of water until it receded. Now because of their location they didn’t get the big wave crashing on the beach, but they were totally flooded.
But earthquakes themselves don’t cause the sun to black out or the moon to turn to blood. Some of you here remember Mt. Pinatubo in 1991. Here is a picture of the first eruption on June 12. It’s taken from Clark Air Base. I have pictures of that taken from Subic and from the air as we scrambled to get some airplanes evacuated after it erupted. Unfortunately they’re all at home in the States. But you remember that eruption. There were earthquakes that went on constantly all day. On June 15th when the big one erupted, it blocked out the sun and put the entire region in total darkness for 36 hours. There’s a possibility if you have multiple volcanic eruptions going on.
But how about the moon turning red? And what about the stars falling from the sky? We have meteor coming into the atmosphere every day, and occasionally a meteor shower. These are mostly burned up and if you ever see one at night it’s just a streak across the sky and then it’s gone. But this doesn’t explain stars falling.
Well let’s think about it. About 700 years ago the Chinese invented gunpowder. Then about 500 years ago the Spanish invented the first musket type of guns. Guns have advanced to very rapid-fire precise weapons in our day. Then they also invented cannons that shot cannon balls, and then artillery that shoots shells, but then with the invention of the airplane came aerial bombs. But a 2,000-pound bomb would never make an explosion big enough to make the sun turn red or block out the sun.
That is until 1945. When the atomic bomb was developed and dropped on Hiroshima we entered the nuclear age. There are some prophecy teachers such as Hal Lindsey that believe these verses are describing a nuclear holocaust. A nuclear bomb can block out the sun and make the moon look red. Many atomic explosions have these strings of debris falling off to the sides of the clouds. That could have looked like stars falling to John. Or what about if there is a nuclear exchange someday? The MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction of the Cold War. A rain of scores of nuclear missiles hurtling to the earth may have looked to John like stars falling from the skies. Of course you know I’m just surmising and there is a point to this, but one more.
John describes the fig tree shaken by a mighty wind. You know the most of the destruction done in a nuclear explosion is not in the intense heat at the center of the explosion, but in the shock wave that spreads out for miles with such force that it knocks everything down.
And one last thought. He describes the heavens opening like a scroll. This last picture is a hydrogen bomb explosion. It meets that description. The heavens seem to open up like a window while the fireball rises up through it.
Are these the things John saw in his vision? We don’t really know. What we do know is that what he saw was very terrible. In chapter 8:1, an angel showed John a Little Book, and after he read it, he told John not to write it down. Certain things were apparently so horrible that God didn’t want John to even write about it. Perhaps it was even more difficult to describe than what he has done.
I don’t know, but the point is this. If what he is describing is a man made phenomenon, we are at an age where all of these phenomenons can be explained and explained quite well. And what that tells us is that there is almost nothing that has to be developed in order for an antichrist world kingdom to be put in place. As never before we are at a place where we should be considering that the Rapture of the saints is imminent. The only thing keeping the Lord from calling us out at any moment is His timing.
These are some of the modern developments that give us perspective concerning the Lord’s return. They help us understand how things described in the Bible could take place. Now let’s consider the moral conditions of our day.
II. As in the days of Noah (Matthew 24:37-38, Luke 17:26).
Jesus said of Noah’s day that the people were eating, drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage, essentially they were having a continual party. The implication is that they were taking multiple wives committing adultery and all kinds of immorality. Genesis 6:3 says that they took wives of all they chose, likely including incest and a whole list of other perversions. They lived in a pornographic world and were unconcerned about God or the consequences of their sin. It was an extremely violent society; murder and rape were probably indicative of their lifestyle (Genesis 6:11). Their wickedness was so great that their thoughts were constantly evil (Genesis 6:5). But it was not just that they had bad thoughts, it was that they never had a good thought. The entire world was corrupt (Genesis 6:12), except for Noah (Genesis 6:8).
Jesus also made the comparison of Lot in Luke 17:28-30. Lot, a righteous man, had vexed his soul living in Sodom, and went about his life completely unconcerned about the will of God. Sodom was a city totally given over to sexual depravity. When the two angels came to rescue Lot and his family the men of the city “wearied themselves” (Genesis 19:11), they wore themselves out, trying to break into Lot’s house to have homosexual relations with the angels, even after the angels blinded them. Their desire was so heinous, that even after Lot offered them his two maiden daughters, they rejected them to get at the angels who were in the form of men.
Lot tried to reason with them but they were without tolerance for Lot’s opinion against them, and threatened him harm. Has there ever been a time when the world is closer to Sodom and Gomorrah than it is now?
In 1987 my Navy squadron was deployed to Thailand and we stayed in a hotel in Pataya Beach and had a driver to take us to the airfield each day. In his van he had several travel and tourist magazines. Thailand is known for being the place in the Far East for sex, and these magazines were full of advertisements for sexual entertainment, but what we noticed was that there were more ads for homosexual sex than normal. One of the pilots mentioned this country must be more than half gay.
In the Philippines for decades gays have been winked at as being different. They are common in the entertainment industry and many are just a satire of themselves, yet people treat them as if everything is okay. In this strongly Catholic country there is a crisis of morality. But it’s worse with all the transgenders. They are everywhere. The Pemberton-Laude trial was in the news again this week. An American after cheap sex wound up with a transgender and apparently killed him. It’s a monumental tragedy, but indicative of where the world is today.
The US Supreme Court decision last week now forces gay marriage on all fifty states. It’s a tyrannical, unconstitutional ruling that is opening the door for gays to flaunt themselves in front of the whole public. But the gay agenda doesn’t just stop at marriage. They are intolerant of any dissenting opinion to their lifestyle. If you oppose it they call you a homophobe, racist, hateful and intolerant. Yet not even a week had passed since the decision before the gays started demanding that churches be denied tax-exempt status. They are demanding that the Bible be changed to allow their lifestyle and that preachers stop preaching against the sin of homosexuality.
Even so, we are a long way from Sodom and Gomorrah, even from Thailand. The US gay population is only 2.5%, but its influence is great and many non-homosexuals in the country support them. We may not be far from becoming like Sodom, but we aren’t there yet. Things in this world could still become a whole lot more wicked.
In fact, Jesus questioned in Luke 18:8 whether there would be any believers left when He returns. This is an incredible statement. There was only one faithful man and his family left in the world when God sent the flood. There was only one believing, but compromised man and his family left in Sodom when fire rained down from heaven. In both cases the people at the time were given an opportunity to escape. Noah preached for a hundred years before the flood came. Lot vexed his soul in Sodom, but when the angels came he had one last chance to warn his family and neighbors before he was taken out of the city and judgment fell.
Conclusion: How does that compare to where we are today? We aren’t down to the last man or family yet. Before this worldwide judgment, which is known as the Great Tribulation, falls on the earth, those believers who are left are going to be raptured out of this world to be with the Lord. We saw last week that the only prophecy about the time frame for the Rapture is the establishment of Israel as a nation back in their land. That happened in 1948.
The Bible also gives us a description of several events and situations, which will also take place in the end times, and today we have seen how those events will be able to take place, something we’ve never known with certainty before. Now the return of the Lord at the Second Coming will take place after the seven year Great Tribulation period, but the Rapture will take place before the antichrist rises to power and before the seven year Great Tribulation. So what does that tell us?
Simply this: All of these signs are indicative of the world condition when the Lord returns to set up His kingdom, but the Rapture will happen at least seven years before that. Now I don’t know if that blessed hope will be today, next year, ten years from now or twenty. What I do know is, everything is in place. The only thing holding back the Rapture right now that I can see is, when comparing with the days of Noah and Lot, that the world isn’t wicked enough yet. You mean it could get worse? I’m afraid it could and I’m afraid it will.
What that means is that we need to be stronger than ever in our faith and walk, and taking every opportunity we can to try to reach people for Christ while there is still time. From what we can see we believe the time is close, but close in God’s timeframe could be many, many years away yet. We need to be ready, but we also need to occupy until He comes. It’s not time to go sit on a mountain and wait. It’s time to be busy about the Lord’s work. The question is, are you ready? If you are, are you watching?
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