The Great Signs of the End Part V Matthew 24:1-51

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Last week, we continued our journey through Matthew 24.
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Matthew 24, once again, is known as the Olivet Discourse, or more simply, the last times according to Jesus.
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Our big idea of this long sermon is to anticipate the soon return of Christ.
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And thus far, we have seen 15 practices how you are to do this. And here's a recap of that.
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Let me give you the first eight that we've looked at thus far. So you are to anticipate the soon return of Christ through looking at prophetic certainty through what has already been fulfilled.
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Taking seriously why Jesus provides end times details. Watching out for the appearance of many false prophets.
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Observing an increasing number of global wars. Experiencing a rise in natural disasters.
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Witnessing the rise of global persecution. Noticing widespread disregard for God's law.
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And seeing the Gospel advance to all the corners of the earth.
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Points three through eight are signs that Jesus gives that point to the reality that Jesus' return is coming.
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So this morning as we continue our sermon series through Matthew and our journey through Matthew 24, we are going to see points nine and ten.
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These two points are also signs that Jesus gives that point to the reality that He is coming and His return is on the horizon.
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So at this time I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to Matthew 24. And if you're using one of those red
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Bibles, it's on page 986. 986, and once again the big idea, anticipates the soon return of Christ.
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This is the great hope of the New Testament. Someone said that one out of every four verses has a reference to the return of Christ.
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So you see this is a big emphasis of the Bible and it's a big emphasis of our church.
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And we're seeing this play out here in Matthew 24 as Jesus tells us, these are the signs that I give. My return is coming.
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When you see these signs, it points to this reality. So here is the ninth practice how you are to anticipate the soon return of Christ.
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And that is through following the rise of the final one world ruler.
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Following the rise of the final one world ruler. And we're going to see this in verses 15 -20.
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I'm going to read these verses. Verses 15 -20. And this is where much of our focus is going to be this morning.
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These are the words of Jesus. So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet
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Daniel, standing in the holy place, let the reader understand. Then of those who are in Judea, flee to the mountains.
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Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house. And let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak.
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And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days, pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a
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Sabbath. Thus far in this chapter, we have seen that there will be wars at the very end and widespread persecution.
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As we see wars and persecution, there is one man who is the driving force behind all of this, and that is the final one world ruler.
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We will see this one man and the havoc that he causes described in the verses I just read. And we saw that havoc.
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But I want to zero in on verse 15 to start where Jesus once again says, when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet
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Daniel, standing in the holy place, let the reader understand. What Jesus describes is what was predicted in the
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Old Testament is the passage I read this morning during the call to worship. What we saw earlier in this chapter is that the
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Messiah is predicted numerous times in the Old Testament.
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And Jesus fulfills every prediction concerning the Messiah to a
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T. Jesus came the first time 2 ,000 years ago on a rescue mission to save sinners, and when
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He comes again, He will come to take His throne to reign in power. But the
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Messiah is not the only significant figure predicted in the
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Old Testament. There's also a dark figure, a dark ruler predicted, and that is the final one -world ruler.
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What Jesus tells us in verse 15 is that this final one -world ruler is predicted in the book of Daniel, and those are the verses
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I read this morning. Daniel chapter nine, verses 24 through 27, also known as Daniel's 70 weeks.
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Entire books have been written about those four verses. There, He is predicted to rise to power during the final seven years of this age.
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And you might wonder, how do we get this final seven -year tribulation? Well, it comes from Daniel chapter nine, verses 24 through 27.
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69 weeks have happened. Each week represents seven years. There's one week that still has not yet occurred.
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It is seven years, and it's in the future at some unknown time. In Daniel nine, verse 26, this figure is referred to as the
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Prince who is to come, and verse 27 says this about Him. He shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week,
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He shall put an end to sacrifice and offering, and on the wing of abomination shall come one who makes desolate until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.
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In our passage in verse 15 of Matthew 24, this is the verse that Jesus is referencing to His disciples.
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This final one -world ruler is the abomination of desolation, as Daniel nine says.
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In the class on Daniel that Keith is leading, we talked about Antiochus Epiphanes. He actually sacrificed in the temple of God in a very horrible way, and he is kind of a type of an
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Antichrist. Sometimes there's these figures from history who are not the Antichrist, but they represent someone who will later fulfill that in one man, and Antiochus Epiphanes is one of those guys from before the time of Christ.
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So to be called the abomination of desolation means that this man is going to cause enormous trouble while he rules over the earth.
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In the previous point, I explained that he is going to get to power through seducing the population.
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He is going to start off looking good as the leader of the people, and as time goes on, his true colors will show.
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This future one -world ruler goes by many titles in the Bible. The book of Daniel calls him the little horn, the prince who is to come, and the abomination of desolation.
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2 Thessalonians calls him the man of lawlessness. The book of Revelation calls him the beast.
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Lastly, the book of 1 John calls him by the title that most people know him as, the
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Antichrist. What is interesting is that he is only called the
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Antichrist once, and that is in 1 John 2 .18, but that is the title that normally sticks with this future one -world ruler.
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The reason this title probably sticks with him more than the others may be because this title, the
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Antichrist, really sums up who he is. He is the ruler who opposes the true ruler,
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Christ Jesus. During the Sunday school hour, we just finished going through the Chronicles of Narnia.
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We went through the first book. Technically, it's the second book, right? The lion, the witch, and the wardrobe. In this book, there is a false ruler and a true ruler.
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The false ruler is known as the white witch, while the true ruler is named
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Aslan. The white witch does not like to be called the white witch.
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She wants to be called the queen, but the story presents her for who she truly is.
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She is the villain of the story who desires to take the throne from the one to whom the throne truly belongs.
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Just as the white witch does not like her true title, in the same way, this future one -world ruler does not like these titles that are assigned to him in Scripture, but of course,
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Scripture tells us the way it really is. He will much prefer to be called king, but in reality, he is called negative titles like the man of lawlessness, the beast, and the
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Antichrist. This final ruler, as I have indicated, is going to rule the entire world.
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This is a sign of the end, because after his reign is when
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Christ is gonna come back. His reign will begin, as Daniel 9 .26
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says, when he makes a treaty with the many. The question is, who are the many?
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Well, when you look at the context, there's gonna be sacrifices going on. And which people are gonna be sacrificing in Jerusalem?
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That, of course, is the Jews. There's even talks right now of a third temple being built.
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In fact, these talks have been going on for a very long time. And you might wonder, well, how is that gonna happen?
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Because on the temple grounds is the Dome of the Rock, and the Dome of the Rock is run by the
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Muslims. Why would the Muslims ever allow the Jews to build a temple there?
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Well, the final one -ruled ruler is gonna make this happen. He's gonna be the one in charge, and he's gonna let them build in this location.
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So this future ruler is going to make a treaty with the
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Jewish people where they will be able to offer sacrifices again, as they haven't done since the temple was destroyed in 70
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AD. But as the text says, halfway through the 70th week, so halfway through the seven years, these final seven years, he will break this covenant showing his true colors.
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2 Thessalonians 2, verses three and four describes what he will do when he breaks this covenant. For that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first.
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And the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so -called
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God or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be
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God. This is not your ordinary ruler. Now while certainly the devil influences world leaders, and we see that influence in our world today,
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I mean, his agenda is godless, and we see a godless agenda in our world.
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This final one world leader will be far worse than anyone who is even on the scene right now.
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He will be possessed by Satan. Satan's power will be shown to this person unlike any other person in history.
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I've stated before something that my professor shared with our class when we were studying eschatology or at the end times in seminary.
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He said something very fascinating. It's his belief that Satan doesn't know who the antichrist is gonna be.
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He doesn't know the future like God knows the future. There have been certain people down through history that have been extraordinarily evil.
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People like Nero, Diocletian, and in the modern world,
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Adolf Hitler. It may be that Satan planned for these men to be the antichrist, but it was not
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God's will for the end to come at those times. But there will be a time in the future when
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Satan grooms a man as he has done before for this position, and it really will be this guy because it accords with the will of God.
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It'll be God's timing. When we think of evil rulers from history, it's hard to imagine rulers worse than some of them.
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I once watched a documentary on Adolf Hitler, who of course was the Nazi leader during the 1930s and 1940s in Germany.
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And this documentary talked about his rise to power and all the evil that he did during his time in leadership.
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The documentary closed by describing his legacy in this way. Think about legacies.
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Think about what legacy you want to have. This is the legacy of this man. He is regarded as being responsible for both the
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Second World War and the Holocaust, which combined led to the deaths of upwards of 50 million people.
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One man did all of that. Wow. It's amazing how much evil one man can cause, and Hitler did that.
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But to cause that evil is not just the evil of one man's heart.
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It is the power of Satan working through that person. Hitler is a great example of how much evil
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Satan can accomplish through one man. Whatever man Satan grooms and possesses in the future to rule the world, the goal of this man's leadership will be to defame
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God and to destroy God's people. Revelation 13, verses five through seven describes his reign.
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And the beast was given a mouth, uttering haughty and blasphemous things. And it was allowed to exercise authority for 42 months.
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It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming in His name and His dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven.
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Also, it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation.
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This is gonna be the will of God. Sometimes the will of God is, it's called His dark providence, where for reasons unknown to us,
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He allows certain things to happen that we look at it and say, well, why would He allow that?
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And the answer is He always does it for His glory. God could destroy Satan right now if He wanted to.
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We have to affirm that because God is all -powerful. He can do that, but He chooses not to.
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And it's interesting, right? Every story that you love, every story that you read that you love, when is the bad guy defeated?
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In the end, right? The best stories, the bad guy always loses in the end. It looks like he's gonna win.
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But then good prevails. And that's the story of life that we live in. It's gonna get really, really dark at the very end.
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There's gonna be one ruler who's gonna rule the world. Satan is gonna possess him. It's gonna look like evil's gonna win.
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But all it is pointing to, as we've seen in Matthew 24, is that Christ's return is coming.
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It's a sign of the end. It's birth pains. Birth pains, once again, are the pain increases in frequency and intensity as the birth nears.
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And the signs increase in frequency and intensity as Christ's return nears.
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And all the evil leadership in world history is gonna reach its peak in this one man.
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Satan is gonna have more advancement at this time than any other time, but all it is is birth pains.
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And he's gonna lose. And we've already seen in this chapter that there will be widespread persecution during these final seven years.
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This final one world ruler will be on a mission to annihilate not only Gentiles who believe in Jesus, but also
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Jews. The Jewish people have faced enormous opposition down through history, enormous persecution.
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No people group has experienced more persecution than the Jews. But their greatest persecution has not yet arrived.
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It will come during the reign of the Antichrist. He will have a deep hatred for Christians and Jews.
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Think about this. Satan hates God's image bearers. John 8 says that he's a murderer.
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Well, what's a murderer? It's the taking of a life. He's going after God's image bearers.
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So he loves murder. He loves when a human life is ended. How much more does he love it when the image bearer belongs to God is eliminated?
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That's his goal. He will have a deep hatred for Christians and Jews, but let's see what verses 16 through 20 says concerning the
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Jews. That's what these verses are focused on. He says again, let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.
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Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house. And let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak.
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At a loss for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days, pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a
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Sabbath. What Jesus is saying is that the persecution from the
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Antichrist will be so severe that Jews will be desperately trying to flee the region.
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And the region is Jerusalem. That's gonna be the central place of the Jews. And that's gonna be the place where this
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Antichrist declares himself to be God. He's gonna try to annihilate the
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Jews. And Jesus is saying these people are gonna try to flee. They're gonna try to get out.
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And when Jesus mentions fleeing to the mountains in verse 16, he's probably referencing the Dead Sea region where there were many caves for people to hide in.
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This is the place where King David fled to when King Saul was trying to kill him.
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What Jesus is saying in verses 17 and 18 is that when persecution ramps up, the Jewish people will be fleeing in large numbers.
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And what he's saying is that when this happens, do not go and grab your things from your house.
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You're not gonna have time. It will be imperative to leave immediately.
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He also says in verse 19 that it will be very difficult for pregnant women and those women nursing babies during this time.
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This circumstance will obviously make it difficult for them to flee. Then Jesus says something interesting in verse 20 where if you read it, you're like, what's he talking about?
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Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath. Interesting. What is he talking about here?
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It's not hard to understand that the escape from Jerusalem will be easier in warm weather than in cold.
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You can imagine people will not just be able to drive out of the region. There will certainly be checkpoints. The people have to find a hidden way to the caves and it will be difficult to do this in the heart of winter.
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But what is he talking about when he's talking about the Sabbath? Some Jews are so legalistic that they will insist that fleeing on the
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Sabbath is working. So some Jews will hinder other Jews from leaving the area to escape from the terror of the
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Antichrist. The Jewish leadership showed their legalism to Jesus when he healed people on the
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Sabbath. Legalistic Jews will do the same to their fellow Jews who try to flee from the persecution in Jerusalem during the height of the reign of the
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Antichrist. The goal of the Antichrist will be to defame God, destroy
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God's people, both his ancient covenant people, Israel, and Gentiles who believe in Christ.
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And his goal will also be to receive worship for himself. The desire for worship will come from the one who possesses this man, as I've already said,
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Satan. As Revelation 13, four describes, they worship the dragon for he had given his authority to the beast.
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And they worship the beast saying, who is like the beast and who can fight against it?
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Revelation 13, eight also says, and all who dwell on earth will worship it. Everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the lamb who was slain.
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This is the sobering reality of life. Every person on earth either belongs to Jesus Christ or the devil.
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So when you're in a big crowd, those are the two groups that people belong to. People belong to the prince of the power of the air, who's
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Satan. He is the God of this age. It says that the God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the glory of Christ.
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John eight says that unbelievers, their father is the devil.
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And so people are going to follow the devil during the final seven years when the antichrist reigns as the devil possesses this man.
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This will be a very dark time on the earth. This will be the darkest time in world history. As we have seen many, many will be martyred for their faith in Jesus.
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Revelation 13, 10 gives this word to the saints. Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.
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This echoes what Jesus said in verse 15, or verse 13 rather. The one who endures to the end will be saved.
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Those who trust in Christ and do not worship the beast will be the ones who save their eternal soul.
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The evidence that they are saved is that they do not submit to the antichrist reign. Jesus calls his people to be faithful unto death.
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Earlier in Matthew, Jesus said this in chapter 10, verse 28. Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.
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Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. But the believer is forever secure in Christ as the apostle
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Paul wrote in Philippians 121 to live as Christ and to die as gain. Things will be dark, but the
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Lord will take care of his people as he always does. As I've already explained one week ago, some
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Jews will be supernaturally spared. They'll be preserved to the end of the tribulation so that when the
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Messiah comes, they will receive him. Largely speaking, the ones who will be martyred are the
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Gentiles, as Revelation 7 explains. The other major casualties will be unbelieving
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Jews whom the antichrist hates because of their association with God's ancient covenant people.
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This will be ethnic cleansing. The same thing Hitler tried to do with the Jews in the 1940s.
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Let's just get rid of them all. Let's annihilate them. This final ruler will rule the world through Satan's power and the kings of the earth at this time will submit to his authority through Satan's power and the kings of the earth will have no problem following him.
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Revelation chapter 17 verses 12 through 13 describes when these kings follow the leadership of this final one world ruler.
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Everything I have described concerning this final one world ruler has been what he will do during these final seven years.
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But his activity takes place before that. It's not like he's just gonna appear and things are just gonna get bad.
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The table needs to be set before he can come back. Once again, as we ponder this sign, as we have seen with the other signs, the rise of the final one world ruler, we must keep in mind the birth pains illustration.
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As Jesus says in verse eight, the signs are but the beginning of birth pains. Once again, the pains increase in frequency and intensity as his return nears.
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The revealing of the antichrist has been going on for 2000 years and one day he will finally be revealed.
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In first John two, the apostle John in chapter two verse 18 said that the spirit of the antichrist is already here.
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And this is shown through many smaller antichrists. So who are these smaller antichrists?
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I've already alluded to it. Anyone who denies Jesus as first John two 22 says, who is the liar?
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But he who denies that Jesus is the Christ. This is the antichrist. He who denies the father and the son.
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It's interesting. Unbelievers, whether they know it or not, are ushering in the end of the world by pushing forward immorality, by creating an environment where he will be able to come in and take leadership without any difficulty.
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Sometimes Brie and I tell our kids that some people do not believe in Jesus.
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And they're shocked when they hear this. Like why would anyone want to believe in Jesus? But the world is full of those who do not confess
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Jesus as the Christ. And through default, instead follow the evil one.
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First John three verse 10, the apostle John wrote, by this it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil.
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Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
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Anyone who does not follow Christ follows the evil one and is an antichrist according to the apostle
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John. Sounds severe, sounds harsh. That's what scripture says.
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But this one man, this final one world ruler is the worst antichrist this world has ever seen.
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It all finds its fulfillment in him. He is the poster boy. And this is why he is not called an antichrist, but the antichrist.
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In our day, we see his rise coming. The table is being set right before our eyes.
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What other time historically can a man of this stature rise up?
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There have been men who tried to rule the world, but a lack of technology prevented them from doing so.
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In ancient times, empires like Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia and Rome desired to rule the world.
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But in reality, they only ruled a region. For example, there were empires in the far east in the region of China, while these empires were around in the center part of the earth.
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Many evil men have desired to rule the world, but no one has ever ruled the world. They have been bound by limitations.
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But what prevented men from ruling the world in the past has been removed. Right before our eyes, we have a global economy and all it takes is one giant crash for us to have a global currency.
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When there is a global currency in the future, there won't be dollars and euros and all other currencies, there will be one currency.
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With the global economy we have now, we can see how this is going to work. We live in a world that is moving toward globalism and away from nationalism.
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With nationalism, you are less connected to other nations and the interests of your own nation are chiefly in mind.
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With globalism, every nation is closely connected, making it easier for everyone to be under the rule of one man.
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The goal of globalism is to get the interests of all nations to be one.
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Globalists do not care about national decline. In fact, they promote it, whether they say it or not, because the decline of a nation means that all nations are in decline and all nations will have to be dependent upon one another, hence globalism.
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It's all a part of the plan. What we also see is that technology has made the planet small.
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The pressure that will come from submitting to this rule will be immense because technology will not make it difficult to control the population.
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Through technology, it is easy to bring everyone under one tent and it makes it harder for people to be dissenters of the authority because in this system, liberty is not the goal.
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The goal is tyranny, where the government wants to be involved in every aspect of your life in order to control you to push forward their agenda.
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At the root of the final one world agenda will be to defame God, persecute his people, and worship of the one world ruler who is possessed by Satan.
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Ever since the beginning of time when Satan rebelled, this has been his desire and he's looking ahead to this day.
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He's looking forward to it. It's gonna be the day when he is worshiped, when the whole planet explicitly worships him.
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And I'm not saying any of this to scare you. I'm saying this to tell you that we see the table being set for the rise of the one world ruler.
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We don't know when it will be. We could have years before it happens, but it will happen as scripture says it will.
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The Antichrist is not going to rise to power out of nothing. The conditions need to be prepared before he can rise.
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And what we see in our world is the environment is being prepared for him, and eventually it will be his time.
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We see all the signs around us that his time is coming, and this should motivate us all the more to follow
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Jesus closely, because it's a sign that Christ's return is getting closer. It's birth pains.
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We see the signs all around us. Far from it being depressing, it's encouraging to the
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Christian because it tells us we are that much closer to leaving this devil -ruled world to dwell with our
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God, savior, king, and friend, Jesus. He's the rightful king.
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He's not the white witch. He's the king. He's the true king. And as I've said before,
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I don't think we'll be here during the final seven year tribulation. I believe in a pre -tribulation rapture, that the church will be raptured before that time.
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As the table continues to be set for his rise, we must understand that any moment, Christ may snatch his church.
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He may delay for a while, but we need to be ready to meet him on the day when he gathers his church to be with him.
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And all these signs that we see in our world that are setting the stage tells us that that day is getting that much closer.
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Anticipate the soon return of Christ, and the ninth practice how, is through following the rise of the final one world ruler.
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And here's the 10th practice how, and this is a shorter point, but here's the 10th practice how, you are to anticipate the soon return of Christ.
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That is through going through worldwide cataclysmic events. And you're visiting today, and you're like, wow, this is intense.
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If you're visiting today, I just want to say, we've been preaching through the whole book of Matthew. We've gone through every verse.
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This is where we are, okay? We're not a doom and gloom church. I hope what people see about our church is that we're a church that's full of joy, that wants to love each other, that wants to live out our faith.
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And we cover every portion of the Bible, including these hard ones that are hard to look at, but it's what the word says.
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So I don't set the agenda, the word of God does. And I'm gonna summarize all the destruction that is going to take place as verses 21 through 22 describes.
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These are the words of Jesus once again. For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now.
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No, it never will be. And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved.
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But for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short. When we talk about the final seven years, it is commonly called the great tribulation.
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But technically the great tribulation is the final three and a half years, the second half of the seven years, as Jesus says here.
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He says, then there will be great tribulation. We know this because of what verse 21 says here.
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It is at this point, as we have seen, that he will pour out his wrath on the
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Jewish people and on believers. And that is, of course, the Antichrist. During this time, he will persecute and kill many, many people.
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What we also will be seeing at this time, and again, I don't think we'll be here, but what the world will be seeing at this time is that there's other things going on.
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There's going to be wars going on that are going to cause an enormous amount of damage. Earlier in this chapter, we talked about wars and rumors of wars as a sign that Christ's return is getting closer.
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And my personal conviction is that Gog of Magog, which is described in Ezekiel, will start before the seven -year tribulation, and there will be war going on till the end of the tribulation, which is called
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Armageddon. As we have seen, Revelation 14 .20 describes how extensive the carnage is going to be during these wars.
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After Armageddon, the carnage will stretch over an area of 200 miles.
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So during this time, there will be death from persecution and from war, but as we have also seen, there will be extensive destruction from the wrath of God that is poured out on the earth.
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And this will cause the most death. We wonder, okay, when is God going to judge the world? Why does
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God let evil go on forever? He doesn't let it go on forever. He's going to bring judgment on this earth, and it's going to happen as He pours out these natural disasters.
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He controls nature, and He's going to unleash nature on the godless world that we live in.
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What is interesting here is what Jesus says. He says, let me read this here.
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Then there will be great tribulations such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be.
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And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short.
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What is interesting is that as we hear Jesus say this, it should cause us to think of the flood.
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Thousands of years ago, a flood happened. And we live in an area, by the way, where we see evidence of the flood all around us.
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The St. Croix River, the glacier rocks. Well, where did that come from?
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Well, it came from the flood. A flood happened, which caused an ice age, which caused the rocks to be this way.
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That's the explanation. I once heard Ken Hand say, if there was a global flood, there would be billions of dead things all over the earth.
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What do we find? Billions of dead things all over the earth. All these fossils, where did they come from?
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They came from a flood. God judged this world long ago.
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And in 2 Peter, it talks about scoffers. These secular people scoff the reality that there was a flood.
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So much time has passed that, of course, generations don't pass on the news, and eventually, they don't believe it happened.
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And what Peter does is he connects the flood with the second coming of Christ. Judgment happened long ago.
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Judgment will happen in the future. Only eight humans survived the flood.
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And the only reason they survived is because God told Noah to build a big boat to save he and his family.
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But what Jesus is saying in verse 21 is that the destruction of the final tribulation is worse than the flood.
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Yes, you heard that. How could it be worse than the flood when millions of people will survive the carnage of the tribulation?
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There's gonna be people alive at the end of it. The answer is that if the destruction continued, everyone would die.
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As Jesus says in verse 22, if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved.
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The destruction will be very severe for only a few years. As we have seen,
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God is going to preserve one third of the Jews who will receive their Messiah. And Jesus says it's gonna be cut short for the sake of the elect.
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He's preserving these people. The one he preserves to the end. These days will only go on for so long.
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With seven years, with the worst of it happening in the second three and a half years. But as Jesus says, it will be the greatest disaster and the greatest carnage this world has ever seen.
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But once this very dark period ends, that is when Christ will come to this earth to take his throne.
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There's an old saying, it's always darkest before the dawn. No time is the same or true than when the seven year tribulation is described.
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It's gonna be the darkest time in history but what comes after it is the brightest time. Things will be very bad but it will bring in the greatest era when
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Christ reigns from his throne. This is the hope of every believer, the day when
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Christ comes to this earth. But I've said before, I believe we are alive, we who are alive at this time will be raptured before the seven year tribulation but even before the rapture, we see the ramping up of events that show
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Christ's return is nearing. And the point of these signs is to show us he's coming back, he's coming back and they increase in frequency and intensity.
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And as we ponder the reality that he's coming back, how are we to respond to this? We're supposed to respond by living godly lives for Christ's sake, by walking closely with him, by praying more, by doing more evangelism, by reading our
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Bibles more, by spending more time with other believers where we can encourage one another, by supporting missions.
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All these things should motivate us. The Bible never tells us to hide in a bunker, right?
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And to move to Alaska and the most remote place we could possibly imagine to hide from the destruction that's gonna happen.
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No, we should stay and live where we are and make a difference and make our lives count here.
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And all these things are pointing ahead to this day. So anticipate the soon return of Christ and the 10th practice how is through worldwide cataclysmic events that will reach their pinnacle during the final seven years.
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Now next Sunday, we will be looking at the big events.
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Okay, we've gone through the tribulation and it's all been pointed ahead to this grand event when
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Christ comes back. And that's what we're gonna look at next Sunday. But this time let's bow our heads in prayer.
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Father in heaven, what a wonderful book this is.
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It tells us the story of life. And the one who listens to it is wise and will shine like the brightness of the sun.
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And so my prayer is that everyone would take heed to the words of this book, listen to it and live accordingly.
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Help us as a church to do that. And Lord, as we look at this dark future when the
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Antichrist reigns and the world experiences enormous carnage, we are reminded that that's not how the story ends.
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That you will win, that you will reign, that you will be victorious.
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And it's the most humbling thing to say that we who are in Christ will conquer with your son.
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We are conquerors alongside him. Not because we deserve it, we don't.
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But because of your grace, you have designed it this way. Thank you for saving everyone in this room who knows
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Christ. And if anyone doesn't know Christ, I pray that they would enter into that relationship with him today.
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As the scripture says, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. So Lord, apply this to everyone right where they are at.