Judgment Could It Be? — Bill McLeod

Tribulation as the Common Lot of Humanity

In Winnipeg, Canada, January 2006. I want to speak first of all about tribulation and the great tribulation. Now I want to speak on God and what has been called the judgment moment. Job 5 -7 says that man is born of a trouble as the sparks fly away.

Job 14 -1 says that man is born of a woman as a few days and is full of trouble. John 16 -32 says that in the world we shall have tribulation. Acts 14 -22, Paul said that we must do much tribulation in Herakles' kingdom.

In 2 Timothy 2 -8 -9, Paul asks us to remember that Jesus Christ is the seed of grace and of death according to my gospel. Then he says that when I suffer trouble, as you even do, even under bonds. And in Revelation 1 -9, John says that he was a companion in the tribulation.

A different art was there in the original. Alright, so tribulation is the common lot of man. And then for Christians, many are the afflictions of the righteous, but thank God the Lord delivers them out of them all.

The Great Tribulation and the Perilous Last Days

Now apart from this kind of tribulation which we all experience and go through, we have what the Bible calls the great tribulation. Daniel spoke of it in chapter 12 verse 1. He said there would be a time of trouble such as never was until that time.

And in Matthew 24 -21, Christ said then shall be great tribulation such as was not, nor would ever again be. Luke 21 -25 -27, in clear language, Christ said,. And upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity the seeing of ways of war, and men's hearts failing for fear.

And for looking after those things which are coming on the earth for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. Alright, in the last days, Paul, 2 Timothy 3 -1, he said that in the last days perilous times would come.

Perilous, sometimes they can say dangerous, difficult, hard, perilous times, dangerous times. The reason being, he says, in the context, the men shall be lovers of their own selves. And again, he says in the context, the men will be lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.

Or instead of lovers of God. John speaks in Revelation 12 -7, the men are about to bring war in heaven. That seems very strange. War in heaven? How can there be war in heaven where God rules and reigns?

Well, that's exactly what he said there in Revelation 12, beginning at verse 7. Michael and his angels fought against the devil and his angels. And the devil was cast out and his angels went to the earth.

And so he has great wrath because he knows he only has a short time. Christ described those last days, Matthew 24 -12,. Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many, literally the love of the many, shall get cold.

So, in Revelation 11 -18 we read, we have an angry word, an angry God in the first place. It's exactly what it says, So we have an angry devil because he knows he only has a short time, Revelation 12 -12.

Was he cast out? Has he already been cast out? Or is there a different opinion among Bible scholars? I'll tell you what I think, Revelation 2 -13 speaks about Pergamos, twice it says, that that's where Satan's throne is.

While his throne was in heaven, it's gone. So I take it for granted that Satan has been cast out of heaven already. Then we want to talk about God and the judgment mode, which I think as a world we have already entered into to some extent.

Judgment Against Israel and the Nations

Israel, Amos 3 -2, God said, You only have I known of all the families of the earth. Therefore I will punish you for your iniquities. Then in Matthew 27 -24 -5 you'll recall that Pilate was trying to get them to release Christ.

And he took a basin of water and washed his hands. And they said, His blood be on us and on our children. Now in Luke 21 -23 it says, speaking not of the future but of the past, at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, A .D. 70, He said, There shall be great distress in the land of Iraq upon this people.

And in 1 Thessalonians 2 -15 -16 Paul said that the wrath of God has come on Israel to the uttermost. And that phrase, I understand, means in point of time. There is no way you can understand the history of this nation without understanding what's going on.

They persecuted the prophets, the Old Testament prophets. They killed some of them. And in the New Testament days we know how they persecuted the apostles. Christ said, Some of you, speaking to the twelve, they will persecute, they will kill and crucify.

Be warning about this, of course. This happened, certainly. And so there is great distress among these people and wrath from God. But as Christian people we must love them, pray for them, and encourage them to think of their Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, the true Messiah of God.

All right? Great distress, wrath on this people. And Gentile nations, too, under the judgment of God. Jeremiah 1 -10, when Jeremiah was called by God to be a prophet, he was called to be a prophet to the nations, not just to Israel.

And so he was told to root out and tear down and throw down. He is speaking here of nations of the world. And, of course, he did that in a very, very clear way. If you recall, in Jeremiah 25, there are 27 nations that he spoke of as being under the judgment of God.

Judgment Has a Cause

Now, Proverbs 26 -2 says, The curse will never come without a cause. I made a special study of that one time, marking in the margin every verse in the Bible that deals with this thing, this truth. And I was amazed.

There were literally hundreds of verses. The curse will never come without a cause. The word because, because, occurs frequently in the Old Testament scriptures. So it will never come without a cause.

Ezekiel 14 -23, God said, I have not done without cause all that I have done. So God is taking responsibility for what he has done, and he hasn't done any of it without a cause. He's been driven to do it because of certain evil things that nations are doing.

Psalm 65 -19 says, Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God. And so God brings changes, changes in the weather, changes in many ways, many different ways, economic downturns and changes in pestilences and in war and so on.

He does this because they won't listen to the soft tones of the gospel of Christ. So he speaks to them in judgment, helping them, hoping that they'll listen to what he says. Ezekiel 14 -21 speaks of four sore judgments that God uses in judging the nation of the world.

The sword, the famine, pestilence, and beasts, hurtful beasts. 2 Kings 17 -25 -26,. There was no fear among these people who came from Babylon and other areas to live in the cities of Israel that were now empty because they had been carried into captivity.

There was no fear of God among the sorcerers, but God sent lions among them. And then they began to fear God, and they asked for help, and they sent a priest down to help them understand who this God of Israel really was.

1 Chronicles 5 -11 says, There fell down many slain because the wars of God. The wars of God? And because of this, many slain is exactly what it says. We've had two great world wars, and millions of people died.

In the last world war, they compute that probably more civilians died than soldiers died because of the indiscriminate bombing of cities all through Europe. And, of course, added to these four sore judgments, there's floods, and fires, and earthquakes, and tornadoes, and hurricanes, and volcanoes, and communism.

And less than during the reign of that particular political system, it's computed that around 30 million people died who opposed in any way what used to go along with communism. And in China, probably just a million.

I got the assurance from a very interesting book. It's about this black plague of communism, and showing what has happened in country after country where they have been in control. They would not stand for the slightest deviation from the role that they had assumed on themselves.

They said that Lenin and Stalin had a phrase they used many times. It was simply, shoot the pigs. If somebody was not going along, then shoot the pigs. That was said. That is what was done. What about today?

Natural Disasters as Signs of Judgment

Are we into a judgment moment? I think we are. Listen carefully. We have, first of all, the terrible thing that happened in Oklahoma where some hundreds of people died in a sudden blast. Many children died.

Then we have New York where a couple of thousand people died without warning. Then we have New Orleans where a modern city is wiped off the map. And then in Canada, we've had from east to west much rain.

Job 37 .13 says that God sometimes sends rain for correction. For correction. And we've had that here in certain parts of Canada. Well, in the maritime provinces, the eastern provinces of Canada, last winter, they had three or four blizzards that were so heavy that some people were talking about throwing their shelves away and going to their house and just hibernating until they could get the streets cleared.

Then in the province of Ontario, we had a terrible rainstorm. Over 30 people died. In some places, there were some weeks without electrical power. Many people came up from the streets to help Canada in this particular tragedy.

But we've had it too here in Canada, I'm saying. That's what we need to understand. Then in the province I live in, Manitoba, for two years now, we've had too much rain. And some farmers have had no crops for two years now.

And the weather forecasters are telling us we're going to have another wet year this year. And many farmers are simply patching it up and moving to other parts of the country where they can get a job to support themselves.

One farmer told me that he's farmed 1 ,000 acres. He got in about 50 acres in the spring. That's all he could get in due to the wet weather. And he doubted that he would get five acres harvested in the fall.

Then Alberta had a drought for several years. And British Columbia, most west of the province, they had serious fires this year and this last year in 2005. And hundreds of homes were burned. Thank God no people were hurt.

But certainly it was a very bad time. So we've had it all across Canada. And if you remember the foreshore judgment, one of them was what is called hurtful beasts. That is beasts that attack people. Well, we've had that too, you know, because here in North America, both in the States and Canada, we've had cougars and bears attacking people.

And here in Canada, we've had people killed by bear attacks. And not only that, but we've had in the province I live in, that is Manitoba, recently, we've had two cases where bears are not being hunted, not being molested in any way, no cubs around.

The bears are suddenly bust from the bush and attacks some people. They're two separate incidents where people were having to be hospitalized. They were not killed, but they were very badly scratched and chewed, and for no reason at all.

This is something that we've never had this before. The Bible speaks of it. This is one of God's four sore judgments. That's what it's called, remember? All right, this is what has happened. Then when it comes to the fish, you know, on the west coast of Canada, the salmon stocks are being depleted, and they don't know what's happened.

They're just sort of fading away to some extent. On the east coast, it's the cod. And scientists are studying this cod thing. They're not depleted. They've just disappeared. We don't know where they are.

They've simply gone. We don't know what to make of this. Well, in Hosea 4 .3 and Zephaniah 1 .3, it says that God takes the fish of the sea away. God does it sometimes as a judgment. And then, of course, you remember the tsunami waves when maybe 200 ,000 people died.

And then this year in the United States, after the tornado season was over, they had many, many tornadoes, and it was so unusual. Very difficult times and much destruction. And then these tsunami waves.

How does this happen? Why did a thing like this happen with maybe 200 ,000 people losing their lives and billions of dollars in property damage and so on? Well, the Bible has something, you know, to say about that, and we need to look at that very carefully.

Now, in Naaman 1 .3, it says, The Lord has his way in the whirlwind and in the storm and the clouds are the dust of the sea. The Lord has his way in these tornadoes. The Lord has his way in these huge hurricanes and storms because they're called whirlwinds, and that's exactly what the hurricanes are and exactly what the tornadoes are, and God takes responsibility for that.

I remember during the time after those waves had hit, they would have pictures on TV of a bedraggled group of people, maybe 25 people or so, and they would explain these people came from a village where 800 people lived.

These were all that survived. And in Amos 5, verse 3, it speaks about the city that went out by a thousand returning by a hundred. And then in verse 9 of the same 10th chapter of Amos, it says that the Lord sends the waters of the sea or takes the waters of the sea and pours them out on the face of the earth.

That's repeated in chapter 9 of Amos, verse 6. God takes the waters of the sea and pours them out on the face of the earth. Psalm 148, verse 8 says, Stormy wind fulfilling God's word. Amos 4 .13 declares that God creates the wind.

So it's not Mother Nature, people. It's Father God. And he's angry with the world because of their... Well, the Jew, he's angry with the Jew because he rejected the Messiah. He's angry with the world because we are rejecting the gospel of Messiah, the Son of God dying for the sins of men.

And people totally ignoring this. Then pestilence, that's one of the four sword judgments. That's disease. There used to be just two sexual diseases, coronary and syphilis. Now there's 25 of them. Why is this?

Disease, Sin, and the Judgment of God

Then this thing called AIDS. Millions affected. Now listen carefully to what I'm saying. Don't misquote me on this. It's basically a sin problem because if people are not fornicating and committing adultery and so on and having sex with people they're not married to, which is happening all around the world, then it is a sin problem.

You can't blame the children that get AIDS for that. You have to blame their parents. But the real problem, people, is this, that it's become in North America particularly a political problem instead of a medical problem.

You know what I mean by that? Exactly what I said. You see, think of Japan for a moment. Japan has maybe 130 million people. Canada has 30 million. And they have less AIDS in Japan than they have in Canada.

Why is that? Well, in Japan, if a doctor discovers you have AIDS, he has to report you immediately. He can be severely chastised if he doesn't report you. And you will be quarantined immediately. It's a medical problem there, not a political problem.

Here in North America, it's a political problem. That is, certain people are screaming, if I have AIDS, you have no right to know that. You can't betray this. It's a trust thing. I have a right to secrecy here.

No, they don't have a right. This is a political problem. And so because it's not a medical problem, people are not being quarantined. And so it's spreading much faster in the population. As a matter of fact, there are probably hundreds, maybe thousands of people who would not have died of AIDS in North America had it been treated as a medical problem.

People with this particular disease, they need to be quarantined, taken care of. Both Japan and Cuba are treating it as a medical problem, and they have basically a far smaller percentage of the people afflicted with this particular problem than here in Canada or in the USA.

I wonder, sometimes I'm amazed that the medical profession caved in to the demands of some people who wanted to be left, just totally left alone. Then other diseases are making a comeback. The malaria, they thought they had it completely beaten around the world.

But now they find it's resisting certain drugs we've been using in the past. And there are other diseases besides, but this is happening too. And so pestilence, God uses that. This new flu carried by birds and so on, right now in Turkey there's numbers of cases of people dying with this particular flu.

They're so afraid it's going to get out into the world as a whole. And then there could be hundreds of thousands of people die from it. Why is God allowing this? Well, he said, remember, I have not done without cause all that I have done.

I have a reason for it, a cause for it. We may not know what that cause is, but if we stop and think and look around, we can see. Another problem we're facing is the fact Matthew 6, 24 says you cannot serve God and mammon.

Wealth, Covetousness, and the Prosperity Teaching

But people are trying to. People are trying to serve both God and mammon. You know, money has become such an important thing here in North America. It's such an important thing. People keep talking about the American dream.

Well, it's the Canadian dream too. You know, having a two-car garage and a number of vehicles and having a house with three or four bathrooms in it and so on. People are trying to make the kind of money so they can do this.

And we think it's something, and Christians have fallen into this as well. Let me tell you something. You couldn't buy a popsicle in heaven with a million dollars because our money is not current over there.

Now, among Christians we have the prosperity syndrome, as it has been called. As a child of the king, that is a child of God, we should have a right to expect and to have lots of money in the bank and buy the things we like to have.

They have a saying among these people. It's grab it and grab it. If you see something you really want, then you grab it. You pray about it. God will give it to you. You don't have to worry about this at all.

This, in my opinion, is an extremely dangerous and unbiblical teaching and idea. Let's listen to what the Bible says. All right. Jesus said, Foxes have holes and the birds of air have nests, but the Son of Man, that's himself, has not where to lay his head.

We find references in the Gospel of John to every man went to his own house. Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. You'll study the last verse of chapter, I think it's chapter 7 in John. And so Jesus had no place to stay.

And people are saying, Oh, no, he was wealthy. He was wealthy. What about Peter? Well, he said to the lame man, he was just going to heal, Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, I give to you.

As Peter said, James says, How come, my beloved, in James 2 .5, How come, my beloved brethren, has not God chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, and heirs to the kingdom which he has promised to them that love him?

I read an article one time. This lady said, I absolutely refuse to be poor. And she was referring to this prosperity syndrome thing. She said, I have a right to be wealthy because my Heavenly Father is so wealthy.

So I wrote her a letter. I got her address, wrote her a letter, and asked her if she'd never read James 2 .5. And I, of course, quoted that in a letter. How come, my beloved brethren, has not God chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, and heirs to the kingdom which he has promised to them that love him?

People, I got a wonderful letter back from this lady. She apologized. She said, I will never, ever say that again that I'll not be poor because she said, I didn't know this was in the Bible. Why are poor people rich in faith?

Well, it is because they have to be in order to survive. Listen to me. When I started off preaching 64 years ago, a little church in northern Canada said they'd pay me $30 a month if the money came in.

You know, it was a K-Land of the dirty 30s as it was called. And so, after six months, I got married, so two of us had to live on $30 a month. And in those days, if you had an ordinary job, you'd be making $100 or maybe $150 a month.

So we were considerably short. How did we handle this? Well, two things. One, we decided to give God the tithe and the offering off our little pittance, but we did that faithless from the very beginning.

And the second thing was this. We determined, we made up our mind before God that we would never let anybody know if we had a financial need. There's an old saying that if God knows your need, who else needs to know?

God knows. And so, we stayed that way. There were times we had no money and maybe had no food in the house, but it never lasted long. We could never say we were starving. In some way, I remember one time we had no money coming in for another two weeks.

We never had a nickel between us. I got a check from England from a friend of mine, a check that would take care of us for probably two or three weeks. Things like that happen hundreds and hundreds of times.

And so, the poor of this world are rich in faith. If I say again, it's not bad to be poor, it can be a real blessing to us. The Bible says, having food and rain, let us be there with content. Godliness with contentment is great gain for we brought nothing into this world and it's certain we can carry nothing out.

I can give you your total biography in just two statements, nothing in and nothing out. That's what Paul said there in 1 Timothy 6. They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare into many foolish and hurtful, lest we should drown men in destruction and perdition.

And the man of God is asked to flee from this love of money. It doesn't mean anything. Those who suppose that gain is godliness in 1 Timothy 6 also. Hebrews 13 .5 says, let your conduct be without covetousness and be content with such things as you have.

For he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you, so that we may boldly say, the Lord is my help, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me. Well, we read about in Ezekiel 33 .31, Israel with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goes after their covetousness.

After Israel was spanked by God and sent into captivity for 70 years, they didn't fall into worshiping idols made of wood and stone again. But in Ezekiel 14, God said to the prophet Ezekiel, Son of man, these men have set up idols in their hearts.

Now they were covetous, and covetousness is idolatry, and the covetous man is an idolater. So we read in Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3 .5. Okay. Let your conduct be without covetousness. Keep that in mind.

Israel and the world are under God's judgment because of the fact that we're chasing a piece of paper, a dollar bill. Do you know that in our world there are 75 countries where the average annual income is 5 of what it is in Canada states?

I talked to some men in India one time, and they were working for a tailor. I asked what they were making, and it worked out to about $2 a week. People listen, not $2 an hour, $2 a week. Recently I heard somebody on a TV program when they were explaining that they were only making $27 an hour, and there's no way they could live on that, and they were thinking of striking, you know.

$27 an hour? They can't live on that? It seems that no matter how much some people get, they have to have more. All right. So God is angry with the world because of this, and we've made money our God, and we're chasing it when we're an idolater in the eyes of God.

No wonder that things are happening the way that they are happening. Then there's something else we need to consider, and that is the fact that God is shaking the nations. We're going to look at that in the Word of God.

God Shakes the Nations

Job 38, 12, and 13 speaks about the Dayspring taking hold of the earth so that the wicked might be shaken out of it. In Luke 1, 78, Jesus is the Dayspring. That means that there is a day coming in which Christ will remove the wicked from the earth, and it's spelled out in clear terms in Matthew 13.

Isaiah 2, 19. People hide in the rocks and caves when God arises to shake terribly the earth. Isaiah 13, 13. I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall move out of its place in the day of His fierce anger.

Isaiah 24, 18 -21. The windows from on high are open. The foundations of the earth do shake. The earth is utterly broken down. The earth is clean, dissolved. The earth has moved exceedingly. The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard.

Transgression shall be heavy upon it, and it shall fall and not rise again. Joel 3, 16. The Lord shall roll out of Zion, and out of His voice and Jerusalem, the heavens and the earth shall shake. Isaiah 2, 6 and 7.

For thus says the Lord of hosts, yet once it's a little while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come.

We sing about that in one of our songs, about Jesus Christ being the desire of nations. He's the one that's to come. He's the one we all need. We may not understand that and know that, but He is the one that we all need, and He's the one that will prevail.

Haggai 2, 21. God said, I will shake the heavens and the earth, and I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and I will destroy the power of the kingdoms of the Gentiles. Matthew 24, 29. Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.

Then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. Luke 21, 25 -27. We've heard that before upon the earth, distress of nations, the perplexity, the sea in a way, roaring, speaking of unsettled conditions, politically, economically, socially, and so on.

Men are failing for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth. The powers of heaven shall be shaken. Then shall we see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

So Hebrews 12, 25 -29 has something to say to something Paul has said regarding this. You do not refuse him his speech. For if they did not escape, for if you refuse him his speak on earth, the leper says to Moses, much more shall we not escape, if we turn away from him who speaks from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ.

God spoke in Old Testament days by the prophets and New Testament days by his Son. We're told that in Hebrews chapter 1. For his voice sang shook the earth, but now he is promised, saying, yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.

And this word, yet once more, signifies the removing of those things that may be shaken, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore, we receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken or moved, let us have grace, the mother says, let us hold fast, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, while God is a consuming fire.

The Church and the Great Tribulation

Now the question is asked, will the church be raptured before the great tribulation begins? Oswald Smith felt that the church would go through the tribulation, and here's what he said, it's just a point on which great and godly men disagree, so I would advise all just to be ready.

Romans 2, 4 and 5 asks this question, Do you despise the riches of God, his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads us to repentance? Then he speaks about people's hardness and unrepentant heart, treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath in revelation of the righteous judgment of God.

Repentance, Tragedy, and Watchfulness

In one of my churches years ago there had been a bad accident and one of the young men from our church had been killed along with three or four other young men, young people from other churches in the area.

A drunk man had run into them at night on the highway and they had all been killed. And this man from my church was the only child that he and his wife had and they never did have another child. And he became a Christian after he got the news that his boy had been killed.

And here's what he said to me, What a fool I've been that I had to wait until God put a coffin on my back before I would bend my knees. And sometimes the world is like that. And so Luke 21 says, Take heed lest at any time your heart be weighted down with the intemperate indulgence and drunkenness and cares of this life and so that they come upon you unaware.

So how do we handle it? He says, Watch therefore in prayer always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass and to stand before the Son of Man. Now if he's referring there to the rapture then of course those in the rapture will be only those who are walking with God and counted worthy.

So this puts the whole thing on the base of works and not on the basis of the grace of God which it has to be. This would mean a partial rapture, only those Christians who are really walking with God.

I think if you study the context in Luke 21 he's talking about what happened at the destruction of Jerusalem in A .D. 70. Christ had warned his people that this was coming. And we're told by Christ also that those days would get so severe that unless God intervened and shortened the days no flesh would be saved alive.

And then he says that for the sake of the elect, that's God's children, you and me if you're a Christian, he's going to shorten those days. Otherwise he said there would be no flesh saved alive. They used to laugh about that when they fought with bows and arrows or with pistols and rifles.

How in the world can the human race be wiped out? Nobody laughs today. Atomic weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons. And democratic nations are very much afraid of some rogue nation getting atomic weapons and using them.

That can very easily happen, we know that. All right, so we have to be very careful here. I think he was referring... You see, when he told his disciples, when you see the city surrounded by armies, get out.