The End Times — A.W. Tozer

The Signs of Christ’s Return

Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. And then shall appear the Son of Man in heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with purpose.

And he shall send his angels with the great sound of the trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four corners of the earth, from one end of heaven to the other. I'll learn a parable of the fig tree.

When his branch is yet tender and put forth, though the summer is nigh, so likewise he. When ye shall see all these things, know that here, even at the door, verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass till all is filled.

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away. But of that day and hour shall the Son of Man know, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. There are a few more in that same chapter.

I want to speak a little today. I rarely do. I think this would be the second time in under a year that I have given any word on the prophetic scriptures. But they are here before us. It's variously estimated that a third or a half of the Bible is devoted to passages, telling us what will be.

Some fulfilled, some yet to be fulfilled. It is quite a significant thing that when the World Council of Churches met in New York, that they chose for their theme, Christ, the hope, with strong emphasis upon his return to earth.

I understand that the others meant to the American leaders who were playing down, and have been playing down, the thought of the coming of Jesus for a great many years. Partly because they have other plans for the world than that Christ will take over.

Partly because to believe in the coming of Christ would mean to separate from the world and clean up, and that they do not wish to do. And partly because those who do believe in prophecy have made themselves ridiculous by their prophecy, their own speculations, and so confusing the whole thing.

But the European leaders came strongly emphasizing the doctrine of Christ's return. Our Lord taught that he would come back to earth again, and his holy apostles taught that he would come back to earth again.

The Apostolic Hope of Christ’s Return

The Church Fathers always held this as the final, ultimate hope of the Church of Christ, that our Lord himself should come back to earth again. The very angel that saw him go away dressed in white as the angel, and he said, this same Jesus which is taken from you up into heaven shall so come in like manner as you have seen him go unto heaven, said that meant the destruction of Jerusalem.

But of course that's so ridiculous that there would be no reason for my attempting to refute it. And then others have said it was death, which would mean that every Christian that died from the day of heaven had a return of the Lord again to earth.

Whereas the scriptures teach that Christ makes two visits to heaven, one to die and the other to reign, so that if Christ came every time a Christian died, it would again, for it would mean Christ's return had to be repeated every time a Christian died.

The Bible has other things to say about when a Christian dies. It says they are carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom, and that otherwise they go to heaven, not by the coming of Christ. Now, it is taught here in the passages before us that our days are long.

I believe that we are living in grave days, but we're living in grand days as well, grand, dramatic days, greater days than you and I know. Not even the ubiquitous news or newspaper can possibly have any true concept of how great and how grand or solemn the times are in which we are now living.

And of course we're helpless to predict what is to come. Nobody knows that. Nobody's smart enough to know it, and nobody is taught enough in the Bible to know it. The Bible gives a schedule like a local train, giving the name of every stop and the time that it will arrive, will leave.

Thus to interpret the scripture is to misinterpret the scripture. The Bible is a book of grand outlook, and it tells us of the future, but tells us in great strokes like an artist painting a picture across the sky.

The size is so tremendous you have to get away. He does not go in for tiny details, but for vast, bright strokes that are started one stop to another one. So I cannot tell you what may be on tomorrow.

I do not know. Not even the angels know. Who art in heaven knows that alone. But if we common people are helpless to predict tomorrow, the great leaders of the world are helpless. You know, brethren, it's awfully hard to have any brains in the day in which we live and not get blamed for it.

Hard to have any insight and not be considered a cynic. It is hard to be realistic and not be considered pessimistic. Just make any statement when everybody's waving flags and screaming until they're all flushed, and their tears are something somebody's doing or saying.

Look through it and see what it really is, and with a sentence or two, and name it and label it, and say this too will pass away, and they'll turn on you with anger, and say you're a cynical pessimist.

Why don't? But five months or six months later, they'll be looking back on that same thing and seeing it just as you forethought. To foresee a little bit or see through is a wonderfully stabilizing ability.

It is also an ability that brings you much criticism and much hostility. Cannot see. Now there are great earth leaders. The reason I said that was that I was going to say this, but the great earth leaders, comforting, soothing speeches, which they make over the air and on television these days.

I'm for these. I think that Eisenhower and John Foster, Dulles, and Churchill, and all the rest of them have been, were, and are great men. They wouldn't be where they are. They certainly, politics aside, must have some abilities we plain people don't have, or they wouldn't be where they are if they'd be here.

But the fact they're where they are indicates that they're great men. But if I am not mistaken, it was the earth that were crying in the book of Revelation for the mountains to fall on them, to hide them from the wrath of the man.

And as taken, there was not one lone great man that recognized God when he was incarnated in the womb of the Blessed Virgin. One man, great man, recognized. Only the plain people heard him gladly, but the great did not.

There is something in greatness, rather, does something to the human mind that indisposes it for fine spiritual insight. Men do not have spiritual insight. The very effort they're making to have peace, peace, peace, peace all the time, it's commendable.

War, Peace, and the Limits of Human Leadership

We all wish for peace, and we could all wish that we might live in harmony around the world, and we could beat our guns into implements of agriculture, and could exchange all our technical secrets and ways of living for all humanity.

We could all wish that, and so we cannot but commend and approve the efforts. But they're not Bible students, or they would not even believe it could be done. That is that, oh, there should be peace, Rambo tells us otherwise.

I say, our leaders don't know either. They don't know where we're going, and they don't know it. I remember hearing one member of the State Department who said to another one, well, our long-range, unchanging foreign policy this morning.

And we smile up, true, we don't know, we work it just as a club plays a game of ball. We do what we have to do because the other fellow has done something that's compelled us to do what we're supposed to do.

It's like playing chess. You don't sit down and think the whole game out a year ahead. You're forced to do it by the other fellow's move. So that's the way we play politics over the face of the earth.

And nobody can predict, except as one great statesman said, the next war will be fought in the future. That, of course, was a prediction that could not possibly have failed. Well, I cannot name the immediate future.

I don't know what may be tomorrow or this year. And I do not know where the match is going to fall when some careless man tosses it down into the powder keg. I don't know whether religion or morals or politics, whether the danger lies with the three or one of which of the three, and it's possible that it cannot be separated.

A nation is what its religion is, and its morals will be what its religion is. And it will follow its morals and its religion. So I do not know what there may be next. But I only know there is a more sure thing.

I know that while we must discount the fanatical interpretations and the excesses that have grown up around prophecy, at the same time there is a sure word of prophecy. And I give you this little talk this morning not to allot you.

False Christs and Religious Deception

Now Christ has a word for us. He tells us that there are to be certain evidences of his near coming. And he made characteristics of the day just before he comes. Let me name them briefly for you. Verses 5, 11, and 24.

A delusion, I might call it. One that says, for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive. Verse 11, and many false prophets shall rise and shall deceive many. And 24, there shall arise false Christs and false prophets and hymns and wonders, inasmuch that it were possible they should deceive the very elect.

Now let me explain something to you here. But Mr. Tozer, how can it be possible that you could make the fact of false Christs to be a proof of the coming, near, near coming of Christ? False Christs always.

Well, it's like this. There never is a period, any time from January 1st to December 31st, regardless of what kind of weather it is or where it is, that there are not false Christs. There never has been, there is not a period from January 1 to December 31 at midnight that there are not false Christs somewhere throughout the world.

But there are certain peaks when polio incidence, as they call it, becomes so prominent that it can properly be called a season for polio. Now, there never has been a time since Cain slew Abel, when some wild-eyed fanatic did not think he was God or that he was sent to redeem the world.

The Messianic delusion has never been off the earth from the time that man said history. But Jesus thought that there would be a period when, like the high peak of the polio, when the incidence should, that it might properly be called the season for it.

He said just as there may be a few scattered around over the world to all time, when there'll be a great many messiahs, saying, I am messiah and deceiving many. I just have knowledge of what's going on in the world.

I don't have to make applications or read out of Time magazine. You know, and so we'll pass on. I am Christ. I have the answer. I know how to bring peace to the world. I can lead you into the promised land.

In comes the millennium. Next day, prosperity. We have these messiahs, some of them political, a great many of them. It's wonderful. And we have them everywhere, all kinds of people that are claiming to be messiahs.

Wars, Betrayal, and Persecution

Then he said, and ate these words. He said, you shall hear wars and rumors of wars. See that you be not troubled. Things must come to pass, but the end is not yet, for nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famines and earthquakes in diverse places.

And elsewhere he teaches that it would seem that in the end to that time, when our Lord shall return, there should be increased military power. You know, you're the same person living in the same world.

Right after the first world war, we broke out in a war, anti-war, no more war, war pacifism. And the preachers were all pacifists then. They were saying, we outlaw war. And they had their manifestos.

There can be no more war. Man has learned there will be no more war. Now that the Kaiser has fled for refuge, there'll be no more war. The people of that generation that grew up, right, the flapper generation, grew up believing that there could be no more.

And then we sold scrap iron to Japan and they turned it into bombs and threw it back on us at Pearl Harbor and burst out like a fire in a tenement house and blazed for years. And then we dropped our famous bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima and brought the thing to an end.

And then there was to be no more. There has been a five-minute period from that day to this, when there has been peace in the world. And now it seems that the military has taken over, little by little, it's taking over.

Used to be that in Europe, there were strong people. There were people who the military, the generals, controlled things to a great extent. And in this country, people, we had an army if we had to have it, but we didn't care for it.

And we were a civilian people and the people ruled. But slowly it's shifting and more and more we're hearing the military speech, the military speech. Little by little, generals and great men are telling us which way we're to take.

And we're going back to where Europe was a few years ago with great wars brought her to her knees. But wars and rumors of wars and nation rising against nation and kingdom against nation. You say, was there ever a period of 50 years in human history that there wasn't a war, a tribal war, a city against city, a country against country?

I suppose not. But again, when there comes a peak, when war is in season and when the talk is over, I defy any man to listen for 15 minutes to any broadcast in America. Fifteen minutes now, just some little local political thing, that's different.

But any newscast of any stature coming out of New York or Washington, listen 15 minutes and not hear about war from somewhere. War that is, war that just ended, truce that is being called. So we're having it.

I don't say that it could look like it to me. And then there is verse 10. He tells us again, and there shall be men betray one another until they hate one another. Now, you, of course, know that whenever the totalitarian control, betrayal, and disloyalty and hatred in your own family becomes part of their technique, force.

And if the families in Russia today would be dead loyal within the family circle, communism would die in 10 years time. It depends upon so subverting of the individual that he thinks, not in terms of his family or his church, but in terms of his own country and world conquest, so that he would sell out his aged mother to get in good with her.

There's always been men betrayed, men that betrayed other men. Cain slew Abel in one awful act. Judas betrayed Christ, and men have betrayed each other down the years. But this is betrayal season. It is the incidence of betrayal.

The philosophy of betrayal is everywhere throughout the whole world. And then persecution, verse 9. It tells us there that, for you to be afflicted and shall kill you, and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.

I have to tell you the persecutions that have been going on throughout the world since the days when Hitler arose and turned his hatred against him to down to this present hour. I don't have to tell you what they're doing in Spain, or what they're doing in Spain, and what they're doing in Poland.

I don't have to tell you how the Christians suffered in Germany. I don't have to tell you that persecution is one of the techniques of totalitarianism, both in church and in state. So we seem to be in the persecution season.

You know what I'm going to do one of these days, and I want all of you people, your eyes peeled for it to come out. We're going to publish in the Alliance Weekly a bona fide and an edited account of what the Christians are doing in China, back of the bamboo curtain.

It will be most interesting how the Christians are coming along there. The man who's furnishing me this information lives in Hong Kong, and said, now remember, if we're to publish this in our magazine, it's going to have to be documented.

Nobody can come around afterward and say, you're publishing hearsay. We're going to have to know that, and we're going to know what they're doing. I'm quite sure that it will mean persecution, loss of property, banishment, and death for many Christians now behind the bamboo curtain.

Spiritual Falling Away and the Cost of Discipleship

And then verse 12 says to us, because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall die. Verse 12, a spiritual falling away, the increasing of iniquity, spiritual falling away. And it seems that this is happening in our time.

I know there are times when the church went very low, and when lawlessness was very high. But I also know that we are now living in a polio season for lawlessness. It is not safe to go down the street.

When you drive down on any of them, I recommend you keep your doors locked, so that when you stop at a red light, there isn't somebody who hasn't yet learned to shave, but has learned to use a clip gun, or a clip knife, and a gun will stop you, and murder you, and take your car.

Lawlessness, and a spiritual falling away. Brethren, it is very easy for me to stand here and say, whoa, everybody is falling. And it's easy for you to hear me and say, all churches are backslidden except this church.

Well, I'm a questioner, too. Not to accuse, but just to rouse you, thinking. How ardent is your love for the Lord Jesus Christ? The love of many shall wax cold in that terrible period just before. How ardent is your love?

All right, I want to ask you a second question. What is your Christianity costing you? You know what we are, brethren. We're a bunch of small, well-groomed showpieces of Christianity. Middle class, well-to-do, it costs us nothing.

The lying tent that we have left is still 100 times more than our fathers used to have. So it doesn't cost us. The old man of God said, shall I offer God anything that costs me? I'm asking you, what has your Christian faith cost you this last week?

Think about it now. You say, but it would have been just as hot before you'd stayed home. It didn't cost you anything. You meet your friends, and it's a pleasure to go to church. That didn't cost you anything.

I gave my tithes, and you had enough left. Put some in the bank. That didn't cost you anything. I taught my Bible class. It didn't cost you anything either. What has your faith cost you this last week?

And then I want to ask you what it's cost you this last month. Let's start with January. What has your faith for Jesus Christ cost you? That we serve the Lord at our convenience? Is it not true that we see to it, we Protestants see to it, that our Christianity is very good?

Our friends over on the other side of the fence, at least they have fast days, but the average Protestant doesn't fast. He doesn't practice it. We don't put ourselves out at all. We're the slickest bunch you ever heard of in getting our religion for nothing.

We let Jesus do all the suffering and all the sweating and all the bleeding, dying, and then by faith, we take over all of his bloody dying. And we snap and pat ourselves on the back and go galloping along.

Christianity, to the average evangelical, is simply ill of a good time with a little devotions on me and as an excuse. And we in this church ourselves, what has my faith cost me? Am I offering to God a one ounce of blood or sweat or tears?

We let our missionaries do all the suffering. We let them leave their home and go into the jungles. We let them stay away years at a stretch. We let them sleep in under thatched huts and drive off ducks and goats in order to get a quiet enough to rest at night with suffering.

And we pay them out of our tithe and buy big cars and have a bank account out of our nine tithes. And then we're believing that such were the prophets which were before us. There then we Christians in this church need to get on our knees with an urge to our hearts.

We'll be shocked at what we find. Remember it was the middle class, well fed, well set up, proudly killed Jesus when he came back to earth. The riffraff that you and I don't want in our church, they believed in him.

The harlot we wouldn't admit, she believed in him. And the publican with his evil name, the middle class people didn't. Well anyhow, because iniquity shall abound, many shall wax cold. Pray for me, will you?

Don't pray for the things commonly people are praying for. Pray for me. I won't end up a petered out, tired old preacher hunting a place to roost. That costs me something down to the last gasp. And then verse 14, full of the kingdom shall be preached, and all the world for a witness unto all nations.

The Gospel of the Kingdom and the Reign of God

Then shall the end come. And I don't have to tell you, activities are greater now than they've ever been in the history of the world. Not even Paul had as many irons in the fire. Not even the early many missionaries out going in all directions as we do in our day.

To steady us, to hold us steady in this awful hour, there is. The gospel of the kingdom shall be preached. And what is a kingdom without a king? And how could there be a kingdom without a king? The answer is, no matter how lawlessness increases, how war is fused and puzzled our great men are, or where the powder cake is going to blow, and no matter what betrayal and disloyalty and perfidy may be found every place, no matter, my brethren, there is a king.

Men scream and thunders and beat their breasts, and send out their bombers to destroy, but God reigns. Why say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountains, for lo, the wicked bend their bow, that they may privilege you to the upright in heart.

His holy temple and his throne is in heaven, and his eyes behold, and his eyelids try the children of men. What we see around about us is the trial of God Almighty trying us and trying us. He's trying the nations, and he's trying the kingdom of the nations.

But don't get scared and fly as a bird to your mountains. There's no mountain to fly to. Where could you fly to? They'll find you. There isn't any place to look. So don't run and hide. Look up. There is a kingdom, and there is a king, and there is a king sitting upon the throne.

And God will look after his people. So that steadies me in this hour. Another thing is, here's what I delight in. Our Lord Jesus Christ looked down the years as with a telescope, and saw everything, and told us in sufficient detail that it could not have been guessed.

Nobody can guess ahead on all these things. The Lord knew. He who was born of the blessed virgins, crucified under Pontius Pilate, and who ascended to the right hand of God the Father himself, was God.

And he had lived all our tomorrows when he walked in Galilee, because he is God. And he told us all these things and said, Lift up your heads and look and watch, because my coming will be unexpected. Now, if he could foretell the future 2 ,000 years in advance and more, it dates way back to the early prophets.

If he could foretell the future 3 ,000 years in advance, he must be more than man. If he could foretell it, he must have foreknown it. And if he could foreknow it, he can handle it. Then another thing is that we can fortify ourselves and should fortify ourselves against getting panicky.

Confidence in God’s Protection

This is the day of the nervous breakdown, today, when people have to take long, expensive vacations from loafing in order to keep from having a nervous breakdown. But don't get panicky, Christian brother.

Christian, dost thou see them on the holy ground. They are surrounded by invisible fire. And every true Christian, every true child of God, is safe, surrounded by a wall of invisible fire. Angels of the Lord camp round about them that hear him, and delivereth them, watch how they are led into suspicious religions.

I wrote a series of editorials in which I said, in effect, that all this great going on in our country and all over the world is not a revival of true religion at all. I wrote that, six of them, installments, believing that I would be nailed to the wall with words, at least, and be called everything.

But I have gotten letters from all over about those articles, and everybody agrees with me that it's written up to now. One Methodist preacher wrote in and he said, I think that it would be better for you to try to help religion in this country than to denounce it.

And he said, furthermore, suppose this should turn out to be of the Holy Ghost, then you would be found to be fighting against God. Well, it appeared to tell the truth, lest you be found fighting against God, kept men's mouths shut, there would be no Noah, there never could have been a Moses, there never could have been an Isaiah, Elijah would have hidden in a cave and stayed there till he died of old age, there couldn't have been an Ezekiel, and Jeremiah would have been known as talkless Jeremiah.

And could have uttered his parole, raised his voice, Peter never could have written his epistles, John never could have written his epistles, there never could have been a Saint Bernhard, there never could have been a Luther, nor a Wesley, nor a Finney, there never could have been a Church Father, never could have been a Saint.

The fact of the thing is, brother, if your heart's right, you won't be found fighting against God. Now, God and I have an understanding, and all Methodist preachers may now copy, that I'm not fighting against God.

I'm for everything God's for, and I'm for everybody that's on God's side. But nobody is going to feed taffy and tell me that it's steak. Nobody is going to give me fool's gold and tell me that I might be found to be fighting against God.

No, no trouble there, brethren. We're more likely to fight and put our broomstick over our shoulder and the guitar in the other hand, and march with the legions of the one-third saved, to say the half-saved, but I've changed it.

They're not even half-saved. The one-third saved. They're saved in this, the doctrine. But two-thirds, their personal life and their attitude toward sin in the world, those two-thirds are full of sin.

Rejecting the World’s Moral Code

Well, another thing we've got to watch out for is the modern moral code. You know, every generation has its moral code, and we have our moral code. It's different now from what it was then. You'll find they talk about things now, that my mother would have blushed, and my grandmother would have fainted.

The grandmother would have blushed at it. Mother would have fainted at it, and mother would have blushed at it. Another generation would have walked away, and this generation is a farm, and a loud, cocky, rocket-launcher.

...just have to come out. If they didn't read the digest this last month and warn, that if we continued to be Buddhism worshippers much longer, what would happen to us? Well, we've got to watch out we don't accept this world's moral code.

We have a moral code in the world, by most everybody. It is the moral code. It's the code of the majority. Watch it, brethren. The majority in spiritual things is always wrong. Go to your Bible. Get on your knees, daily.

Pray. Ask God to help you to look out on the world and see it as he sees it, not as the world sees itself. Enduring to the end. What shall we endure? I've got three minutes yet to go. Well, we've got to endure a lot of stresses and fears.

We've got to endure suspicion and distrust, and he that endures unto the end, the same shall be saved. ...the presence of false Christ. We've got to endure temptation to relax discipline. We've got to endure temptation outlook.

We've got to endure terrible temptation that failures of others bring. Somebody, and they failed us. We thought they were a Christian, and they proved they weren't. And that's always a shocking thing.

We've got to endure the continued decay of religion round about us, and the continued fusion of the world with the church. We've got to endure the apparent triumph of evil, for if evil was winning. But let me tell you something, it isn't.

It just thinks it is. God being God, and this Bible being his book, this I can tell you, however bad the world, evil cannot continue to win forever. God and righteousness will win at last. Those who have been found on the side of righteousness will wear some kind of crown along with their Lord.

Those who have been compromising with iniquity because it was popular, and because it seemed to be winning. Apart from me, I never knew you. I have this. God is our refuge and strength. Even in these deadly, grave, dangerous, awful, dramatic hours, God is our refuge and strength.

God Our Refuge in Troubled Times

The very present health in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth bear mountains, be carried into the midst of the sea. For the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shape with a swelling thereof.

There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, and she shall not be moved. God shall help her when the morning appeareth.

When the graves and the tombs were moved, God uttered his voice, and the earth melted. The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge. Come, behold, the revelations yet made in the earth.

He maketh wars to cease, he maketh wars to cease, unto the end of the earth. He, not the U .N., he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in thunder. Be still, and know that I am God. I recommend you turn off your radio, turn off your TV.

Give orders that you are not to be bothered if the phone rings, unless it is a matter of life or death. Get alone with God every day. Be still, and know that I am God. I will be heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.

The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge. Fear not, little daughters, for it is good pleasure to give you the King.