The Last of the Last Days — Carter Conlon

So wonderful for Pastor Teresa and I to be here with you today as your pastor, Pastor Tim Delina and his wife Cindy and the children are experiencing a time of rest and vacation that they so deserve. I so thank God.

I hope you do for Pastor Tim, Cindy and all that God's doing in this church. You must be exhausted from fasting and praying and meeting all this week. There was a few with nervous laughter because you haven't been fasting and you know it.

But that's okay. That's okay. God knows. He sees your heart. And I had a young lady one time we were fasting in the church and she came and said, Pastor, she was on staff. I have to eat. I have to eat.

I'm useless to the kingdom of God. I can't think about anything but food. And it was like it was the first day. It was noon of the first day. I said, go ahead. Have something to eat. God's not a legalist.

He knows your heart. And she said, oh, thank God. I can't even work. All I can do is think about food. So please be in prayer for Pastor Tim, Pastor Cindy. You know, there's a tremendous weight that comes with this pulpit.

And God knows why everybody that's ever stood here, Pastor David Wilkerson and myself for several years. And now Pastor Tim understands the weight that is here. We stand in a virtual headwind of opposition to the gospel.

Of course, we know why. In the inception of this church, the Lord gave Pastor David Wilkerson a vision, in a sense, that this church, Times Square Church, would become a lighthouse. And as the days grew darker, the beam from this church would go farther and farther around the world.

Now, that vision was given before the Internet. Do you understand? I mean, there's no way to explain it, but somehow from this pulpit was going to come a beam of light. And we're reading all of the countries and all the places.

So I'm sitting there saying, God, I knew, you knew, you foreknew, and you spoke to us about these days that we're now living in, where the darkness is getting darker, but the light is going farther. A lighthouse is only a tourist attraction until the nighttime comes.

You know that. And then it's in the darkness that the dark actually allows the beam of light to go farther. So thank God for the numbers of homes that are being reached, the numbers of hearts, the numbers of people who have really no fellowship in some cases.

I remember getting an email one time and a text from a little group of about seven people meeting in a secluded spot in the world. I can't name the country. But they were meeting in a room, closing the blinds, meeting and listening online to the messages coming from here.

Because if they were discovered, it meant a death sentence for them in that particular country they were in. So you understand that there's something bigger than what we can see and understand quite often happening.

Appreciate your prayers for Pastor Teresa, myself, Brother Chukzubu, one of the elders here at Times Square Church, his wife Ngozi, Nick and Catherine Cassidy, and Bettina Mariag. We're heading off tomorrow morning into Nigeria for a 12-day tour in Nigeria.

And appreciate your prayers. I was sitting in my seat here today as we were talking about mountains moving. I was praying, God, make our feet like the feet of those four leopards that went down into the Syrian camp.

That everything that is pitted against the Church of Jesus Christ in Nigeria and against the Christian people, set it to flight. Do something, God, that only you can do. Encourage and lift the pastors up.

Give them strength to face the days that they're now in where the terror is very, very real in that part of the world right now. I'm going to speak to you today about the last of the last days. The last of the last days.

We've been in the last days since the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. That's the period of time biblically known as the last days. The last days began with the ascension of Christ, continued with the day of Pentecost, Acts chapter 2, and will culminate or finish with the return of Jesus Christ.

If the early apostles thought they were in the last days, we are now in the last of the last days. The apostle Peter warned us that these days should not overtake us as a thief, should not come upon us so suddenly that we were unprepared for it.

I remember back in the year 2001, it was about the month of April, when the Holy Spirit started speaking to our hearts in this church that there was a time of crisis coming to the city. We knew it was the voice of God, so we canceled the missions conference, we canceled the women's conference, we canceled our guest speakers.

We began to meet, and the Holy Spirit said, bring the people to the throne of God and teach them how to find grace to help in time of need for a season of distress is coming to the city. And they're going to need to be strong to not be part of the fear, in a sense, that will be in our streets.

You know, during the next few months, we had such a phenomenal presence of God come into the sanctuary, we would sometimes sit for up to 20, 25 minutes in absolute silence, and the presence of God was touchable.

I don't know how else to describe it. And God was preparing our hearts. Now, there were some people here that said, hey, we didn't come to church for this. We came to church to be blessed. There's always people who come to church, and it's all just about me, myself, and mine.

I didn't come here to be prepared to be ready to help somebody else. I came here to be blessed. So they left, a few left. It wasn't that many, but a few left, and they found a place more conducive to their pursuits at that time.

But thank God, when 9 -11 came, we were ready. Thank God that we were ready as a body to receive people in the... I can't even count the numbers of people that came to Christ. There's no way to count it.

I do remember one Tuesday night, I had to ask the people to stop kneeling in the aisles because they were creating a fire hazard in the church, and they did. And there were just multiples and multiples and multiples of people who'd come to Christ.

But the point being, we were ready. And so I want to talk to you about the last of the last days, and it comes with an incredible promise from God, an incredible promise. I'm going to have to go through some of the things that we're going to have to face in the last days before I get to the promise, so stay with me, please, because there's something for you at the end.

Father, thank you, God, for the touch of heaven in this sanctuary all day today, God. You have just so, so blessed us, oh God. You've so given us strength, Lord. I thank you for your word, which indeed is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path.

I thank you, God, that you will never let us be taken unawares by some day ahead of us in the future without speaking to us, as you did to Paul in Acts 27, about our future. How do we fare? How do we fit?

What is our purpose? God, strengthen your church today, and help me, Lord, to speak this word. Quicken my mortal, my physical body. Give me the ability to speak this word, and I thank you for it. In Jesus' name, amen.

Acts chapter 2, part of verse 17, and I just want to start with the part at the beginning. It shall come to pass in the last days, says God. It shall come to pass. When God says it shall, that means it will.

That means it doesn't mean it might, should, possibly will, will come just for a few. No, it shall come to pass. When God speaks, his words have the same authority as when he said, Let there be light, and light came.

As when God spoke into dust of the earth, and Adam became a living soul. As when he stood in the boat, and he said to the wind, Be still, and to the seas, be calm. And immediately the storm ceased. When he stood before the grave of Lazarus, and called him out after being four days in the place of death.

You see, it's that powerful. God says it shall come to pass in the last days. As I said earlier, the last days began with the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, and will end with his return. But there is a moment where we become aware that we're living in the last of the last days.

I don't know how long the last of the last day season will be. But I don't think it'll be as long as some would like it to be. I think it's going to come upon us suddenly. The Bible says it's like a woman about to give birth.

The labor pains in the beginning are far apart, but as the birth draws near, they become closer until it's a constant, in a sense, at the giving of birth. It's like that, the scripture says. There's coming a time when all of the evil around us will get progressively worse and worse and worse and worse, and people will look and say, what's happening to this world?

Since COVID seemingly shut everything down, it's as if a baptism of confusion and lawlessness and division has really hit the entire world that we're living in today, where so many are scratching their heads and saying, what's going on in this world?

Well, this world is launching its final rebellion against the lordship of Jesus Christ. It's always been in the heart of humankind to go its own way, to do its own thing, to craft its own rules of what's right and what's wrong.

The essence and the nature of sin in the garden of Egypt is to actually rebel against God, but there's been a restraining force, a restraining power in the world against that, instituted, governed, carried by the spirit of God.

There has been a restrainer. One day the scripture tells us that the restraining hand of God will be lifted, and humankind will devolve into a depravity never, ever seen on such a scale in all of history.

We've seen this depravity from time to time, as in the Holocaust in World War II, where it's unbelievable how inhumane humanity can become with other human beings in the name of what they believe is virtue, and yet we know it to be evil.

Absolute, unmitigated evil. Now I want you to imagine that on steroids, with restraints removed, nothing to stop it. The hand of God has been lifted. Many believe that's the rapture of the church of Jesus Christ.

I happen to concur with that, that one day the Bible says that the church of Christ is going to be lifted from the face of this earth. The restraint, in that sense, will be taken away from this world, and whatever remains in this world will be free to practice its debauchery and its lawlessness on a scale that's unimaginable.

If you think it's dark now, it's not even remotely as dark as it's going to get, and the behaviors and the violence and the immorality are going to be on such a scale that it will make Sodom and Gomorrah look like a kindergarten picnic.

The Bible warns that in the last of the last days there will be a dramatic increase in lawlessness. That part of the human heart that says, we do not want anybody telling us that there's a right and a wrong beyond what we believe right and wrong should be.

You now have this concept in society today of your truth and my truth. Have you noticed that? You'll tell somebody, say, I believe that 2 and 2 equals 4, and I think I can empirically prove it. And they'll look you right in the eye and say, well, that's your truth, but I believe that 2 and 2 equals 5.

And it's insanity. Truth is being crafted. It's not based on any reality. Just like when the children of God, when Moses was gone for a season, they crafted a golden calf and somehow convinced themselves that this calf that they made with their own hands had been the power of God that brought them out of Egypt and was going to lead them now into a place of promise.

The stupidity of the human heart is staggering at times when you take away the restraints of God. There's almost nothing that we will not craft, and no matter how deep or dark a lie it is, we will want to parade it as truth.

And isn't that exactly what we're facing in our world today? Paul paints this incredibly dismal picture. 2 Thessalonians 2, beginning at verse 7, he says, the mystery of lawlessness is already at work until he who restrains it will do so until he's taken out of the way.

There's this push against the ways of God, and we're seeing it in full force in our country today. A push against what God says is biblical morality, a push against truth, a push against everything that is holy and righteous and just and true.

Isn't it amazing how people now in authority can get up and bold-facedly lie, and they don't even blink when it's proven to be wrong? Can you imagine, with the restrainer still here, can you imagine what will happen when the restrainer is taken out of the way, when that of God which holds back this evil is suddenly removed?

Then the lawless one will be revealed. Satan, of course, is at the heart of this rebellion against God and those he chooses to put into authority, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming.

The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteousness, deception among those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved.

For this reason, God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. There's nothing in my mind more terrifying than when you see the hand of God having been lifted from somebody who wants new truth, and I've seen that more than once in my lifetime.

When you're looking into eyes so dark and into logic so foreign to the ways of God that you can no longer, even people who once walked with God and you can't reach them. Something has happened and there's a mist of blindness that's come upon their lives and no matter what you say, they can just shrug it off.

There's no conviction, no desire to turn back to God, no desire to return to truth because they did not receive the love of the truth. God, it says, shall send upon them strong delusion. If today you can hear his voice, don't harden your heart.

That's the best advice I think as an older saint I can give you. If you can hear his voice, if he's telling you to turn away from something, turn away from it now. If he's telling you to move towards something, he has you move towards it now.

If you can hear his voice, don't harden your heart. The old time saints used to call it gospel hardening. When you hear truth for so long and have resisted it for so long that suddenly you don't hear it anymore.

It's like a veil comes over the ears and over the heart. There's no longer any ability to hear. Now Paul also paints a dismal picture of this time when humankind moves to a collective level of depravity that's rarely, if ever, been seen in the world.

Listen to what he says in 2 Timothy 3. Know this. In the last days, perilous times will come. Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, and that means a standing and cursing God, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power and from such people turn away.

In other words, this entire rebellion will clothe itself in its own homemade religion. It doesn't say that they will reject religion, they just reject God. They will form a religion that allows this kind of behavior to exist and somehow validates it and makes it a good thing.

It's a form, but it has no power in it. It cannot change a human heart. It can't transform a society. It can't do anything. The power of God is not in it. Of this sort are they who creep into households and take captives of gullible women loaded with sins and led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Now as Janice and Jamboree resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth, men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith, but they will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all as theirs also was.

And so what you see in this is when Moses was sent by God to bring the people out of captivity, out of years of captivity in Egypt, and then to bring them into a wilderness. How attractive is that? Not into the promised land yet, but into the wilderness first.

It speaks to me of a place of trust in God. Out of captivity into a place where I don't know where I'm going, but God's taking me there, and I choose to sacrifice here. I choose to thank him here. I don't see his promises yet fulfilled, but I believe he's faithful.

And so God, thank you for taking me out of captivity, and I'm not sure where I'm going, but I am sure you're going to take me there. So I'm going to sacrifice here. I'm going to thank you here. I'm going to praise you here.

So important to learn to praise God in the wilderness. Hallelujah. You can't wait until all your promises are fulfilled to start praising him. You start praising him now. Start praising him before you're prisoned, or praise him before you're blinded, I see.

Praise him before your wounded heart is healed. Praise him when you don't know where you're going, but you're not going back to where you used to be. You know that much, but you don't know where you're going yet.

But you start praising him and saying, God, I believe that all things work together for good because I love you, and I am the called according to your purpose. Not my purpose, but your purpose. As we heard about Joseph being in the prison, God, I don't know how this promise is going to be fulfilled, but I know you're going to fulfill it.

It's going to be done your way. It's going to be done in your time, and you have set my life apart for the sake of others. That's what we teach at our Bible school. Christianity is living for the benefit of others.

It's not just for me. It's not just for my food, my career, my home, my life, my happiness, my job, and all these things. Ultimately, the purpose and the pleasure of God's power in our lives is for the sake of other people who need to know him through us as Lord and Savior.

Now, there's going to be a religion that's going to resist this, a religion that had gained access to the throne, a pharaoh, and could imitate the power of God, but only to a point. There's a lot of imitation of the power of God.

It's usually accompanied with a lot of smoke and a lot of noise, but there's a lot of imitation. And so they were able to imitate certain things. When Moses and Aaron showed up, they could imitate the rod turning into a serpent.

They could imitate the frogs coming out of the river. There's certain things they could do, but there was a line that they could not cross, and that was when God told Moses to bring life out of the dust.

You see, you and I were created, our first father was created from the dust. Adam was, God put some dust in his hand and he breathed upon it, and that pile of dust became a living soul. And we are the children of that pile of dust.

You know that, right? We are the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. They are our first parents. Ashes to ash and dust to dust. I've said that at so many grave sites now that it's kind of ingrained in me now.

This is where we came from, and this is where we're going to go one day. But only God can give life to my pile of ashes. You understand that nobody can imitate that. You can't fake that, you can't pretend that, sir.

Only God can breathe into my life and take me where I need to go and make me into what he's called me to be and give me what I need to have when I get there. Only God can bring life from the dust. Only God can bring that kind of life into any of us.

This is what will manifest their folly. There will come a point where it becomes obvious to the honest seeker of God that these men and women do not speak for God. Because no matter how much they strut and preen themselves in public or wherever it is, they cannot bring about anything in my heart that allows God to bring change into my life.

You see, because their whole focus is about themselves. They can't bring people into a focus of others. They can't because it's never at the center core of anything they preach, teach, publish, or defend.

In 2 Timothy chapter 3, Paul tells us about the season that we're probably living in now where marriage and family and fatherhood and motherhood will be mocked and directly undermined. Children will be indoctrinated in godlessness.

Pleasure and not purpose in life will be promoted. Immoral lifestyles will be celebrated. Prayer will be taken away from our children, from our schools. Obscenity laws will be softened. Pornography will be promoted in all media outlets.

Many churches will back down, discredit the Bible, and actually begin to resist the truth. When that decree came from Nebuchadnezzar, who built a statue, as he saw it, in the image of himself and his worldview, as it was, of what the future is going to look like, he sent a decree, and he said, everybody, when you hear the music, you bow before my image of man, as it is.

You bow before that golden image. And if you refuse to bow, you're going to be thrown into the furnace. It's going to get hot for you if you don't bow. Many of you know what I'm talking about today. That same spirit is in the workplace.

That same spirit is attacking the people of God all through our society today. You bow, you bend, you agree, or you burn. That's really the issue. That's what people are being challenged with today. Now, there's a lot of people that claim to be people of God of that generation that bowed, I have no doubt.

And they had all their reasons why this was probably legitimate in the sight of God. And I don't know any of their names. None of their names are recorded. Do you know any of their names? Did any of them have any effect on their society?

Absolutely not. But the one thing I do know, I know the names of the three who didn't bow. Hallelujah, I know the names of the three who decided no matter what you do, no matter the threats you send my way, I am not bending my knee to a homemade image of God or man.

I am going to serve the living God and Him alone will I bend my knee to. So you throw me in the fire if you want. You take away my freedom if you choose to do so. But I'm going to serve God and it's only Jesus Christ that I will bend my knee before in this or any other generation.

We know their names. We know the names of the three of them. And we also know the name of the fourth who had the form like the Son of God who stood in the fire with them. And I don't know if they saw the fourth.

I honestly don't know if they saw the fourth in the fire because the Bible doesn't record it. But I do know that Nebuchadnezzar saw the fourth man in the fire. And when you choose to stand with God, no matter how difficult life gets, the people around you will see a strength that you have.

Somebody is standing with you that maybe you don't see, but they see it. They say, where does this woman get the strength that's in their life to stand in spite of the threats that are coming against them?

This religionist system will progress no further. Their foolishness will be made known. And you ask me the question, you say, well, then how are we going to stand in the last of the last days against such a flood of evil?

And some of you came in here with that question today. God Almighty, how am I going to stand in the workplace? You can't even have a conversation about something biblical anymore without being labeled a hater or somebody who's unnecessary or being vilified or lied about or slandered or set up.

I know you face these things now in the workplace. So many that are here today, this is your portion in this moment we're living in. So we ask the question, how do we stand in the last of the last days against a flood?

Now Isaiah chapter 59 and verse 19, the Lord says, when the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him. Now a standard is a banner. A standard is like a flag.

And the best definition I read, it's when the Lord decides to enter the fight Himself. God says, okay, it's enough. I'm coming down. I'm going to enter the fight. And He raises a banner around which He calls His soldiers to gather.

It's a gathering point. You know, of course, the flag for us, the banner, is the cross of Calvary. It's the place where the victory was won. It's the place that God is calling us to. It's the place which we're now called in the last days to the banner because His promise is it shall come to pass in the last days.

It shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh. Hallelujah. I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy. That means your sons and daughters will begin to declare truth through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

They will see it. They will believe it. And by the power of God, they will declare it. They will declare the cross without compromise. They will prophesy. They will be able to talk about the future of those who turn to God and the future of those who don't turn to God.

There will be a boldness. There will be a strength. There will be an ability given to them. It goes on. Your young men shall see visions. In other words, younger men shall see things from the perspective which God gives them.

Pastor Tim is on the edge now of being young or old. He's right in the middle, right on the line right now. Pastor Tim, I know you're watching me, so take this as a compliment, okay? But he's right on the edge between young and old.

Not sure if he's seeing a vision or dreaming dreams. But God has given him a vision. And I thank God for the vision that Pastor Tim has to reach a billion souls for the kingdom of God in this last day.

Why should anything seem too hard for God? Is it too hard for God? No, heaven is his throne. The earth is his footstool. He can reach anybody he wants to reach. I often wonder, has he been waiting for somebody to believe him?

Somebody to stand in the gap? Somebody to believe that this beam can go out around the world from a pulpit where people are given the opportunity to turn to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? Why should it seem difficult for the one who made all things by the word of his mouth?

And your old men shall dream dreams. That means the older men like myself are not living in the past. Getting up in the pulpits like this and just telling stories of the past. I thank God for the past.

There's been a terrific history in my life and the life of this church, but I don't live there. I live for something I see now in the future. I live for what God is about to do. A revelation of what he's able to do or what he's planning to do.

I have believed since I was in my twenties that I would live to see an incredible turning to God. Not understanding how it was going to happen, but the Lord spoke to my heart that it would happen in a season of calamity.

In a season of fear. In a season of crisis. People would begin to turn. The numbers turning would be so vast that nobody could count them. It is my heart's cry to see pastors alive again in pulpits. Every pulpit in churches that are seeking God across the country to become a burning bush.

Confronting every one of us who comes in with the call of God that's on our lives. No matter whether we're young or we're old or rich or poor or black or white or brown or red or green. It doesn't matter what color we are, where we come from.

The call of God is on our lives, and we would be confronted by a holy God every time we come into His house. Not looking just for some new thing to put in our resume, but looking for what is it God wants to do through my life?

Where does God want to take me? What does God want to make me into? How does God want to glorify His life through my physical body, through my life? What can I do that Christ in me can be glorified? Praise be to God.

I'll tell you what I can do. I come to the banner. I come back to the cross, and I say Jesus, I don't want to live beneath the inheritance that you have for my life. Thank you, God. Thank you, Lord, that my name is written in this book of life.

Thank you that my name is written. Thank you that heaven is my home.

But I want to go beyond that.

I want my life to make a difference. I want men and women and children to be set free from the captivity of.

Egypt, brought with me into the land.

Of God's promise through Jesus Christ. Glory to God. So I'm coming to the banner. I'm coming there because you said it shall come to pass in the last days, and I refuse to live beneath my inheritance in Jesus Christ.

Oh, hallelujah to the Lamb of God. Hallelujah. So I'm an old man dreaming dreams. I see something on the horizon. I see God doing something that's so much bigger than you or me. We can't even begin to understand the depth of what he's about to do.

But I do know, by God's grace, we are invited to be part of it. You were never God's plan B, do you understand? Or C, D, E, or F. You were always plan A in the kingdom of God. When you go into the book of Corinthians, you just see it clearly.

God chooses the foolish and the weak and the nobodies and the nothings and those things that are despised and the poor to empower by the cleansing of his blood, filled with his spirit, bringing us where we could never go and giving us what we could never naturally possess and making us into what we could never be so that he might be glorified.

This is a visual generation, folks. This is a visual generation. They're not going to read the Bible, do you understand? Their attention span is very limited now, especially the young generation. But what they will do is they'll read you.

They will read the presence of God in your life. They will read you. And when you and I come to that banner of Christ and allow God to fill us again with his Holy Spirit, as everything around us starts coming apart, we start coming together.

Hallelujah. I think it's interesting. It's just a sidebar, but this church is in its 37th year and it's in Ezekiel 37 that God says, can these bones live? And all the bones start coming together and they stand and God breathes upon them and they become a force to be reckoned with in the earth.

God, do something in my life. Take me. Jesus Christ, give me your Holy Spirit. Take me. Use me. Change me. Let my life be a supernatural life. A life empowered, guided, led. Move upon me, Lord Jesus Christ, to speak to somebody a word that they would know comes from you.

Give me the courage to lay hands on the sick and believe that you can heal them. Give me the power to take authority over things that are trying to trouble and darken people's minds. Give me words to say in every place I walk into that are laced with the wisdom of God that will change the way people think.

God, I want to be part of this last time generation. This outpouring of the Holy Spirit that you promised in the last of the last days. And together, you and I will move into this mountain. I love that we're saying that.

I've seen the mountain move and I believe I'll see it again. You know, you and I will move into this mountain of confused humanity. Talk about confusion. It's on every level, but here we go as the body of Christ moving into this mountain of confusion for perhaps the greatest whoever calls moment in the history of the world.

I believe it's going to be so. You're free to accept that or reject that. That's a personal conviction. But in verse 21, as signs in the heavens begin to actually increase, he says, it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

But it's you and I moving in the empowerment of the Holy Spirit into this mountain of darkened humanity and whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. That's what I want my life to be. That's what I want your life to be.

It's a life that causes people to call out to God. David the king said, I was sinking. So if you're sinking today, then you're okay. You're okay. He's not going to let you go down. Don't you worry about that.

And David said, the Lord reached down and picked me up and set me upon a rock. He put my feet on a solid place and he put a new song in my mouth, even praise to our God. And I love the King James Version.

He says, many shall see it. It doesn't say they'll hear it. They'll see it. He puts a song in us that can be seen before it's heard and they will fear and they will trust in God. In other words, the song of confidence in God is so deep within us.

The song of God's ability to change us from image to image and glory to glory by the Spirit of God. The song of the ability to see a future when others around us don't. In Acts 27, when the ship was going down, somebody called for the Apostle Paul.

Up to that point, they couldn't care less about what he had to say. But when the ship was going down and the Scripture says, in all hope that we would be saved was lost, somebody somewhere said, where is that guy that said he's got a word from God?

And suddenly the Apostle Paul comes on the deck and he's filled with confidence in God. You've got to picture this. The ship is going down. The waves are so big they're going to break the back of it to pieces.

The odds of getting to shore in a storm like that are almost zero, even if you can swim. The undertow is so strong. Any mariner would know the odds of making it to shore are nil. Half of the people there have got chains on their hands.