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Living end time exploits, now

· by · In: Basic Christianity, Current events, The Future and Endtime

Sometimes it’s hard to keep the vision of the last days. The enemy of our souls wants to exhaust you with distractions, vanities, “rabbit trails” and meaninglessness. Without God, you ultimately crumble, surrender to the fog and become numb within the mists you’ve come to live in. Certainly, this is not the will of God.

But then tonight, it was like a fresh wind from God that blew through the house. We watched the movie about the “Free Burma Rangers”.  It’s the story of a man from Texas who was raised on the mission field of Thailand but then felt led to become a soldier. After having become an elite “Rangers” member of the US military, he felt the call of God to use his training and Christian/military background to help the marginalized peoples of Burma.

I realized, watching it, that this documentary/movie about real people in these times could be a glimpse of how reality will be for some Christians in the very final years, during the time of Antichrist rule. Some parts of the world are experiencing extreme “great tribulation” right now and God’s presence is being strongly seen and felt by those who continue to serve Him in those times and places.

It specially spoke to me as this man, with his wife and 3 children beside him, has lived a life of zealous Christian discipleship which has been similar to what I’ve experienced at times in my life on the mission field. What this couple has been doing in the last few years is very much like what I believe Christians, some at least, will be experiencing in the final 42 months of Great Tribulation before the return of the Lord.

The three and a half years before the return of Jesus is a period of time that is amazingly shown repeatedly in Scripture. I certainly can’t in this article get into all the aspects of it. But if you’re interested in the subject, here is a link to an article I did when I was in a remote part of Bulgaria some years ago, where I was struck by how that area could be like what it says about the Christians of the last days that they “flee into the wilderness” where they are protected during that time. It’s called “Fleeing into the Wilderness… in Bulgaria”.

I firmly believe there is no “pre-tribulation” rapture or gathering of the saved, before the coming of the Lord. In fact, I believe there are several verses that clearly tell what Christians will be doing during that time. Two from Daniel chapter 11 are “The people who do know their God will be strong and do exploits. And they that understand among the people shall instruct many.”

This movie touched me on so many levels. While I‘ve not had exactly the same life as this man and his family, I could very much relate to their commitment to the Lord and their willingness to put their lives on the line for Him in very extreme situations in the hinterland of Myanmar (Burma) for years and then in northern Iraq at the height of the ISIS threat there.

This dedicated family at the front of Christian discipleship in Burma and Iraq helped remind me to not “sit at ease in Zion” (Amos 6:1), as is so normal and acceptable to do here in Christian circles in America. It was a reminded to me of my calling and background, my experience and all that the Lord has invested in me and all I can still be used by Him to do, if I will be cautious to not get comfortable and settled in this present situation I’m in.

Desperation often brings on a clarity that comfort and ease really doesn’t. There’s so much confusion and vanity that every person here in my country is mightily assailed by every day. It’s like living in mists that effectively obscure spiritual realties. So we can end up quibbling about trifles while the starkest realities of the spiritual world mostly escape us in all the Babylonian chatter of our daily lives.

But watching these dear ones who were going all out for the Lord at the forefront of some of the worst conflicts in the world of our times reminded me of how it is going to be in the future where Christians are going to be laying down their lives, utterly involved with humanity around them and being burning and shining lights to multitudes of the lost and oppressed.  This was all a bit of a shakeup and a reminder for me of my calling and life up to this time.

One of the greatest dangers to Christians in my country is the incredible surge of sickening swill and sludge that flows at us night and day through every organ of the media. It’s virtually all tainted, brackish and deeply polluted by any number of agendas and outlets, trying to sell you their viewpoint or product.

Strange as it may seem, counter-intuitive as you might think it to be, those dear people in the jungles of Burma or the poor souls who were assailed for years by ISIS in Iraq and Syria had a leg up on many of us here. Because they didn’t have to try to sort out reality from fiction. The enemy was right there, real and clear and in their faces, ready to literally kill them physically right then.

We don’t hear much about Christian activists at the forefront of the worst conflicts of our time. But for them, it’s like they are already living in conditions much like the final last days will be. So this movie was very much like a look into the future for dedicated Christians. And although it was totally and utterly real and true, not a bit of fiction to it, it also had an element of Biblical futurism to it to see how these horrific conditions brought out the very best of Christian character and love for others in this dear man and his wife and kids.

It wonderfully concentrates the mind in situations like that. I haven’t experienced it a lot but I definitely have from time to time in my encounters on some far flung mission fields. It quickens you, clears your mind and mostly gets you very desperate as you are face to face with forces greater than you. And you realize perhaps as much as ever before how very much you desperately need at that moment the presence and power of God. Or you may die in the next minute. [Here’s an article I wrote about when I was about to venture into a city on the Syrian border when ISIS was at its peak and how desperate prayer was a life or death matter.]

If you want to see what the final days before the Lord may be like and how you and yours can be victors and “more than conquers”, even during the time that “the woman fled into the wilderness”, then I suggest you watch “Free Burma Rangers”. “And they overcame him by the blood of the lamb, and by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto the death.” (Revelation 12:11)

Fog

· by · In: Basic Christianity, Current events, Insights

Winston Churchill, writing about 1940 said, “Although it was a fine September, I was frightened of the fog.” Why? Because he knew that the fog was the best cover the enemy could have for a German invasion of Britain at that time. And that’s in many ways where we are now: in a fog.

Admittedly, some think they are seeing utterly clearly and can emphatically tell you who the good guys are and who are the bad. But sometimes, the wrong people have the right message and the right people have the wrong message. It’s rather like great confusion.

Have you ever looked up at the sky and seen some clouds going one direction but others going another at the same time? In one place in the Bible it says, “The winds were contrary.” (Acts 27:4) A bit like it is now, it seems to me. And it’s the easiest time for the enemy to invade the land or our own hearts: when we are in a fog and can’t really see as clearly many things that seemed clear not so long ago.

It’s like that to some degree for me now and perhaps for many people. A dear friend said something to me a few days ago that was profound, although he didn’t probably intend it that way. He simply said that he was looking at individual issues rather than choosing one side or the other in the big picture.

I think that might hold a lot of wisdom for the Christian people of faith right now. For me it’s been a help. If I look at individual issues affecting the world right now, I can feel a leading of the Lord on them, if I just look at them one at a time. But forming some composite big picture, some “unified field” as they say in the realm of physics, I’m not really able to do that right now.

And maybe as a Christian disciple, I don’t need to. Maybe I don’t need to identify with the various yardsticks that are so prevalent and demanding right now. No, I don’t at all swear allegiance to one political party or the other, “left” or “right”. I just feel vehemently that my loyalty and allegiance should continue to be to the Son of God Who will ultimately return to establish the Kingdom of God on earth, as He clearly said He would.

Should I move away from that? Should any of us come off the wall of Christian discipleship to become embroiled with “the course of this world” and “the affairs of this life”?  (Ephesians 2:2, II Tim. 2:4) No matter how loud the clamor is between one worldly faction and the other right now?

I just can’t, or at least shouldn’t. But there is a strong pull and I do have long-time Christian disciple friends who’ve now engaged themselves almost totally within those controversies and have, in so doing, moved away from their original calling to an allegiance with Christ and His service within this present evil world.

But the enemy can attack most easily when there is a fog. That may be why Paul said, “God is not the author of confusion but of peace.” (I Corinthians 14:33) If I let present contrary winds and an inability to as easily discern things as it seemed possible in the past, then I can allow that wedge to be a device of the enemy to move in heavily, as he always attempts to do, and to overwhelm me with uncertainty, perplexity and confusion. Before you know it, as Churchill feared the Germans would do in 1940, the enemy is landing troops upon your land and is advancing in a blitzkrieg war while you pause in perplexity, with your guard dropped.

The solution? Remain vigilant. “Strengthen the things that remain.”  (Revelation 3:2) “Be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary the devil as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour.” (I Peter 5:8)

Having perfect understanding and being able to see clearly the horizon in every direction is not guaranteed for Christian discipleship. Sometimes we simply don’t have that. We have to “walk by faith and not by sight.” (I Corinthians 5:8) But the enemy is always there to cast fiery darts into our hearts and minds, sowing fear, uncertainty, questions and doing all he can to reverse the polarity so that he can launch an attack on God’s homeland, which is our souls, especially when the overall outlook seems foggy.

I’ll have to admit, it has bothered me that I have not been able to feel I see things as clearly as I did until very recently. But on the other hand, I have more than enough of the Lord’s grace to handle all that is before me on the short term. So while the fog clears, I’m going to concentrate on the short term goals and vision which is still just fine. And perhaps before long, other things will become clearer. Still, I am going to remain vigilant against the attacks of the enemy who has already tried to attack me in this present somewhat foggy time.

The enemy is always threatening, broadcasting his woes and contrary confusion, all the much more when it is foggy. But the Lord’s directional systems still work just as well in fog as they do in clear skies.  Meanwhile, when it comes to the enemy of our souls, “We are not ignorant of his devices.” (II Corinthians 2:11)

Judgment begins at the house of God

· by · In: Basic Christianity, Current events, Insights, My past

The Bible says, “Judgment must begin at the house of God”. (I Peter 4:17) What does that mean? God holds the standard the highest for those who proclaim that they are His. It’s like how Jesus castigated the Pharisees rather than the drunks. In fact He told the self-righteous religious leaders of His day, “The tax collectors and harlots enter into the kingdom of God before you.” (Matthew 21:31) The same principle that Jesus espoused 2000 years ago is still valid today.

The recent pandemic that’s swept America, as well as the world, had a major, transformative effect on the elections of 2020 in the USA. The national government here was seen by many to be aloof and distracted by other things as the Corona virus hit America as hard as any disease has in the last 100 years.

Was this an example of judgment beginning at the house of God? Well, it sure had an effect on the elections last November. And America voted for a new administration and government which it was hoped would take more action and really get to grips with this vast, deadly emergency that has virtually overwhelmed the country.

And now this major historic cold and snow that has just hit here in Texas has had a similar effect. Both the cold in Texas and the Corona virus nationally have been ”natural disasters”, as we call them. Insurance companies actually call them, “acts of God”. But judgment must begin at the house of God. The Lord has ways to intervene in the affairs of humanity, even in our times. And thank God for that.

The Lord has always had ways to bring judgment first upon His own people, rather than on the so-called worldly or the unsaved. That’s why, in God’s eyes, His own saved Christians are so much more accountable than are the unsaved worldly who don’t know His Word or ways.

I often feel that it is a pitiful, fearful time for America. Will they be able to muddle through for a few more years, as they have for so long? Maybe; they’ve gone on a long time, coasting on the momentum of the righteousness of former generations. But, like Israel of old, there comes  time when God requires an accounting. It says in the Bible, “In those days the Lord began to cut Israel short”. (II Kings 10:32) I fear this is now happening to America as well.

The Lord has consistently held a higher standard for His own people than He does for the ignorant and unsaved of this world. But you seldom hear this message from the pulpit here or much less from the opportunistic politicos of our times.

A former US President from Texas once talked about “compassionate conservatism”. I wish I could say I have seen more of that here. In Texas there is a predominance of conservatives; but each of us will have to answer to God if we have truly been compassionate. I could go off on a tangent here, trying to apportion blame and take sides. But instead, maybe I’ll just try to keep seeing what the Lord is doing. I will add that I have certainly known personally some very humble and compassionate conservative Christians here in Texas.

The Lord brings crisis into our lives. He can, in His love and nurturing of us, even expose our sins, both to individuals and to nations. And almost no one really ever likes that, individually or nationally. Still, the Lord does it to purge and purify and to try to bring us out of “the sins that so easily beset us.” (Hebrews 12:1)

And how we react to that, individually or nationally, will really tell the tale of how our life goes. Almost everyone is very prone to “justifying themselves” (Luke 10:29). I wrote a blog article about justifying yourself which can be found here.

But God’s hope must be that, individually and nationally, we won’t justify ourselves and thwart the working of God in our lives. Instead, we will see the hand of God working when events that He sends expose our unpreparedness, our aloofness, our pride and arrogance. Then the hope must be that we will see it, acknowledge it, repent of it and be the better for the judgment the Lord sometimes brings. So often, it really comes down to that.

How’s this all going to end? Will the leadership of Texas confess their mistakes, ask for forgiveness and make the changes that are so desperately needed? We can hope so. Virtually every major leader in Texas is strongly a Christian conservative. May the Lord have mercy upon us all. May we all, individually and nationally, see the chastening, purifying hand of God in our lives.

“Now no chastening for the present seems to be joyous, but grievous. Nevertheless afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them which are exercised thereby.”  (Hebrews 12:11)

Anarchy and stable government

· by · In: Basic Christianity, Current events, The Future and Endtime

Perhaps the November elections in the USA will pass without violent unrest. Some people here now flirt with the idea of an uprising if the election doesn’t go their way.  Talk show host for years have spoken against the government, declaring that the government is our enemy. My friends, I’ve lived in over 50 countries as a missionary, 36 years on the mission field and I can tell you this: you don’t know how good we have it.

Do you know what a civil war is really like? Do you know what you are contemplating or being lured into contemplating? Just a few years ago a long time friend of mine really wanted to get into a fist fight with me. I didn’t go for it but they really pushed me. They told me later, “I didn’t want to kill you; I just thought we’d slap each other around a little.”

But so often, Pandora’s box being opened, you don’t realize what will come out. And people in America are talking amongst themselves about civil unrest, both on the Right and on the Left. People have been heavily armed here for years. And sadly the Christians are just as much in the middle of all this as anyone.

I wish I could scream at some people right now. Do they have any idea what they are thinking about and contemplating? No, 99% don’t. They’ve lived in the incredible bubble of America all their lives which, as bad as it is in some ways and places, is nothing when you compare it to the conditions of anarchy and civil war that can come to a country and stay there, if they open the door to violence.

I wish the voice of history could call out to American hearts and minds, all the millions of people over the last hundreds of years could speak to you from beyond, our ancestors who lived and died in anarchy and societal collapse because some ones thought that the time had come to rise up against the government. Or their neighbors. Or the opposition. Or whatever.

But Americans don’t know history anymore. They don’t even know their own history. Almost all my relatives came to Texas after the Civil War in the 1860’s, from Mississippi and Alabama after the war there had brought their lives to ruin and havoc. They fled like Syrians have done in our times; they crossed the Mississippi River and came to Texas.

Many Americans today are spoiling for a fight. They’re “fed up and not going to take it anymore!” “They have no choice!” Sad, foolish people bringing on their own sorrow. It’s like a dream that you see happening but you can’t intervene to stop it. If you don’t like the election in November, are you going to take up arms against the other side?! Your side lost so that’s the last straw?!

“It must be rigged! It’s all a conspiracy! We have to take back our nation!”

YOU ARE BEING DUPPED. You are going to reject the democratic processes that have worked here for close to 250 years and instead rely on your gun rage? Or your “woke” comrades on campus and their neo-Marxist agenda?

But many people are past reasoning. “The lines have been drawn, the curse it is cast”, sang Bob Dylan over 50 years ago. And it may be truer now than it ever has been. This is the spirit of the times, just before great cataclysm. People are all jazzed up for their cause, full of hate of their “enemies”, even though it be their own neighbors. And off they go to the jolly war they have been prepped and hyped up for over years. When will we ever learn?

I’m concerned about the US election in November. I’d love to be proven wrong. I’d love to see everything turn for the better, the flaming rhetoric get turned down, a little bit of reconciliation appear in the air, the Corona virus begin to subside and happy days be here again.

We’ve had a period of relative peace and safety here in North American for over 150 years, at least when compared to places like the former Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Syria, Northern Ireland, Israel, Rwanda, Sri Lanka and perhaps you can think of many more.

Yes, there have been injustices, oppression, racism, inequality and a host of inexcusable grievances that were unwarranted. But we haven’t really had major wide spread civil unrest and war within our borders since 1865.

Maybe we are at the high-water mark. Perhaps soon cooler heads will prevail. Maybe in the next days and weeks things will swing back towards dialogue and away from violence and escalation. Because if the centrifugal forces keep increasing that are pulling this nation to its edges, then violence may in fact be the end result of where things are going at election time.

If any of you are toying with the idea that taking up arms is a way to make America a more righteous place, I just wish there was some way I could impart to you how that idea has failed to deliver over and over again for hundreds of years, no matter how righteous it may have looked at the time.

And especially if you are a Christian, just get a grip on the Lord and your own heart and reject that idea! It is not the leading of God; it is not what the Lord is leading you to do. But instead it comes from strident, secular, Satanic forces which don’t have the mind of Christ working in them.

Please pray for peace in our country. Amen.

 

“The Woman fled into the wilderness”

· by · In: Current events, Insights, The Future and Endtime

What a difference a day makes. A few days, a week or two and the world is vastly different from how it was. Rationing, national lockdowns, schools closed, air travel curtailed and most nations utterly changed from a few weeks ago. For the people of faith, especially those who look to the prophetic future that’s foretold, this is a lot easier to take and to have been prepared for than perhaps for many others.

Recently I wrote an article called “Are we there yet?” which talked about what Scripture says about the times before the return of Jesus. There I went over some of the “signs of the times” (Matthew 16:3) that Jesus Himself mentioned would be apparent before His return.

But even in the short time between when I wrote that and now, things have been changing very fast. Today where I live some major grocery stores have started restricting how many people can be inside the store at one time. There are rationings for many basic staples and the cash register will not allow purchases over a certain amount. This is unprecedented in my lifetime. I think you’d have to go back to World War II in the States to find anything remotely similar to how things are at the moment.

This reminds me of what a friend years ago told me about what he had thought about the Bible, before he got saved. “Just a book for old ladies to cry in,” was his opinion of Scripture. But we know it is so very much more than this. So much more that it has many specific, exact conditions that it predicts will be a part of the world at the end of this age. And that includes economic conditions.

For example, more and more people around the world have become familiar in recent years with the prediction in the book of Revelation that focuses precisely on how shopping for groceries will be in the last years of this age. Speaking of a final demonic world government that will arise at that time, it says that it “causes all, both small and great, rich and poor to receive a mark in their hand or forehead. And that no man will buy or sell unless they have the mark.” (Revelation 13:16 & 17)

Cryptic but clear. Are we there yet? No, not quite. But the technology is already here. I don’t have to tell you how close something like this is now in our times. How simple it will be to implement a cashless society, all connected online and thus able to be controlled in a way unimaginable only a few decades ago. There just has to be an atmosphere, perhaps some international crisis like the present one, to make it easily accepted by the masses.

For the people of faith, this is going to be a major moment of crisis and decision. Because the Bible warns that this “mark of the beast” to come will be utterly Satanic and that the people of God are warned in no uncertain terms not to receive this coming mark that will be enforced in order to buy and sell.

So what will we do? How will we get food and survive? Wonderfully, the same book in the Bible also answers this question, in a somewhat amazing way. I’ll add in the verse, Revelation 12:6, that explains God’s plan and provision for His people in the final days and then examine its meaning. “And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.”

That phrase “the woman” is speaking of the saved of God in the final days, the body of Christ out of every nation. The “1260 days” mentioned there equals 3½ years, the period of time of the “great tribulation” (Matthew 24:21) that is referred to in so many places both in the Old and New Testament of the final time before the return of Jesus.

And when something is really important, sometimes God will “sprinkle a little dust on it” to make it have a special shine. That verse, talking about 1260 days, is Revelation 12:6. When originally written in Greek, the verses were not separated like they are now. So this was just one of God’s “little coincidences” that the length of time and the Bible reference were almost identical.

There’s more. Since this provision of our physical welfare that God will have for His people in the final days is so important for us to know about, the Lord even went ahead and said it twice in the same chapter. Here’s where it’s virtually repeated again, in Revelation 12:14: “And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.”

I like to try to limit these articles to not be too long but there’s a whole lot more to all this. So if you want to know more about “the woman in the wilderness” and how this will play out in the not-too-distant end time, I’ll refer you to an article I wrote almost exactly 5 years ago called “Fleeing into the wilderness… in Bulgaria.” I’d been visiting dear friends in a remote part of Bulgaria and was struck by how it felt like a place that could be a refugee for believers in the future. In that article I go into the particulars of “the woman in the wilderness” and God’s world-wide provision for His people in the final days.

And you might also wonder what this thing is about “3½ years” of “Great Tribulation”; where in the world do I get that from? I’ve made a video on this, based on what Jesus of Nazareth said in Matthew 24, as well as the last verse in Daniel chapter 9. That video, called “The Last 7 Years”, can be seen here.

I heard somewhere long ago that there is a Chinese curse that says, “May you live in interesting times.” Well, here we are. I hope you are praying, staying close to the Lord, loving your neighbor and staying in God’s Word. Those things are our only hope in times like these.