Can We Be More Positive Than Jesus
Jan Willem van der Hoeven
Israel
June 18, 2009
With the wide-ranging feeling going around - that as believers in God we should be optimistic and full of faith - it is quite shocking to read some of Lord's own statements, especially as they concern the days in which we live; definitely the end times.
The nearer we get to the end, the darker becomes the general situation in our world.
As rogue states pursue ever more dangerous weapons of mass destruction, some of the prophetic words spoken a long time ago by God's prophetic men and women now face the real possibility of fulfillment when, as Peter writes, the elements will be dissolved by fire.
But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up.
Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. (2 Peter 3:7, 10-13)
The cruel, dictator-like Vladimir Putin, who is not afraid to imprison or kill people that get in his way, could well become the leader of a future assault which, as the Bible foretells, will be launched against the Jewish people who are now back in their God-given land:
Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying, "Son of man, set your face against Gog, of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal, and prophesy against him, and say, 'Thus says the Lord God: "Behold, I am against you, O Gog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal.
"And it will come to pass at the same time, when Gog comes against the land of Israel," says the Lord God, "that My fury will show in My face. For in My jealousy and in the fire of My wrath I have spoken: 'Surely in that day there shall be a great earthquake in the land of Israel, so that the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, the beasts of the field, all creeping things that creep on the earth, and all men who are on the face of the earth shall shake at My presence. The mountains shall be thrown down, the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.' I will call for a sword against Gog throughout all My mountains," says the Lord God. "Every man's sword will be against his brother. And I will bring him to judgment with pestilence and bloodshed; I will rain down on him, on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him, flooding rain, great hailstones, fire, and brimstone. Thus I will magnify Myself and sanctify Myself, and I will be known in the eyes of many nations. Then they shall know that I am the Lord." ' (Ezekiel 38:1-3, 18-23)
Earthquakes in ever greater numbers, epidemics like AIDS, chicken or swine flu, are only part of the picture that the Bible long ago foretold. Christ, speaking about these things, calls them only 'the beginnings of sorrows.'
And Jesus, answering them, began to say: "Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am He,' and will deceive many. But when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be troubled; for such things must happen, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be earthquakes in various places, and there will be famines and troubles. These are the beginnings of sorrows. But watch out for yourselves, for they will deliver you up to councils, and you will be beaten in the synagogues. You will be brought before rulers and kings for My sake, for a testimony to them. And the gospel must first be preached to all the nations. But when they arrest you and deliver you up, do not worry beforehand, or premeditate what you will speak. But whatever is given you in that hour, speak that; for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. Now brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all for My name's sake. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. (Mark 13:5-13)
Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?"
And Jesus answered and said to them: "Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:3-14)
In other words, things are only set to become worse.
The following are some of the expressions the Bible uses to describe the increasingly serious time that comes upon us; which will develop, as Jesus said, in a night in which no one will be able to work.
I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work. (John 9:4)
When asked if there were going to be many who in the end will belong to those who are saved, Jesus answered:
Then one said to Him, "Lord, are there few who are saved?" And He said to them, "Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the Master of the house has risen up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, Lord, open for us,' and He will answer and say to you, 'I do not know you, where you are from,' then you will begin to say, 'We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.' But He will say, 'I tell you I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity.' (Luke 13:23-27)
Peter writes in his epistle:
For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly; and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly; (2 Peter 2:4-6)
The prophet Isaiah says that so great will be the judgments of God upon the nations that 'men will be rarer than fine gold upon the face of the earth.'
Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with both wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate; and He will destroy its sinners from it. For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be darkened in its going forth, and the moon will not cause its light to shine. "I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will halt the arrogance of the proud, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. I will make a mortal more rare than fine gold, a man more than the golden wedge of Ophir. Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth will move out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts and in the day of His fierce anger. It shall be as the hunted gazelle, and as a sheep that no man takes up; every man will turn to his own people, and everyone will flee to his own land. Everyone who is found will be thrust through, and everyone who is captured will fall by the sword. Their children also will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished. (Isaiah 13:9-16)
John, the Apostle of love, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, sees terrible things on the Isle of Patmos, scales of wrath, hunger, wars, and a decimation of mankind.
By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed--by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone which came out of their mouths. For their power is in their mouth and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents, having heads; and with them they do harm. But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts. (Revelation: 18-21)
Then another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle. And another angel came out from the altar, who had power over fire, and he cried with a loud cry to him who had the sharp sickle, saying, "Thrust in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe." So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth, and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trampled outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress, up to the horses' bridles, for one thousand six hundred furlongs. (Revelation 14:17-20)
Paul writes that first, before the return of the Lord to this earth, there will be 'a great falling away' by many believers.
Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come.
Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, (2 Thessalonians 2:1-3)
I am writing these things, not out of a sense of morbid pessimism, but out of concern that, unless we are confronted with a great number of biblical quotations, most of us positive-minded believers might not realize how serious the coming days will be for us.
"And you will be hated by all for My name's sake" (Luke 21:17) says the Lord.
Up to now this has not really happened in our modern western societies. Christians have sometimes referred to themselves as the (moral) majority. But as we see the bitter anti-God and anti-Christian spirit taking hold of more and more leading men and women, we know the time will soon come when believers will be spewed out by most gentile societies, and that real persecution - and even martyrdom - will become a reality.
Of the twelve apostles, eleven died a martyr's death. And as the world increasingly darkens around us, and the hatred against God and His Word will cause more and more people to react even at times with violence against the true believers, and we may soon come to a similar time as them. In this way the time will soon be upon us that we shall be hated by all.
We can of course try to ignore or resist these clear truths and manifold warnings from the Scriptures. But we can also take them to heart, and seek to live increasingly holy, contrite and watchful, lest we find ourselves among those that fall away.
This is what Jesus spells out in relation to these end times, that we should take heed unto ourselves with all the wars and problems of the world. Things will only get worse!
"You will hear of wars and rumors of war but let not these things trouble you ... take heed of yourself .."
The Lord's main emphasis, then, is upon our own private conduct rather than on our fighting and striving against all that which will come upon the earth. These things must happen because of man's increased wickedness. As with Sodom and Gomorrah, so will the world go. This is the absolute and clear teaching of the Scriptures!
While the present outlook for the nations of the world is very bleak, the opposite is true for the plucky nation of Israel. As the Scriptures say:
Arise, shine; for your light has come! And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you. For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and deep darkness the people; but the Lord will arise over you, and His glory will be seen upon you. The Gentiles shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. (Isaiah 60:1-3)
'Therefore do not fear, O My servant Jacob,' says the Lord, 'nor be dismayed, O Israel; for behold, I will save you from afar, and your seed from the land of their captivity. Jacob shall return, have rest and be quiet, and no one shall make him afraid. For I am with you,' says the Lord, 'to save you; though I make a full end of all nations where I have scattered you, Yet I will not make a complete end of you. But I will correct you in justice, and will not let you go altogether unpunished.' (Jeremiah 30:10-11)
Also in Isaiah the day of vengeance upon the nations falls together with a day of comfort for Zion.
"To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified." (Isaiah 61:2-3)
The thickness of the moral darkness upon many of the nations will cause those who are God's children and 'the seed of Abraham' through their faith to turn to Israel for safety and help, as Zechariah already foretold:
Yes, many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord.' "Thus says the Lord of hosts: 'In those days ten men from every language of the nations shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying, "Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you." ' " (Zechariah 8:22-23)
Jesus said: "When the Son of man will return, will He still find faith?" Few will be saved like few were saved during Noah's time and in the time of Lot. In the midst of the destruction of all of Jericho, just one house stood undestroyed, the house of Rahab, a woman that had enough fear for the God of Israel to give shelter to the Israelite spies.
In Revelation, in spite of all the scales of wrath and judgment, we read "and yet people did not repent of their sins and immoral ways":
But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts. (Revelation 9:20-21)
No wonder that in the end time, just as it was in the days of Elisha, God's prophets and servants - like the two witnesses who appear in those latter days in Jerusalem - have power to shut the heavens, to again turn water into blood, and to lay upon the different nations as many plagues as they feel led.
And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy one thousand two hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth." These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands standing before the God of the earth. And if anyone wants to harm them, fire proceeds from their mouth and devours their enemies. And if anyone wants to harm them, he must be killed in this manner. These have power to shut heaven, so that no rain falls in the days of their prophecy; and they have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to strike the earth with all plagues, as often as they desire. (Revelation 11:3-6)
Even the preaching of the Gospel seems to receive this added note of seriousness:
Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth--to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people-- saying with a loud voice, "Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water." And another angel followed, saying, "Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication." (Revelation 14:6-8)
Reading all these verses could lead one to say that this is all very gloomy, even though it was always there in the Bible - God's Word - for us to read and take in. But just as the disciples shut their minds almost every time the Lord spoke of His rejection by, and death at the hands of, the elders of His people, we often likewise dislike these clear scriptural warnings and shut them out as negative and judgmental TO OUR OWN SPIRITUAL DETRIMENT!
Would a God of love and mercy shake us awake by these pre-announced judgments upon the nations of the earth if there were not ALSO a very positive side to it? The Scriptures say: "Redeem the time for the days are evil." How very true! And how many of us believers have often wasted our time and money, and the opportunity to use them for eternity now that we are soon entering into a night in which, as Jesus foretold, no one will be able to work?
Thank God, we can therefore still use the little time left "to redeem it," "to buy up the opportunity," to do what we can, also to sanctify our lifestyles and behavior, as Peter comments regarding these end time days in the passage above (2 Peter 3:10-14).
These days we hear of many who have fallen away, have departed from the faith and are on their way to hell - a lost eternity.
Many will try to stick it out on the narrow way, but in the end will depart from it. Jesus already warns us that 'only those who persevere to the end will be saved.'
Would it not have led to much more seriousness with all of us, believers in Christ, if we had heard and faced up to these words of warning while still on that narrow road which AN INCREASING NUMBER of Christians have left?
For instance, how else could a man like Barack Obama - who is willing to legalize lifestyles that brought God's fierce judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah and will bring fierce judgment on our world and societies today - how could he have been voted for by so many who say they are true believers in the Word of God? Do they then WANT America - like so many other nations in the world - destroyed? How COULD they, as real believers, have voted for such a person?
It all shows that we are racing towards becoming a totally lawless world, exactly as Jesus said in Matthew 24:12:
And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.
And how has it been possible for so many Christians to become complacent and even fall away? It is exactly because the things that have been written and quoted here from the Scriptures were not sufficiently held out as a clear and needed warning for us all!
This, then, is the somewhat hidden blessing; just as the clear warnings announced by Jonah saved the whole city of Nineveh from that very destruction BECAUSE THEY TOOK THIS WARNING SERIOUSLY!
If only Peter had taken seriously Jesus' warning that he would deny Him thrice he might have never had to go through the humiliation of doing so and weeping bitterly because of it. So it may be true, not only for cities or individuals, but even for nations. If they believe God's announcement of His soon-coming righteous and deserved judgments rather than dismissing it as negative utterances, these judgments may still be averted and reversed.
As God says through Jeremiah:
If that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. (Jeremiah 18:8)
And Joel says:
The Lord gives voice before His army, for His camp is very great; for strong is the One who executes His word. For the day of the Lord is great and very terrible; who can endure it?
"Now, therefore," says the Lord, "Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning." So rend your heart, and not your garments; return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm. Who knows if He will turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind Him-- a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God? (Joel 2:11-14)
Jan Willem van der Hoeven, Director
International Christian Zionist Center