It is always dangerous write about end times. There has to be a lot of humility even when you broach the subject and a willingness to agree to disagree. Anyone who tells you that “this is the way it is going to happen,” you can take with a pinch of salt. The reason I am writing this short piece ( I try to keep everything short these days, could take 1000 words just to introduce the subject) is because a few people have asked me if I think there is any significance for the end times in regards to the USA recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Short answer, yes, just because I think everything that happens to Israel and more specifically Jerusalem is significant. I think it actually might lead to a major peace deal, the one spoken of in Scriptures, a seven-year comprehensive peace deal and all the world will celebrate, but when they say “peace,peace,” there will be no peace and half way though that deal it will all fall to pieces. Let me give you the relevant Scripture from where we get the notion that there will be a seven-year comprehensive peace deal.
Dan 9:27 And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
Mat 24:15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)
Mat 24:21-22 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.
1Th 5:2-3 For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
Rev 13:7-8 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
So, the typical understanding of the abomination of desolation is that it takes place in the Temple, a Temple. Of course at this moment we do not have a Jewish temple in Jerusalem so most suppose a third temple has to be erected in order for this prophecy to take place. I disagree, for a couple of reasons. First I believe the saints themselves to be the third temple with God dwelling inside each of them, each of them being a living stone. Secondly in Matthew 24 Jesus refers to the “Holy Place.” Now, the ground upon which the Temple was built was a holy place. If you do the research you will see that the site of the Temple itself had a long rich history and so was not built on a random site. So what is there now? Right now we have the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque. The Dome was completed in 692 and this makes it one of the oldest Muslim holy places in the world.
So that is some of the history and Scriptures that allude to this topic, now back to the USA recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Many if not most scoff at the notion that someone like Trump could be part of a final comprehensive peace deal in the Middle East. I want to remind everyone that there was another President that people openly mocked and scoffed as a buffoon, President Regan. Yet he was the one that brought down the mighty Soviet empire and the Berlin wall, the symbol of separation of east and west. Now we know that God raises up the foolish things of this world to confound the wise. The recognizing of Jerusalem as the capital city is the first step towards the peace deal that we know has been foretold.
So I believe that when you see all three religious leaders of the world come together in the “Holy Place,” to combine the religions of the world then this is the abomination, the birth of the great whore church. What disaster or disasters that bring this about I cannot tell you but it will come to pass. The world will be so sickened by terrorism, perhaps after the largest atrocity the world has ever seen, that the people of the world will demand a coming together. The leaders of the religious world will meet, at the demands of the political leaders of the world, at the holy site, the holy place, the Dome as it is now. They will tell the world that each of them believe Abraham to be their mutual father of faith and that Abraham’s God is their God whether they are Christian, Jewish or Muslim. It will be a day that the world will celebrate and exchange gifts to commemorate true world peace. And the cry will be “peace and safety.”
The only people of the world who will resist this will be the saints and they will incur the wrath of the whole world. They will be seen as a cancer in society that has to ripped out. The religious and political leaders will point to them and tell the world that these so-called Christians are the source of all the worlds problems. And so war shall be made upon the saints and they shall be overcome for a time as every tribe and tongue and nation worship the one world government and the one world religion. In fact it will be so severe that if God Himself does not shorten those days then there would be no saints left on the earth.
I believe that all these things are shortly to come upon us. It is a good thing to be prepared just as Jesus prepared in the garden before the crucifixion. We are called to endure to the end saints. We are called to overcome and stand in the evil day. Our God will be with us and He will pour out His Spirit upon us so that we may have the strength to endure. He is God that keeps His promises and He shall never leave us no forsake us.
I love the fact that no matter how ungodly the world becomes, some people still maintain their devotion to God and one another. No matter how much betrayal and debauchery we see on every side, some people still believe in duty, love, and honor. God is faithful to bless those whose hearts are attuned to him. They may not be in the majority; in fact, they usually are not. But they don’t mind; they keep on doing the right thing.
Many times today, those who love the Lord with all their heart and are sincere about following him feel bereft and alone. They look around at the corruption both outside and, unfortunately, inside the church, and they say, “How can people act that way? Don’t they know any better?” The enemy often tries to get us to give up and compromise ourselves.
In such a moment, we need to hear God’s voice reminding us of what he told Elijah at a low point of discouragement: there were still 7,000 others who had not bowed the knee to the idol of Baal. Elijah was not the only one after all.
Jesus said, “Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:13-14). God is looking for people in every age who choose his small gate and narrow road. They want to please him regardless of how opposite the cultural tide is running. They will be his holy remnant. On these God will pour out his abundance in surprising measure. (Jim Cymbala)
“[Elijah] replied, ‘I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.’” (1 Kings 19:10 NIV).
If you were to watch my dog Jack go for a ball you would be pretty impressed. I have a little ball throwing gizmo that helps me launch it much further than I could ever possibly thrown it. While it’s still behind my back, half way through the swing, Jack has already figured out the trajectory of the ball and is off and running without ever looking back. The ball will bounce once in front of him and while never missing a beat he leaps up and just at the very apex of the bounce trajectory he snatches it out of mid-air and lands perfectly, it is poetry in motion. Now he will do this action 100% of the time and 99% of the time he gets the ball. Yet, even when he misses it is still poetry in motion because every single time he is 100% committed, he will catch it spectacularly or he will miss it spectacularly.
There is something about the way Jack goes for this ball that speaks to me. His passion, his commitment, his expectations are all really impressive. The most impressive thing about Jack is that it does not matter that the last time he went for it he missed, he just goes for it every single time. God is always looking for a passionate people. Yes you might miss the ball sometimes but do you have the passion, the commitment and the expectations when you hear God speak? Are you off and running in the direction that God sends you knowing that there is going to be a ball dropping right in front of you? The Scriptures tell us that without faith (trust) it is impossible to please God. When He sends you off in a certain direction do you go for it, do you believe that God is in it and He knows what He is doing? Or are you always looking back and second guessing him? It is not the catching of the ball that God loves, it is the passionate pursuit of Him and His ways. You are gonna drop the ball, you’re gonna miss the mark, but that is just you, that is just natural. What is supernatural is to trust in God with all of your heart and keep pursuing Him over and over again. God loves diligence. He is not a rewarder of the guy with the biggest ministry, He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. This is what gets Gods attention.
There is roughly 12 inches between the brain and the heart. In the life of faith this distance is covered by actual experience. We can have a head knowledge of many subjects but until we experience the subject or the situation it is merely theory. I could be an apple expert, know everything about the apple and never have actually ate an apple. A faith untested is like a car never driven. The point of a car is to take us from one place to another, the point of our faith is to take us deeper into the heart of God. In addition to having a car we need the fuel to propel the car. A car without fuel would be like a bird without wings. Faith without works is dead.
The Holy Spirit is the wind that propels us forward. He is the fuel that runs the engine. He is vital to forward motion. A sail boat without wind in the middle of the ocean is carried wherever the current takes it. If we live in this life without the direction of the Holy Spirit then we will be carried by the influence of the world and by our personal natures. This is why trials and storms in our lives actually promote growth. If we allow ourselves to run with the wind in the midst of these storms we can cover great distances in a shorter amount of time. The journey from the head to the heart is a difficult one, but vital.
Trials and tribulations will ultimately bring out the best in genuine Christians and the worse in the religious man. The harder the circumstances get for the genuine Christian, the more he is forced to his knees and driven deeper into the heart of the Father. He is humbled and contrite as he understands how weak he is and how much flesh he still has.
Ultimately the results of this is more love, more peace, more forgiveness and more understanding. The harder the circumstances become for the religious man, the more bitter he becomes. He has no joy or peace. He will not forgive his enemies and his hatred for those he perceives to have caused his sufferings increases dramatically. So, the trial, the deep valley, is death to one and life to another. The flesh dies and the spirit arises.
As I was walking recently, the Holy Spirit spoke some words to me. ” There is nothing more important than the condition of your heart.” It lingered with me for weeks as I pondered those few words. All of my Christian life I have periods where I retreat into myself and kinda shut down, withdraw from the maddening crowd and simply go along on auto pilot.
In Kansas we can go months without rain. The ground gets baked hard in the sweltering heat of summer. If a rain comes it typically does not penetrate the hard ground, instead there is a flash flood. The ground is wet for a very short period of time and then it is as hard as it ever was.
There are periods when it rains every day in the spring. The ground soaks up the rain and then it rains again and again until it is saturated. When the ground is saturated it takes only a slight rain to cause flooding. The creeks and the rivers are swollen and the landscape is in danger of being changed by raging waters.
If my heart is good, if the waters that flow from heaven flow through me, if my heart remains supple and soaked with the dew that falls from heaven, then it takes very little for the glories of heaven to flood forth from me, living waters that refreshes my soul and others. If my heart is hard, it takes a lot of water just to soften me up. Oh that I would learn to remain close to the source of life itself that I might be useful in season and out of season, that I would be a source of life to others.
Can you see the furrows on my brow
Each tells a hundred stories of the whys and of the how
I have walked through howling winds I have walked through pouring rain
I have journeyed through the joys and I have journeyed through the pain
Every single furrow marks the valleys I have trod
And the narrow winding road that leads me back to God
And every single line that is marked upon my face
Highlights the very fact that I have lived by grace
Each and every soldier bears the scars of many fights
For every cloudless day there are just as many nights
But even through the furrows and all my many lines
You will see my joy, you’ll see my love and many other signs
For though I bear the scars that are etched upon my back
In the depths of my very soul there has never been a lack
There’s a deep wellspring of peace that continually flows
Despite the many rains and the mighty wind that blows
There is a greater wind from God that carries me along
There is a latter rain from heaven that makes me very strong
The hand of God Himself is the hand that holds the plow
You will know I’ve been to war by the furrows on my brow.
Jesus was a man acquainted with sorrows. It is not something that we like to dwell on too often but there it is. When we are physically attacked, at the very least, we throw up our hands to protect ourselves. Yet when our heart is open, as it must be to walk with and serve the Lord, then it is utterly vulnerable to attack. It is like a city without a wall. It is so tempting to allow our hearts to begin to close down, to construct a moat around our hearts and make it difficult for people to ” come in.” I have cried out to the Lord many times to fill my heart with love even when I had not the slightest desire to. This is the Word of God doing it’s work, when our own love fails, when we come to the end of our emotions, when anger and bitterness and melancholy seek to drown us or perhaps apathy sweeps down like an avalanche and smothers everything, then we cry out to God for what we know is right and we wait.
We are told to wait upon the Lord, to believe that He is a rewarder of those diligently seek Him. If you are tired and weary, cry out to God and wait. Cry out for what you know to be right no matter what your heart or your emotions tell you. Then suddenly the presence of God will lift you and carry you beyond and above, high above the cares and pain of this world. He will make you lie down for a while in green pastures, He will lead and guide you and comfort you.He will do it. He feeds our hearts and waters our thirsty souls.
He prepares a table before us right there in the midst of our circumstances and we are strengthened to carry on. Every time we walk through the fire or the flood and walk out the other side there is a growing realization that surely goodness and mercy has followed us and will follow us all the days of our lives. This is the joy of knowing Him on this all to often painful journey. We persevere and overcome because our hand is outstretched to His and that outstretched hand reaches high into the heavens and touches His outstretched hand and we find ourselves before the throne of mercy and grace.
If every tear could tell a story
About your love and all its glory
Could you read the words that I cry
Could you even begin to try
With every single tear that fell
There is a story it will tell
A single tear that falls with emotion
Is deeper than the deepest ocean
Tears of joy and tears of pain
A single tear or falling rain
Some tears are caused by a poison dart
That finds it mark and breaks the heart
Some tears come from a cleansing flood
Part of the river and part of the blood
Other tears fall from bitter regret
Of all the things done we’d rather forget
So when all of your tears are gathered together
And are carried away by that heavenly river
They will flow to a sea and by its name it will bless
For the name of that sea is forgetfulness
I wrote this song for those who suffer from chronic pain of one kind or another, emotional or physical.
STILL GOD IN THE MIDST OF PAIN
Can I suffer through the pain
Can I love Him in the flames
Will you come and hold me up
When life has come and filled my cup
When my weary soul begins to tire
I find my Lord in the midst of fire
Oh Lord take me a little higher
And my Lord lifts me up
Will I make it till the end
Not without my Lord and friend
Oh Lord of wounds and stripes and pain
Shield me from the pouring rain
When my weary soul begins to tire
I find my Lord in the midst of fire
Oh Lord take me a little higher
And my Lord lifts me up
When all of life becomes too much
I desperately need to feel your touch
Oh Lord consume me with your power
And raise me up to your high tower
When my weary soul begins to tire
I find my Lord in the midst of fire
Oh Lord take me a little higher
And my Lord lifts me up
And when the race is finally won
And this world gives way to the eternal Son
You dear Lord were faithful and true
It was by your hand that I got through
When my weary soul begins to tire
I find my Lord in the midst of fire
Oh Lord take me a little higher
And my Lord lifts me up
Despite walking through the various valleys of life, including the shadow of death, He leads us besides still waters and He compels us to lie down in rich pastures, being fed and living life where others starve and die. While many cry out to God to take their cup from them, gethsemane shows us the way of righteousness and embracing God’s will and directions in our lives by drinking fully the cup. It is our light that overcomes the darkness . So many people cry out to God to remove the darkness, yet the answer, the solution already exists within us, Christ in us, the hope of glory, the light of the world. Let your light shine today, be that city on the hill for oftentimes we never know that the man or woman standing next to us is being consumed by the darkness.
A neighbor shot himself in the field behind my house on Tuesday. It is profoundly sad and tragic. I spent the the first few days of this week writing a poem about the many struggles that I had prior to becoming a Christian with this particular demon. This man was a good man. He was a Christian. I had spoken to him many times. The last time we spoke he gave me some tiny little crosses that he would hand out to people, he said that he knew I spoke to people and maybe I could give them one. I want you to know today that if you are struggling with this issue, please speak to someone, find someone. I also want to ask folks today to engage people more, even just ask how someone is doing. In a supposedly connected world we have become so disconnected. I pray the Lord’s grace upon his wife and adult children.
I was born with a trembling soul
Intuitively knowing that I’d have to pay the toll
Darkened troubled waters and the wind was in my face
Staying alive was just one perpetual race
Swimming up the river, never ever down
Really,would it be such a big deal just to drown
Just to stop the thrashing and simply to let go
And the darkened troubled waters would take me in its flow
You would see me laugh but you would never see me cry
The trouble with troubled waters is that they dare you to die
Hopes and expectations were for ordinary people
In my darkened troubled waters, hope was truly lethal
Pretending to be normal was the greatest pain of all
It looked like I was walking but it really was a crawl
The darkened troubled waters they were seeping into me
This was the kind of darkness that no one must ever see
It was the bottom of a bottle, sex and then a roach
In no particular order, this was my approach
And all the while the waters rise trying to pull you down
Any light was left receding as the darkness gathered round
Darkened troubled waters and a trembling soul
The man in dark was coming, he was coming for his toll
I looked around and found myself at the bottom of the pit
I looked up and saw no light and knew that this was it
I looked down in horror, no heart no flesh no bone
I looked around in horror, my God I’m all alone
And in that moment I cried “my God please come to me”
And suddenly there was light “I have come to set you free.”
And so it was and so it is my Father took me by the hand
Upward ever upward out of the pit into the promised land
He set me on the Rock and I looked down, no longer a heart of steel
Within my chest a new heart beat and it could love and it could feel
If you swim in troubled waters and there’s no where left to go
There’s no more fight, you’ve given up and are carried by its flow
There is a hand that reaches down and He will make you whole
For the hand belongs to the Son of God, He’s already paid the toll.
The freedom to do what is right, towers above the prison and the chains of commandments.One is initiated by love, the other is enforced by the whip. Holiness comes from freedom and freedom comes from love . And this love inspires and draws us and compels us to honor and respect and obey our Father in heaven because His love is the very air that we breathe and the air before the throne is rarified air and if we cannot breathe this air then we die.
The remnant Church will soon face such a flood of evil as has never been seen before. It is time to prepare. We must gird up our hearts and our spirits in such a way as to be completely dependent upon the Lord. Indeed, that is why the Lord is conveying His people into the valley of Acacias, into the desert place, into that final place of gathering before the great and notable day of the Lord. Once before, the Lord carried His people on Eagles wings. Exo 19:4 You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself.
The tenderness and beauty of the Lord can be seen in this Scripture. He delivered His people from bondage out of Egypt. Now Egypt is synonymous with the world. The Lord has begun to convey His people on eagles wings from the world, from the established church, into the desert where they will be prepared for the final battle. His people are being prepared for Martyrdom. They are being isolated so that He alone will be their sustenance. Jesus Himself was also taken into the desert as a place of testing and preparation.Mar 1:12 And immediately the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness. Notice the word “drove.” Interesting ,is it not, that the Spirit “drove,” Jesus into the wilderness. The Greek word for drove is “ekballo,” meaning to drive out, to send away or to cast out.
You see brothers and sister, once again God’s people are being carried on the wings of an eagle and being “brought to myself.” God is drawing His people close to Him in order to prepare them. What was the Lord being prepared for when He was driven into the wilderness? He was being prepared for humiliation, rejection, false accusation, imprisonment, torture and ultimately death on the cross. We too brothers and sister are being prepared for such things on a scale not seen before. Yet even in the wilderness, this shall be like “Eden.” You see in the beginning God drove His children out of Eden into the wilderness. Now, at the end of times He will make that very wilderness like Eden. For we know that it is God’s presence that creates the “garden of Jehovah,’ even although it is in the desert. Heaven is where the Lord is and joy and gladness shall be found in the desert by His people. This spirit of Martyrdom, this Spirit of Rev 12 where they “overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony and they did not love their soul until death,” can be found down through the ages and it will be found in us as we glorify Him whether we live or whether we die.
The road gets narrower and the the climb becomes steeper the deeper that we walk into the Kingdom of God. There is no way back , nothing to go back too, there is only on-wards and upwards no matter what the road ahead holds ( praise God we can rarely see it) For those who have entered into the Kingdom and turned the world upside down, then up appears to the world as down. When they see trials and tribulations they see somehow failure and rejection. But our trials are the chisel blows. The great Sculptor is shaping us that we may rightly fit into one glorious temple, a dwelling place for our Lord.
Who will yield to the chisel’s blows? Who will not run from trials and afflictions and persecutions? Who will embrace such a walk that against the blackest backdrop our little light shines out and testifies of His glory? Will ye yield Christian? Will you allow yourself to be shaped? Will you stretch out your own hands for the Master’s cause? Can you rejoice in the deepest valleys? The strongest blows ever against the enemies Kingdom is the joyful noise that arises from the deepest valleys. In a place where others weep and gnash and despair, the upside down man, the Kingdom man rejoices in His Lord and the devil is silenced, indeed Jesus prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies. Have you oh Christian man sat at this table? It is the table of the Lord and goodness and mercy follows us all the days of our walk along the narrow way.
For what am I without the Lord?
A butterfly without a wing
A nightingale that cannot sing
A man who truly has no tears
Simply drowning in his fears
For what am I without the Lord?
A child without a lullaby
A sea that surely has run dry
A dark night sky without the moon
A man who cannot die too soon
For what am I without the Lord?
A child without a mother’s breast
A bird with chicks who has no nest
A man who has no will to live
Who has no heart that can forgive
Now what am I with my dear Lord
A valley through the mountains high
A swallow flying in the sky
A sun that sets in a majestic sea
A shackled prisoner now set free
There are many reasons why God is silent, but I am going to touch on something he recently put on my heart. Sometimes God may be silent simply because he has already spoken to you! If you think about it, how can you accuse God of being silent when he has left you sixty-six letters, thousands of verses? There is no need for him to repeat himself. Aren’t you glad that the book of Genesis doesn’t say, “God said, ‘Let there be light. Let there be light’”?
If you and I had been there on that first day when God said, “Let there be light,” we would have been dancing and rejoicing from 6 o’clock in the morning until about 6 o’clock in the evening.
But suddenly, when it starts to get dark, we begin to panic. “Oh, no, I knew it wouldn’t last! I knew the light was going to go away. Maybe we’ve done something wrong. Maybe we weren’t reading the Word enough.”
The light fades away, and we spend the next twelve hours in sorrow — until the light reappears, and we realize that when God said, “Let there be light,” he didn’t mean that there wouldn’t be night; that there wouldn’t be seasons when we cannot see. He didn’t mean that we would always be able to understand everything that is going on in the heavenly realm. However, the light always reappears, and we see that what God spoke continues to be fulfilled without his having to speak again.
One reason God may be silent is because there is an appointed time for his Word to be fulfilled. One example of this in the Bible is Joseph, who was given the incredible promise that he was going to reign one day. He was going to be a man through whom great provision would be unlocked. However, there was an appointed time for the fulfillment of the promise and he had to follow God’s plan. (Carter Conlon)
Silver and gold I have none……rise up up and walk! How many churches today can say silver and gold I have none? Yet, by the same token how many churches today can say rise up and walk! Jesus said that we could not serve two masters and of course He was right. We will either love the one and hate the other, or in modern parlance we will prefer one over the other.
A Call To The Remnant 