The End Times Part 2

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I set a new HFF record last week of an hour and seven minutes in a sermon, which is something I said I was never gonna do, but I did.

And so I'm gonna try to dial that back a little bit this week as we have our newcomers launch afterwards.

Erin, is the haze off?

It's permeating like an essential oil, which is actually gonna be good for me.

My sinuses were really rough this week, and so I feel very, like my nasal cavities are great.

It's awesome, but it's got that apocalyptic feel in the air.

So roughly two years ago, Brent went through a multi-part series.

I think it was 18, 19 parts called "The Lion's Roar" on the book of Revelation, the revelation that was given to John.

And he did so under the premise of kind of the shifting nature of our church, where a lot of times, any of the scripture, the Torah, the prophets, any of the laws given, the thousand that were given by Yeshua in the New Testament were done through the lens of a regulation, a burden, a heaviness that should be there, and taught through the lens of a revelation, something that was God to man, one that should cause us to grow in wisdom, to grow in our love for the Lord, not be scared, not fall away, not be paralyzed.

Being paralyzed does not provide freedom.

Yet in Christianity, not only from our corner where we've come from, but through many different denominations in Christianity, the book of the Revelation, and Ezekiel, and Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and all the prophets who were sent to bring a revelation of the Lord to his people, the Israelites.

While they were brought to give a revelation, a lot of times they are taught through the lens of fear, judgment, condemnation.

And so today, as we continue to move forward, I wanna remind you of what we talked about last week.

We spent an extensive amount of time talking about what the Bible says is the nature of God.

It is important to understand from Genesis to the Revelation of John, what does the Bible say about our Father?

What does it say about us as sons and daughters approaching our Father?

Because if how we approach God is messed up, we're gonna end up with some sort of skewed end times thought process.

We're gonna end up with some sort of skewed present thought process.

And so, while it is very popular to teach the end of the world in prophecies under the name of messianic prophecies as some futuristic doom and gloom, I just don't believe that's the revelation of the Bible.

I just don't see that.

I see the messianic prophecies promoting Jesus as the Christ.

The heavens and the earth collide.

And when the heavens and the earth collide, this is how God intended creation.

The sages teach that eternal life is not something in the future.

It's something that starts in this very mortal life.

For us, believers in Jesus, the moment we find Jesus, our eternal life starts now.

It's not something that some futuristic event, we get to heaven, whether you believe in the rapture, post, pre, Matthew Day has like 45 adjectives in his end times thought process.

I hadn't even heard of it before.

I couldn't even repeat it if I wanted to.

It's now.

Tyson, it's what you do today with your feet, with your mind, with your lips.

That's your starting of your eternal life.

It is something that carries over into the heavenlies.

The sages teach this from Judaism, but the New Testament also is explicit about this point as well.

Yet, Bibles, Bible studies and churches around the country teach that once you are saved, it is more of a futuristic time where you will be judged and these things will happen.

Last week, we looked at Matthew chapter 23 and 24.

In there, it says that if you are not a believer in Jesus, you're already in the process of being judged.

This is an active thing in the present, not just a futuristic time.

This isn't some church meeting we set up in like October, 2026.

We're gonna have a come to Jesus church meeting on October, 2026 and you're like, oh, well by October, 2026, I better get right.

I can live however I want, but if I can get right the day before we show up for this church meeting, everything is all right.

Things change when you look at the scriptures in the gospel of Matthew and it says that eternal life starts now and judgment for those who are not in Jesus starts now and it's ongoing process.

Yet many of us don't like to talk about judgment because ultimately judgment as a whole is something that we can't do nowadays.

Judge not.

Well, we can't judge them.

We can't judge their heart.

We can't judge.

The Bible says that we are to look at them by the fruit they produce.

We've talked a lot over this year and last year about fruit.

A lot of people can say, why keep the commandments of the Lord?

From Friday at seven p.m. till Saturday at seven p.m.

I cease from all work.

I don't buy anything.

I don't go out anywhere.

I don't watch television.

I only study the word of God and sing worship to God.

Yet if you do it, bitter, angry, lacking in compassion for your brothers and sisters, if you do it with a judgmental spirit, they're not reading the right translation as I am.

They don't understand Hebrew and they don't understand Greek so they can't fully understand what this passage is actually saying.

If you approach keeping the commandments with lacking in love, lacking in joy, lacking in compassion, lacking in self-control, lacking in these areas, then the Bible tells me that the Holy Spirit is not present in your life.

That's not me saying that the Holy Spirit isn't present in your life.

That is me taking the word of God and applying it to our daily life.

This is how we are to judge the fruit of those around us.

This is something that should be ongoing.

A scripturally unbalanced emphasis in the teachings of the end times has led people to go off grid and buy farmland out in the country and then sell the farmland and then move back into the suburbs and then they do it again and it's like that, last week we talked about that trauma cycle, marrying before they were ready.

There is an epidemic in the Hebrew passionate side of Christianity where there are people in their late 20s, early 30s who got married because they were told the world was coming to an end, that the Gulf War was gonna turn into the Psalm 83 war and all these things.

And it's not exclusive to the Hebrew passionate side of Christianity.

We've got the Left Behind series.

Jonathan Cahn's got mysteries of all kinds of harbingers and harbingers and more harbingers.

The mysteries are unlocked.

There's a lot of people who have an emphasis and have had an emphasis for centuries over the end of the world.

And this shouldn't be surprising and it shouldn't be new because when Yeshua was sitting and talking to his disciples, the very first thing he said is, "Master, when is this gonna happen?"

When he ascended, they're still standing there like, is he coming back?

This shouldn't be new.

This is written about in the scripture.

Yet the scripture isn't given to us so that we can have some sort of fear-based, like let's use no logic in our life.

It is given to us to be a revelation that should impact what we do now.

So rather than looking at Ezekiel or Daniel or Jeremiah or Isaiah or the revelation to John and saying, "Well, you know what?

"I can seek to see that this is part of this vision "so I can save myself."

We should start to read the Bible in a way that could cause my relationship with you, Isaac, to be better and more like Christ today so that our relationship with you, Isaac, is better today, so that our relationship with the checkout lady at Walmart who's got AirPods in, who really wants nothing to do with you, is better today, so that your marriages are better today.

I have personally seen people divorce over the topic of end times.

I've seen people divorce over the amount of stuff that was bought under the premise of prepping.

I've seen people give away their properties firsthand from people who gave away their pets, who sold their properties, who sold vehicles, who did all of this, all under the premise of, "This is the year."

But this isn't new.

From the moment Yeshua started talking about his death, burial, and resurrection, his disciples wanted to know when these things would happen so we're dealing with something that literally has been woven throughout all time, all humanity from the moment Yeshua started talking about these things.

There's nothing new under the sun.

This isn't the first time that we've seen God's people fall prey.

We also know throughout the scripture that Jewish tradition teaches that some of the tribe of Ephraim left Egypt before the redemption because they thought they had figured out the date of the redemption of the people out of Egypt.

How ironic, right?

They left Goshen, they were massacred, which is the area similar to modern-day Gaza.

So they left Goshen early, they were massacred in a place that was similar to where Gaza is today.

Can you imagine that the Ephraimites would set dates and be wrong?

The Ephraimites being part of the twelve tribes who were scattered into the nation.

It sounds like maybe we haven't learned from history.

It sounds like maybe we haven't learned from the first Exodus.

It sounds like maybe we haven't learned and we're still struggling with the earthly things that Yeshua said to Nicodemus, "If you're struggling with the earthly things, you're never going to understand the heavenly things."

Sounds like we might have the same problem.

So the question isn't whether or not we can identify the problem in the pattern.

We've identified that.

The Bible explicitly identifies that.

The question is, is what are we going to do about it?

Because in our present day, we talked about this last week, in our present, we have the choice to make the decision to either spiral in the things that have happened in our past, our trauma spiral, or we can allow Jesus to break that, Jesus to be who he says he is, us to do what Jesus has called us to do, which will alter the present and then alter the future.

But this is a choice that we are given.

Every person is given.

We must choose to walk in whatever portion of the choice we choose.

Will we be like the ancient Ephraimites who thought that they could figure all the prophetic timelines and they sabotaged their families and their churches and their congregations and ultimately were massacred?

Well, it says that there's going to be martyrs for the kingdom of God.

Yeah, I mean, come on.

It doesn't mean that you go out of your way to self-fulfill prophecy.

Americans love to self-fulfill prophecy.

We get sideways with our spouse.

I'm sorry, none of you have ever done this.

I'm just going to tattle on myself for a second.

Sometimes you get sideways with your spouse and you think like my wife's not giving me enough attention, but she gives me more attention than I could ever deserve, ever needed.

This is all speculative.

But I feel that way sometimes.

And when I feel that way, then it's like every time my wife walks by me and doesn't give me the attention I need, she's mad at me, she's ignoring me.

And guess what?

What started out as maybe not actually reality turns into reality because it turns into me being mad, which turns into me saying, "Why don't you love me?"

Men, women aren't the only ones who have hormones.

We're going to teach on facts in this church.

It's a scientific fact.

And so you can self-fulfill prophecy in your marriage, in your relationships, and everything else.

So of course we're going to self-fulfill prophecy when we start to read into Scripture, we start to interject ourself into God, and we start talking or thinking for God without allowing God to speak for Himself.

Number two, are we going to be like the ancient Jews of Jesus' day who were so blinded to the arrogance of their prophetic speculations and their messianic expectations?

Remember, Judaism was looking for Mashiach.

Judaism is still looking for Mashiach.

So a lot of times when we hear in the church, "Well, the Jews just don't accept Jesus.

The concept of Messiah is they don't get that."

No, they absolutely do.

They just didn't recognize Jesus.

Their messianic expectations and arrogance of what this would look like caused them to not see God in the flesh walking in their midst.

And not only did it cause them to not see that, it caused them to continue to perpetuate a farce, which is there is a temple built of brick and stone.

There are curtains and courts and courts and courts, and in the back part, the most holy of holy places, is the presence of the Lord.

We're coming up on the fall feast.

The feast of trumpets is this Thursday night.

We'll be celebrating here, and then Yom Kippur, known as the Day of Atonement.

The Day of Atonement is when the high priests would go in and offer the blood of bulls and goats, and they would go in before the Lord, and there was all kinds of requirements, but that was the once a year they didn't.

And so when Jesus comes and Jesus is walking in that time frame, all of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, not all of them, excuse me, the majority of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, didn't recognize that the presence of God was not in the holy of holies exclusively anymore.

It was walking around them.

It was in Solomon's portico.

It was on a mountain like Moses.

He was saying, "I'm here."

But they didn't recognize it, because he didn't meet their expectations, and he didn't fit their mold.

He didn't conquer Rome like they needed him to do in their minds.

He came and said, "I'm going to actually lay my life down."

And then because he did that, our Messianic expectations is there's going to be this massive battle in the hail, hail, lion of Judah.

He's going to come in the clouds.

And yet, Daniel 7, the language and the history is actually ascension language, not descension language.

It's talking more about the Son of Man in the clouds to ascend, to talk about the holiness of who Jesus is.

You see, a lot of the apocalyptic literature that we talk about in the prophecies, whether it's Isaiah or Jeremiah or the revelation to John, a lot of these things where there's chaos happening in the world, and God is giving a vision of the heavenly realm and how things should be so that they would repent, turn, and follow the Lord.

It's an invitation, an ongoing invitation for us to do something, follow Jesus.

For us to do something, be his image-bearers.

For us to do something, lay hands on people.

For us to do something, read the Word of God.

For us to do something, be Jesus to those around you.

Paul wrote that this was a time, the end of days, these prophetic events, this was a time that was supposed to be encouraging to the saints.

Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up.

There is nothing that builds you up that says, "I believe if we see Hezbollah come across the northern border of Israel, that this will usher in the Psalm 83 war.

And when the Psalm 83 war happens, then when this country gets involved and does this, now we're at this spot of Daniel's timeline.

Is your go-back ready?

How many years' worth of dried rice do you have?

What are you going to do with your deer cart?

Do you make sure that you have a little portable pump that you can pump up while you're on the road for this?"

There's nothing encouraging about that.

You immediately say, "Is that going to be the war?

Is America going to be blown off the map?"

And we become paralyzed, and what do we do?

We start watching Fox News every single night.

And yet, during that same day, a hundred people came into the business or the marketplace where you worked who don't know Jesus.

A single mom or a single dad might have come through the door who was really, really struggling and just needed an encouraging word that's like, "Hey, I see you.

I know you only have two hands, and you've got two babies, and you're doing everything you can do, but Jesus sees you, Jesus loves you, and Jesus is with you, and He's going to take care of you."

Hey, did you know we've got a "If I won't get one free on bags of rice" back there?

You should really do that, because the Psalm 83 war is about ready to happen.

If you don't have that, I'm just struggling to take care of my two children.

I'm just struggling to pay my bills.

Who are we going to be?

That's the choice before us.

Are we going to be the people who talk about encouraging one another, building one another up day by day?

The author of Hebrews in Hebrews 10.25 also says, "Do not forsake the assembly of ourselves, but encourage one another all the more as we see the day approaching."

This is implying the day of the Lord, the day that the Lord will come back.

The revelation to John was a revelation to early Christians to persevere in the calling of loving your neighbor, loving God, while joyously anticipating the return of Christ.

So church, who are you going to be?

Are you going to be someone who believes in the power and the hope of the message of the revelations, whether it's the revelation that was given to Isaiah, the revelations given to Daniel, to Ezekiel, to Jeremiah, to Amos.

Can't leave Amos out.

The revelation to John, are we going to be an encouragement to one another?

Are we going to be an encouragement to this world?

Are we going to be the light?

Are we going to run and hide?

Are we going to put our hope and our faith in some sort of creation thing?

God wasn't created.

So are we going to put our hope in something that was created?

Because if it was created, it has a shelf life.

I talked last week on, you know, we'll play fantasy football, we'll get engaged, some might be on the slot machine, whatever, like they'll play cards with their friends and they'll bet money, and it's like, "Hey, I bet that Prescott's going to throw seven interceptions, and you're probably right."

But you'll put money on those things, but then when it comes to Jesus, and it comes to somebody who has literally been 100% perfect and never failed, I'm like, "I'm not sure he's going to do what he says he's going to do."

I probably need more ammo.

I probably need more spare tires for my car.

I heard that the tread of the tires will never wear out when the Atlantic Ocean parts, and diesel fuel will never run out, and gas will never run out.

What scriptures are you reading?

Somebody please tell me one place in the Bible where it gives you this information.

It does not.

Now, God is the God of miracles.

He can do anything, and you should absolutely be prepared.

There ain't no love in Oklahoma.

So I've been told.

If a tornado comes, if an earthquake comes, you absolutely should be prepared and take care of your home.

It's the first commandment that's given before the Sabbath day in the garden.

You absolutely should do that.

You should have some food.

You should have some water.

It's Oklahoma.

But there's nothing in the scripture that tells you if you stockpile food, if you stockpile ammo, if you stockpile anything, that somehow that will save you.

You cannot save yourself.

Never have been able to.

Even when Moses was around, they couldn't save themselves.

Salvation comes from God.

I need you to understand that.

Because we live in a culture, especially in America, where we can do all things.

You can get certified on things, and you can get jobs, and you can do this, and you can do that.

You cannot find righteousness apart from God.

You cannot find holiness apart from God.

You cannot find salvation apart from God.

You cannot predict the future.

There is nothing you can do.

You must follow after God.

And when you follow after God and you do what God has told you to do, He has a promise to you.

He says He'll save you.

And some of you have been saved from some atrocious things in your life.

So why do we miss what's happening now, the living God, the living God, to look at things in the future?

Will God save me in the future?

Well, I mean, I believe in the Bible, so yes, I believe He will.

But God did save me from a car accident a week ago.

I saw it in slow motion.

I was driving, super weird.

Logically, rationally, I can't even explain it.

I'm driving, taking my son to baseball.

I see this lady come out, and all of a sudden it's like this matrix thing, and I can't even do it.

I'll break a hip, and you'll have to carry me off the stage.

But it's like this matrix thing where it's like I see it in slow motion, and all this stuff is happening.

And so I floor it, and I do one of those banana curves, because I'm not NASCAR, but somehow I did it.

I don't know.

And so rather than her T-boning my son, we go like this, and both cars, while there's damage to the cars, all parties in both vehicles were safe.

And I could clearly see that she was going to T-bone me, and she probably would have been hurt when she was all about like this tall.

I think she weighed like 120 pounds, and we could have potentially be hurt.

But yet I saw this in slow motion, and God stepped in and said, "Oh my gosh, this is going to happen."

So God saved me now.

There's a power in your testimony.

There's a couple of keys to the revelation to John that I think I want you to kind of take notes and put in your Bible, and put in your notebook, put in your phone, whatever.

It's important to understand some of how these things are relevant to the entire revelation to John.

Number one, not once is Jesus referred to by any human title or description like he was in the Gospels.

So there is a literary change.

Last week we talked about the Subaru Car Manual versus the Commentary of John MacArthur.

One is not the same.

They're not the same type of literature.

Poetry is not the same as an instruction manual.

He's not referred to by any human title or any human description.

Throughout the Gospels he is.

So the terms rabbi, teacher, prophet, they're not found to talk about Jesus in the revelation.

Instead there's titles that tell you about the divinity of who Jesus is like Son of God, King of Kings, Alpha and Omega.

This defines the playing field because guess what?

Jesus is 100% in the Gospels, right?

And they talk about him and he talks to them and we have that recorded.

Then all of a sudden you get to the revelation and because it's at the end of the New Testament in most canons and most Bibles we're like oh well this is just the culmination of this.

And then we're like okay well Jesus is the Christ.

So we're reading through the Gospels and then we get to the revelation to John and we're like oh well he's still talking the same way.

No, it's talking about the divinity of who Jesus is at that point in time.

Number two, Jesus and the term Lord are used interchangeably throughout Revelation.

In one of our building blocks early on we did a building blocks on who is Jesus.

So we wanted to make sure that the theology and the doctrine of this church of who Jesus Yeshua is from the scriptural standpoint was clearly defined.

Lord, Yahweh, all the titles that are used for God, the Father, whatever name you want to use, Hashem, El Gabor, El Shaddai, all the names that are there, the mighty God.

Jesus and the term for the Father are interchangeably used throughout the book of the Revelation.

Do not tell me that Jesus is some created being or that Jesus is some lesser God or that Jesus isn't the Father.

Don't tell me that the terminology that is used is the same interchangeably.

There's nothing in the Word of God that wasn't done just, oh I stumbled into using this terminology.

No, a Revelation from God that's being recorded at a period of time is a Revelation from God.

They could have used any language they wanted to, so I believe that it was specific for that reason.

This harkens back to the Torah and the prophets where the term Lord was designated only for Yahweh, only for the Father.

This also places a high ranking on the nature of who Jesus is in this Revelation.

It's setting the stage.

So for example, Tim, you are a welder.

You also can play softball.

You also can do a lot of carpentry things.

You also are a father.

You also are a husband.

You also are a team lead at the church.

So if I come in and I just start talking about you and nobody knows all of these things, but they might know some, if I don't define, I'm talking about Tim the welder, you might say, so Tim does that as a father or Tim does that as a husband?

That doesn't make any sense.

So he gets up every day at 8 o'clock and he goes to meet with his wife?

That doesn't make any sense.

No, he gets up every day at 8 o'clock and he goes to meet with his employer to do his welding job.

Some of our relationships run into conflict from time to time because we might work together, we might be friends, and we might go to church together.

And so when we're talking to each other, the question is, well, Isaac, am I talking to you as the pastor of the church or am I talking to you as your friend?

Am I talking to you?

So defining the aspect of the relationship is important.

God does the same thing in the Revelation to John.

It's defining who he is in this book.

In this literature that's being written, he's defining who he is.

Jesus is the father.

That's the rank that the Revelation to John puts on him.

The angels told the shepherds not only that there was a Savior board, but the Savior was Christ the Lord.

Important.

When you start to throw out Christmas and you start to take issue with these things, you don't talk about that story as much so you forget, not only did they say a Savior was born, but they said Christ the Lord was born.

It wasn't just some random baby.

Throughout time, think of how many people have been talked about in some sort of saving manner.

Shohei Otani saved the Dodger season this year so far.

Aaron Judge saved the Yankee season.

But Aaron Judge is not Christ the Lord.

Jesus is Christ the Lord.

Number three, the Revelation centers around Jesus as Mashiach.

Whereas in John's previous books, he references the anti-Mashiach, the antichrist, or the spirit of the antichrist.

In the other books, John is calling us to press into the real love of Christ.

Anybody who has studied counterfeit, how do you know to find a counterfeit?

It's not going and studying those who make fake IDs and all that.

You study the real thing.

So when we approach eschatology, when we approach the prophets and we approach the end times, why do we immediately say, "Oh, okay, all my logical rational thought processes thrown out the door."

Let's study the beast.

Let's study the beast system.

Let's study the antichrist of the world.

By the way, the Bible mentions many, many antichrists throughout time.

I think it is in John, too, where it actually says that if you don't believe in Jesus and you teach that Jesus is the Lord, that's the spirit of the antichrist.

So there's many of those around.

But we're looking for the head.

We're looking for the general manager, and all we have is the assistant to the general manager.

Study the real thing, and the revelation of God will reveal it to you.

For example, I always want to be a better husband.

So do I study bad husbands?

No.

Thank God we don't have any here.

But I'm not going to go study somebody who's an abusive husband and say, "Okay, well, now I know what not to do."

That is a portion of learning.

But the reality is, is if I want to be a good husband or I want to be good at financial trading or I want to be good at whatever it is, I'm going to go sit and study under somebody who thrives in that.

You want to know about the end times?

Study the real Christ.

You'll see all the other ones that are false.

You'll see all the other pretenders.

You'll see all the other systems that don't lead you to Christ.

It's funny how you can change your life when you start to become more like Christ.

You start to see, "Hey, that friend that I've been friends with for 20 years, I'm not really comfortable hanging out with them anymore because of how they talk."

Twenty years ago, we talked the same way.

Study the real thing.

Number four, one of the most significant words in the Revelation to John is "Come."

The angel says to John, "Come, come up here.

Come, let me show you."

It is an invitation to the nations and to us to draw near to God.

This isn't some end times thing.

He tells us from the moment that he comes into our life, we are to draw near to him.

We are to pursue him.

Come.

The Revelation to John might actually be an evangelical tool.

There might be some evangelism in there.

How many people have thought of that?

Come, come, come be with me.

Come.

If I invite you to come to our house for a Christmas party on December 25th, see I'm getting way out in front of the announcements this time, if I invite you to come, is that negative?

Oh, Pastor Chris told me, he invited me to his house.

Oh, I must have done something wrong.

He must want to kick me out of the church.

That's your trauma drama.

That's not me.

I'm inviting you.

How much better when the Lord is asking you to come?

Some of us are afraid to come and sit with him.

Some of us are afraid to come and embrace him and allow him to embrace us because we've had husbands who sucked.

We've had other people who've been horrible.

We've had fathers who are bad.

We've had wives who are bad.

And so we can't embrace the love of a perfect father.

And yet the entire scriptures in the narrative is about new creation to cycle us back to the garden where the father has sons and daughters to co-heir with.

We're going to struggle with everything if we see God as an abusive daddy God.

Because he's not.

The only abusive fathers are humans, not God.

Number five, the revelation invites us into a heavenly perspective and invites us to evaluate our character and who we worship and how we worship.

It inspires our hope and our identity as citizens of that conquering victorious kingdom that we can already partake in.

When Christ ascended to the right hand of the Father and he sent his Spirit to be poured out upon humanity, in those moments he is inviting us to go higher because he went higher.

He's inviting us to have a higher level of character, to have a higher level of calling.

And guess what?

He tells you that it doesn't even matter if you know how to do it because he's already given you the power.

Ephesians says he's already given you the gift and given you the power.

Some of us need to heal into our gift.

Some of us need to walk into our gift.

Some of us need to actually ask the Lord, what is my gift?

He didn't give you that gift so that when he comes back and he makes everything perfect, you can come back to him and say, here master, I buried this in my backyard, waiting for you to come back.

Oh wait, there's a parable in the Bible about that one too.

This isn't so that you can be activated in some end times army.

Maybe I'll be sealed as one of the 144,000.

Who's going to know?

Are they going to have members only jackets?

How will we know who they are?

If it's a literal 144,000 people, which is a possibility of the word of God, it is a possibility.

We will know because they will have the spirit of God and that will be what unites us as the spirit of God.

But it doesn't mean that the 144,000 are the only one who have a calling on their life.

God said every single person, including you, you're all a part of that.

You all fit into that category of every single person has a calling.

All the concepts throughout the prophets and throughout the entire narrative of the Bible is about God's plan for all of humanity.

We would not say to someone, hey, look, take out every other portion of the Bible, just read Deuteronomy.

And if you just read Deuteronomy for the next 40 years of your life and you do what God says to do in Deuteronomy, you will know all about God.

We wouldn't say that.

Take Deuteronomy out and just say any book of the Bible.

We wouldn't tell them that.

It would be incomplete for them to understand what God has already given us to understand who God is.

So when we look at end times, eschatology, prophetic events, it is void to just take the revelation, take it out of the context and the timeframe by which it was given and turn around and say that somehow this has everything to do with Kamala Harris' presidency.

Wrong.

Has everything to do with Donald Trump's presidency.

Wrong.

The revelation to John was an invitation to come and be a part of the kingdom of God.

It had nothing to do with American politics.

Stop studying the kings and the rulers of this world if you want to know what the king of kings is going to do because the king of kings is not like any other king or queen, possibly.

He's not.

This isn't something to fear.

It should be the goal of every believer in Jesus that we should walk in a manner that we would be judged by each other based upon the fruits through the same lens of the love of Christ so that we would be molded and made today into the image of Christ that we could walk in the spirit with the gifts and the fruits of that spirit that God has already given us today.

We're so worried about the future that we've aptly forgotten that we are called to do something in the present.

What type of a marriage do you think I would have to my wife because the imagery of husbands and wives and brides and bridegrooms are all throughout the prophetic nature?

What type of relationship do you think I would have with my wife if I said when we hit our 30th wedding anniversary I'll start loving you and doing things for you?

Because that's a milestone, 30.

So when we get to the 30th, they're going to be like, "Hey, so when we get to the 30th, then I'll start doing things for you, but until we get there I don't need to do anything today."

You want to know how to take care of the end times?

Deal with your present now.

Whether it's the story of Noah, Cain, Abel, Adam, Eve, the jailer in Acts or the countless other times throughout scripture when humanity is left to their own witness, their own passions and their own sinful nature, what happens?

We produce harm, not only for ourselves but for those around us.

There's a promise that all of us have when you put down your sinful nature and you pick up the nature of the divinity of who Jesus is and the spirit of Jesus, He will take away your sinful nature.

But again, this is a process.

Some people say, "Well, I got born again and it changed everything."

Yeah, I mean it did for some.

They had a miraculous moment, but they still had to make a decision the next day not to go back into the slums.

And every day after that.

Some people it's not as miraculous.

Sometimes it takes a little bit of time to grow.

But if we don't allow Jesus to step into our present and change the present, we will have a fearful future and the truth is you have a really, really bad present.

This is exactly what Peter's final words during Pentecost were.

"Save yourself from the corrupt generation."

Seems like the corrupt generation is still happening.

So I think the words of Peter are very, very important.

"Save yourself from the corrupt generation."

Not just from the 2035 prophecy when the sun will fall from the stars and the moon and whatever it is, I don't know.

I got like three seconds in and it was like, "Eh."

Because today I need to be a better human being.

Today I need to love my neighbor more.

Today I need to forgive more.

Those are acts of righteousness that we're called to do today to help usher in the kingdom.

So with that all in mind, Revelation 20 tells us that those who are dead in the death of our bodies, present and future and Hades are all to be judged.

It says that they are judged based upon what they did with their works.

Did your actions match your profession of faith?

And this again doesn't mean, "Well, I kept the Sabbath today."

Well, as long as you're bitter about having to keep the Sabbath, you did not keep the Sabbath.

Yeah, you ceased from your work.

You did that, but you didn't keep the Sabbath.

Well, I asked Jesus to come into my heart.

How you just talk to the person who's waiting at your table tells me differently.

If we're not checking ourself every single day and how we're walking our life, then who cares what happens in the end of the world?

Because the call is every day to die daily to yourself and to live in Christ.

So if you can't do what he's asking you to do every single day, who cares what's going to happen in the end?

You've already disobeyed the calling of God on your life.

So what you do matters.

This is why I've always said what I have found in this church is the more we're doing good for those, the more homeless outreach, the more involvement we're doing with school systems, the more we're busy doing the hands and feet of Christ, the less conflict we actually have with the body.

Because we're busy doing what God has called us to do, so we don't have the time to be looking around and being judgmental on everybody else.

To project onto others.

If you believe that Jesus is going to come, save and restore, which is what the Gospel of Matthew tells us, does your go bag reflect that?

Does your social media reflect that?

Does your work and what you produce at your job reflect that?

No one should be scared of Jesus analyzing their life.

Because it says I've come to save you from what you're already going to do without me.

You should want Jesus to come in and help you do away with your sinful nature.

It's simple.

Do what you're supposed to do.

Do what the Bible tells you to do.

You have a choice in that moment.

I have a choice when, Alyssa, you and I get sideways, we're arguing over this worship song or whatever.

I have a choice in how I speak to you.

The devil didn't do that.

I did.

Take captive your thoughts and what you do every single day.

Behold the dwelling place of God is with man and he will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God.

How do you get a ticket to that event?

Be a living, walking and speaking testimony of loving your neighbor as yourself and loving God with all your heart, soul and mind.

One of the Hebrew words for congregation comes from the same root of that of the word testimony.

What is your testimony about your future in Christ?

If the world out there is looking to you and all you can say is, "Oh, I think I'm moving to Canada if Kamala becomes the president.

If the Fed doesn't cut the interest rate, I'm going to be living in a van down by the river."

If everything you talk about is horrible, what is the testimony you're speaking of the one who lives inside of you, the one who has saved you, the one who's conquered death and ascended to the right hand of the Father?

That there's freedom, there's power to overcome?

This was a hard one for me to write this week because a lot of times people will ask me, "How's your week going?"

It's like, man, a lot of people are really hurting.

There's not enough hours in a day to help people.

It's like, "Hmm, I want to hang out with you.

You sound like your life's going great."

And the reality is, is I love the opportunity to sit with people and help them and to pray with them.

And yet how I might have spoken about a cause, death to the situation, and something that I believe is life to me.

There's power in your testimony.

There's power in your testimony that you have Jesus, the Christ inside of you in the Spirit of Jesus.

What will the testimony of this church be?

That we're at stop number three on Daniel's timeline?

Which one?

There's like 40 timelines just in this area alone.

Based upon the calendars.

Which calendar?

There's like 40.

We keep making up calendars every year.

Or is our testimony that Jesus has overcame, Jesus is our light and our salvation?

That's who we trust in.

If we got the day right, awesome.

If we got the day wrong, awesome.

Jesus is there.

He'll take care of it.

We're just doing our best.

Is that our testimony?

I hope that would be our testimony.

Is that I am not the perfect man.

I'm not the perfect pastor.

But guess what?

My God is perfect.

And I'm just trying to be like him every single day.

Worship team, you can come back.

Life is tough.

There's very real issues.

We struggle financially.

We struggle with health.

We struggle with all these things.

But Jesus told us in this life we were going to have trials.

But he also says in those trials, take heart, I've overcome the world.

Some of us are living our lives as if this is some sort of future promise that ties into some sort of future doom and gloom.

As if Jesus hasn't already come, that he hasn't already conquered the grave and that he hasn't already ascended.

Some of us approach the feast days as if we're in first century Judaism or as if we're before Christ.

As if Christ hasn't come.

As if he hasn't fulfilled promises throughout the Old Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures.

As if he hasn't already fulfilled some of those.

You know, when I go into the day of atonement, which is one of the most solemn days that are out there, I actually rejoice all day long.

Not in rejoicing because I took a day off.

Rejoicing in the fact that I don't have to bring in the blood of a bull and goat because Jesus' atonement is enough for me.

And it's done and he's already done it.

Can we throw a party?

My failures don't have to be sufficient because he's enough.

I don't have to know how everything's going to pan out in the end because as long as I hold on to the champion, the king of kings, the lord of lords, it says he takes care of everything.

So he doesn't have to give me the download of the military strategy that's going to happen.

Remember, faith enough to touch the hem of his garment healed.

If I have faith enough to just be able to just barely hold on to that hem of that garment, don't you think he's going to take care of me in the end?

If we have to choose my ability to give you every Hebrew and Greek nuance of how everything will take place in the last day of the existence of the world, if that's your option versus Jesus, if you choose me, you need professional help.

I will fail you.

I will make mistakes.

I will be wrong. 100% of the time, all the time, he is perfect.

Human beings constantly look for saviors.

We're constantly looking for somebody to talk to.

It's ingrained in us.

John in the Revelation, chapter 19, it says, "And then I fell down at his feet to worship him."

But he said, this is John interacting with the angel, "You must not do that.

I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus worship God."

So when man's words do not align with the Word of God and the nature of God from Genesis to Revelation, stop falling down and worshiping them.

Worship God.

That's idolatry.

Let's call it what it is.

But did you hear what this teacher said?

Doesn't align with the Word of God, but he's got the Revelation, idolatry.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

The angel was like, "Come on, man, get up.

This is weird.

I'm a created being."

Daniel chapter 7, chapter 7, verse 13, Matthew 26, 24, Mark 14, 62, Revelation 14, 14.

These are all common passages that are used to imply that these are about the second coming of Jesus.

We see it in the Gospels and we see it in the Revelation and we see it in the prophet of Daniel.

Yet the language is ascension language, not descension language.

So when we look at the context of verses and the words that are used, does it change it when we're talking about the coming of Christ or we're talking about him being seated at the right hand of the Father which had never been done before?

Kind of changes your perspective on that a little bit, right?

God is constantly calling us higher to have a higher level of integrity, a higher level of fidelity in our faith, and a higher level of actions.

When we've taken the end times and we've taken the Word of God and we've twisted it to fit whatever narrative we have, however we want to imply that, we are doing something that is not our right to do.

And it causes us to give false witness to who God is.

If Jesus says in the Bible that he's coming to save, and through coming to save us, that there is an ongoing judgment of what we're doing with our feet, our lips, our minds, our eyes, then how in the world do we get to twist that around and say that he's not going to save us, that he's just going to bring hellfire and brimstone to all people?

The original intention was the garden, walking as co-heirs, a loving father who would meet them in the cool of the day.

We decided that that relationship wasn't good enough, so we decided to listen to the adversary, a created being.

Remember, the devil needs permission.

We decided to interject with that relationship with them, and so we caused an issue with our relationship with God.

We're spiraling, spiraling, Cain, Abel, people killing each other, all of the murders and all the other horrible things humanity was doing.

Noah, he closes up the ark.

God uses his hand, his voice, closes up the ark to protect him, yet humanity does the same thing over and over and over and over again.

Then comes Jesus, and does it end at the cross?

No, it actually only begins.

There's a new normal.

The new normal wasn't COVID, it was Christ.

The moment that was broken, the future is coming.

There is an end game in sight.

Do righteousness today.

Do righteousness tomorrow.

Do righteousness the day after and the day after and the day after and the day after and the day after and the day after.

If we do this, we're doing our role.

If the end times start tomorrow, and you're doing that, you're doing your role.

If the end time starts 45,000 years from now, you're doing your role.

Never once do I read in the scripture where it says that I am supposed to be this military king who understands, predicts, and then executes some sort of plan.

It says that I'm not the king, and because I'm not the king, I needed a king.

And by me finding that king and submitting to the power of the king, I can be called higher.

Not because I have the capability of doing it.

I absolutely do not.

But he does.

My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.

I like that right there.

That.

All other ground is sinking sand.

On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.

All other ground is sinking sand.

Is Iraq going to invade Israel?

On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.

All other ground is sinking sand.

Is Bitcoin going to become the one world currency so I will no longer be able to eat, my children won't be able to eat?

On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.

All other ground is sinking sand.

Did you know that it's Hebrew 5785 next year, and in 5785 there's on Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand.

There's only one person who can make a way.

There's only one person who has made a way.

From Genesis to Revelation, he has been inviting us into new creation over and over again.

Whenever this world ceases, whatever that looks like, it says that he will bring the New Jerusalem that was fashioned in the heavens.

He will bring it.

Oh, okay.

But he tells me I'm supposed to participate with him daily for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

So you have to participate with him daily for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.

Seems pretty simple.

The revelation of the Torah, the prophets, the apprentices of Jesus in the first century, was that Emmanuel is here.

God is here.

Everything they told us about is here.

Moses foretold the prophets were bold, the angels extolled, the heavens no longer withhold.

A manger he was born.

Stand with us as we respond today. (gentle music)