Satan Pours out Water after the Woman

RV162-02

The Essence of God

He is presented as the Creator of the material universe and all of its life forms. There is no suggestion of evolution by blind chance, over vast eons of time, producing the world in which we live. Creation itself, the Bible says, "Testifies to the power; to the wisdom; and, to the very existence of God. For this reason, in Psalm 14:1, the Word of God says that anyone who denies the existence of God is a fool. How true!

Furthermore, no one in all of God's creation can speak for Him. To many of you, that may be a self-evident fact. But you should be aware of the fact that most of your religious friends do not understand this principle. No one in all of creation can speak for God: No religious leader; no political leader; no educator; no prosperous businessman; no scientist; and, no ordinary citizen can speak for God.

The truth is that in our society, it is people such as that that are the voices to which people listen to as being the channel to the mind of God. The truth of the matter is that only God Himself can speak for God, and God has spoken to mankind through the Bible, which contains revelations from Him which were then accurately recorded under His supervision. So, if you want to know what God thinks, there's only one answer. There's only one source. It is the Bible.

One man who is in Christian felt that the evangelism brochure that we have produced here At Berean Church is too blunt for some people, in some cultures. Why? Because it presents this issue that no one speaks for God except God. Therefore, the question is: why do you believe the things you believe about spiritual matters? And if those find their origin in your church; in your associations; in your parents; and, what you have always known, you may be quite wrong. Well, I knew what this man was saying. For the average person, it is terribly humiliating to realize that you have been a fool when it comes to knowledge about spiritual things. You may have done this for 50 years. Then, all of a sudden, one day you wake up and say, "Why in the world did I believe my parents, who believed some priest, who believed the Pope, who believed the church, who believed in an ecclesiastical organization, all sin nature people talking for God, and I never verified, as the brains of all did, whether the Bible said these things, and whether the Bible confirmed what I was taught, so that I came back to God's only source of information about Himself? Only the Bible speaks for God.

The Prophetic Scriptures

Literal Interpretation

The Discrediting of the Bible

However, there he was this morning. Because I happened to know New Age doctrine, as you do, I was able to grasp exactly what this man was saying, whereas the average citizen would not have grasped it at all. He was talking about the Christ in us, and he said, "Do you remember what Paul said? 'Christ in you, the hope of glory.'" He said, "You see, don't think about Jesus Christ as somebody with a first and last name. 'Christ in you' is what is the deity that is in all of us. And you must recognize that deity within you so that you may begin to expand and develop into your full potential." That's New Age doctrine. That's directly out of Hinduism, dressed up under New Age terminology now.

This man is smooth. He used to be a Hollywood actor. He's in the rich north Dallas area, and he has a wonderful, marvelous, impressive facility in which he preaches. There is nothing but Mercedes Benz's, and Cadillacs, and all those high-class people cars out there in the parking lot. You don't see any Volkswagens out there. He's out there telling people that they're all little deities, and those folks are eating it up. And, boy, their checkbooks are pouring it out to the Unity preacher.

What is he doing? He took a lot of Scriptures just like that, and completely distorted them from their true meaning. He completely twisted away from what God was saying to something that the human corrupt sin nature wanted to believe about itself.

The Bible is under attack. You've heard it before, but you really better believe it. Those of you who know the Scriptures, therefore, are going to have a great deal of responsibility for being out there, and pointing people to the truth, and alerting people and cautioning people. A lot of them are not going to listen to you. I have found that out recently again. Please remember that a blind person cannot get through those blind eyes, no matter what he wants to do. But you must understand that neither can you get through his blindness the other way. You can't make him see from your side of his blindness. Only God can enlighten and can bring a person into the realization of how important the Bible is, and the fact that God is going to hold every one of us in the human race responsible for the fact that He has given us the information of Scripture. God help the person who ignores the Bible. God help the preachers who have corrupted the Scriptures; who have misdirected people; who have minimized it; and, who have undermined its authority.

A recent study by some eminent scholars (as many of you have read) has reached certain conclusions about the Bible. And I mean that these are eminent biblical scholars, people with the degrees in the high names in the theological circles. They had a study over some time, and they have concluded that 80% of what you read in the New Testament as the words of Jesus is complete fraud. 80% He never said. 80% was made up by those writers of the Bible.

Now, are you going to believe that or not? You're going to make your decision, and you're going to bear the consequences one way or another. But I want you to know that behind all this discrediting of the Bible is Satan himself. Satan motivates these lies about the Bible, because in it, God has predicted in the prophetic Scriptures the ultimate defeat of Satan by Jesus Christ, and of Satan's ultimate destiny in the lake of fire. Satan is behind all the efforts to discredit and to misinterpret the Bible.

So, what rational person would follow such a loser as the Bible reveals Satan to be? Who, with any sense, in Iraq today is enthusiastic for old Saddam Hussein, and to want to follow him (as they refer to him) as the Arab Messiah? The Arab Messiah has become the Arab misprint. He is anything but a messiah. He is a big, zilch zero. And that's very humiliating.

For God to come along and to reveal to us that Satan is such a loser, even though he's subtle and smart and very clever and very powerful, that enrages the devil. What he wants to do is to try to silence the information about him. Satan is well-versed in the teachings of Scripture, and he hates it with a purple passion. He knows what's in store for him. I remind you again that God is going to hold people accountable for the fact that he has given you a Bible, and He expects you to know it, and He expects you to live according to it.

You remember when that rich man was appealing from Hades to Abraham for some relief from the suffering and pain that he was experiencing after he had died, and he saw Lazarus, the poor man, enjoying the bliss of heaven. And the rich man called upon Abraham to send Lazarus back alive, so that he could prove to his five brothers that what they had been told from Scripture was really true, and that what they had been told about heaven and hell in eternity was true. They had discounted it. He didn't want his brothers to end up where he was. The response of Abraham was quite clear: "But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them.'" They have Moses and the prophets, the Old Testament Scriptures. Let them hear them."

He wanted a miracle to prove the Scriptures like the charismatics do today. God said, "No. Listen to the Scriptures. It is the Word of God. And God has been pleased to reveal His future plans to those who are in His family, because they are His friends. He did this with the Jew Abraham, who had become a child of God by faith in the coming Savior Jesus Christ. He reveals the future to us today, who have entered into his church family through free grace salvation provided by the Lord Jesus Christ, who died to make atonement for us. So, God's revelation about His future plans for mankind reveals something from Abraham's time to ours – that a holy God will inevitably punish evil. No one is going to get away with evil: not Abraham; not the Jews; not me; and, not you. No one gets away with doing evil. God's prophetic Scriptures are constant reminders to us of this point. It has examples throughout history of how God brings judgment upon those who do evil, and He tells them ahead of time that He's going to do it.

So, you and I, as Christians, should fear the consequences of sinful conduct. And we are not free of sinful conduct: not in the Christian community; nor in any community; nor, in any congregation, including Berean Church (and once in a while, even the general public). It might be well for you to know that the general public looks upon you, and some of the general public knows me.

When I walked in to see our financial man in his office at Las Colinas, the first thing he said was, "Are you John's father?" I said, "Is that good or bad?" He said, "Oh, I love him. I watch him on cable TV, fighting that alcohol at the stadium." He said, "I thought that's who you were." He said, "I was really interested in that in that campaign." He was really hot about this for some reason. He said, "I saw one of my closest friends on TV, standing up there before that city council, arguing for turning Texas Stadium into a booze haven." He said, "I couldn't believe it. When I saw him, I said, 'What were you doing standing up there on that side of that issue?' And he said, 'Because of the bank where I work. That's the bank where Jerry Jones does all of his business, and we all got a letter to get out there, and show up at the council, to champion the cause of alcohol.

We live in a world where people know each other, and every now and then somebody comes up and tells me something about some Berean who has been doing something underhanded in some relationships: social; business; education; or, whatever. They let me know like Satan up in heaven, saying, "Here's what I want to tell you about your sweet Christian's, God." They tell me about my sweet Christians. The world in which we live is antagonistic toward the Lord Jesus Christ. We should be concerned for the consequences of our sinful conduct because no truer statement was ever made than was made in the Old Testament Scriptures: "Be sure your sin will find you out," if not on this side, then on the other side.

So, God has revealed plans concerning the future to let us know that He means business, and He deals with sin; and, He keeps His Word. In the middle of the tribulation, God begins the countdown to the judgment which He is pronounced on Satan for his evil ways. Satan, we have seen, is permanently thrown out of God's third heaven. He is restricted to the earth as his sphere of activity. His taunting of God, with his accusations of sinning Christians before God in heaven, will then be terminated. Nevertheless, even though that will be terminated, it is going on now. So, we should all be aware of the fact that secret sin on earth is open scandal in heaven.

Russia in the End Times

The United States in the End Times

So, there's nobody to confront the antichrist at this time from the two superpowers, and he takes over. So, Satan indwells this man now, in the middle of the tribulation, to really make him completely his agent. Through him, Satan will launch a worldwide persecution of the Jews for the last three-and-a-half years.

In Revelation 12:14, God reveals to us that a portion of the Jews in Judea will escape this persecution of the antichrist. They will be carried by God in some mode of transportation, which the Bible here describes as eagle's wings. That means it'll be swift, and it'll be strong. This remnant of Jews will be carried to some desert or wilderness sanctuary in southern Jordan – probably the Petra sanctuary. God will protect and feed the Jews in this place of refuge for three-and-a-half years, which will bring them to the end of the tribulation. They will be preserved from Satan's rage, and all his efforts to kill them.

Other Jews will die. As a matter of fact, two-thirds of them will die. God will preserve alive one-third of the world's Jews which are left at that time. In eternity, the Jews will look back to this tribulation preservation of a remnant of their people from Satan's wrath as the greatest example of God's mercy to them. Now, the Jews look back to an example of God's mercy in the way He protected them when He led them out of Egypt from Pharaoh's wrath. In eternity, they will look back to His protection in mid-tribulation, and through those years from the wrath of the antichrist.

Today, the pressure on the Jews from the Arab world and its supporters is increasing daily. To whom can the Jew turn for protection in an increasingly anti-Semitic world? The Middle East is truly a huge powder keg, and Israel is the fuse, about to be lit to set the whole thing off. Satan wants to make it impossible for any Jews to be left on the face of the earth, for Jesus Christ to rescue at His Second Coming, and thus to frustrate the millennium. You cannot have a millennium without Jews who have their normal bodies that can reproduce children who have not entered the glorified body status that we will have.

All the world now, you may expect, will pressure Israel to make a deal with the Arabs to establish peace in the new world order that the antichrist has already set in motion. The Jews are being psyched to welcome a protector such as the antichrist, so that finally this suffering nation may have peace and safety.

Satan Pours out Water after the Woman

The object of this act on the part of Satan is to destroy the Jewish people in some way. Indeed, he may send a literal torrent of water (a flood condition) after these Jews who will be fleeing south through these narrow passages toward the area of safety at Petra. This may be reservoirs that are broken. This may be that Satan disrupts nature, and brings horrendous rains so that flood waters rapidly rise. As you know, if you if you have any experience in the desert, in certain places, flood conditions rise immediately when there is a substantial deluge of rain, and you have to be careful of that when you're driving out in places like Big Bend National Park. That's why they have those markers in low depressions which show you the feet (the elevation), because you might be tempted to not realize that that's a dip there after the rain has suddenly filled that, and the thing may be six or seven feet deep, and you'll drive right into it.

So, it may be possible that this is actual, literal rain. It may be Satan creating these flood conditions in some way that he has power to do.

However, on the other hand, the flood, again, may be a symbol (as indeed it is used in Scripture in that way) to symbolize a pursuing army that the antichrist sends after these fleeing saints. We have this, for example, in Isaiah 8:5-8 – this idea of an army as a flood: "And again, the Lord spoke to me further saying, 'Inasmuch as these people have rejected the gently flowing waters of Shiloah, and rejoice in Rezin and the son of Remaliah, now, therefore, behold, the Lord is about to bring on them the strong and abundant waters of the Euphrates, even the king of Assyria in all his glory. And it will rise up over all its channels, and go over all its banks. Then it will sweep on into Judah. It will overflow and pass through, and it will reach even to the neck. And the spread of its wings will fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel."

Here Isaiah says that the king of Assyria, in all of his glory and his military might, is going to come like the Euphrates River overflowing its bank, and coming up to the necks of the people, so that they are on tiptoes trying to get through to survive as the waters rapidly rise around them. He is comparing flood to an army that sweeps down upon a fleeing body of people. Of course, an army that is powerful, and that has a foe before it which has lost its capability of defending itself, is overwhelmed like a flood by the army which follows.

We have seen that in Kuwait. You may have seen that scene north of Kuwait with that traffic jam of trucks and vehicles trying to get out of the city, and caught out in the open, and the flood of air power that came over and dropped cluster bombs (of all things) over them. They hit just practically every square foot on the ground. All those vehicles stood there burning, and people were dying all over the place. That is a military flood that is compared to a real flood that you have no capacity to resist. A flood is a powerful, powerful force. Unless you have ever been in water currents that are powerful, you'll not fully appreciate this. If you have ever been underwater, you scuba divers know what it is to get into an underwater current. That is like a flood under water. You may find yourself hanging onto coral reefs just to keep from being swept uncontrollably by the flood that is taking charge. Water is a very powerful force, and it is an apt illustration of what an army does in pursuing its victim.

In Jeremiah 47:2, you have this same picture: "Thus says the Lord, 'Behold, waters are going to rise from the north and become an overflowing torrent, and overflow the land in its fullness; the city; and, those who live in it. And the men will cry out, and every inhabitant of the land will wail." Here, in this context, you will see that the flood from the north is an army coming down upon Israel.

In Revelation 12:16, we have the divine defense given to these people who are fleeing: "And the earth helped the woman. The earth opened its mouth and drank up the river which the dragon poured out of its mouth." The earth here is the planet earth, and it says, "That the earth came in and actively helped the woman. The word "helped" here means "to come to one's rescue." It looks like this in the Greek Bible: "boetheo." That word means to come to somebody's rescue. So, here the woman, referring to Israel, is saved by the fact that the earth opens its mouth.

Now, again, if this is a literal flood of water, an earthquake could break open the earth, and indeed the water could gush down into that opening, and that would literally drain off the flash flood which Satan has turned loose against these people. If the flood symbolizes a pursuing army, the same thing could be true. The earth could be made to open supernaturally by God, so that it would swallow the pursuing army of the antichrist.

This is exactly what has happened in the past. In Numbers 16:31-33, when Korah and his associates decided to challenge the spiritual authority of Moses and Aaron, God had set up this confrontation to establish who was really God's leader. And God's judgment, then, was to be demonstrated before all the people: "Then it came about as he finished speaking (that is, Moses declaring to them that God is going to settle this issue) all of these words that the ground that was under them split open, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, and all their households, and all the men who belong to Korah, with their possessions. So, they and all that belonged to them went down alive to Sheol (that is, into the place of death), and the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly."

In the Old Testament, it was very wonderful that you could always decide issues very clearly. You knew what the answer was when God got through: "Do you guys speak for God, or do we speak for God? OK, Lord, who speaks for God?" It was very clear who spoke for God. You have the same picture here of the earth opening and swallowing the opposition.

This is exactly the picture which you have also with Pharaoh, who was pursuing the people of Israel as they were leaving their slave condition in Egypt. Pharaoh is closing in on them; the sea is open; and, the Jews are going through. Exodus 15:9-12: "The enemy said, 'I'll pursue. I'll overtake. I will divide the spoil. My desire shall be gratified against them. I will draw out my sword, and my hand shall destroy them.' You blew with Your wind. The sea covered them. They sank like lead into the mighty waters. Who is like You among the gods, O Lord? Who is like You, majestic in holiness, and awesome in praises and working wonders? You did stretch out Your right hand, and the earth swallowed them."

When the Egyptian armies, with the charioteers in the lead, saw what had happened: they saw the borders divided; and, the path before them, and they dove right in. They said, "We're going to get those suckers now. They're almost through. They're almost to the other side, but we'll catch up with them." God said, "He closed the earth (referring to the waters here), and He swallowed them."

So, the main point indeed, here in Revelation 12, is that God, at mid-tribulation, will use supernatural means to preserve one-third of the Jews who are fleeing from the antichrist, who is himself motivated by Satan to exterminate all the Jews alive on the face of the earth.

This preservation is also presented in Psalm 124: "Lest Israel now say, 'Had it not been the Lord who was on our side when men rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us alive. Then their anger was kindled against us. Then the waters would have engulfed us. The stream would have swept over our soul. Then the raging waters would have swept over our soul. Blessed is the Lord who has not given us to be torn by their teeth. Our soul has escaped as a bird out of the snare of the trapper. The snare is broken and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth." Here the psalmist is rejoicing that the people of Israel could have been swallowed by a flood of enemies many times, but God has preserved them.

It is the sound and basic principle of Bible doctrine that Satan can never reach the believer who is under God's protective custody. This is clearly declared to us in 1 John 4:4: "You are from God, little children, and have overcome them (those who are not of God), because greater is He who is in you than He who is in the world."

So, the serpent pours out some opposition pursuing the woman. God comes in and uses the earth in some way to preserve the woman from this pursuit, whether literal water or a military force. Whatever the specifics are, this incident will prove to be a great calamity for the antichrist. He'll be frustrated before all the world in his determination to destroy the Jews.

It is interesting how much like Saddam Hussein, Satan will be at this point: the humiliation; the bravado; the braggadocios; and, the self-confident man. And, suddenly, he is proven to be a bag of empty wind. Did you see the report of General Schwarzkopf on the interview on TV? One of the questions put to him was about how things went when he sat across the table from the Iraqi generals. They said to him, "We have 41 allied prisoners. Would you mind telling us how many Iraqi prisoners you have?" And Schwarzkopf said, "Well, we have 60,000, but we're still counting. We don't know for sure." He said, "In every one of them, you could see the (expression) in their eyes, and they all tensed up. They hadn't known what a bag of wind they had been following in Saddam Hussein, and they didn't realize the enormity of their defeat. But if God is for you, who can be against you?

So, as soon as Saddam is humiliated today (and only the criminal die hard type would continue following him), so the antichrist (as a human being) is going to suffer a terrible humiliation when these Jews escape in such dramatic fashion. The Jews themselves, I suspect, will be awed by this demonstration of divine preservation, and they will begin to reconsider their attitude toward Jesus as the Messiah.

This preserved Jewish remnant will form the nucleus, I suspect, of the Jewish nation in the Millennial Kingdom. They're going to put two and two together, and begin to think, "Maybe we were wrong. Maybe what God is doing is telling us that Christ was the one.

Satan is Enraged

So, the dragon is now livid with rage and his hatred toward the Jews. We read that he went off, and then, when this particular group fleeing from Judea has escaped him into the sanctuary in southern Jordan, he proceeds to set in motion a worldwide persecution of the Jews: "He went off to make war with the rest of her offspring." Worldwide, Jewry now comes under attack. Wherever there's a Jew, you're authorized to kill him on the spot, and whatever wealth he has becomes yours.

The focus of his anger is particularly at a certain group of people – a certain category of Jews. He says that it is against those who keep something. The word "keep" is the Greek word "tereo." "Tereo" means here "to obey." The rage of Satan is focused on a specific group of Jews – "Those who obey the commandments of God." So, here you have the orthodox Jews as well as believing Jews. You have Jews who are unsaved, but they are what we call "orthodox Jews" today. They believe the Old Testament. They take it seriously. They believe the Word of God, and they seek to keep the precepts of the Old Testament Scripture. These religious Jews who are devoted again to the Bible. That's the bugaboo for Satan. Anybody who takes the Bible seriously is a prime target for his attack.

So, he pursues these who are talking with authority, because they speak for God, because they are quoting God. There are also certain other kinds of Jews who are described as holding to the testimony of Jesus, referring to Jesus, the Messiah. This refers to born-again Jews who believe the testimony that Jesus gave about Himself as Messiah Savior.

Remember that, from the very first, there are 144,000 Jewish evangelists that God raises up at the beginning of the seven-year period. These people are immortal. You can shoot them, and they don't die. You can't do anything to them. If you try to kill them, they are capable of killing you by some means: their spoken word; fire from their mouths; or, whatever. These 144,000 are driving the antichrist crazy because they're out there testifying to salvation by the grace of God, and the returning Messiah. Many people will be saved.

So, among these will be these Jews. This will be the orthodox Jews, to begin with, who take the Bible of the Old Testament seriously, who are led to confidence in the testimony of Jesus about Himself.

So, Satan's final effort is going to be to use the antichrist to exterminate all Jews on the earth so that the mission of Christ will end in failure. Matthew 25:31-46 describe for us the ultimate purpose that God has of bringing together a group of people. We have the judgment of the gentiles, and you may read this on your own. These are individual gentiles to be judged at the end of the tribulation in order to determine whether they go alive in their bodies into the millennium. How does Christ decide that? It says that the Lord decides that on how they treated the Jews during the tribulation. So, the Jew will have a lot of protectors. They will have individual believers who say, "You're a believing Jew. You come in here. I'm going to hide you in my basement. I'm going to put you in my attic. I've got a special room with a false front. I've got to put you in there." This is just like people did in many places in Europe during the era of Nazi Germany – hiding Jews. So, they will do that. And only those who are born-again believers would be willing to hazard such a thing in those days.

So, the Lord said, "When I was hungry, you fed Me; when I was naked, you clothed Me; when I was thirsty, you gave Me something to drink; and, when I was in prison, you even had the gall to come and visit Me." These people are going to say, "I don't think I remember when we ever did such a thing for You, Lord." That's when He will say, "When you did it for one of My own (meaning the Jews in the tribulation), you did it for Me."

So, remember: when you treat a Christian nice, you're treating the Lord nice. ... To be kindly disposed toward the people of God is to be reflecting upon those whom he represents as a believer.

So, Satan's effort to exterminate the Jews is going to fail. Lots of gentiles are going to help out. They're going to protect these Jews, and then God will regather the Jews to Palestine from all over the world after the tribulation. Jeremiah 30:3-11 describes that. That has never been done. That is something which is yet in the future. But Satan is out of luck.

There is one other thing. In Revelation 12, we've completed through verse 17. You do you do understand that the Bible, when it was originally written, was not written with chapters and verses. Have you ever seen an ancient manuscript? The Bible was actually just continuous lines. You have to read it to know where the sentence begins and where it ends. They didn't want to waste any paper. They just wrote continually. So, the dividing was done later. Every now and then, the dividers made a mistake. They did one here. Revelation 13, verse 1a (that first sentence of chapter 13) should have been the Revelation 12:18: "And he stood on the sand of the seashore."

The times of the gentiles are about to end. The times of the gentiles are going into their greatest persecution of the Jews. Also, the times of the gentiles does not end until the Jews actually control Jerusalem permanently and securely. Since God is now closing in on the antichrist, and on Satan, Satan is confronted with making a major decision: "And he stood." Let me show you a little bit on how things work out. Any of you who are reading a King James Bible text will read, "And I stood on the sands of the seashore," referring to John, the writer. But some of the best texts of Scripture (the best manuscripts) have: "And he stood on the sands of the seashore," meaning "he," in the context: the dragon, Satan.

This anomaly occurs because of this: The Greek word here for "stood," in the particular form here, is "estathen." That is, "I stood." The Greek word for "he stood" is "estathe." There is different by only one letter (the trailing "n"). And it just so happens that you can see how a copyist, someplace along the line, added this "n." So, what was originally "he," referring to Satan, became "I." The reason we think that happened is because the next sentence does refer to John: "And I saw a beast." And some copyist said, "Oh-oh, this 'he' is a mistake. The word should have had an 'n' at the end," so he adds the "n" so that it'll match the next sentence: "I stood on the sand, and I saw." No, it should have been: "He stood on the sand of the seashore."

Here is the reason for this: This word "estathe" ("he stood") is in the aorist tense. It is at the point in time (which is what aorist means) after he failed to catch these fleeing Jews. It's passive. Satan is put in this position of frustration by God. It's indicative mood – a statement of fact. It actually says in the Greek: "He stood on the sand of the sea." You had the picture of Satan standing on the beach area, looking out across the Mediterranean Sea. His hand is on his chin, and he's contemplating his next move. That's what he's doing. He's standing there thinking what to do, as a counterattack, against God's frustrating his desire to kill every Jew. Somehow, he has to get down there to that southern part of Jordan, and get at those Jews, or his plan will be frustrated.

What evolves in that clever, devious mind is revealed to us in the 13th chapter of Revelation. In it, we see the plan for the organization of the world that will give Satan complete control over all economic; all religious; and, all political matters. You will be amazed to discover that that is exactly what is happening today. We Christians, living in this generation, will have a rendezvous in the air very soon with our Lord Jesus Christ, while Satan organizes his world to go into its final death throes.

What Should you do with your Life?

We close with 2 Peter 3:10-14: "But the day of the Lord." "The day of the Lord" starts with the tribulation, and goes into the millennium. The two are combined under the term "the day of the Lord." This is a technical term. The tribulation and the millennium make up the day of the Lord. You must remember that: "But the day of the Lord will come like a thief in which the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness?"

Now, we learn from prophetic Scriptures that God is going to deal with unholy conduct and with godlessness: "Looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God (which is the great white throne judgment) on account of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat. But according to His promise, we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found in Him, in peace (in temporal fellowship), spotless and blameless." Be sure that you as a Christian are very careful to keep short accounts with God on your personal sins. Stay in temporal fellowship, then you'll be at peace with Him; then you will be under His blessing; then you'll be under His provision; the He'll be able to do everything He can that He wants to do for you; and, most of all, you'll have the good sense to be putting your life into the investment of the eternal things, so that you will enrich your eternity, after all of these terrible things that you have knocked yourself out over are gone.

You see, when I get hot, and you have to permit me to do that, over teenage kids having jobs, and I don't see them in band practice, and I don't see them in club meetings, and I don't see them out here cutting the lawns in the task force, parents are at fault. You do not teach your young people, who are going to have to work all the rest of their lives, that they should substitute their personal gain for monetary material things that are going to be burned up and destroy. You teach your sons and your daughters that, first of all, they seek the righteousness of God, and He says that all of these things that you need, I will add to you. You teach your sons and daughters to enjoy their boyhood and their girlhood – not to substitute knocking themselves out in work, which they can do for all of their lives.

I had a mother come to me one time, and she had a dumb husband that thought that he had to teach his kid how to work hard. So, here's this teenage kid, and he's got a job. So, instead of being able to do the things that boys should enjoy doing, he's going to make this kid work. The guy can't come to band practice. He can't do this because he has to be out there working. She said, "Would you talk to my husband, and help him to understand that this does not make a responsible child – to make him have a job instead of serving God?"

Well, the husband that's that dumb to begin with in the first place cannot be made smart in the second place. What kind of people ought we to be? You make your decision. All of the material things are going to go to waste, but what we send upstairs to our treasury in heaven – that you will have forever.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1990

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