The Time of Jacob's Trouble, and Restoration

RV167-02

John discovers that during the seven-year tribulation era, the seemingly dead ancient Roman Empire will be restored. The empire will be revived in the form of a confederacy of 10 Mediterranean nations. These are nations which were once part of the ancient Roman Empire. The ruler of this confederacy of Western nations will be the antichrist who receives his power from Satan. People of the tribulation will know that the great power of the antichrist comes from the devil. People will be so awed by what Satan enables the antichrist to do as a political ruler, that they worship him as God. We have seen that in Revelation 13:4, they worship Satan the dragon.

Mankind also will be so awed by Satan's agent, the antichrist, that they will view him as deity because of his military invincibility. Revelation 13:4 tells us that. The antichrist will use his access to Satan's superhuman knowledge to solve the world's problems. He will therefore have what every politician today wishes that he had –s great insights into how to solve the problems of mankind through governmental agencies. The antichrist is going to be able to do that because he will have at his disposal the enormous information that Satan has, plus the fact that Satan can make things happen.

Therefore, he will therefore be able to deal with poverty; with hunger; with disease; and, with war, with vast governmental social programs that improve things dramatically in the first three-and-a-half years of his reign. The confederacy as a whole will enjoy peace and prosperity. The people of the tribulation world, during those first three-and-a-half years of the tribulation, will adore the antichrist for having improve their lot in life, just as the unemployed Germans adored Hitler for having improve their lot in life.

These early successes, during the first part of the tribulation, will cause the antichrist to begin to believe that he himself is a God, with all wisdom within himself. He only needs to look within himself to find the truth. That's what Hinduism teaches, and that's what New Age theology teaches today.

At mid-tribulation, the Bible tells us in Ezekiel 38 and 39, that Russia makes her move against Israel, and is destroyed by God himself. The United States, for a variety of reasons, will have by then been reduced to a minor economic and military power compared to the enormous structure and power base of the European Confederacy, which is forming even in our day.

At this point, the antichrist will finally be able to achieve the one-world government that man has dreamed of since Nimrod's attempt at the Tower of Babel. Revelation 13:7 tells us that he will have authority over every tribe and people and tongue and nation which is on the face of the earth. This will not be true of him during the first three-and-a-half years, but it will be during the last three-and-a-half years. Historically, God has frustrated all previous attempts at world government by a variety of ruthless and evil men: the emperors of Rome; Genghis Khan; Napoleon, Hitler; and, communist leaders. Some of them came very close, but no one has been permitted by God to bring about one-world government.

There are modern day attempts, of course, to do the same thing: the League of Nations, following World War I; and, the United Nations, following World War II, but they too have thus far failed to establish a world government. It is the goal of all the banking and business establishments today to establish a world government. The banking industry and the business world has become internationalized, so they want a world government control. The Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission (both of these agencies), which are dominant in American government, and in governments around the world, have as their goal a world unity.

The recent Gulf War, of course, with its victory, made the idea of peace and prosperity through a world government an attractive idea. Christians, however, who are well taught in doctrine, know that at mid-tribulation, God will finally permit a revived Roman Empire to be established, and a world government to come into being under the antichrist. All of the technology for the control of mankind is already available, and is largely in place. It will not be too far down the line before money will become obsolete. People will be dealing with credit cards (plastic cards), and everything that is necessary to know about them will be on that card, and without that, they will not be able to buy or to sell anything. This will be the antichrist's final control over individuals.

The mid-tribulation world government of the antichrist will be Satan's attempt to create a joyful millennial condition on this earth without God, and without His Son, Jesus Christ. But, as we find from the Word of God, what will happen is that from the tribulation on, the world will continue to deteriorate under the antichrist, and in time, he will be brought to his knees by the final bowl judgments which will be poured out upon the tribulation humanity near the end of the tribulation period.

So, in Revelation 13:5, we read (in the latter part of this verse) about this man of power, and the specific period of his power. We were told, "There was given to him about speaking arrogant words and blasphemies." Now we also read that this period of the arrogant words and of the blasphemies is an authority which has been given to him. He has not secured it on his own. The word "authority" looks like this in the great Bible: "exousia." This word here refers to the right of the antichrist to govern the world. The word does connote power so that one's will can be imposed, and one's commands will be obeyed. This is an authority which is given to the antichrist by God. It is not an authority only from Satan. Satan cannot do anything that God does not allow. It was Martin Luther who said, "When the devil is acting his worst, he is still God's devil;" meaning that God still runs the show.

So, this word makes it clear to us that there is a power and authority to execute control over humanity, and it's given to the antichrist by God. This authority was given to him to act. Here it means to act in terms of governing. It is a freedom given to the antichrist that he previously did not have; namely, to govern the whole world. Now he has unrestrained power over all mankind. He possesses maximum power to do what he pleases. It is the final expression of evil by Satan which God will, at that time, permit.

The dictatorial power of antichrist over mankind in a world government is limited to a period of 42 months. This is 42 months of 30 days each. The Bible speaks of this period in a variety of ways. It talks about this period as lasting three-and-a-half years of the seven-year tribulation period. This is the period which Matthew 24:21 refers to as the great tribulation.

The Tribulation

In Daniel 9:27, this very event is described for us: "And he, the antichrist, the man of sin who is to come, will make a firm covenant with the many for one week." "The many" are the Jewish people. "For one week" means a week of years – seven years: "But in the middle of this week of seven years, he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering." One of the things that the treaty agreement will include is that the Jews may not only rebuild their temple, but that they may now resume their full sacrificial worship system: "On the wing of the temple, he will set up an abomination which makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, until the end that is decreed is poured out on the one who makes desolate."

God has decreed the ultimate end of the antichrist. What he puts out on the wing of the temple is actually to put his statue in the holy of holies, to be the object of the Jewish worship. This is done after three-and-a-half years when the antichrist breaks the treaty. This period of political power is given to antichrist by God. It is during this time that he speaks so arrogantly and he boasts, and in which he rises to a maximum level of blasphemy against the Creator God.

This is the very thing that the apostle Paul referred in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, where Paul says, "Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come (that is, the rapture) unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of sin (of lawlessness) is revealed: the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called God or object of worship. He takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as God." This is the very thing that we have just read in Daniel – that this man sets himself up as the god that the Jews must worship.

Well, the Jews aren't going to do that. They have learned their lesson about idolatry. They will totally reject this idea. The result will be that this will set in motion the final great persecution of the Jewish people. Since Satan is devoted to the total destruction of the Jewish people, he will now move the antichrist to mount a great worldwide persecution against them. We already read about that in Revelation 12:13: "When the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth (this is mid-tribulation, when he's excluded permanently now from heaven), he persecuted the woman (that is, Israel) who gave birth to the male child (that is, Jesus Christ).

So, the antichrist, while trying to force the Jews to worship him in the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, will find that they refuse. The result will be that two-thirds of them will be killed. Revelation 12:13-17, which we previously looked at, describes how God will take care of that one-third that survives the persecution of the antichrist by taking them out into a secluded wilderness area, probably the city of Petra, and there He will provide for them.

Things will become so bad for the Jews that the Bible calls this last three-and-a-half years of the tribulation, the period of Jacob's distress. You might know that term more commonly, in the King James Version, as the time of Jacob's trouble. It comes from Jeremiah 30:7 which describes this period.

During World War II, the Germans had what they called "the final solution" of dealing with the Jewish people in order to eliminate them completely from Europe. What they did was absolutely horrendous. It is beyond human comprehension. You may have had then experience, as I have had, of going to the key concentration camp in Europe (the one established in Poland – Auschwitz), of walking through these great rooms, where you can see the suitcases with the names on them, and where these people were from.

These people were told, "We're going to transport you to the East for relocation in new territories," and they took everything that was valuable to them. There you see all of their toothbrushes; their little cans of shoe polish; their eyeglasses; and, all of the things that people take with them to go to a new location, to start a new life.

You look down the road, and there's the crematorium. Just in front of it are these huge rooms which were the shower rooms to which these people were taken and told as they enter, "Take your clothes off and hang them up here. You may take come back to get them after you've had a shower, and then we must go to supper." And they would all go there, being lulled into a false sense of security. Suddenly, they were confronted with Zyklon B, a fertilizer powder, which when exposed to air becomes lethal. This lethal gas was poured into the vents at the top. The Germans took great delight in looking through the glass peepholes as they watched these people doing what people do under those conditions would do, as their breathing system became paralyzed, and they would naturally look for: "Where is the air?" And there was the vent, and they would go to the vent, and one would climb on top of another, so, inevitably, when the gas was evacuated and the doors were opened, there would always be a pyramid of people, one climbing upon another, going to that vent where they thought the air was coming in, but which was indeed the poisonous gas.

This was brutality in its most inconceivable form. It was a work of Satan because he hates the Jewish people, because they brought Jesus Christ into the world, which has spelled Satan's defeat. He has already been finished off at the cross. The execution of his sentence into the lake of fire is what he's trying to delay.

So, this time is indeed going to be the time of Jacob's distress, but it's going to be worse than it was in Hitler's Germany, if you can conceive of that. The 42-month period is terminated by the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, when He will cast the antichrist into the lake of fire as per Revelation 19:20.

So, we're told that for 42 months, authority was given to him to act. Only the sovereign Creator God has power. God endows certain people with power for limited periods of specific time. The people of the world, particularly the rulers of the world, have never learned the principle that only God appoints political rulers. Only God puts rulers in authority governmentally over other people.

This was very clear in the case of Nebuchadnezzar, who was told by Daniel, "The God of heaven has placed you in this position of authority for a very specific purpose." But rulers don't understand that. They don't understand that to this day. This was the problem of Pontius Pilate when he stood before Jesus, and he questioned Jesus, and Jesus simply did not answer him. Pilate was amazed. ... Jesus refused to respond to Pontius Pilate, and Pilate said, "You don't answer me? I, who had the authority to put you to death?" Jesus said, "You have no authority but that which has been given to you from above." Pilate was told, "You have no authority over Me. The authority you do have is the authority that God has permitted you to have."

This is what the antichrist is going to discover. Unregenerate men like to speak about the untapped powers within man so that people are told to look within themselves for truth and answer. But men have no power – only that which God permits. Satan and his antichrist are going to find very quickly that what they have is a power shortage. So, this passage, Revelation 13:4-5 are actually describing the turning point of the tribulation era. Verses 4 and 5 move over from the first part of the tribulation to the last three-and-a-half years. The antichrist, at this point, turns against the Jews. The antichrist now claims to be God and demands worship. The antichrist heads up a world government with total control over all individuals. This is the period which the Bible, in Matthew 24:21, calls the great tribulation.

The Time of Jacob's Trouble

Following the great persecution, there will come the time of God's restoration. That's what we must remember. While the Jew will go through this terrible period, the time of restoration of the people is ahead. The average Jew today is abysmally ignorant of the Scriptures, even of his Old Testament Scriptures. He is confident that the Bible is a book of myths which people put together, but that he does not have to take them seriously. But what we are dealing with here are very explicit time periods. I remind you that when God, in the Scriptures, sets a time period, he means it to the very day. It is not about such. It is precisely to that very day.

Restoration

Let me point out to you that in Joel 2:1-11, which you may read at your leisure. You will find this passage describing God's great judgment upon the Jewish people; the sufferings that they will face; and, the fear that will be upon them. But then when you come to Joel 2:28-32, everything changes. It now goes to the end, when Christ has returned in the Second Coming, and the Jewish people are preserved and protected. This is that great passage that Peter referred to on the day of Pentecost when the Spirit of God would break loose upon the Jewish people, and they would be speaking in tongues, and in great events, the Spirit of God would take them over. The day of Pentecost was a little sample of what it's going to be like to be a human being completely and totally under the control of God the Holy Spirit. You and I have only moments of that thrill now. We just have flickers of association with what it is to have yourself totally under the control of the Spirit of God. This will be commonplace at that time.

The reason that Pentecost was not the fulfillment of this promise in Joel, as the charismatics like to say, is that, if you will run your eye over verses 30-32, you will see that this describes the period of God's great judgment upon nature, and God's destruction. He's talking about the judgments of the tribulation, and these have not yet taken place.

You will find the same thing in Zechariah 13:8. "'Here is the time of divine judgment. It would come about in all the land,' declares the Lord, 'that two parts in it will be cut off and perish. Two-thirds of the Jews will be killed by the antichrist, but the third will be left in it.'" One-third will survive.

But now look in the next verse, Zechariah13:9: "And I will bring the third part through the fire, refine them silver is refined, and test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name. I will answer them, and I will say, "They are My people," and they will say, "The Lord is My God." Here is an example again (a very clear statement in the Old Testament) that the Jews are going to have a terrible time at a certain period in history, namely the last three-and-a-half years of the tribulation, when it will be the worst time of their existence that they've ever had, and that it'll be a time when two-thirds of them are going to be killed. By today's figures, that would amount to 4 million being killed; and, 2 million will survive.

Romans 11:26 speaks about all of Israel being saved, by which the apostle Paul means that they will, as a nation, be preserved from the persecution of the antichrist so that he will not totally destroy them.

In Jeremiah 31:33-34, we have the promise of God that, when Christ returns and saves the people from the attacks of the antichrist, that the Old Testament covenant of Moses will now be set aside, and the Jews will experience a new covenant: "'But this is the covenant which I will make with the House of Israel after those days (after the tribulation days),' declares the Lord. 'I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.'" There will be no more looking on the Torah (on a bunch of parchments), externally written. Now the Word of God will be automatic, because it'll be on your heart. What does that mean? It is up in the mind, and stored in the human spirit. This is exactly the way we operate today under the power system of knowing doctrine and staying in temporal fellowship, with the Word of God flowing up to guide us.

Forgive and Forget

Then there is that precious statement which applies to us: "Their sin I will remember no more." When God forgives a sin that you confess, to return to temporal fellowship, He has forgotten it. It is a very great sin for you to have a guilt complex about anything you've ever done, or anything you will ever do – the worst thing that has ever been in your experience. It should be wiped out of your mind. You should never think about it again. You should treat it the way God treats it. Don't be a chain-smoking type of sinner who confesses the sin, and then has guilt over it, and thereby relights your intimidation and your personal conviction so that you're out of fellowship again. It relights your guilt complex. When God forgives, God forgets, because that's how you have to do if you forgive.

So, you may like to go around telling your friends, "Well, I'll forgive you for what you did, but I'll never forget it." When you say that, you haven't forgiven, because forgiveness means, "I have forgotten it."

Now, this is the picture. The antichrist comes down with both feet on this people. It's in the latter part of the tribulation. They will not worship his image. This is what Revelation 13:5 is referring to – that for 42 months, he'll have total authority over all the world, and the Jews will be at his mercy. But I want you to remember that the Bible repeatedly says, "Yes, God is going to bring the punishment upon the Jews that He has instituted as discipline upon them for murdering their Messiah. But when it's over, a number of them will be preserved to go alive into the millennium in their normal physical bodies. These will not be glorified bodies like we will have (we, who are part of the church – the body of Christ), but they will be in their normal physical bodies to make up the population of the nation of Israel in the millennium.

Now, the millennium is going to be set up. Obviously, anything as dramatic as a millennial government, with Jesus Christ as the head, and we (the church) administering, is going to take some time to shift gears. I want to point out a passage of Scripture to you before some critic comes along and says, "Hey, I found a mistake in the Bible." I'm referring to Daniel 12:11. We've already talked about the fact that the Word of God has said that the period of judgment upon the Jewish people is going to last for 1,260 days. That, divided by 30 days per month, equals three-and-a-half prophetic years. The Jewish calendar had 30-day months. They had to add days for certain holidays to make it come out to 365 days.

Daniel 12:11 is giving the final close down of what God is going to do. From the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished, to the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days. From the time that the antichrist sets up his image (that abomination) in the temple, it is going to be 1,290 days. What do you have? You have 30 extra days in there. This is not a mistake in the Scripture. It is telling us that after the tribulation period is officially over, there's going to be a period of 30 days that God has allotted to do something in. And I suspect that what He's going to do in that 30-day period, is to judge those who survived the great tribulation. There will be a mass of saved and unsaved humanity that is alive on this earth at the end of the tribulation, when Jesus Christ returns to this earth. The first thing He's going to do is determine who is qualified and authorized to enter the millennial kingdom; that is, whether you're saved or not.

In Matthew 25:31-46, you have the description of separating the sheep from the goats. That applies to gentiles. The sheep are the saved gentiles who came out of the tribulation. The goats are the unsaved gentiles who came out of the tribulation. He sends the sheep into the millennial kingdom. He puts the goats to death, and they go into Hades.

In Ezekiel 20:34-38, you have this same judgment, but now as it applies to the Jewish people, God has unsaved Jews and saved Jews who came out of the tribulation. He says that He'll cause them, "To pass under the rod;" that is, the rod of His judgment. And the saved Jews will be put in one category. The unsaved will be put into another category. The saved Jews will be ushered by the angels into the millennial kingdom, and the unsaved Jews will be taken out in the wilderness and put to death. They will enter Hades, and that's where they will remain for 1,000 years of the millennial kingdom, until they are resurrected and restored to their bodies to enter the lake of fire. So, this accounts for the 30 extra days. These are the days while God performs the judgment and separation of Jews and gentiles in order to determine who goes into the millennium.

However notice verse 12: "How blessed is he who keeps waiting, and attains to 1,335 days." What you have in this verse is an additional factor of 45 more days beyond the separation of the saved and unsaved. Here again, God said, "Blessed are those of you who come through to this extra 45 days. Why does God need another extra 45 days after having determined who goes into the millennium and who doesn't?

Well, I expect that this time is going to be needed to organize the world as the kingdom of God on the face of the earth, with Jerusalem as the capital city, of Jesus Christ as the King of Kings. What he has to do is take every nation on earth and appoint rulers. He has to take every little state and appoint rulers. He has to put the whole bureaucracy in place. Every little village and hamlet has to have administrators. All through the kingdom of God on this earth, there are going to be those who rule with Christ. And the people who are going to do that administering, in part, are those who are sitting here right now. This is where the church comes in.

All of you are going to become politicians. You are going to become bureaucrats. So, those of you who have been making cracks about politicians and bureaucrats might want to rethink that, for your own destiny is headed in that direction. You are going to run the world: "OK, who's going to get Dallas? Who wants Fort Worth? Who wants Orlando? Who wants Disney World? All of these places; all of these great metropolitan centers; and, all of the nations of the world have to have a ruler. During this 45-day period, the Lord Jesus Christ is going to put in place His governmental organization. Then the millennial kingdom will start rolling along. Everybody in it will initially be born again. Christians will finally realize what the poor postmillennialist are trying to realize. The post-millennialists say that the world is going to get better and better, and that Jesus Christ will then return, and Christians will be in charge. Well, Christians are going to be in charge of the world, but not because it gets better. It is because it blows apart under the final attempts of the antichrist and Satan to have a millennium without God.

The thing that will then happen is that Jesus Christ will fulfill what has been promised in Acts 1:9-11 at the point of His ascension: "And after he had these things, He (Jesus) was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their site. Timothy. And as they were gazing intently into the sky, while He was departing, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them (angels). And they also said." They were speaking in the tongues of angels. The tongues of angels is the language of people: "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven."

The Judgment Seat of Christ

Rewards

The Second Coming of Christ

In Acts 2:33-36, this is stressed by Peter in his sermon on the day of Pentecost. Peter said, "Therefore, having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear. For it was not David who ascended into heaven, but He Himself says, 'The Lord said to My Lord, 'Sit at My right hand.''" Quoting from the Old Testament, David said, "The Lord (God the Father said to my Lord (the Messiah, Jesus Christ), 'Sit at My right hand until I make enemies of footstool for Your feet (until I have finished off the antichrist in his world).' Therefore, let all the House of Israel know for certain that God has made him (Jesus Christ) both Lord and Christ (this Jesus whom you crucified)."

And boy, that was a dagger in the heart of the religious leaders who were paying attention, and to the Jews who had followed their leaders, to realize what they had done. They had murdered their Messiah.

However, God's plan goes through. While they have done that, God is bringing out of this world a new body of believers – believers who will be so intimate with Jesus Christ (like a husband is with his wife), as no other saints have ever been. These will be saints who will be aristocrats of all the saints of the ages. They will be called the royal family of God. They will have privileges that the Jew never dreamed of having. They will forever be united to Jesus Christ in His rule and in His authority. They will be husband and wife.

It was necessary for Jesus to go to heaven to share His Father's throne, and many Scriptures describe that period. And the reason for this was that this new body of believers called Christians that he was forming (the church), required a special system of power to be able to survive in the devil's world. So, in John 14:16-17, Jesus enunciates that it is necessary for someone else to come on the scene from the Trinity to handle this part of the need. He had done his part in providing salvation. The power system now was the work of the Holy Spirit.

John 14:16-17: "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever." The Greek word "another" is the word "allos." There is another word for "another" in the Greek language. It is called "heteros." You know what "heteros" would mean. It means different. It is interesting that God the Holy Spirit is so exact. Jesus said, "I'm going to ask the Father to give you another (an 'allos') helper," meaning one just "like Myself," not a different kind of helper, "but one who is God as I am God. I am shifting gears in My presence to heaven." He is going to shift gears to come in His presence here on this earth, because He is going to be with you forever, because he's going to indwell every believer: "That is the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not hold Him or know Him. But you know Him because He abides with you."

Then, wonder of wonders, a Jew really staggered at this next phrase: "He will be in you." No Jew could conceive of God living in him in his physical body – God walking with you every moment of the day. And if all the connections are right, and the temporal fellowship status is there, you get that moment of glimmer – that exhilarating experience of knowing what it is to be controlled by God the Holy Spirit. So, every thought is on target; every decision is right; every move is right; and. every action is exactly the best of all the millions of actions you could be taking. The Holy Spirit came when Jesus left in the ascension to be seated at the Father's right hand.

The Day of Pentecost

The Holy Spirit

You may sit in church; you may be instructed; you may read a book; or, you may listen to a tape, but if you really learn spiritual phenomena, I can assure you that you did not learn it from the communicator. The communicator is simply the channel of the information, but the learning of it, so that it's usable to you, comes because of an act of God the Holy Spirit upon you. That's why we say, "Don't sit in church and start listening to a sermon unless you have cleared yourself with God, and you've got the channel of communication open. You will very rapidly forget; you will misinterpret; you will misalign; and, you misuse what you hear if God the Holy Spirit is not teaching you what you are hearing from the pulpit.

In John 14:25-26, this teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit is related to us. Jesus said, "These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you, but the helper (the Holy Spirit), whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to you remembrance all that I said to you." Once you have learn a doctrinal principle; you are positive to it; you accept it as a truth of God; and, it is stored in your human spirit. Then when you need it, God the Holy Spirit pushes the button, and up it comes. When the crisis come, up comes the information. When a decision needs to be made, if the information is stored, that principle will come up, and you will be guided.

If you describe this to the average person of the world, they'll think you're crazy. They don't have the foggiest notion of what you're talking about. If you talk about this to most Christians, they'll think you're really weird. But I'm telling you, God did not send His Son, who had the humanity that we have, minus the sin nature, into this world without providing a way for Him to survive so that He did not make the same mistake that the first Adam made. The reason Jesus Christ, in His humanity, was successful where Adam was not, was that God provided this marvelous system.

The Key to a Victorious Life for the Christian

We close with John 15:26: "When the Helper comes whom I will send to you from the Father (That is the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father), He will bear witness of Me." We learn about the Lord, and we learn the principles of God's mind and His ways through the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Power for the Christian

I'm getting a lot of reports (more than usual) from many of you, as you come (kind of excited to tell me) of doors witnessing opportunity that God has given you. They seem to be out of the clear blue, no, it's not out of the clear blue. It is because you are prepared; you have temporal fellowship; you have information; and, God is not going to let you sit around sitting on that when the world needs to know it. All of a sudden, you're out of some social event, and somebody brings up the question or brings up an issue, and you give them the testimony that they need: how to be saved; the authority of the Bible; or, how to enjoy eternity in God, enriched by a life of service. They may reject it. They may show their ignorance. Have you lost anything? Not on your life. You have stored a big chunk of rewards in heaven by having made that testimony under this condition. The people who rejected will remember someday (in the lake of fire) that testimony you gave them, and which they passed off lightly.

God is going to use us to get out the word. This is the system that works. Now you can see why it is that the antichrist is so determined to blaspheme God, to discredit God; and, to ridicule God. But please remember that he has 42 months to do his worst. And at the end of that, it's all over.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1991

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