Meditation for the week of June 17, 2007
Matthew 24:3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world (age)?
I have good news and I have bad news. The bad news is that things in this world are going to get worse before they get better. The good news is that this has been known by God from an eternity past and our current situation has not caught Him by surprise. He has even got an “escape plan†in place for Christians to save them from the awful days that are coming.
I was sent an email recently that detailed the plans of terrorists groups that are coming into our country as illegal immigrants. Supposedly plans are in place to detonate briefcase size nuclear devices. In addition, gangs are preparing to murder multitudes of our school children. The purpose of these terrorists groups is to destroy the United States as a nation. Now whether that will all happen the way we are being told it will happen, I don’t know. But I do know that things like that are predicted in the Bible.
In our passage, the disciples were told not to be deceived into believing that the Lord had come when He had not. The signs of the Lord’s return would include wars and rumors of wars. Nations will be fighting one another and there will be famines, disease and earthquakes. And according to the passage, this is just the beginning. It appears that these things happen just before the Lord returns to set up His kingdom, but it would seem that things like these things are happening now. People are looking for a man-made solution to these problems and they are not finding them. As a result, men’s hearts will fail them for fear during this period (Luke 21:26). This is a time when God’s wrath is going to be poured out on this earth (Revelation 6:16-17) and specifically on the Jewish people (Luke 21:23).
The good news is that those who are saved have been delivered from the wrath to come (1 Thessalonians 1:10). What does it mean to be saved? It means to have come in simple trusting faith to a loving God who willingly punished His Son for the sins we have committed. The wrath of God is presently abiding on the unbeliever, but the believer has been made right with God and will not be judged or condemned (John 3:18).
While we certainly can’t say for sure that the present state of affairs in the world are the events that precede the Lord’s coming, they are certainly like them. I am sure that in 70 A.D. when Titus destroyed Jerusalem and the temple, people thought this was the beginning of the end of this age. But it wasn’t. I am sure that the holocaust had many people convinced that this was the beginning of the end. But it wasn’t. But the end of the age is coming and when it comes it will be worse than anything that has happened on this earth yet. Will there be nuclear war? Probably. Will there be weapons of mass destruction? Most assuredly. Will there be a concerted effort on the part of Satan to cause hatred and to kill and to destroy? Certainly. But the Christian is prepared. If we die we go to be with Christ which is far better (Philippians 1:23). If we are alive when God begins to pour out his wrath, we will be delivered from it by the catching away of the Saints (1 Thessalonians 4:17).
We live in scary times. We can be prudent and try to find military or political solutions, but ultimately the only way to be prepared is to have faith in the One who has born our sins in his own body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24). While we may need to prepare to fight terrorism, what we really need to do is to prepare to meet God (Amos 4:12). If Al Quida and other terrorist groups cause us to think about where we are going to spend eternity, then they will have done the world a service. They will have been used of God to save even though Satan is trying to use them to destroy.
Bruce Collins