They shall also build houses, but not inhabit
them, and they shall plant vineyards, but not
drink the wine thereof.
The great day of the Lord is near.
It is near, and hasteth greatly, even the
voice of the day of the Lord.
The mighty man shall cry there bitterly.
That day is a day of wrath, a
day of trouble and distress, a day of
wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and
gloominess, a day of cloud and thick darkness,
a day of the trumpet and alarm against
the fenced cities and against the high tower.
But I will bring distress upon men, that
they shall walk like blind men, because they
have sinned against the Lord, and their blood
shall be poured out as dust, and their
flesh as the dung.
Neither their silver nor their gold shall be
able to deliver them in the day of
the Lord's wrath, but the whole land shall
be devoured by the fire of his jealousy,
for he shall make even the seedy riddance
of all them that dwell in the land.
May God add his blessing to the reading
of this portion of his word.
We are speaking on the subject of God's
picture of the tribulation.
Men everywhere have an instinctive fear and dread
of that visitation of God's wrath which is
to be poured out upon the earth.
Even men who have little or no knowledge
of the word of God, and little or
no knowledge of the revelation in the prophetic
scriptures, seem instinctively and inherently to have the
conviction that God must judge this earth because
of its wickedness.
When one looks back through the pages of
secular history, as far back as recorded history
goes, we have a continuous and unbroken record
of rebellion against God.
Civilization after civilization and nation after nation has
walked in the way of godlessness and unrighteousness,
and men instinctively and conscientiously expect and anticipate
some visitation of God's wrath upon this earth
because of their iniquity.
And yet, men are not clear in that
teaching of the word of God that unfolds
God's program and God's plan in the tribulation
period.
Now, in the time that is allotted to
us this evening, I'm going to try to
cover in a telescopic way the panorama of
that tribulation period to try to give you
a bird's-eye picture of how the events
in God's program fit together for that time.
In successive messages, we are going to deal
with some of the specific things revealed in
the tribulation period, such as the federated states
of Europe, the rise of communism, the rise
of Russian communism, the campaign of Armageddon.
These and related subjects that all are a
part of the doctrine of the tribulation will
be dealt with in successive studies in some
detail, but I want to try to relate
the tribulation period to the general panorama of
the ages as we look this evening in
God's picture of the tribulation.
Now, because they say that one picture is
worth 10,000 words, and I have a
good many thousand words I'd like to say
tonight on this subject, I'm going to try
to resort to a few lines in a
draft to try to get the scope of
God's prophetic program before your minds as we
would start with the talk of Christ.
I realize this is going to be a
little difficult for those of you that are
in the back to see all this next
time, come a little bit earlier, for you
don't know when I may do this again.
But, after the death of Christ, we find
that our Lord continued on earth for a
brief period before he himself was taken up
into glory, and then on the day of
Pentecost, or 50 days after the Passover, the
Holy Spirit came to take up his residence
in the church which is his body.
And this present age of which we are
now a part had its beginning on the
day of Pentecost.
Too long to write out will abbreviate it.
And this age has been going on, and
we'll just break it because we do not
know its length.
It has continued so far, something over 1
,900 years.
How much longer this present age will continue,
we do not know because Scripture has not
revealed to us the time of the next
prophesied event.
If those of you who were here last
week will recall, it is the coming of
the Lord into the air to take up
all the resurrected and living saints of this
age to himself.
We call this event the Rapture of the
Church, or the Translation of the Church.
From the First Thessalonians 4, we will all
be caught up.
The dead in Christ shall rise first, the
living ones will be lifted up and glorified,
and together we shall be taken into his
presence ever to be with the Lord.
That event of the rapture will remove every
single believer from off the face of the
earth.
Think of it!
Not a single believer left on the earth
when this rapture occurs.
The only ones left on the earth are
the unregenerate, the unsaved, the unredeemed.
But there will begin, at the Rapture of
the Church, a brief period that will last
for seven years, which we call the Tribulation
Period.
Now, at some future time, we may be
able to study the prophecy of Daniel that
tells us the length of this Tribulation Period,
but I am not going to go into
it this evening and ask that you just
accept this fact for the time being that
the Tribulation Period will last for seven years.
At the end of the Tribulation Period, the
Lord who has been in the air will
come back not to the air this time,
because it is a rapture, but he will
come back to the earth.
This we call the second advent, or the
second coming of Christ.
And at that time, he will institute a
kingdom on earth that will last for a
thousand years that we call the Millennial Kingdom.
Now, we are not concerned this evening with
a period between Sunday 12th and the rapture,
this present church age or the age of
grace as we sometimes speak of it.
We are not concerned with the events of
the rapture.
We spent an hour together last Sunday night
speaking of that.
We are not concerned with the second coming
of Christ to the earth, nor the Millennial
reign.
We will have messages on that later.
But we are concerned with this one period
that we call the period of the Tribulation.
Now, would you let me take just this
section, just this much out of here, the
seven-year period, and I want to enlarge
on that period.
This period, beginning at the rapture and concluding
at the second advent of Christ to the
earth, is to be divided into two equal
parts.
Now, if I remember my arithmetic, half of
seven is three and a half, and three
and a half, and the Tribulation period is
seven-year period, will be divided into these
two three-and-a-half-year periods.
The period in its totality is called the
Tribulation period.
In the Old Testament, it is called in
Jeremiah 20, verse 7, the time of Jacob's
trouble.
It is called the time of indignation in
Isaiah 26, verse 20, and we could give
many other names applied to it in the
word of God.
Then we find that this last half is
spoken of by our Lord in Matthew 24,
verse 15 and following as the Great Tribulation.
So, we have the whole period referred to
as the Tribulation period, seven-and-a-half
years of tribulation subdivided into two parts, and
the last half is called the time of
Great Tribulation.
Now, I ought to remind you that the
word tribulation, as it is used in the
word of God, is used in a technical
and a non-technical sense.
When the word tribulation is used in a
non-technical sense, it speaks of any trial
or suffering through which an individual may go.
When it is used in its technical sense
in prophecy, it refers to this seven-year
period, the tribulation period of unprecedented judgment and
wrath from God.
Now, in the prophet Zephaniah, which we read,
we find a number of descriptions given to
us of this seven-year period.
The prophet in verse 14 is speaking of
the Day of the Lord.
That is a technical term that you students
of prophecy, and now that you're here, you're
all students of prophecy, that's a term that
you ought to get in your mind, and
the Day of the Lord is that extended
period of time that begins at the rapture
of the church and goes all the way
through to the end of the millennial age
on earth.
It includes the tribulation period and the time
of blessings of the millennial age that follows.
Now, when you read Zephaniah 1 verse 15,
it is obvious the Day of the Lord
there is not a reference to the thousand
years of a millennium.
That is a period of righteousness, and peace,
and justice, and equity, and full provision.
He is speaking of the seven years of
the tribulation period, and I want you again
to notice the words used concerning that tribulation.
It is a day of wrath, a day
of trouble, distress, wasteness, desolation, darkness, gloominess, clouds
and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet
and alarm against offensive cities.
That has to do with warfare, and I
will bring distress upon men, their blood shall
be poured out.
So, that's not a very inviting picture, is
it?
It's not one that we would welcome or
anticipate, and let me present this fact to
you.
That you can go through every passage in
the word of God dealing with the tribulation
period, whether it be in the Old Testament
or the New Testament, and you will not
find one single word that in any way
alleviates the suffering, and the misery, and the
wrath of God that will be poured out
upon the earth in that period.
There is not the slightest ray of hope
that this period is going to be changed
or altered, for it is the day of
the visitation of God's wrath.
Now, I want you to see its description
in the New Testament, and several passages that
we will look at there.
Will you turn first of all into Matthew
chapter 25, where the Lord Jesus Christ himself
gives us a picture of this period.
I'm sorry, Matthew chapter 24.
24 verse 21, For
then shall be great tribulation, such as was
not since the beginning of the world to
this time no, nor ever shall be, and
except those days should be shortened, but I
believe that word should be terminated, except those
days should be terminated, there should no flesh
be saved, but for the elect's sake those
days shall be terminated, or brought to an
end, by the act of God himself.
And there, the Lord Jesus Christ so describes
the tribulation period that he says that if
God did not bring that period to an
end, but were to let it go on,
man would absolutely destroy every living thing that
walks upon the face of the earth.
But because God has a program for kindreds
and peoples and tongues and nations in the
millennial age, God is going to terminate that
period so that man cannot wipe himself off
the face of the earth by his own
destructive capacity and his capacity for evil.
But the Lord says in verse 21, It
shall be a time of tribulation such as
the world has never seen before.
Now would you go over to the book
of the revelations, please, and we will see
some of the descriptions given to us by
John.
We will just use several scattered verses to
emphasize the character of this period.
And I want you to look, first of
all, in Revelation chapter 6 and verse 16.
We'd better read verse 15 to begin with.
The kings of the earth, and the great
men, and the rich men, and the chief
captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman,
and every free man, hid themselves in the
dens and in the rocks and in the
mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks,
Fall on up, and hide it from the
face of him that is on the throne,
and from the wrath of the Lamb.
For the great day of his wrath is
come, whom shall be able to stand?
And there we find the greatest volume of
prayer that has ever gone up from the
face of the earth is ascending, but it's
not ascending to Almighty God.
It's a plea and a prayer to the
rocks and the mountains to fall on them
and destroy life.
Why?
Because of the fierceness of the wrath of
God that is being poured out upon the
world.
Then again, when you look in the Revelation
and chapter 15, well, we'll go back into
chapter 14, verse 19.
The angel comes to the harvest of the
earth, and we read in Revelation 14, 19,
The angel thrust in his sickle into the
earth, and gathered the vine of the earth,
and cast it into the great winepress of
the wrath of God.
And the winepress was soddened about the city,
and blood came out of the winepress, even
unto the horses' bridles.
By the faith of the thousand six hundred
furlongs, or roughly 250 miles, it is the
time of the wrath of God.
15, chapter 1, I saw another time in
heaven great and marvelous seven angels, having the
seven last plates, for in them is filled
up the wrath of God.
Look at the end of verse 4, Thou
art holy, all nations shall come and worship
before thee, for thy judgments are made manifest.
In verse 7, one of the four beasts
gave unto the seven angels seven golden vials
full of the wrath of God, to live
as forever and ever.
And so you can go on.
Chapter 16, verse 1, I heard a great
voice out of the temple saying to the
seven angels, Go your way, and pour out
the vials of the wrath of God upon
the earth.
Now, over and over in the New Testament
prophetic book, we find this period, the period
of the tribulation, called the period of the
wrath of God.
That is the scriptural designation of the character
of this period.
Darkness, judgment, pain, suffering, warfare, bloodshed, and above
everything else, the divine visitation of the wrath
of God upon men.
Now, when we go back in the book
of Revelation, we have some very clear descriptions
of events that will take place.
Let me just briefly try to point out
some of these to you, and will you
look first of all in Revelation chapter 6.
Revelation chapter 6, and in Revelation 6 you
find there an angel has a book, or
let me put it this way, that the
one who sits on the throne has a
scroll in his hand.
It has been rolled up and then sealed
on the end, and then rolled a few
more times, and sealed on the end again,
and rolled and sealed seven times it has
been sealed.
And they watch as someone opens those seals,
and we find that the Lord Jesus Christ
himself opens this seven-sealed book.
Now, in these seals, we have the first
unfolding of the judgment of God poured out
upon the earth, and in Revelation 6 verse
1 and 2, you see a rider on
a white horse.
There is a great four-piece movement that
brings the world under the authority of a
king.
We'll have more to say about him when
we study the revised Roman Empire or the
beast.
Then in verse 3 and 4, he opens
the second seal, and he sees the rider
on the red horse, and it is explained
he takes peace from the earth, they should
heal one another.
Worldwide warfare.
In verse 5 and 6, the third seal,
and there you have worldwide famine, poverty, and
physical war.
And in verse 7 and 8, you have
the fourth seal, which is the visitation of
death that sweeps across the face of the
earth because of the warfare, the famine, and
the pestilence that follow the famine and the
warfare.
Now then, our Lord is describing the events
of the first three and a half years
in this chapter in Revelation, and is describing
there the great movement in that three and
a half year period which God will use
to bring judgment upon the earth.
Will you, for just a moment please, turn
from the book of Revelation back into Matthew
24, and we'll have the Lord's word in
Matthew 24, beginning at verse 4.
The Lord himself describes this three and a
half year period, or the first half of
this time of Jacob's troubles of tribulation.
And we read in Matthew 24, Jesus answered
and said unto them, Take ye that no
man deceive you, for many shall come in
my name, saying, I am Christ.
That's the rider on the white horse of
Revelation 6.
And ye shall hear wars and rumors of
wars.
That's the rider on the red horse of
Revelation 6.
Nations shall rise against nations, kingdoms against kingdoms.
There shall be famines and earthquakes in divers
places.
That's the third rider, the rider on the
black horse of Revelation 6.
And all these, the Lord says in verse
8, are the beginning of sorrows, or literally,
the beginning of labor pains, or birth pains.
That the events of these three and a
half years are the false labor pains that
are the forerunners of the birth of the
new age that's going to be instituted on
the earth when the Lord Jesus Christ comes.
The beginning of travail, the beginning of sorrow.
And so, under those figures are a four
-feet movement that brings the world under a
one-world government, the one-world religion, and
then this world-wide war and pestilence and
famine and death is a description given to
us of the first visitation of God's wrath
during the tribulation period.
And now will you turn with me, please,
to a second passage in the book of
the Revelation, and this time in Revelation chapter
8 to 10.
For in those chapters, we have John's description
of the events of the last three and
a half years of the tribulation period, and
there in that symbolical language, John speaks of
the visitation of God's wrath poured out upon
the earth during that second half of the
tribulation.
In verse, this time, instead of portraying it
to us under the figure of a seal
scroll, it's under the figure of trumpets that
blow to sound an alarm.
In the first trumpet, we find that there
is hail and fire mingled with blood.
They were cast upon the earth, the third
part of the trees and all the grasses
burned up.
There seems to be a visitation of judgment
upon nature that is a sign of God's
wrath upon the earth.
In verse 8 and 9, the second trumpet,
a great mountain like a volcano erupts into
the sea, and the third part of the
sea becomes blood.
That it upsets the whole course of precipitation
in nature so that there is famine and
want and death as a result.
In verse 10 and 11, the third trumpet
sounds, and it sees as it were a
great star falling from heaven, and it falls
upon the rivers and the fountains of waters,
and the source of refreshment and life is
turned to poison, and many men die because
of the waters that were made bitter or
poisonous.
Verse 12 and 13, the fourth trumpet sounds,
and there there are signs in heaven so
that the third part of the sun, moon,
and stars are darkened.
There is a supernatural darkness over the face
of the earth, divine visitation of wrath.
You go into chapter 9, you have the
fifth trumpet in the first 12 verses, and
there you find the locusts that come to
disseminate death over the face of the earth.
And then in chapter 9, verse 13 to
21, you have the sixth trumpet where a
marching army of, verse 16, 200,000 or
200 million men marches across the face of
the earth to destroy one-third of the
world's population is before that marching army.
Now, I confess to you that these chapters
describe events so gigantic and so suspenseful that
we can hardly conceive of them, and yet
that is God's picture of his visitation of
wrath as it will be poured out upon
the earth during the last half of this
tribulation period.
And as bad as that is, it isn't
all, for you have to turn over to
chapter 16, and here, under the figure of
emptying out vials or bowls, once again the
wrath of God is poured out upon the
earth.
Now, as I understand it, in Revelation chapter
16, we have a series of events that
take place within just a very short time,
perhaps within just a few days, at the
very end of the tribulation period.
While the seals covered three and a half
years, and the trumpets covered three and a
half years, these vials seem to cover just
a few days as a central sign of
God's wrath and God's judgment poured out upon
the earth at the close of the tribulation
period.
You will notice that chapter 16 is very
much like chapter 8, in that you have
the pouring out of a vial upon the
earth.
Verse 2, it became a sore upon men
which had the mark of the beast, like
a great running, festering sore upon the body
of every man who gave allegiance to the
beast and the false prophet.
In verse 3, the sea again is turned
to blood and brings death worldwide.
In verse 4, the rivers and waters are
turned to blood.
In verse 8, the sun becomes so hot
that it scorches men with fire.
Evidently, the relationship between the sun and this
earth is so altered that the sun consumes
all that lives upon the face of the
earth.
In verse 10, we have the judgment upon
all those who were in the kingdom of
the beast under the headship of the federated
states of Europe, and they gnawed their tongues
in pain and blasphemed the God of heaven
because of their pain and their sore.
Then, in the sixth vial, we find again
a great marching army that comes from the
east to march across toward Palestine, and then
finally, with the sounding of the seventh vial,
is the close of the wrath of God.
We have gone very briefly through these, and
frankly, I don't expect you to remember it
all.
I am trying to create an impression.
I'm trying to make your spine crawl.
Why?
Because we have no concept of the holiness
of God, the unholiness of man, and God's
attitude toward rebellion and rebellious ones.
And these prophecies were given to us that
we might come to understand something of God's
hatred for sin, God's judgment upon sinners and
upon the sin of man's sin when men
reject Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
And, once again, may I remind you that
no matter where you go in the world,
where these events are portrayed to us, there
is not given the slightest word of comfort
or of hope that this period will be
alleviated.
It is not a mixture of good and
evil, of wrath and of blessing, but it
is the time of God's curse upon the
earth.
Taking something of the character, something of the
description of the tribulation period, we briefly want
to touch on another vital subject, because I
know that this thought is in your minds
as you're asking, why would God do such
a thing as that?
You are sitting there thinking, if he is
that God who has poured out wrath upon
the earth, he must not be as God
of love.
Why is God going to judge the world?
I want to deal with that under several
headings.
If God is going to judge the world,
first of all, or pour out this visitation
of wrath, first of all in reference to
Israel, second in reference to Gentile nations, third
in reference to God's program for evil, and
fourth in respect to sinners themselves.
We don't have much time left to cover
those four points, do we?
But here goes.
Let's see what we can do.
When the Lord Jesus Christ came into this
world, his first spoken word was, a repent
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
The Lord Jesus Christ came unto his own
that he might call his own nation, his
own people, the nation Israel, to repentance.
Call them from their idolatry and their godlessness
back to God himself.
The nation Israel watched with interest as the
Lord Jesus Christ lived his life.
They followed him avidly as he worked miracle
after miracle and sign after sign.
They listened as words flowed from his lips
that revealed to them that he had come
to reveal God to them, that he was
not of human origin but was of divine
origin.
And when the Lord Jesus Christ began to
express his message home, and to remind these
people that they will have no fellowship with
him and no part with him unless they
turn from their sins, they said, we love
our sin, we love our position, we love
our prominence, we love our outward ritual and
form and our observance of the laws that
pleases us.
We don't want this man to reign over
us.
And they accused him of being a traitor
before Pilate, and Pilate condemned him to death
because he had presented himself as Jesus of
Nazareth, the king of the Jews.
Because God had sent his son, the son
of David, and the son of God to
reign, and the nation Israel had sinned that
willful sin, rejecting Jesus Christ.
The Lord Jesus himself has to announce judgment
upon the nation Israel, and I am reading
in Matthew 23 verse 37, as our Lord
for the last time stands and looks over
that city of Jerusalem before he is led
into it to be crucified.
He says, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that showest
the prophets and stone of them that are
sent unto thee, how often would I have
gathered thy children together, even as a hen
gathers her chickens under her wings, and ye
would not.
Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.
Will you underline that phrase, please?
For it gives to us the key to
Israel's present day suffering, and the key to
the purpose of God for Israel in the
tribulation period.
Your house is left unto you desolate, for
I say unto you, ye shall not see
me henceforth till ye shall say, Blessed is
he that cometh in the name of the
Lord.
Look again, if you will, into the book
of Luke, in Luke chapter 21 and verse
24.
The second time the Lord announces judgment upon
Israel, as he says that they shall fall
by the edge of the sword and shall
be led away captive into all nations, and
Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles
until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.
So from the year 70, when Titus, with
his Roman legions, marched into Palestine, until Jerusalem
shall be delivered at the end of the
tribulation period, God is going to bring judgment
upon the nation Israel because they rejected the
Messiah which God sent unto them.
The sin of Israel was not a sin
of ignorance.
They did not reject Christ because they didn't
know who he was.
They didn't reject Christ because they were deceived
and blinded into thinking that he was not
the Son of God.
They did not reject him because there was
reasonable doubt.
They rejected Jesus Christ as their Messiah after
they had had the full evidence, after they
knew the evidence, and they willfully rejected that
evidence.
And God holds them guilty nationally of that
sin of rejecting Christ, and God says that
he is going to purge out a people
for himself.
Now, we have to get one more passage
as we go back into the prophecy of
Ezekiel.
The prophecy of Ezekiel, where Ezekiel tells what
God is going to do for the nation
Israel.
Ezekiel chapter 20, and I want to begin
reading in verse 33.
"'Thy lives, saith the Lord God, surely with
a mighty hand, with a stretched out arm,
and with fury poured out, will I rule
over you.
I will bring you out from the people,'
that is, out from the Gentiles, "'and will
gather you out of the countries wherein you
are scattered, with a mighty hand, and with
a stretched out arm, and with fury poured
out,' there's that word fury again, "'and I
will bring you into the wilderness of the
people, and there will I plead with you
face to face, like as I pleaded with
your fathers in the wilderness of the land
of Egypt, so will I plead with you,
saith the Lord God,' now notice these words,
"'and I will cause you to pass under
the rod,' the rod always speaks of judgment
in the Old Testament here, "'and I will
bring you into the bond of the covenant,
and I will purge out from among you
the rebels, and them that transgress against me,
and they shall not enter the land of
Israel, and ye shall know that I am
the Lord.' So what we find is, in
the first place, God has a program for
Israel, that during this period of the tribulation,
he's going to bring this judgment upon the
nation Israel, and many in that nation will
turn to God, will confess their sins, will
accept Jesus Christ as Savior, and when Jesus
Christ impacts the earth to institute his Millennial
reign, they will go into that earthly Millennial
kingdom, they will have been brought to God
because God has poured out his judgment upon
the nation.
Then there is a second reason, and that
is in reference to the Gentile nations.
Back at the time of Nebuchadnezzar, the Gentile
nations captured the land of Palestine.
The land of Palestine has been under a
succession of Gentile rulers from the time of
Nebuchadnezzar more than 500 years before Christ until
the present day.
Palestine was ruled over by the Babylonians, and
then by the Medo-Persians, and then by
the Grecians, and then under many different forms
of the Roman Empire.
During the tribulation period, once again the nation
Israel will be ruled over by the head
of the Roman Empire.
We're going to study this in a future
evening in great detail.
But God is going to judge those Gentile
nations because they have been the oppressors of
the nation Israel.
I would direct your attention to one of
the parables which our Lord gave in Matthew
chapter 25, and we find there in Matthew
25 verse 31 to 46, the Lord gives
off the instruction concerning the judgment of the
sheep and the goats.
This is a judgment on living Gentile nations,
and the Lord Jesus is going to separate
all Gentiles at the time of his second
coming to the earth into two classes, the
saved and the unsaved.
And the Lord is going to say to
the saved, as much as you did it
to the least of these my brethren, the
nation Israel, you did it to me.
Enter into the kingdom.
He's going to say to the goat on
his left hand, you didn't do it to
these my brethren, the nation Israel, the believers
in Israel.
Depart from me, ye cursed into everlasting fire.
There is to be a judgment to remove
every unsaved Gentile, and God is going to
pour out fury upon Gentile people because they
have sought to thwart God's purpose by exterminating
the nation Israel.
One passage more in this line in the
book of the Revelation, in Revelation chapter 3
and verse 10, where the Lord addresses the
church of Philadelphia and says, Because thou hast
kept the word of my patience, I also
will keep thee from the hour of temptation,
or the hour of tribulation, the hour of
trial.
Now, notice these words, which shall come upon
all the world, to try them that dwell
upon the earth.
Now, this is a very interesting word that
John writes here.
It's coming upon all the world to try
them that literally are earth dwellers.
Now, the word earth dwellers does not speak
of geographical locations, people who live on the
earth, as opposed to the little green men
from Mars.
This is an ethical word, and it speaks
of men who are joined to the earth.
We would call them worldly, or worldly-minded
ones.
And here John teaches us that the Lord
Jesus Christ is going to pour out his
fury to prove what men are earth dwellers,
or worldlings, and which ones are truly united
to the Lord Jesus Christ by grace.
There is a third purpose of God in
the tribulation theory, and that is to reveal
the program of Satan, to let the program
of evil come to its confirmation.
I'll have to touch on this just very
briefly, but what we find is this fact
that from the time of Satan's first rebellion
against God in heaven, before the time of
the creation of this earth, Satan desired to
be head of a kingdom.
He wanted to rule over every created intelligence
and take the place of God.
For his system was a lawless system, and
God put the control upon the lawless system
of Satan, and said to Satan, you can
go so far but no further.
In spite of all the wickedness and godlessness
that we see in the world today, we
still haven't seen one fraction of what the
lawlessness of Satan actually is.
In spite of all that we saw during
World War II, of the bestiality of the
human nature as a thought to exterminate races
and peoples, we have seen nothing of what
the human part is like.
Because God is restraining Satan, and Satan's kingdom
cannot come to its fulfillment.
But God is going to say to Satan,
Satan, you've wanted to have urinating for a
long time.
You wanted to have a chance, without any
restraint and without any hindrance, to demonstrate what
your kingdom is like, to prove what you
can do.
But I've always kept a restraint on you.
Now, I'm going to take every restraint off,
and I'm going to turn you free to
do exactly what you want.
And so, during the tribulation period, we are
going to...
I shouldn't say we, should I?
Well, praise the Lord we won't be there.
But I'm going to say that this earth
is going to see a reign of lawlessness
such as has not even been dreamed of,
let alone experienced in the annals of history.
In Revelation chapter 13 and verse 2, Satan
is going to bring a world ruler on
this world scene.
And we read the last part of Revelation
13 through Satan, or the dragon, gave this
one his power, and his seat, and his
great authority.
And we find from that passage that Satan
is going to manipulate in world affairs so
as to bring the man of sin, or
the beast, or some calling the antichrist, on
this world scene.
This one is described for us in 2
Thessalonians chapter 2.
In 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul writes about the
man of sin, or the lawless one, verse
4, who opposes and exalts himself above all
that is called God, or that is worshiped
so that he is God, sitting in the
temple of God, showing himself that he is
God.
This is the one who will cause his
mark to be put upon the palm of
the hand or the forehead of everyone on
the earth, and no man can buy or
sell unless he has the identifying mark of
the beast.
We'll be studying that in a future study,
until we pass it on.
But here we are going to find a
system operating in the earth under full Satanic
control, in which the iniquity and the lawlessness
of Satan is openly and fully demonstrated, and
God is going to be able to point
to that demonstration of lawlessness and say, that's
what sin is, that's what evil is, and
that is the end of everyone who rejects
my son and rejects my word.
God has a purpose for Israel to purify
out from among them a saved remnant.
He has a purpose for the Gentiles to
punish the Gentiles for their despicable treatment of
the Jews.
He has a purpose in relation to Satan
to let Satan demonstrate to all the earth
the sinfulness of sin, but there is one
final purpose, and we anticipated that in some
of the passages which we read.
But God is going to pour out judgment
upon sinful men themselves, and as we saw
it in the sixth chapter of the book
of the revelations, sinners are going to feel
the outpouring of the wrath of God, and
in verse 16 they are going to beg
for physical death, but will not be able
to find that physical death by a landslide.
And we see something of the hardness and
the deceitfulness of sin when we turn to
Revelation 16 verse 10, when the angel pours
out his vial from the seat of the
beast and his kingdom was full of darkness,
they gnawed their tongues for pain, and they
blasphemed the God of heaven because of their
pains and their sores, and they repented not,
or as the original says, they would not
repent of their sin.
And you go through here passage after passage.
God is pouring out judgment upon wicked men
who have vowed before this satanically controlled individual
to call him God.
God says, I'm going to judge you for
your sin of rejecting my son, and they
say, we refuse to repent, we refuse to
turn to God.
So God is going to bring physical judgment
upon the world of men who have gone
off in this spiritual parlor trade, worshiping Satan
as God.
Now, what is the hope?
During the tribulation period, according to Revelation 7,
God will raise up a host of witnesses.
They will be sovereignly born again as the
apostle Paul was sovereignly brought to God out
of darkness into light on the Damascus road.
And as Paul was breathing out threatenings and
cursings against God and God's people, God in
his grace reached down and took hold of
Paul of Tarsus and brought him to the
knowledge of Jesus Christ and sent him out
as the angel who brought the message of
the gospel throughout the Roman Empire.
God is going to sovereignly lay hold of
144,000 Jews.
He's going to bring them out of darkness
to light and send them over the face
of the earth.
And Revelation 7 says there will be multitudes
from every indigenous tongue and tribe and nation
that will meet the Lord Jesus Christ and
come back to earth to reign, because they
have lost their native place in the blood
of the Lamb.
For almost all those who accept Jesus Christ
as Savior during the tribulation period will pay
with their lives for their faith in Christ.
Satan will keep to terminate every believer on
the face of the earth through the instrumentality
of the man of faith and the system
of the false prophet.
But praise God, we're not looking forward to
the tribulation.
We're not wondering when this world war is
going to start, when this false peace movement
will burst upon the earth to plunge the
earth into war.
For the Lord Jesus Christ himself has given
us this blessed hope that before God lets
these events begin to unfold on the earth,
he's going to appear in the clouds.
He's going to summon every believer in Jesus
Christ to his house.
And when God's wrath is poured out upon
the earth, we're going to be in his
presence.
We're going to be like him.
We're going to see him as he is.
Every person should the last church take place
tonight, every person within the sound of my
voice who has not personally accepted Jesus Christ
is going to experience the very events that
we have been describing.
The time of awful desolation and destruction and
wrath, and following that the eternal separation from
God for us.
I present you a living, victorious, triumphant savior
who will receive you and bring you deliverance
from the hour of testing that's coming upon
the earth.
If you will put your faith and trust
in him.
We're going to be dealing, Lord willing, next
Sunday night on the question, will the church
go through the simulation series?
You may be familiar with the fact that
there are different interpretations.
Some folks think we're going through the first
half of it.
Some folks think we're going through all of
it.
What is our mission?
Are we looking for the man of truth,
or are we looking for the son of
man?
For the difference it makes as we live
day by day, the child of God, we
can lift up our eyes for our redemption
is drawing nigh.
But if you are here without trust, there
is only the awful expectation of judgment, and
I invite you to receive Christ.
For there is therefore now no judgment to
those that are in sin.
Our Fathers, we do thank thee for the
privilege of studying the portions of the word
of God that have been before us this
evening.
We pray that thou will give us a
heart to know thee, to be brought into
fellowship with thyself as we understand thy purpose
and program.
We ask, O God, that if there is
one to you who has not accepted Christ
as Savior, in view of the visitation of
God's wrath that will come, that one might
accept Christ, to be delivered from every form
of sin.
Give us, we know thee, the confidence of
believing in a delivering Savior, to live in
the light of his coming.
For it is in his flesh that may
we trust.
Amen.