Welcome to From the Pulpit in Classic Sermons.
Each week we bring you a different message
from some of history's greatest speakers in the
Christian faith.
And powerful sermons from modern preachers, too.
This week we have Joel Rosenberg.
With his message, Are We Living in the
Last Days?
Good morning.
It's an honor to be with you this
morning.
I'm from the East Coast, so you've got
to excuse my disbelief that there's anyone up
in California this time of morning.
But this is nice, and I appreciate you
guys coming out.
Thank you for what you do here at
Calvary Chapel, and for the way you're reaching
your community and the world for Christ.
No time like the present.
Our topic this morning is, Are We Living
in the Last Days?
And you just look at the world around
you, and you have to ask that question.
If you can't send your children to school
safely in a one-room Amish schoolhouse, you
start wondering what is going on in our
country.
You've got North Korea testing a nuclear weapon
and ballistic missiles capable of reaching Los Angeles.
You've got the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
I want you to say that five times
quickly with me.
No, I'm just kidding.
You can just say Ahmed Genocide, because that
sort of captures the sense of where he's
going.
The president of Iran is telling people that
he believes the end of the world is
rapidly approaching.
Last year when he was elected, he was
telling people in Iran that he believed the
end of the world was just two or
three years away.
And that the way to hasten the coming
of the Islamic Messiah, known as the 12th
Imam or the Mahdi, the way to hasten
his arrival is to launch a global jihad,
to annihilate Israel, the little Satan in his
view, and the United States, whom he calls
the great Satan.
And, of course, you know Iran is feverishly
trying to build, buy, or steal nuclear weapons,
and is building military alliances with three nuclear
powers, Russia, China, and North Korea.
You've got the former Speaker of the House,
Newt Gingrich, saying that he believes we are
watching the early stages of World War III.
You've got Senator John McCain, the Arizona senator
widely touted as a possible presidential candidate, saying
on Meet the Press a few months ago
that if Iran gets nuclear weapons, he believes,
quote, I think we could see Armageddon, unquote.
Now, Senator McCain is known for a lot
of things.
He's known as a war hero.
He's known for his straight talk.
He's known as a Republican for getting conservatives
all mad at him when he does deals
with the Democrats and vice versa.
He is not really known for citing the
Book of Revelation on national television in terms
of foreign policy crises in the Middle East.
Yet that's the moment that we're in right
now, and it's an intriguing moment.
It's a dangerous moment.
It's hard to imagine how we're going to
keep the nuclear genie in the bottle in
North Korea and Iran.
And these two countries are talking about launching
what would effectively be World War III.
Now, I write novels, and I'm going to
tell you a little bit about that this
morning.
I write political thrillers.
I did have a career in politics for
many years, but I kept helping my candidates
lose.
So I thought, maybe that's not really the
career for me.
Maybe I ought to shift and get out
of that and just make things up for
a living.
And I began writing a series of political
thrillers.
As the pastor mentioned, The Last Jihad, The
Last Days, The Ezekiel Option, The Copper Scroll.
I've got a new nonfiction book out this
week or this month called Epicenter, Why the
Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change
Your Future.
And it talks about these issues.
All of these thrillers take you inside these
Middle Eastern adventures and what could happen.
And they've had a strange way of coming
true, each one of them.
And now Epicenter takes us nonfictionally into this
world.
But this is the question.
And since the middle of July, when I
started this book tour for The Copper Scroll,
I've been on over 200 radio and television
programs.
People interviewing me about what's going on in
the Middle East and where is this leading.
I was on CNN in August at the
height of when Hezbollah was raining 4,000
missiles and rockets down on the citizens of
Israel.
And the CNN anchor said, Joel, you know,
based on all the horrible things we're seeing
in the Middle East, are we living in
the last days?
I mean, you've written about this, Joel.
You wrote a book called The Last Days.
You speak on this widely.
What are the signs we're supposed to be
watching for?
And do you think we're there?
Now, remember, this is not, you know, this
is not Pastor Chuck Smith asking me.
This is not your pastor asking me.
This is CNN.
They're asking, are we living in the last
days?
And it's a good question.
It's an important question, given all that we're
seeing.
And we're going to get into that this
morning.
We're going to start in Matthew chapter 24.
So I want to turn there.
And as we do, let me give you
a little bit of background of how I
got to this topic.
I am an evangelical Christian.
As the pastor mentioned, I'm from an Orthodox
Jewish background.
My Orthodox Jewish grandparents and great-grandparents actually
escaped out of Russia around 1907 when the
czar was killing thousands upon thousands of Jews.
Basically, you had two options in anti-Semitic,
fascist, czarist Russia in 1907.
You could fiddle on the roof or you
could consider trying to get out.
And my family was like, hmm, let's try
at least to get out.
Now, obviously, many were unsuccessful.
But God, by His grace, got our family
out.
In fact, they hid in a hay wagon
that was crossing a border.
And czarist soldiers plunged their swords into the
hay to see if anyone was in there.
By God's grace, no one was injured.
None of the kids sneezed.
None of the kids said, are we there
yet?
I got to go to the bathroom.
They were able to get out.
And having gotten out of fascist, anti-Semitic,
czarist Russia, they didn't go, ooh, let's settle
in Germany or Poland or Austria.
They worked their way across the continent of
Europe.
They got to Ellis Island in New York.
And like any good Jewish family, they set
up shop in Brooklyn, which is where my
father was raised.
Now, by God's grace, he and my, and
eventually the woman he married, came to know
Jesus as the Messiah and helped lead me
into the kingdom.
And so that's my background.
And then, as I mentioned, 11 years in
politics, working for a number of U.S.
and Israeli political leaders, including Steve Forbes, which
was a wonderful time.
I helped him lose two presidential campaigns.
That was exciting.
And then for former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, who, as you know, also lost a
campaign not long ago.
So I got into writing novels.
I thought, you know, let's just make things
up.
And I'd never written fiction before, although when
I was ghostwriting for Rush Limbaugh in the
mid-'90s, some of my liberal friends said I
was making things up and writing fiction, but
that was different.
So I decided I'm going to write thrillers.
I'm going to write a series of thrillers
that draw you in on an adventure.
And hopefully, when you can't put the novel
down, maybe three-quarters of the way into
the book, I'm going to raise the spiritual
temperature to the point that one of the
characters shares the gospel with another.
And I want to take people inside the
events in the Middle East.
And I want to take them on a
series of events that could be leading us,
that could cause the characters to wonder, are
we living in the last days?
So, okay, for my first novel, it was
called The Last Jihad.
The first page puts you inside the cockpit
of a jet plane that's been hijacked by
radical Islamic terrorists.
It's coming in on a kamikaze attack mission
into an American city.
This is nine months before September 11th.
I began writing it in January 2001.
And as the story of The Last Jihad
unfolds, the fictional American president gets into a
global war against radical Islam, and then with
a fictional war with Saddam Hussein over terrorism
and weapons of mass destruction.
I was literally finishing The Last Jihad on
the morning of September 11th, 2001, in a
townhouse that my wife and I and kids
were living in at the time, just 15
minutes away from Washington Dulles Airport, where at
that moment, Flight 77 was being hijacked, turned
around, flown over our house, and into the
Pentagon.
Now, we didn't ever expect that novel to
be published.
A whole series of events ensued in which
eventually The Last Jihad was published a year
later.
And I had, you know, no one had
ever heard of me.
No one had ever heard of The Last
Jihad.
But suddenly, there was so much interest because
this novel was essentially coming true.
And I was interviewed on over 160 radio
and television shows.
And people would say, you know, how is
it possible to write a novel that begins
with a kamikaze attack against the United States
and leads to a war with Iraq?
How did you do that?
What do you think is happening next?
You know, look in your little crystal ball
and see where we're going with this thing.
And then we would walk these through and
we would talk about these issues.
And then they would say, now, your name
is Rosenberg, right?
I'd say, right.
They'd say, that's Jewish, isn't it?
Right.
But you've got all these characters in your
book.
They're all talking about Jesus, aren't they?
Right.
What is that?
What are you, born again?
Are you an evangelical Christian?
I said, well, yes, I am.
Well, how is that possible?
How can you be Jewish and believe in
Jesus?
So I said, well, actually, it is an
interesting story.
I mean, you probably don't have time for
me to talk about it right now.
Well, oh, no.
It's one thing to have a novelist who
writes novels that come true on our show.
It's another thing to have some Jew who
believes in Jesus.
I never even heard of that.
Why don't you tell us your story?
And in less than 60 days, I was
able to talk about my faith in Jesus
Christ with over 20 million people.
And this just set into motion a series
of novels.
And the publisher came to me and said,
would you like to write another one?
And I thought, OK, you know, beats working,
right?
What else am I going to do?
Go help people lose more campaigns?
OK.
So that's when I wrote the book The
Last Days.
And that begins with the death of Yasser
Arafat, an American president pushing for peace and
democracy in the Middle East.
And strangely enough, well, 13 months after the
book came out, Arafat was dead.
Two months after that, President Bush decided to
make democracy in the Middle East the centerpiece
of his second term agenda.
And what's strange is still was the first
pages of The Last Days puts you inside
a U.S. diplomatic convoy heading into Gaza
as part of the peace process when that
convoy is suddenly blown up by a massive
explosion.
Six days before The Last Days hit bookstores,
a U.S. diplomatic convoy heading into Gaza
as part of the peace process was attacked
by terrorists.
This is when U.S. News & World
Report did a story on me describing me
as a modern Nostradamus.
Now I'm having to go on all these
radio and television shows saying, no, no, no,
I'm not a Nostradamus.
I'm not a psychic.
I'm not a clairvoyant.
I don't call Miss Cleo in the middle
of the night to get my plot ideas,
OK?
I'm an evangelical Christian from an Orthodox Jewish
background.
I'm basing these novels on a series of...
And they said, what did you say?
I said, well, I'm basing these series on
a very...
No, no, no, no, before that.
Did you just say you're Jewish and you
believe in Jesus?
I said, yes.
And so I'm basing these novels on a
series of events...
No, no, no, no, I happen to be
Jewish and believe in Jesus.
I said, well, actually, it is an interesting
story.
And sure enough, they gave me a chance
to talk about my faith in Christ with
15 million people.
So this has just set into motion these
series of books that they're all based on
Bible prophecy.
And they're all based on the sense that
while we are not going to know the
date and time that Jesus comes back, there
are clues, there are things to watch for
that indicate that we may be getting a
lot closer than most people realize.
And so that's most recent.
Now, this has happened so many times that
now when I'm on CNN, they just say
flat out, all right, let's just get right
to the prophecies.
What are they?
And what should we look at?
So let's talk about that today.
Matthew chapter 24.
You know, Jesus was asked this very question
by his disciples at the beginning of Matthew
24.
They said to him, when are you coming
back?
And what are the signs that we should
be looking for?
What indicates the end of the age, the
last days?
Now, Jesus could have given a very Don
Rumsfeld answer.
No comment.
Next question.
But he didn't.
He spent an entire chapter walking us through.
Now, I would note that at the end
of chapter 24, verse 36, Jesus says he's
not going to tell us the day and
the hour.
Matthew 24, 36, he says, but of that
day and hour, no one knows, not even
the angels of heaven nor the son, but
the father alone.
For the coming of the son of man
will be just like the days of Noah.
Two thoughts about that.
First of all, day and hour is a
fairly narrow time frame.
Jesus says, I'm not going to throw the
game for you, but I'll let you know
when the game's fairly close to beginning.
You know, he does give us an entire
list of things.
We're going to look at that in a
moment.
I should also know that for Noah, the
days of Noah, he knew what was coming.
He knew what was coming.
He didn't know exactly when, but he was
preparing for it.
He wasn't caught off guard.
Yes, by the actual time when rain started
falling for the first time in human history.
Yes, that was, but not for the concept
that it was coming or that he was
getting ready for it, preparing for the salvation
of his family.
I should also note that I have four
sons, my wife and I.
We've got Caleb, Jacob, who is here with
us today, and Jonah.
Those are the first three.
Then we have Noah.
Now, the first are 12, 10, 8, and
Noah is 2.
And just to explain this, you know, Jesus
said he's not coming back again until the
days of Noah.
So we thought, you know, if we're holding
him back in any way, you know, but
now he's, Noah's here and we're good to
go.
And Noah's even been to Israel already.
And so we're, we're all set.
So just know that we're living in the
days of Noah now.
Now, Jesus, when he walks us through this,
he says, look, here's what you're going to
be looking for.
Wars, rumors of wars, revolutions, the rise of
false religions, false messiahs, false prophets.
He talks about earthquakes and famines and terrible
diseases that are spreading across the earth.
He talks about lawlessness increasing, the love of
many growing cold.
He talks about this gospel of the kingdom
spreading to every people, tribe, and tongue and
the face of the planet.
He talks about the rebirth of the state
of Israel.
In fact, he says in verse 32, now
learn the parable from the fig tree.
When its branch has already become tender and
it put forth its leaves, you know that
summer is near.
So too, when you see all these things,
recognize that he is near right at the
door.
What is the parable of the fig tree?
Well, I would encourage you in your, in
your quiet times, your Bible studies this week
to spend some time in Jeremiah chapter 24.
This is where we learn of the parable
of the fig tree.
God sets down in front of the Hebrew
prophet Jeremiah, two baskets of figs.
One basket has good figs and he's, and
God is clear.
These represent the children of Israel, the Jewish
people, the good ones that are following me.
The second basket, these are bad figs.
They represent the, also the children of Israel,
also Jewish people, but these are people who
are not following me.
Ergo, both baskets are the Jewish people.
They're the people, the children of Israel.
Some are following, some aren't.
They're both figs in the parable of the
fig tree.
And we see this throughout the Bible, Micah
chapter 4, verses 1 through 4.
Also, God says that in the last days,
all the attention of the world will be
focused back on Israel.
And every child of Israel will be sitting
under his fig tree.
The parable of the fig tree, as Jesus
is saying here, is when you see all
these things, wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, persecution
of the believers, the spread of the gospel,
all these issues, and you see the rebirth
of the state of Israel, now you know
you're in the ballgame.
Now you know it's getting close, as Jesus
said.
So too, when you see all these things,
recognize that he is near, right at the
door.
And we have seen these things.
And interestingly enough, the famous chapters where we
read those prophecies, detailing that Israel will be
reborn in the last days, and the Jews
will return to the Holy Land after centuries
of exile, and that the ancient ruins will
be rebuilt, and the deserts will bloom, all
these prophecies are detailed in Ezekiel, chapters 36
and 37.
And guess what?
They've all come true in our lifetime.
We have seen the rebirth of Israel in
our lifetime.
We have seen Jews pour back into the
Holy Land after centuries of exile.
We've seen the deserts bloom and the ancient
ruins be rebuilt.
Go to Israel with your pastoral team, go
and see Jerusalem rebuilt, and Bethlehem, and Jericho,
and Tiberias, and Nazareth.
These cities have been rebuilt.
You can see them for yourselves.
It's extraordinary, and it's so easy for us
to forget.
When we turn on the news and we
see a country attacking Israel, or like in
the case of Akhmedijad, saying we're going to
wipe Israel off the map, the fact that
there is an Israel today is a huge,
major Bible prophecy come true in our lifetime.
What's interesting, though, is the two chapters that
follow, Ezekiel 36 and 37.
And turn with me there for a moment.
We're going to really hunker down here in
the time that we have.
It gives you a flavor of this remarkable
prophecy, what's known to Bible scholars as the
war of Gog and Magog.
And so, as you're turning there, let me
say that my answer to the CNN correspondent,
as well as to all the other reporters,
and producers, and hosts that I've talked to
is, yes, we are living in the last
days.
Look at the list that Jesus gave us,
and you see that you can basically check
off all these things.
So I was on, some of you may
know who Alan Combs is.
He's the co-host of Hannity and Combs
on the Fox network.
And Alan is Jewish, and so am I.
I'm a follower of Jesus, of course, and
as you've heard, my politics have been, and
they still are, but I tell people I've
gone through political detox now.
I'm not doing the partisan thing.
But I am from, you know, I'm a
conservative Republican.
He's obviously a liberal Democrat.
So he invites me on his radio show,
separate from the TV show.
And so he has me on, why?
To mock me about this whole thing about
the last days.
Everyone was talking about it.
Fox, CNN, MSNBC, we're all talking about it.
And so he had me on, and he
said, all right, Joel, when's Jesus coming back?
I said, well, I can't tell you exactly,
but let's look at the signs.
He said, no, no, no, no, no.
I want to know exactly.
I want to know.
You come on.
You have an inkling.
You're the modern Nostradamus.
Come on.
Give me a sense.
Just give me a hint.
I said, you know, I can't tell you.
It might be a lot closer than you
think, Alan, but I don't know for sure.
Oh, come on.
Should I buy green bananas?
He said, should I go get my laundry
from the cleaners?
I mean, you know, how soon is it?
I said, I can't tell you that with
that level of precision.
Oh, come on.
He's pushing.
Come on.
Should I get those green bananas?
I mean, what should I do, Joel?
I said, Alan, you really want to know?
Yeah.
What should I do?
I said, Alan, you need to come to
know Jesus as the Messiah.
That's what you need to do.
Well, his reaction wasn't quite so similar.
He kind of pulled back and he said,
what?
You're trying to convert me to Jesus on
my own radio show?
I said, I didn't ask you to come
on here and try to convert me to
Jesus.
I said, you asked me, Alan.
You said, how soon is he coming?
What should I do?
Should I buy green bananas?
Should I get my dry cleaning today?
Joel, what should I do?
And I responded to you.
You should know Jesus as the Messiah.
He goes, all right, well, you did say
that.
So this is that tension, though.
We don't know exactly, but we know we're
a lot closer than ever before.
And we also have to take what Jesus
shared with us and put it into context
of other scriptures to get a feel for
what else is coming.
Ezekiel 38.
This is where God begins to describe a
major apocalyptic Middle Eastern war.
It precedes the War of Armageddon.
But this is what's called the War of
Gog and Magog.
Let's take a look at a few key
verses.
And the word of the Lord came to
me, saying, Son of man, set your face
against Gog of the land of Magog, the
prince of Rosh, Meshach, and Tubal, and prophesy
against him.
And say, Thus says the Lord God.
Behold, I'm against you, O Gog, prince of
Rosh, Meshach, and Tubal.
And you're like, all right, I'm lost already.
Okay, I understand.
Let's start with Gog.
You're like, I'm a Gog already.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Okay, Gog is not a name.
Gog is a title, like a pharaoh or
a czar.
It's a ruler.
He's a prince.
He's a political leader of a certain territory.
The territory is Magog.
You're like, right, I still don't, you know,
yeah, that's not helping me.
Okay.
The ancient historian Josephus, Aphraeus Josephus, writing in
the first century, he describes that this people
group of Magog are the people whom the
Greeks at the time called the Scythians.
Now, if you do the research, and I
detail all this in this new book, Epicenter,
to kind of walk you through this.
But the short version is the Scythian people
are the Magogites.
And the Scythian peoples, as you kind of
do this historical detective work and figure this
out, is they're the people that settled north
of the Black Sea in what we now
call Russia and the former Soviet Union.
And as you go through these scriptures, you'll
find that Magog is described, and this coalition
is coming from the uttermost parts of the
north, the furthermost parts of the north.
The scriptures are clear.
And if you, if I had a map
and I pulled it down and I said,
here's Israel, go due north and find what's
the country to the uttermost parts of the
north before you hit, you know, the North
Pole, Russia.
Now, what's interesting is the first country that's
identified as an ally of Russia is in
verse 5.
The first country, Persia.
Now, Persia is an easy one to identify
because until 1935, that was the official legal
name of Iran.
So, according to the scriptures, we're looking for
a Russian-Iranian military alliance to begin to
form.
With who else?
Well, some of your Bibles will say Ethiopia.
Others will say Kush.
This is the upper Nile region.
And so it's definitely Ethiopia, but it's also
the country of Sudan.
Interestingly enough, Sudan is a radical Muslim country
with very close strategic ties to Iran.
There's a genocide that has been underway in
Sudan in recent years in which the Muslims
are killing Christians by the millions.
Over 2 million people have died in Sudan
through this genocide.
Muslims have died as well, but this is
a horrifying situation, and it's all tied between
the radical Muslim ties between Iran and Sudan.
Interesting, particularly in light of these passages.
The next country is Put.
Where do we put Put?
Well, Josephus, writing in the first century, said
that Put is ancient Libyos, what we would
now call Libya.
Now, ancient Libya was a larger territory than
what we now call Libya.
So we're probably also talking about Algeria, maybe
Tunisia.
Now, this is interesting because who was in
Algeria, for example, in the early part of
2006?
Well, that would be Russian President Vladimir Putin,
who signed a $7.5 billion arms deal
with Algeria, the largest arms deal that has
been signed by Moscow since the collapse of
the Soviet Union.
Earlier this summer, Putin sent the deputy speaker
of the Russian parliament to Libya.
Why?
To start discussions on a new arms deal,
a new strategic pact between Moscow and Libya
for the first time since the collapse of
the Soviet Union.
The next country is Gomer.
Now, I have to tell my children, Gomer
is not where Gomer Pyle is from, okay?
We do our historic detective work and we
find out that Gomer is modern-day Turkey.
And now, some Bible scholars believe that the
Gomerites also spread northward, perhaps into Germany and
Austria.
There's some disagreement about that, but there's a
consensus that Gomer itself is the country of
Turkey.
Beth Togarmah, this is the Turkic-speaking peoples
that spread out across Turkey to Armenia, Turkmenistan,
and all the stands of Central Asia, Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan, Tajikistan.
And so what you're watching here is Russia
with a group of Muslim countries that are
going to attack Israel in the last days.
Verse 8, after many days you will be
summoned, in the latter years you will come
into the land that is restored from the
sword, whose inhabitants have been gathered from many
nations to the mountains of Israel, which had
been a continual waste.
And verse 9, you will go up, you
will come like a storm, you will be
like a cloud covering the land, you and
all your troops and the many peoples with
you.
Now, the mountains of Israel that this coalition
has converged against, the mountains of Israel are
to the north of Israel, along the border
of Lebanon and Syria and northern Jordan.
Now, we don't know for sure if this
war of Gog and Magog will mean that
Lebanon and Syria and possibly Jordan will be
active participants in the war against Israel, but
we know that these other forces will be
coming through those territories.
And of course, as we look at what's
happened just over the last few months, if
this war were to happen in our lifetime,
it's not unfathomable.
So imagine Lebanon and Syria primarily being active
participants in this war to destroy Israel.
Now, let me say for a moment, and
just be clear, I can't tell you that
this set of prophecies, which, by the way,
in verse 16, Ezekiel says this will all
happen in the last days.
We don't know if it's going to happen
before the rapture or after, but we know
it happens after Ezekiel 36 and 37, the
rebirth of Israel.
And I can't tell you if these things
are about to happen right now or even
are going to happen in our lifetime.
But it's interesting.
The trajectory of events are fascinating.
You may be interested to know that Russia
has just sent military troops into Lebanon to
assist with this UN peacekeeping force that's supposed
to protect Israel.
But let me say that Russia has not
had boots on the ground in Lebanon in
over 220 years.
Now they do.
Turkey just sent over 1,000 troops, military
troops, into Lebanon to be part of the
peacekeepers.
The Turks have not had military troops in
Lebanon since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire
almost 100 years ago, but now they do.
Now, again, we don't know for sure exactly
what's going to happen.
God could kick the can of this prophecy
up the road for decades if he wanted
to, but what if he doesn't?
We're beginning to watch Russia and Iran form
a military alliance for the first time in
2,500 years since the prophecy was written.
Russia never had an alliance with them, but
in December they signed a $1 billion arms
deal with Iran.
Russia is building nuclear facilities in Iran.
Russia has trained over 1,000 nuclear scientists.
They're in Iran.
Russia's running political interference for Iran at the
United Nations to prevent them from being stopped
from getting nuclear weapons.
This is the moment we're in.
Now what's interesting is you, and I would
encourage you to spend time studying these scriptures.
What you'll find as you go through this
is nobody comes to Israel's aid.
Not the UN, not the EU, not the
United States.
Israel is all alone in this war except
one.
One comes to Israel's aid, and that is
the God of Israel.
A supernatural description of events unfolds in verse
18, and when you read that and spend
some time studying it for yourself, you're going
to see fire falling from heaven, a massive
earthquake, diseases spreading through the troops of Russia
and her allies.
And in chapter 39, we find out it
takes seven months to bury all the bodies
as God completely obliterates all the enemies of
Israel in a single day.
This is going to be the day of
the greatest horror, greatest tragedy in human history.
Not since Charlton Heston stared down Newell Brenner
in the Ten Commandments have we seen fire
falling from heaven and plagues attacking the enemies
of Israel.
The Bible says this is going to happen,
and it could happen in our lifetime, but
that's not all.
As you go through this, you're going to
find that God says very clearly, chapter 39,
verse 21, And I will set my glory
among the nations, and all the nations will
see my judgment which I have executed, and
my hand which I have laid upon them.
Later, he talks about pouring out the spirit
on the people of Israel in the Middle
East.
I believe this is not only going to
be the day of greatest judgment in human
history, a day of great sorrow and tragedy,
I also believe that we are going to
see the greatest spiritual awakening come out of
this.
As the whole world sees on global satellite
television, I suspect, the hand of God defend
his people.
And when he pours out his spirit and
people see God's glory, I believe millions of
people are going to come to Christ.
Millions and millions of people around the world,
perhaps tens of millions or more.
We don't know for sure, we do know
for sure not everyone's going to come to
Christ.
Judas spent three years with Jesus, didn't make
a dent.
But many will see God's glory, and the
Holy Spirit will be poured out on them,
and their lives will be changed.
And as we close this morning, this is
just scratching the surface, I realize this.
And I'm just trying to give you a
sense of how to put a little bit
of what's going on in the world into
some context.
Again, as I said, my new book, Epicenter,
walks us through in detail.
And a novel that I wrote called The
Ezekiel Option takes this fictionally and says, what
would it look like if these things were
to happen?
But I want to close with this point
this morning.
The answer is, the question is, so what?
So what if these events are coming?
So what if we're living in the last
days?
What does this mean to me?
And I would encourage you, those of you
that are here this morning and are followers
of Jesus Christ, you look at all the
things that are going on in our world,
you look at all these signs that are
being fulfilled in the Scripture that suggest that
we are in the last days.
If you're planning any major sins, can I
encourage you to sort of postpone those or
maybe cancel those outright?
This is not a good time to be
goofing around.
This is not a good time to be
far from the will of God.
Not when you know all these events are
converging at this moment.
Some of them we don't know yet, but
some of them we know for sure.
Which means Jesus could come at any moment.
Nothing else has to happen prophetically before Jesus
takes us away in the rapture.
The war of God and mad God could
happen after the rapture.
And the question I have for you this
morning is a question I ask for myself.
When I see Jesus face to face one
day, do I want to be ashamed of
what I'm doing?
The way I live, the way I work,
the way I treat my family, the way
I treat my friends.
As well, do I want to stand before
Jesus one day and have him say, Joel,
I'm really glad the whole thing with the
novels worked out.
But what about the Great Commission?
How come you weren't sharing the gospel with
every single person that moved?
How come you didn't take the gospel around
America?
How come you didn't take the gospel to
the nations of the epicenter?
What part of the Great Commission go you
there for and make disciples of all nations?
What part of that did you not understand,
son?
I mean, was it in Greek?
All right.
Well, actually, it was in Greek.
But, you know, you had all those translations.
I don't want to be ashamed when Jesus
sees me.
And I don't think you do either.
And this compels us to ask ourselves, how
are we living?
How can we get on the right track
with the Lord?
Ask him to forgive our sins and move
on and start getting engaged in a holy
life.
In a life of reaching our neighbors and
reaching the epicenter.
The nations that are going to face the
judgment at some point.
How are we going to reach these nations
for Jesus?
And if you're here this morning and you've
never made that decision to receive Jesus Christ
today.
You're in a good church.
And there's a pastoral staff that wants to
walk you through that decision.
I'd be happy to chat with you myself
outside.
Let us explain to you how to make
that decision.
How to receive Christ as your Savior.
I don't want you to stand before me
one day before judgment and say, I didn't
know what I was supposed to do.
Walk out there, talk to me or one
of the pastors, one of the elders, one
of the staff.
Let us walk you through and just share
with you how to make a decision to
receive Jesus Christ as your Savior.
We don't know how much more time we
have.
But I can tell you without a shadow
of a doubt, we are living in the
last days.
And it means something.
It means something.
It means we need to live a holy
life and a life with the assurance that
we are going to heaven.
That we will not be left behind.
That we will not be spending eternity in
hell.
This is the moment.
As God is telling us, I don't want
you to be surprised.
I'm not going to throw the game.
I'm not going to give you the day
or the hour.
But you see these signs.
How are you going to live?
Let us pray.
Lord, we thank you for this time.
We praise you and lift up your name
this morning.
This is just a little bit of a
survey, a brief taste of some of these
verses and what they mean and how they
impact our lives.
But I pray you would be stirring in
the hearts of every person here this morning.
Working with Andrew Longman TV.
You've been listening to From the Pulpit in
Classic Sermons series.
This week you heard Joel Rosenberg with his
message, Are We Living in the Last Days?
Tune in next week to hear Bill McLeod
talk about the return of God's glory.
On From the Pulpit in Classic Sermons.