How to Have Your Best Year Ever

John Maxwell

2022-12-30

01/22/25 The New Year is here, and Dr. John Maxwell has a timely message for you that will position you for your best year ever. (From a talk published in January 2019, but the principles apply to any new year.)

Run time for this video is 37 minutes.

https://youtu.be/cxE7DCWjOvs?si=l2spG-5Qu52_93_b

The Fire and the Wind!

Maria Fontaine

2023-04-24

01/21/25 Unless you have personally faced a catastrophic event, it can be difficult to grasp the intensity of such experiences and how small and powerless man becomes in the face of them. Witnessing such events firsthand can be terrifying, because for many of the people directly involved, there is little chance of escape, other than through a God-given miracle.

Along with the accounts of the devastation caused by such events also come some tremendous accounts of supernatural protection, guidance, and the hand of God shielding His children in miraculous ways. During such dire events, many people feel an urge to cry out to God or Jesus, because they come to the realization that there is nothing that they themselves can do. As a result, the lives of many who have experienced God’s intervention to protect them in the midst of such desperate situations are forever changed.

A few years ago, fires raged in Australia for months. Many people found themselves trapped in situations where, but for the grace of God, they would not have survived.

Throughout the parts of Australia where the fires raged, there are some towns and small cities surrounded by hundreds or thousands of square miles of forest. Many of the trees are various types of eucalyptus trees. Their sap is so flammable that in a fire these trees can literally explode, sending flaming shards of wood for some distance and spreading the fire rapidly.

They burn so hot that fires can sweep through large areas at high speeds, leaving little more than ashes in their wake. Yet, in the midst of such terrifying situations, we see that God is with His children, keeping them in the hollow of His hands. Nothing can stand against the limitless power of our loving God to save and protect.

Someone sent me an account of one such situation by a man in Australia. The town where he was located had been cut off from escape by land as the fires approached from three directions. The people of this town were trapped by the fire on three sides, and on the other side lay the ocean. They faced almost inevitable death from the massive walls of fire approaching. The rescue teams were trying to reach many such places by the sea, but they were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the situation.

Here is this man’s firsthand account, told in the midst of the inferno.

Well, conditions are a hell of a lot better than they were. It doesn’t look like midnight like it was just before. There’s actually some light coming through the smoke. … Mate, you just don’t want to go through something like this. It was terrifying! … I’m a bit emotional still but I’m grateful that our animals are alive and that our guests that were with us are safe. We’ve stayed together. And, yeah, it was horrendous!

I want to give God the glory because, mate, I have a good friend, ex-firie [firefighter], well, former head of the fire department here in Mallacoota, Graham Clarke. He’s been giving me the heads-up.

He’s in Canberra, but was totally surrounded by fire where he was, and he was good enough to ring me and he said, “David, it’s at the airport.” So, I knew where the fire was. The airport in Mallacoota is five or seven minutes away in the car. I knew it was hitting town because the sirens started up.

You could actually hear it roaring towards town. I had been told that by Graham, the fire chief. He told me, “You’ll hear it, David. You’ll hear the sound.” We heard gas cylinders exploding, which means people’s homes were being destroyed.

At that point, I started praying. I was an atheist, but I was praying to God, praying to Jesus, “Turn the wind!”

You wouldn’t believe it, but I’m going to tell you the honest-to-God truth. It pushed this thing back against itself. Literally, we felt the wind come from off the beach; it shouldn’t have, but it did. It was unbelievable. It stopped after five minutes, and then probably 20 minutes after that, the breeze was blowing up to a gale and then the sky went red.

We thought it was a fire front about to run over the top of us, but it was, I believe, God’s intervention, absolutely, through prayer, because the redness was the sun coming through the smoke, not the fire about to destroy, you know, obliterate all of us down here. Because there’s nothing [the firefighters] could have done if that had happened. It doesn’t matter how many fire trucks you have. … It looked like what we’d been looking at when we saw the fire coming, but it was God stopping it! Yeah, we’re just grateful to be alive.

Those who sent this account to me managed to find this man’s phone number and called him to let him know that they were praying for him. He didn’t have much time to talk because he was still hard at work helping in the rescue operations.

He explained that a wall of flames 60 feet high was coming at him and the other people who’d fled to the beach. He started praying quietly but then started praying more and more boldly, until he was shouting out his prayer.

That’s when an east wind came and blew the fire away. People around him could hear him praying, and he didn’t care. The bolder he got, the stronger came the answer.

Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.—Hebrews 4:16

(He was on BBC World Service, Jerusalem Times, all over the world.)

*

As we often say, “It takes an impossible situation for God to do a miracle.” What’s so wonderful is that when we personally experience His miracles or hear about them, those physical manifestations are often dwarfed by the spiritual victories that take place, as in the case of this man who was an atheist before this experience.

Something even greater than the physical events happened to him, something life-changing that will last forever. Through his brush with death, he discovered the One who transformed his life for eternity. What greater miracle could you ask for than that?! I believe it was due to many people, not only in Australia but around the world, who were praying!

And Jesus looking upon them saith, “With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.”—Mark 10:27

You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.—Psalm 32:7

Originally published February 2020. Adapted and republished April 2023. Read by Debra Lee.

A Divine Fire Escape

James M. Kushiner

2024-07-17

01/20/25 In the Eastern churches, the service of matins includes several odes presenting images of salvation from the Old Testament. There is an ode on Moses and Israel escaping Egypt through crossing the Red Sea, another on Jonah’s three days in the belly of the whale and escape from the depths of the sea, and two odes about the three young men in the fiery furnace who miraculously escape. In all three stories, an escape is accomplished following a trial in a place of danger: in crossing the waters of the Red Sea, in the belly of the whale in the depths of the sea, and in the flames of the fiery furnace, where suddenly we find “four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods” (Dan. 3:25). There is Christology in all three stories.

(Read the article here.)

A Divine Fire Escape by James M. Kushiner | Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity

Why Disasters? (part 2)

Is Death a Curse or Blessing?

David Brandt Berg

1980-11-01

01/19/25 “This is the Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1:9). The Holy Spirit by His faithfulness speaks to the heart of all and tells people when they’re doing wrong. They know the difference between good and evil, even if they may not have known all of their Master’s will.

They may not have even known their Master, they may not have known the Gospel or the truth or the Good News of salvation, but they knew the difference between right and wrong. If they then, therefore, in spite of that, did things worthy of stripes, it says they’ll be beaten with few stripes. Their punishment will be light, comparatively speaking.

Whereas those who knew their Master’s will, knew the Bible, had heard the Gospel, knew about Jesus, knew it in all of its fullness, and yet did things against the Lord and against their Master’s will, “shall be beaten with many stripes.” They will suffer severe punishment both in this life and the afterlife.

The wicked suffer now, although it doesn’t always look like it. For example, riches don’t make people happy. Robbing the poor, making themselves rich has never made them happy. Their wars don’t really bring them happiness. Alexander the Great at 33 years of age had conquered virtually all the known civilized world in only ten years, and yet he died drunk and sobbing like a baby, “Alas, there are no more worlds to conquer!” It didn’t satisfy.

The rich and the powerful receive a lot of punishment right in this life. As many of them say, “Yes, I believe in hell; I’m living in it right now!” As the Word says, “some men’s sins go before them”—in other words, they’re judged even in this life and they suffer for them even here and now. “But other men’s sins follow after”—they’re not going to get theirs until after they die (1 Timothy 5:24). They’re not going to get their full punishment until the afterlife, and that punishment is really going to be effective.

They’re going to get it sooner or later, because God is just and God is thorough, and “every man will be rewarded according to his works” (Psalm 62:12; Jeremiah 17:10; Matthew 16:27; 2 Corinthians 5:10; Revelation 2:23, 20:13, 22:12). We’ll even have to “give an account for every idle word, for by thy words shalt thou be justified, and by thy words shalt thou be condemned” (Matthew 12:36–37). That’s why it’s so important to confess Christ by your words, with your mouth (Romans 10:9–10).

God is just, God is loving, God is pure, God is holy, God is perfect, and everything will work out perfectly in the long run. There will be perfect judgment and punishment for the wicked, and perfect reward for the righteous and the believer and the one who obeyed the Lord. But it will all be to the same end or purpose.

For those who still have to be punished hereafter, the punishment and the reward will be designed and tailored according to their deeds, for a reason. For what purpose? Just to get revenge? Just to be vindictive? God is not that type of vengeful God, vindictive, only wanting to make people suffer for their sins.

It’s for a purpose: to bring them to the light, to demonstrate His goodness and kindness and love, and show them what damage they did by their disobedience and their lack of love. Why? To hope for belief and to hope for godly sorrow and repentance and a change; that if they did not choose to do good here, that they will be shown in the afterlife how important it is to do good, and will choose to do it there.

It’s sad that they have to wait until then to find out or to decide, and those who wait until then will never be able to walk in the Holy City and enjoy the greatest blessings and joys of God. But obviously they’ll be outside in varied degrees of punishment, reward, freedom, imprisonment, or whatever it may be, until such time as God deems that they have served their sentence, suffered enough, repented enough, and they will be released or relieved.

He makes a difference between few stripes and many stripes, but whether few or many, they all come to an end. A few is a number, many is a number, and whether few or many, the stripes come to an end when they have received enough to have accomplished God’s purpose to cause them to repent, see the light and be sorry, and turn away and change. Having received the punishment that they deserve because they refused Christ’s sacrifice, then they have to suffer for it.

If they reject Christ’s suffering, His atonement, His substitutionary death for their sins, then they have to suffer for their own sins. So therefore, they then will suffer the judgment and serve out the sentence until they have suffered enough to pay for it, and then they will be released from whatever that is and allowed some better life—but not as good as those who received Him in this life and repented here and now and served Him here and obeyed Him in this world and did good in what they could now, here on this earth, and who have received Jesus Christ as their Savior, as their substitution, sacrifice for sins.

We are completely forgiven. We are completely relieved from the punishment of sin, “For the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin”—past, present, and future (1 John 1:7). But not them, because they rejected Jesus and they rejected His blood and they refused to believe and they refused to receive, therefore they shall have to suffer for their own sins, their own punishment.

Jesus does not take it for them because they have not received Him. In a way, He took it for everybody; He died for the whole world, but only those who receive it get it (1 Timothy 4:10). So that’s the story, and I’m convinced that if things aren’t squared in this life, they certainly will be in the next, good or evil.

Therefore, great disasters that sweep thousands of lives into the next are undoubtedly in some way good for the people involved. Those who die go right into a life where they’ll certainly be taught what’s right and wrong. And for many it will be a release from the agony and the punishment and the pain, like Lazarus the beggar, who begged at the rich man’s door and the dogs licked his sores.

The Lord says he suffered his here and had his evil things here, but now he’s going to have his good things. Whereas the rich man had good things here and he was going to suffer for his sins in the afterlife (Luke 16:25).

Those who did evil in this life but maybe didn’t suffer enough for it here will suffer for it afterward unless they have been cleansed by the blood of Christ. In that case, “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). But some will have to pay for their sins by death, suffering, and pain in this life and the afterlife.

It’s a very big subject, one that has plagued the world for millenniums and caused men to wonder and question and argue as to why. Why these disasters, earthquakes, floods, eruptions, wars and famines that wipe out tens of thousands of people?

In many cases it could be a blessing in disguise to relieve many of the poor and the pitiful and the suffering and the oppressed and the starving from their agony and their suffering. They’ll find that death is a blessing, even if they didn’t know the Lord and didn’t know His Word and didn’t know Jesus. I’m sure God’s going to have mercy upon them, and His relieving them of this life is going to teach them the things they need to know in the next life, because we didn’t get to them in this life—our responsibility (Ezekiel 3:18–19).

The church didn’t fulfill its obligation of reaching them with the truth and the Gospel and Jesus and His love in this life, so where are they going to learn it? Certainly God wants them to know it and learn it sometime, sooner or later, and if they don’t get it here and now, they’ll get it there and then. I’m convinced of it.

It says that, “Then no man shall say, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Him” (Jeremiah 31:34; Hebrews 8:11). If everybody’s going to know Him, then they’re all going to know the truth and all know Jesus. They may not know Him as well and as personally as we do, because we already knew Him in this life, and learned to know Him well, communicate with Him well, and love.

We have only happiness and joy and beautiful eternal rewards to look forward to in the next life, because we have received His substitutionary sacrifice for sin, Jesus Christ, and His blood shed on the cross, so that we are relieved from the punishment and the penalty of the sin and relieved from the sentences that will be passed on others at the Great Judgment.

That judgment is for a reason! All the people who ever lived, whether good or bad, if unsaved, will have to stand at the Great White Throne Judgment of God (Revelation 20:11–12). Not at the Judgment Seat of Christ. The Judgment Seat of Christ is a different judgment, in which we are judged by Christ Himself because we know Him, and there He will reward us according to our works (Romans 14:10; 2 Corinthians 5:10).

Christians will be rewarded either well or poorly, because if they served poorly, they’ll be rewarded poorly. Or if they served well, they’ll be rewarded well. Some in the Resurrection, He says “will shine as the stars,” those that turn many to righteousness. They’re going to be shining stars! Whereas others will be “raised to everlasting shame and contempt”—but nevertheless raised, and nevertheless rescued from death and this world (Daniel 12:2–3).

How you interpret it depends on whether you believe in God or not. How you interpret it depends on whether you believe in the afterlife or not. Of course, if there were no afterlife, then the whole thing is a farce and a tragedy and travesty against justice. But there is an afterlife where things are squared up, the good and the righteous are rewarded, and the evil are punished.

Why weep for those who have been taken and gone on to the next life? They’re the blessed ones! It’s those who didn’t die, who stay behind and suffer, that you are to pity and be sorry for, because they’re still having to suffer in order to learn what life is all about, and suffering helps us to learn. As David said, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but in my affliction I cried unto the Lord and He saved this poor man out of all his troubles (Psalm 18:6, 34:6, and 119:67). Affliction and suffering drives people to God, at least those who can be driven. With some, affliction and suffering causes them to curse God all the more because they’re still unrepentant, as God’s prophets said of them (Ezekiel 3:7; Matthew 23:37).

So suffering is a catalyst; suffering is the test-tube time to see if you either have the grace already to take it by faith, or if it can turn you to grace, cause you to call upon God and ask Him to forgive you and cause you to repent and cause you to seek His mercy and His love and His salvation. Or whether the same suffering is going to cause some to reject Him the more and deny Him the more!

Ralph Underwood was a famous atheist—head of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism (AAAA), the biggest atheistic outfit in America at that time, before communism. He once told me, “Dave, all those years I went around preaching against God and claiming He didn’t exist, I knew He existed, but I just hated Him, and therefore I didn’t want people to believe in Him. So I tried to destroy their faith, undermine their faith, and wipe out their faith in God, if they had any.” Of course, if you have real faith in God, it can’t be wiped out.

What little thread of childlike belief or whatever it was they had, he went around trying to destroy because he hated God and didn’t want people to believe in Him. He said, “I cursed God and hated Him for the life I’d had to live. I had been an orphan when I was a child, and I learned to hate God.” But look how the Lord, in spite of his hatred and working against God for years, finally saved him—through suffering! He had some kind of crash or accident that finally brought him to God.

In general terms, suffering can do one of those three things: It purifies and humbles and cleanses the saved and draws us even closer to God; it turns some of the unsaved to God, to repentance and salvation as in their suffering they cry unto the Lord; and then for the totally unrepentant, the renegade or utterly wicked, it causes them to curse God all the more and therefore be all the more deserving of His judgments.

I’m completely, utterly convinced of the righteousness of God and His love and His mercy and His justice and fairness and that He does only the right thing and the thing that’s good for us; or that is deserved by the wicked, which is also good, of course. Even the judgments of God are righteous. The works of God are good and not evil. They may seem evil, look evil, and appear to some people to be evil, but even so-called evil is good if God is in it.

We’re certainly not to be sorry for the dead, only except perhaps for those who died unrepentant and in unbelief and rebellion against God. I’m sorry for them. And for the good poor who died, it was a release and relief from their sufferings and from their hardships and hard life and oppression, depression, pain, and deprivation. I’m sure that God has a fair and just reward for them, and relief from this life was undoubtedly with thanksgiving and pleasure.

In a sense we all live in a measure of suffering in this world under the curse of suffering, pain, sickness, death. So it’s for the living that we need to pray—for the mercy of God and relief of suffering if they repent, or a tightening of the screws if they don’t. Pray for the millions of the poor who still suffer.

It’s for the millions who still live that we need to pray and whom we need to reach with the Gospel and the love of Christ and the message of salvation and His forgiveness and His joy and happiness, His love. These are the ones that we need to be praying about and worrying about, or at least concerned about and caring for and striving to help—not those who are already dead and have passed on to their reward, whatever it may be.

We’re not to weep for the dead in that case, unless they were wicked and evil and have gone on to more suffering, in which case perhaps our prayers might help them. “All things are possible with God, and the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (Matthew 19:26; James 5:16). Since they are still in a stage of learning and being taught in hope and preparation of their repentance and turning and changing and becoming purified and purged in Purgatory, then surely we can pray to that end, and that’s good prayer. In that case we can yet pray for the dead, the unsaved dead, that they may learn in the afterlife what they failed to learn here.

But most of all we need to pray for the living and those who are still alive and can still be saved here and now and miss all that, that they can be spared having to go through even more suffering and agony and teaching and training and chastisement and judgment and punishment in the afterlife. We need to be concerned with trying to save the people now, building a fence at the top of the precipice instead of a hospital at the bottom.

We need to work on the ounce of prevention now rather than worry about the pound of cure later, because it’s so simple and so easy that they be saved now and spared all that, so that the quicker they die the better, the sooner the better, except to live for the sake of others.

God is just, God is good, God is merciful, God is love, and I believe it with all my heart. No matter what happens or how it happens or what great disasters befall the poor and the meek, “they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). And those who die, if they were good and did the best they knew how, they’re better off and they’re out of the suffering and agony of this world.

Copyright © November 1980 by The Family International

The Knowledge of Good

David Brandt Berg

1984-01-01

01/18/25 Man may be able to invent computers and automatons, but that stuff is eventually going to lead the world to its destruction. “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22). Things can be used by the Lord for good—like we use computers—or by mankind and the Devil to destroy the world. Every missile has a built-in computer to guide it to its destination, so computers can be used for good and evil.

The Devil told the truth when he said it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Up to that time all they had was the knowledge of good, because everything was good; there was no evil except for the Devil. But when they partook of that tree, they got the knowledge of evil—good and evil.

Until they had the knowledge of evil, all they had was good, and they didn’t even know what good was. It took the knowledge of evil to give us the knowledge of good, to understand good and what good is. Because without the bad, you wouldn’t have anything to compare the good with, to know it is good.

They didn’t really get the knowledge of good, to know that it was good and why it was good and how it was good, until Satan gave them the knowledge of evil. He didn’t actually give it to them; they yielded to it by eating the forbidden fruit from the forbidden tree that God had warned them not to eat. That was, of course, the first evil, their lack of faith in the Word of God. The Devil planted doubts and they believed the Devil instead of the Lord and they partook of the fruit. But what God promised happened, and what the Devil promised happened too—at least half of it. When he said, “Ye shall not surely die,” that didn’t happen; they did die, it was a lie! The Devil often tells people half-truths to get people to swallow the lie, his sugar-coated pill (Genesis 3:4).

It’s sad that many people today have gained so much scientific knowledge about the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars, the planets, solar system, and galaxies, and yet they’re so ignorant of the beautiful order and perfection and marvelous synchronization of things like the phases of the moon! God has made a lot of marvelous things, and He put the moon and the stars up there for a reason; He said for lights, to light the day and the night, and to be for signs and seasons so you’d know the difference (Genesis 1:14). Long before people had calendars or clocks or any other way of telling time, that was the way they told time. If you ever got lost out in the woods or out in the desert or somewhere, as many people have, people who knew about these things managed to find their way home. People who didn’t, often starved to death and died, because they didn’t know which direction was which or which way to go.

God has made even the planetary system of the earth and the moon to be a marvelous clock to be able to tell time by, and even the day of the year. In biblical times people could read those signs and tell you what the weather was going to be, etc. They had ways of discerning the signs in the sky and the weather, even though they had no meteorologists. But Jesus said, “You can’t even discern the signs of the times! You don’t even know what day it is spiritually or in history or what’s happening right here in your country.”

God’s creation is fascinating. You can see the hand of God, hear the voice of God in it, and learn so much about God from it. “He which is invisible can be seen in the things that He has made” (Romans 1:20). That’s what that scripture means. It has kind of funny wording, but that’s what it means.—That in seeing what He has made, what is visible, you can see and know the existence of He who is invisible, by seeing His handiwork.

Back in the Garden of Eden, the Devil said, “Hath God said? God said you shouldn’t do that because God doesn’t want you to know that if you do this, you’ll have lots more fun!” Adam and Eve did that, and what happened? They didn’t have a lot more fun; they had nothing but trouble from then on.

Seeking the happiness of others and trying to help others and make others happy, as God has ordered us to do, is the only way to bring true happiness. That little song has got it all summed up beautifully: “The way to be happy is to make others happy, and we’ll have a little heaven right here.”

If you’ll try to make others happy, it’ll make you happy, and you’ll have a little heaven right here on earth.—Contrary to the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, that states that Americans are guaranteed the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They’ve been chasing it ever since and have never found it. You don’t find happiness by chasing it; happiness finds you by your bringing happiness to others. That’s God’s system, God’s rule, God’s way, God’s Law of Love. God will make you happy if you make others happy. It’s that simple!

I’ve even told people who have been Christians for years that that was the way to be happy. I told that to one woman who’d married husband after husband after husband and couldn’t find a man who could make her happy. I finally said, “Why don’t you go out and try to find some dear old man that you can make happy; maybe it’ll work!” The only way to be happy is to make others happy, and you’ll have a little heaven right here.

The Lord allowed mankind to fall because He saw that the only way man, His creation, would ever learn, was through that bitter experience, because you never learn as well as you do through experience. Adam and Eve learned, let me tell you, when they were driven out of the Garden and had to go out and find clothes to wear and till the soil for their food.

They then realized they’d never had it as good as they’d had it in the Garden when they obeyed God and kept His rules and had perfect liberty. The trouble was, you see, in the Garden before the fall they didn’t know what good was, because they didn’t have anything to compare it with. As I’ve often said, you wouldn’t know what light was unless you’d known darkness.

You don’t really appreciate health until you’ve known sickness. You don’t appreciate wealth unless you’ve known poverty. You don’t appreciate that marvelous heavenly relief and release from pain unless you’ve known pain.

The Lord had to let all that happen so that we would learn and appreciate the good and the marvelous good world we’re going to have in the future without all of that pain and evil, the kind of world He wanted us to live in in the first place and the way it was to begin with, and the way man was to begin with. But He saw that man didn’t really appreciate it, didn’t really understand it, had nothing to compare it with to know it was so good and so beautiful and so wonderful and such heaven on earth and so perfect with no evil.

God had to let man experience evil to really appreciate good, and experience sin in order to appreciate salvation.

Copyright © January 1984 by The Family International

God’s Idea of Greatness

A compilation

2022-01-11

01/17/25 How would you define greatness?

In his bestselling book The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren says: “There will always be more people willing to do ‘great’ things for God than people willing to do the little things. The race to be a leader is crowded, but the field is wide open for those willing to be servants.”

The interesting thing is that Jesus promoted the role of a servant. Whenever the disciples argued about who would be greatest, Jesus reminded them that the greatest thing they could ever do—the action that would make them great in God’s eyes—was to serve others. “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.”¹

Here are a few more excerpts from Rick Warren’s book on what it means to be a servant:

The world defines greatness in terms of power, possessions, prestige, and position. Jesus, however, measured greatness in terms of service, not status. God determines your greatness by how many people you serve, not how many people serve you.

Jesus specialized in menial tasks that others tried to avoid: washing feet, helping children, fixing breakfast, and serving lepers. Nothing was beneath Him, because He came to serve. It wasn’t in spite of His greatness that He did these things, but because of it, and He expects us to follow His example.

Small tasks often show a big heart. Your servant’s heart is revealed in little acts that others don’t think of doing, as when Paul gathered brushwood for a fire to warm everyone after a shipwreck. He was just as exhausted as everyone else, but he did what everyone needed. No task is beneath you when you have a servant’s heart.

John Wesley was an incredible servant of God. His motto was, “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, as long as you ever can.” That is greatness. You can begin by looking for small tasks that no one else wants to do. Do these little things as if they were great things, because God is watching.²

The Bible is filled with examples of imperfect men who were of service to others. If you’re looking for God’s greatness, just start serving. Look for ways that you can help another and then do what you can with all your heart, and as you do, as you serve, you will learn to serve well.

Keep in mind, though, that service doesn’t mean setting yourself up to receive recognition. But you can be encouraged that as you serve, your life will have a positive impact on others and you will cultivate deep relationships.

When I read about people like Mother Teresa, who helped so many of the destitute on the streets of Kolkata, or Father Damien, the leper priest of Hawaii, their lives of giving and service inspire my soul and heart to pursue a path greater than myself; it gives me a vision far surpassing my petty wants.

One of my favorite quotes is by George Bernard Shaw. He said, “This is the true joy in life: being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

In other words, selfless living is a joy; it’s fulfilling! Albert Schweitzer said, “The only really happy people are those who have learned how to serve.” It’s funny, because when some of us think of the word “serving” or “service,” joy and happiness are not what come to mind. We more likely think of work and self-denial. But obviously, many people have discovered that they have received happiness, joy, and satisfaction through living to serve, give, and care.

As Christians, our service should be done as unto God, and not for personal glory or because we are expecting something in return. We are called to give and serve as unto God out of love and gratefulness for Him, not for appreciation, respect, honor, or reward.

Through serving others you’re creating a ripple effect of giving and receiving. Your giving is not just bringing sacrifice into your life, but joy and positive experiences that you might not have expected. And you don’t only have good things coming back to you in this life; imagine what it will feel like one day to have God say to you, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!”³—Daveen Donnelly

Full of His greatness

God’s idea of greatness is having a heart, soul, and spirit so full of His greatness that it manifests through us. In the Bible, the word “great” is nearly always used to describe who God is: “For the LORD is great and greatly to be praised.”⁴ Or what God has done: “The LORD has done great things for us, and we are glad.”⁵

A great person is one who obeys God: “Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”⁶ A great person is one who is a servant: “Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant.”⁷

When we acknowledge God’s greatness through our worship of Him, we invite His greatness to dwell in us. When we obey God and serve Him, then He does great things through us. This is the kind of greatness God has called us to in our lives.—Stormie Omartian

What is greatness?

The world measures greatness by money, or eloquence, or intellectual skill, or even by prowess on the field of battle. But here is the Lord’s standard: “Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.”—J. H. Jowett

*

Do not confuse notoriety and fame with greatness. Many of the titled in today’s world obtained their fame and fortune outside their own merit. On the other hand, I have met great people in the most obscure roles. For greatness is a measure of one’s spirit, not a result of one’s rank in human affairs. Nobody, least of all mere human beings, confers greatness upon another, for it is not a prize but an achievement. And greatness can crown the head of a janitor just as readily as it can come to someone of high rank.—Sherman G. Finesilver

Choosing significance over success

Ever since God breathed His story into existence, we’ve been drawn to the stories of heroes. We are inspired by brave warriors who stand up for justice, such as firefighters who run into buildings when everyone else is running out. Heroes don’t do what they do for recognition, credit, or fame. They do it because they can take something wrong in the world and set it right again.

Isn’t it interesting that when we read these stories, we don’t consider ourselves in the same category? … The truth is that every one of us is called to be heroic for God’s Kingdom. That means prioritizing a life of eternal significance over worldly success.

That can be hard for us to accept. For most of us, our success in life has been determined by how well we perform inside worldly grading systems. Whether it’s school and report cards, or the adult world of commission structures and performance reviews, in order to gain success, we have to measure up well inside the system. Believe me, I know. For many years, my ultimate goal was success. Get the highest grades possible. Earn recognition and awards.

But do we want success at the cost of God’s will being done?

It’s not that God doesn’t want us to be successful; He wants us to experience the abundant life He has to offer.

Jesus came to offer that abundant life by turning things upside down. He came to tell us about what rewards look like in His Kingdom. He came to invite believers to partner with Him in building His Church.

As leaders (and we are all leaders in some way), the goal is to shift our mindsets. We aim for significance by being major heroes in building God’s Kingdom instead of minor characters, or worse, players who never got in the game. How do we do that? …

When what we say and do honors God and invites others into a relationship with Him, we lead a life of significance.

Father, help me to prioritize the building of Your Kingdom above all else and live faithfully and fully in light of eternity. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.—Erin Weidemann⁸

Published on Anchor January 2022. Read by Reuben Ruchevsky.
Music by Michael Dooley.

¹ Mark 10:43 NIV.

² Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004), 257, 259, 260–261.

³ Matthew 25:21 NIV.

⁴ 1 Chronicles 16:25.

⁵ Psalm 126:3.

⁶ Matthew 5:19.

⁷ Matthew 20:26.

⁸ https://proverbs31.org/read/devotions/full-post/2020/12/09/choosing-significance-over-success.

Building Great People

A compilation

2012-02-13

01/16/25 One of the greatest gifts you can give someone is your faith in them. Everyone needs someone to believe in them!—Peter Amsterdam

*

People often judge one another by what they see on the outside—the initial reactions, the perception of a person’s character, the hearsay circulated about an individual. It’s hard to see the person behind the mask, to see his heart and what his intentions are. It’s sad that so much is measured by what’s on the outside, because it’s the heart that counts. People the world over would be far better off being measured against that touchstone.

It takes love, hope, faith, and understanding to nourish the possibilities in another, and to believe that there is more to a person than meets the eye. You may think that you know a person well enough to know that he is beyond changing, but would you have the same said of you? Would you want to be boxed in and limited to what people suppose you are? Would you consider how people view and treat you to be a fair representation of who you really are and how you would want to be treated? Think about that, and then consider how you view others and how you treat them.

Human nature is such that you thrive on hearing appreciation from those around you. You gain confidence when you know that someone considers your thoughts of value. A brilliant light is turned on within a heart that is cherished and admired by another. There truly is no comparison to what love and faith can do to the human spirit, and it would make Me so happy to see more love extended to those around you.

Do your best to help those around you flourish and become more than they are today. It’s part of your Christian duty to reach out to others and to believe in them. Show faith and trust in people, even when you may feel hesitant to do so. You’d be surprised at what may come from a little confidence and faith placed in an individual.

So many people lack simple confidence. They’ve felt shut out by others, condemned, unappreciated, and ridiculed, and this has been a loss to the development of their possibilities. It’s a rare soul who can go so contrarily against the crowd and forge ahead, regardless of what others think, or whether or not he receives any praise or encouragement for what he hopes to achieve. Most people need the gentle nurturing of appreciation, faith, love, and belief that they can succeed.

Such faith in others doesn’t always come easily. Sometimes you must extend the hand of acceptance, even when your logic is screaming that you shouldn’t. But if you know that it’s what’s right, that it’s what I expect of you, then it’s My voice within your heart that you must listen to. Don’t push it aside as illogical or foolish. Love isn’t always logical.

If you want to see the world and those around you change, then it starts with you—with your belief that others are more than they appear to be. You can draw out the good in those around you, appreciate individuals for who they are, acknowledge the gifts and talents that I’ve blessed them with, and humbly be a conduit of love and appreciation to others.

Remember My words to My disciples, which still hold true today: “This is My commandment: that ye love one another, as I have loved you.”¹ So love others, and highlight the good in them, and that good will flourish even more. You can have full confidence that love never returns void.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy

*

Expect the best from people. You’ll see that they’ll often meet your expectations, and in some cases, exceed them.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy

*

Many of you remember the movie “Stand and Deliver,” the story of Jaime Escalante, an immigrant from Bolivia who taught at Garfield High School in inner-city Los Angeles. He accomplished remarkable results with students known to be especially difficult to teach.

One story not depicted in the movie was the one about “the other Johnny.” Escalante had two students named Johnny in his class. One was a straight A+ student; the other was an F+ student. The A+ student was easy to get along with, cooperated with teachers, worked hard, and was popular with his peers. The F+ Johnny was sullen, angry, uncooperative, disruptive, and in general was not popular with anyone.

One evening at a PTA meeting, an excited mother approached Escalante and asked, “How is my Johnny doing?” Escalante figured that the F+ Johnny’s mother would not be asking such a question, so he described in glowing terms the A+ Johnny, saying he was a wonderful student, popular with his class, cooperative and a hard worker, and would undoubtedly go far in life. The next morning, Johnny—the F+ one—approached Escalante and said, “I really appreciate what you said to my mother about me, and I just want you to know that I’m going to work real hard to make what you said the truth.” By the end of that grade period, he was a C- student, and by the end of the school year, he was on the honor roll.

If we treat others as if they were “the other Johnny,” chances are dramatically better that they will, in fact, improve their performance. Someone rightly said that more people have been encouraged to succeed than have been nagged to succeed. This example makes us wonder what would happen to all the “other Johnnies” of the world if someone said something really nice about them.—Zig Ziglar

*

Everyone screws up at some point or another, but the knowledge that someone still believes in them, has faith in them, and trusts that even though they’ve made mistakes and have fallen or failed, they’re not being put on the scrap heap, can be just what they need to make it. You’ll be amazed at what people will do or be if they know that you believe in them.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy

*

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.—Ralph Waldo Emerson

*

People often lose faith in themselves and in their own abilities. They clearly see their mistakes, inabilities, and failings, and the Enemy is always right there to magnify those faults and to tell them, “Yes, you are a failure and you’ll never amount to anything. You might as well give up now.”

But when someone comes along and shows faith in them, it can often be the ray of hope that they need to turn things around and to keep going.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy

*

Practical ways to express “I have faith in you”:

* Build up excellence: Try to think of at least one thing that you find outstanding in a person, and then make it your task to let them know. Reinforce the fact that you see and know how excellent they are in that specific way. Don’t be shy; they won’t get tired of hearing it. What you’re doing is building confidence in that one area, and as they gain confidence, they will start to improve in other areas as well.

* Give others responsibility: If you’re in a position of authority, try to give others responsibility in the areas in which they are notably strong, even if it’s just in one small thing. Let them feel trusted and needed and appreciated for their obvious strengths, and it will help them to develop other strengths.

* Appreciate who they are: Appreciating others for what they do is important, and people like to be thanked and acknowledged for it. But being appreciated for a personal trait feels a lot nicer than only being appreciated for the outcome of that trait. For example, telling a cook that she is creative in coming up with exotic dishes, rather than just saying that the food was delicious.

* Keep appreciation simple and doable: Don’t feel that you need to have wonderfully warm feelings about a person, or be their best friend and really know them deeply before you can make a difference in someone’s life. You can be a near stranger and still have a marvelous effect on someone.

* Slow down: It takes time to see people in a new light. It takes a slowdown of the hasty assumptions that are a result of mental ruts and thought patterns that require no change in perspective. Go slower in your interactions with people and allow Me a chance to reveal My perspective.

* Pause to meditate: Think of the positive ways that someone has helped you. Praise Me for the good that a person has done. Pray for them. Appreciate them in your thoughts. You will have a change in how you view others, because you will have taken the time to go deeper, past the surface assumptions that are so easy to make and past your history with them.

* Let go of the past: Be willing to see who the person is today, or the potential of what they can be tomorrow, and don’t let your view be marred by your past experiences.

* Extend mercy: Acknowledge the mercy that you want Me and others to show you, and then show that same mercy and tenderness to others.

* Drop the labels: Think of how you dislike being labeled or put in a box. You desire freedom to go wherever My Spirit leads, to do whatever I show you to do. Labels and classifications put people in boxes that hinder their faith to follow My Spirit. Try your best to support and encourage others to follow their faith.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy

*

Treat a man as he appears to be, and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he already were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Originally published December 2009. Adapted and republished February 2012.
Read by Simon Peterson.

¹ John 15:12.

What Is Truth?

By Marge Banks

01/15/25 Standing in the judgment hall of Roman-controlled Jerusalem, face to face with the prophet of Galilee, the procurator Pontius Pilate asked what was to become one of the most famous questions of all time: “What is truth?” Pilate apparently failed to realize that the answer was standing right in front of him. The Bible tells us that “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,”¹ and Jesus Himself said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”²

Today we live in a world of relativism, where it would seem there are no absolutes. Relativism alleges that truth is subjective, elusive, changeable. Politicians utter promises they can’t or don’t intend to keep; spin doctors mislead; the world’s commerce is driven by greed at the expense of integrity; history is revised; news reports are frequently biased, sensationalized, or otherwise distorted; modern entertainment blurs the lines between reality and fantasy; the Bible is viewed as mythical, irrelevant, and inappropriate for today’s needs—if ever it was.

People may imagine what they will, disparage as they will, and try to make reality conform to their own desires and agendas, but that doesn’t change the truth. As Mohandas Gandhi put it, “God is, even though the whole world deny Him. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.” Those who close their minds to that reality unwittingly fulfill some of the saddest words in the Bible: “[Jesus] was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.”³ Even many sincere seekers of the truth look first in the wrong places. While they explore new forms of spirituality or take a psychological route toward self-improvement, for example, like Pilate they miss what is right in front of them: the liberating truth and love of God, which He freely extends to them.

But those who read the Bible with open minds and believing hearts find what they’ve been searching for—answers to life’s deepest questions and love enough to fill the deepest void—truth. “If you abide in My word,” Jesus promises, “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”⁴

The Bible—Fact or Fable?

Despite popular dismissals of the Bible as little more than fables and fabrication, archaeology has provided remarkable evidence of its historical accuracy. For example, the archive of the ancient city of Ebla in northern Syria was discovered in the 1970s. The documents it contained, written on clay tablets around 2300 BC, demonstrate that personal and place names in the accounts of the Hebrew patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are real. Ancient customs reflected in the stories of the patriarchs have also been found in clay tablets.

Another example concerns Sargon, king of Assyria, who is referred to in the book of Isaiah, but whose existence historians long disputed: “In the year that Tartan came to Ashdod, when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him, and fought against Ashdod and took it” (Isaiah 20:1). We now know that Sargon II was indeed an Assyrian king who started his reign in 722 bc. Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad, Iraq, was discovered by Paul-Émile Botta in 1843. Further excavation of the site some 90 years later found the very event mentioned in Isaiah—Assyria’s conquest of Ashdod—recorded on the palace walls. Visitors to the British Museum in London can see the colossal winged bull taken from the palace.

A third example was discovered in the British Museum itself. In the summer of 2007, visiting professor Michael Jursa, an Assyriologist, was searching through the museum’s collection of 130,000 Assyrian cuneiform tablets when he came across a name he half remembered—Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, described there in a hand 2,500 years old as “the chief eunuch” of Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon. The small tablet on which the name appears is a bill of receipt acknowledging Nabu-sharrussu-ukin’s payment of about 0.75 kg of gold to a temple in Babylon. Jursa checked the Old Testament and found the same name, rendered differently by the Bible’s translators, in chapter 39 of the book of Jeremiah. Nebo-Sarsekim, according to Jeremiah, was “chief officer” to Nebuchadnezzar II and was with him at the siege of Jerusalem in 587 bc, when the Babylonians overran the city. Dr. Irving Finkel of the British Museum summed up the significance. “This is a fantastic discovery, a world-class find. A throwaway detail in the Old Testament turns out to be accurate and true. I think that it means that the whole of the narrative [of Jeremiah] takes on a new kind of power.”⁵

What of Jesus Himself?

Dozens of ancient non-biblical manuscripts confirm that Jesus was a genuine historical figure who lived in Palestine in the early part of the first century. The Encyclopedia Britannica states: “These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time—and on inadequate grounds—by several authors during the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th centuries.”⁶

For instance, the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus mentions “Christus” in his annals published around 115 AD: “Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.”⁷

Another example is Lucian of Samosatam, a Greek satirist who lived during the second century. He was scornful of Christians, but nevertheless his writings attest to the spread of Christianity at that time: “The Christians … worship a man to this day—the distinguished personage who introduced this new cult, and was crucified on that account. … You see, these misguided creatures start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time, which explains their contempt for death and self devotion … their lawgiver [taught] they are all brothers, from the moment that they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws. All this they take on faith.”⁸

Marge Banks is a member of the Family International in England.

Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences progress in ever greater extent and depth, and the human mind widen itself as much as it desires—beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity, as it shines forth in the Gospels, it will not go.
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, German poet (1749-1832)

All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more strongly the truth contained in the sacred Scriptures.
—Sir William Herschel, German astronomer (1738-1822)

The Bible is the sacred collection, preserved under the name of Book of books, which contains the doctrinal, moral, and religious system relatively most profound, popular, and intelligible that has come into existence in the history of mankind.
—Francisco Giner de los Ríos, Spanish educator and philosopher (1839-1915)

There is abundant evidence that the Bible, though written by men, is not the product of the human mind. By countless multitudes it has always been revered as a communication to us from the Creator of the universe.
—Sir Ambrose Fleming, English inventor (1849-1945)

All that I think, all that I hope, all that I write, all that I live for, is based upon the divinity of Jesus Christ, the central joy of my poor, wayward life.
—William Gladstone, English Prime Minister (1809-1898)

In books I converse with men, in the Bible I converse with God.
—William Romaine, English preacher (1714-1795)

For me, the Bible is the Book. I cannot see how anybody can live without it.
—Gabriela Mistral, Chilean poetess and Nobel prizewinner (1889-1957)

1. John 1:17
   2. John 14:6
   3. John 1:10-11
   4. John 8:31-32
   5. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/11/ntablet111.xml ; July 13, 2007
   6. Encyclopedia Britannica (1980), Vol. 10, page 145
   7. Annals 15.44.2-8
   8. The Passing Peregrinus

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5) ESV

Become a New Creature in Christ

David Brandt Berg

2016-03-10

01/14/25 Grace plus faith plus nothing.—That’s salvation. You don’t have to be good to get saved, and you don’t have to be good to stay saved. But this does not mean that you can just live as you please once you are saved. If you are really a Christian you will always be saved, but if you commit sins against the Lord and others which are unconfessed, unrepented of, and not made right, you will suffer for them in some way, “for whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.”¹ But even if you are disobedient at times and are chastened by the Lord for your sins, if you are saved, you’ll always be saved.

When, as a young Christian, I read John 3:36, that ended all my worries. “He that hath the Son hath everlasting life.” That was it. I knew I had Jesus, and I knew He didn’t keep popping in and out of my heart. He was there all the time. He says, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”² He says, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee,”³ and “I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand.”⁴

So thank the Lord that we can be saved and know it. And of course, if you really are, you’ll show it too. You’ll no longer be like everybody else in the world; you’ll be different. You’ll be a “new creature in Christ Jesus; old things will be passed away, and all things will become new.”⁵ There’ll be a change, a real change.

Jesus coming into your life not only renews and purifies and regenerates your spirit, but it also renews your mind, breaking old connections and reflexes and gradually rebuilding and rewiring you into a whole new computer system with an utterly different outlook on life, a new way of looking at the world, and with new reactions to nearly everything around you.

It’s impossible for men to really change themselves, but it’s possible for God to change anyone. And when Jesus comes into your heart, everything is changed. You are a new person.

If you are genuinely saved, born again, a new creature in Christ Jesus, old things are passed away and all things are become new. And if you “abide in Him and He abides in you, then you shall bring forth fruit.”⁶ If you are genuinely saved, if you are genuinely born again, if you have God in your heart, if you have salvation, if you have Jesus, you’re a new creature and you will be different.

So expect things to be different. Not totally different perhaps, as you’re still human. But you’ll find a change in your spirit, in your thoughts, in your heart and in your direction. You’ll be happy and overflowing with love. Because if you have Jesus, you have love. For “God is love.”⁷

Do you have Jesus? Have you taken Him into your heart and been born again by His Spirit? Are you truly changed, a new person, a new creature, one in which old things have passed away and all things have become new? You don’t have to walk down to an altar; you don’t have to stand up, sit down, turn over, or stand on your head. It has nothing to do with the position of your body. It’s all in how you position your heart. If your heart is humble before God and you know you’re a sinner and need His help, all you have to do is ask Him into your heart.

Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.”⁸ Salvation is so powerful, but God will not force it on you. His love is all-powerful, but He won’t make you receive it. Jesus knocks at the door; He doesn’t kick it in. He could break it down or pulverize it with one look, but He refuses to force His way into your heart.

He simply asks to come in, and you have to invite Him. That is the limitation He has set and the condition He requires. You have to let Him come in, but if you won’t invite Him willingly, He won’t force His way in.

He wants to save you, but He can’t do it unless you want Him to. You have to ask Him to come in. Gentle Jesus stands there, meek and mild, in loving patience, and perhaps has been for years, waiting at your heart’s door—knocking again and again by His Word, by His love, perhaps by some sad incident or the parting of a loved one, a death or sickness or pain.

But God has left the majesty of choice up to you as an individual, and nobody can ever force you to accept Jesus Christ as your Savior. You alone can make that choice, if and when you want to. He certainly wants to be your Savior and He will come in, just as soon as you ask Him. But you must make the decision. He’s left that choice up to you.

Do you have Jesus in your heart? Then you are saved forever and bound for heaven and will never be lost. Are you saved? If you’re not sure, make sure right now and receive Him personally as your own Lord and Savior by sincerely praying this simple prayer:

“Lord Jesus, please forgive me for all my sins. I believe You died for me. I believe You are the Son of God, and I now ask You to come into my life. I open the door and I invite You into my heart. Jesus, please come in and help me to love others and tell them about You, that they may find You too. Help me to read Your Word and understand it by Your Spirit. In Your name I ask. Amen.”

If you pray this prayer and mean it, Jesus will come in. Jesus promised that if you open the door to your heart, if you ask Him to come in, He will come in. Period.

True salvation is based on pure faith in God’s Word, not faith in feelings. Your feelings may change from day to day—sometimes good, sometimes bad—but the Bible, God’s Word, never changes. So put your faith in His Word, for “faith comes by hearing the Word of God.”⁹ The Bible is definite, so no matter how you feel, if you ask Jesus to come in, He comes in, because He promised He would.

Of course, being born again, receiving Jesus, will result in a change in your life, as you show your faith by your works.¹⁰ But it is not necessarily always manifested at the moment by a big emotional feeling or outward show—although it sometimes is. But regardless of your feelings, God’s Word is always the same and Jesus will always come in when asked.

“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”¹¹ God bless you with His love and salvation—now and forever.

Originally published March 1984. Adapted and republished March 2016.
Read by Jerry Paladino.

¹ Hebrews 12:6.

² Matthew 28:20.

³ Hebrews 13:5.

⁴ John 10:28.

⁵ 2 Corinthians 5:17.

⁶ John 15:5.

⁷ 1 John 4:8.

⁸ Revelation 3:20.

⁹ Romans 10:17.

¹⁰ James 2:18.

¹¹ Acts 16:31.

Granted to Us on Behalf of Christ

A compilation

2020-07-02

01/13/25 “It has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him.”—Philippians 1:29¹

I am a creature of comfort. I don’t want luxury, but I do love comfort. I like—no, strike that—LOVE creature comforts, such as warm cups of tea, soft blankets, cuddling with my kids, a plate of pasta, an evening laughing with friends, the joy of a shirt that fits just right, kisses from my husband, a pretty place to sit. These are the things I seek out. I also like knowing that everyone I love is comfortable. Truth be told, I consider these my needs.

Let me tell you about the things I don’t seek out: pain (of any kind), suffering, distress, and deprivation. I really dislike anything that will leave me cold, tired, or hungry—let alone injured or in pain. I like things to be easy. That’s just the honest truth.

There is this verse in the Bible that really conflicts with what I consider my “needs”: “It has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him.”² This passage was written to the Christians of Philippi when Paul was in prison. In the previous verses Paul was talking about how honored he felt to be in prison for preaching the gospel, and expressing how whether he lived or died, his life belonged to God.

So there I have it in black and white: “It is given to me to suffer for Christ.” Paul is letting us know that it’s not just a “feel good” religion where we find comfort, hope, encouragement, peace, and all that good stuff. Our faith in Jesus is also something we can expect to suffer for.

Religious persecution can seem so far removed from our universe that we don’t realize that even today there are many Christians whose faith costs them heavily in terms of personal comfort, safety, freedom, and even their lives.

It can be a shock for those of us who live in places where religious persecution is less common that our faith comes with a “must be willing to suffer” clause. Jesus prepared our hearts for it when He said, “The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”³

Persecution is actually a promise for living the way God wants you to live. Paul says this in 2 Timothy 3:12: “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”⁴ So persecution can be a sign that your choices and lifestyle are probably right and godly.

I decided to put a face on what persecution can look like, just to prepare my heart and so that when it comes, I will remember that this is what I have signed up for.

1. Being called out for my beliefs. This could mean having to explain to some of my secular friends that I believe in things like intelligent design and being ridiculed for those beliefs. Or taking flak for not condoning certain kinds of behaviors or lifestyles. Or perhaps watching my kids being pushed out of the “cool crowd” for choosing to be true to their faith.
2. Having someone go out of their way to make my or my family’s life miserable because of our faith. Maybe someone will spread malicious stories about me and my loved ones. This could affect our social circle, club memberships, or employment, and cause hardship. This could go a step further, with someone putting our physical safety at risk.
3. Being persecuted by the law and the government. I live in a country that boasts of religious freedom, and I love that we have it. But I also know that this certainly is not the case in many countries today. Religious freedom is something that amazing people of the Christian faith have fought and given their lives for, and I do not take it for granted. It could be taken away. There are countries where being a Christian is a crime punishable by imprisonment, fines, and in the most extreme cases, death.

There’s a lot to be said about God’s grace, protection, miracles, and strength that comes when times are hard, which includes persecution. We can trust that He will give us His grace for any opposition or persecution we face in this life, from mild to severe. He will help us to face it with the same kind of love that makes us ready to fight and/or suffer for those we love. And we know that Jesus does the same thing for us.

“In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”⁵—Mara Hodler

Worth the cost

Christians have experienced persecution from Jesus’ time to the present. Our Lord explained in the Scriptures that this is a part of our lives as His followers.⁶ The apostle Paul also said, “Yea, and all that would live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.”⁷

Many people equate the term “persecution” with its most severe forms—imprisonment, torture, and death. They hear accounts on YouTube, in the news, and on Christian websites of the rising numbers of those of faith who have been called to endure such forms of persecution. But then they look around at the many other Christians in the world who have never faced anything that severe, and they may wonder if somehow those people weren’t “godly” enough in some way.

I think the answer can be found by looking at the definition of the word “persecution.” In both secular and Bible dictionaries the definitions include terms such as “being pursued, pressed on, oppressed, or suffering punishment.” Some definitions described the meaning as “facing resistance, hostility, ill treatment, or opposition.”

When you live the truth of the gospel, it’s inevitable that you will face opposition and resistance in one form or another. Some are called to endure very extreme forms of persecution, while others suffer in other ways. Whatever the situation, God gives them the strength and courage to face what He has asked of them.

None of us can know what will come into our lives in the future, but we do know that whatever it is, Jesus will never fail us. Whatever He calls us to do in this life, if we are closely following Him, we will glorify Him. No matter what He asks us to do, His power will be there to help us when we need it. As we look to Him, we will be victors, and He will be pleased with us.—Maria Fontaine

Tasks of faith

“We do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”—2 Corinthians 4:16–17⁸

Philip Yancey once wrote, “I used to believe that Christianity solved problems and made life easier. Increasingly, I believe that my faith complicates life, in ways it should be complicated. As a Christian, I cannot not care about the environment, about homelessness and poverty, about racism and religious persecution, about injustice and violence. God does not give me that option.”

Yancey goes on to quote that old familiar passage, which he explains this way: “Jesus offers comfort, but the comfort consists of taking on a new burden, His own burden. Jesus offers a peace that involves new turmoil, a rest that involves new tasks.”⁹

What new tasks? Jesus summed them up when He summed up the Christian faith: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself”¹⁰—our “neighbor” being anyone we are in a position to help. Loving others as much as we love ourselves doesn’t come naturally and seldom is easy, but it’s what we are called to as Christians.—Keith Phillips

Published on Anchor July 2020. Read by Simon Peterson.

¹ NIV.

² Philippians 1:29 NIV.

³ John 15:20 KJV.

⁴ NIV.

⁵ Romans 8:37 NIV.

⁶ See John 15:20.

⁷ 2 Timothy 3:12.

⁸ NIV.

⁹ Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God (Zondervan, 2000), 93–94.

¹⁰ Matthew 22:37–39.

03 – Living Christianity: The Blessings of Obedience to God

Living Christianity

Peter Amsterdam

2018-10-16

01/12/25 Each of us is regularly faced with making both moral and nonmoral decisions. Choosing what food to order at a restaurant, what color to paint your bedroom, whether or not to buy a new pair of gloves, for example, are nonmoral decisions—they are morally neutral, as there is no ethical value attached to them. They are just a matter of personal preference. Most of our day-to-day decisions fall into this category. However, at times we are faced with making decisions of a moral nature. Do I exaggerate my level of education on my résumé? Do I deliberately lie in order to get out of a difficult decision? Should I support my government’s decision to fight an unjust war?

The moral and ethical choices we make play a large role in our relationships with God and others. As believers, the foundation of our ethics is the Bible. A life that is lived in service to God finds its ethical compass within Scripture, and through obedience to its teachings we find the joy of pleasing the Lord.

Both the Old and New Testaments teach that obedience to God brings blessings to one’s life, and that sin brings negative consequences. They also teach that each of us sin: None is righteous, no, not one.¹

As believers, we want to please God by living in obedience to His Word; yet, as sinful human beings, we aren’t able to fully obey all that Scripture teaches. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.² In spite of our natural, human inclination toward sin, Scripture teaches that if we endeavor to glorify God through our actions, we will receive His blessings. What do those blessings look like? Let’s take a look.³

The blessing of His love and fellowship.

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.⁴

If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.⁵

The joy and delight of God’s presence.

In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.⁶

How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.⁷

The joy of expressing our love for God through obedience to His Word.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.⁸

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.⁹

This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.¹⁰

The blessing of pleasing God. In the Gospel of John, Jesus said:

He who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.¹¹

Elsewhere in the Gospels, at the time of Jesus’ baptism, God said:

This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.¹²

Jesus pleased His Father.

Throughout the Epistles, we read about conducting ourselves in a manner that pleases God, as Jesus did.

He [Jesus] received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”¹³

We are called to please God through our actions.

Walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.¹⁴

It is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.¹⁵

Try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.¹⁶

Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.¹⁷

Whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.¹⁸

Brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.¹⁹

How do we live in a way that pleases God? By doing our best to apply the principles of His Word to our lives, and allowing the fruit of those principles to flow through our actions, resulting in the “good works” which God’s Word directs us to do.

We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.²⁰

Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.²¹

They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share.²²

The blessing of being effective in our example and witness. When our words and actions are guided by Scripture, they will be moral and ethical and therefore honorable. The apostle Peter wrote:

Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.²³

If we act with Christlikeness, then even those who may dislike us or who speak against us will still see the good we do and perhaps be moved by it. Peter also expressed this concept when he wrote:²⁴

Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct.²⁵

The blessing of God being more attentive to us. Scripture teaches that we receive additional blessings from God when we make an effort to avoid evil.

Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit; let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.²⁶

We read about having confidence when we come before God in prayer with a clear conscience and live what Scripture teaches.

Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.²⁷

The steps of a man are established by the LORD, when he delights in his way.²⁸

The joy of a clear conscience. The apostle Paul directed Timothy to train people to keep a good conscience before God.

The goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.²⁹

He also instructed him to fight the good fight, holding on to faith and a good conscience. Some have rejected these and so have shipwrecked their faith.³⁰ Of course, having a good conscience requires striving to live in obedience to God’s Word and resisting the temptation to sin.

The blessing of peace. The apostle Paul wrote that practicing what he taught would bring God’s peace.

What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.³¹

In the book of Isaiah we read something similar.

Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.³²

The blessing of avoiding God’s discipline. Scripture compares God’s loving discipline of His children to that of an earthly father who disciplines his children when they are disobedient. Such discipline is an act of love, as its goal is to correct the child for wrongdoing in order to teach them the right way to conduct themselves. In the book of Revelation, we hear Jesus say:

Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.³³

In Hebrews, we read:

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.³⁴

If we get off track, God’s discipline is a blessing. However, it is even better to live in a way that makes it unnecessary to receive His discipline.

The blessing of experiencing a foretaste of heaven. The Bible tells us that there will be no sin or disobedience in the heavenly city to come:

Nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.³⁵

Life there will be lived in complete alignment with God’s standards and love, and nothing unrighteous will be present.

We are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.³⁶

If we live in obedience to what God commands in Scripture, then in a sense we will have a foretaste of what heaven will be like.

The blessing of heavenly reward. The Epistles show that salvation is a free gift from God. They also teach that there are degrees of reward for believers in the life to come, and that those rewards are related to how we live on earth.

Whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.³⁷

We will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.³⁸

When we stand before the Lord and give account for our lives, it will be a time of blessing and reward for those who loved and obeyed Him. The book of Revelation speaks of the time for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great.³⁹

It’s not easy to live in obedience to God’s Word, but when we do, we encounter His blessings. In the next article, we will explore the effects and consequences of sin in our lives.

Note

Unless otherwise indicated, all scriptures are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

¹ Romans 3:10.

² Romans 3:23.

³ The following points are condensed from Wayne Grudem’s Christian Ethics (Wheaton: Crossway, 2018), chapter 5.

⁴ John 15:10.

⁵ John 14:23.

⁶ Psalm 16:11.

⁷ Psalm 36:7–8.

⁸ John 14:15.

⁹ John 14:21.

¹⁰ 1 John 5:3.

¹¹ John 8:29.

¹² Matthew 3:17. See also Mark 1:11, Luke 3:22, Matthew 17:5.

¹³ 2 Peter 1:17.

¹⁴ Colossians 1:10.

¹⁵ Philippians 2:13.

¹⁶ Ephesians 5:10.

¹⁷ Hebrews 13:16.

¹⁸ 2 Corinthians 5:9.

¹⁹ 1 Thessalonians 4:1.

²⁰ Ephesians 2:10.

²¹ Matthew 5:16.

²² 1 Timothy 6:18.

²³ 1 Peter 2:12.

²⁴ For more on women’s role in the New Testament generally, and in regard to marriage specifically, see Women of Faith, parts 1–4.

²⁵ 1 Peter 3:1–2.

²⁶ 1 Peter 3:10–12.

²⁷ 1 John 3:21–22.

²⁸ Psalm 37:23.

²⁹ 1 Timothy 1:5 NAS.

³⁰ 1 Timothy 1:18–19 NIV.

³¹ Philippians 4:9.

³² Isaiah 48:18.

³³ Revelation 3:19.

³⁴ Hebrews 12:11.

³⁵ Revelation 21:27.

³⁶ 2 Peter 3:13.

³⁷ 2 Corinthians 5:9–10.

³⁸ Romans 14:10–12.

³⁹ Revelation 11:18.

Copyright © 2018 The Family International.

Run the Race

A Bible Study on Hebrews 12:1

David Brandt Berg

1978-05-01

01/11/25 Hebrews 12:1: “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.”

The original was not divided into chapters, so you’ve got to keep in mind the chapter before this in order to know what “great cloud of witnesses” he’s talking about. He’s referring to all the saints who have already gone on to be with the Lord! And they’re not only watching us, they’re also praying for us.

They’re all praying for us and they’re all watching us, and every now and then God sends one of them down to give us a hand if we need some extra help. They are like our cheering section on the heavenly bleachers cheering for the team, and when you win a battle they really cheer and rejoice! When you win a soul, all the angels in heaven rejoice, praise God (Luke 15:10).

Think how wonderful it is that there are millions up there, all watching and praying for you, and lots of them coming down to help you! This is really where the action is. Here is where the big test is going on. Once you get over there, there will be more in store for you, but this is the primary test. This is what the whole universe is watching, the big game, the World Series. So since they are all watching us, what should we do?

“Let us lay aside every weight.” What are the weights? The things that slow you down, the things that hinder you from getting the job done. Sometimes the Lord allows those weights for a while as sort of a test. In the old days runners used to train wearing weights, building up their muscles, so that when they took the weights off they could just almost fly.

Sometimes the Lord allows a few weights to strengthen your spiritual muscles and to test you and to strengthen you spiritually. But when the weights have served their purpose, then it’s time to lay them aside and run the race.

“And the sin which doth so easily beset us.” What is sin? Missing the mark, not shooting straight, not really doing the most important thing God wants you to do, which is to hit the bull’s eye of His will. So, “let us lay aside the weights and the sins”—anything that keeps you from doing God’s highest and His best, that keeps you from being in the center of His will.

Then, after laying aside all these weights and distractions and sins, what are we supposed to do? “Let us run with patience the race that is set before us.” In other words, you’ve got to do God’s will, do God’s work. As long as you are doing His job and doing His will, it’s work and you’re running.

You can only “run with patience” if you have faith and are trusting the Lord. If you didn’t have patience, you would get fed up, wouldn’t you? “I’m tired of doing all this hard work for people who never thank me and don’t appreciate me and don’t realize what a hard job this is.” If you didn’t have patience, you couldn’t do it. “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatians 6:9).

It’s a race in which some are going to win more than others. Some are going to receive greater rewards than others. In fact, I think some of the people who do the most unseen jobs are perhaps going to get rewarded the most one of these days. They’re going to step out and get the medals and the rewards and the crowns, and for the first time really get what is coming to them, and the whole universe is going to know.

So we’re to run with patience the race that is set before us, wherever God has called us. And the only way we can really run this race is by doing what? “Looking unto Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2). That’s the only way you can have the patience to do the job He has called you to do. So keep your eyes on Jesus, “the author and finisher of our faith.”

Copyright © May 1978 by The Family International

02 – The Spiritual Disciplines: Bible Intake

The Spiritual Disciplines

Peter Amsterdam

2014-01-21

01/10/25 Christians who desire a flourishing relationship with God and who are interested in spiritual growth recognize that spending time taking in and absorbing God’s Word is of utmost importance. It is within the pages of the Bible that we learn about God and His love for humanity, about Jesus and His message, about how to live in harmony with God and our fellow human beings.

God is the Creator, and He wants to be in relationship with His creation. In order to make that possible, He has revealed Himself to us through the Bible. In it, He tells of His love for us and of the actions He has taken to make it possible for us as imperfect and finite beings to be in relationship with Him. The more we abide in His Word and let His Word abide in us, the more we understand how to live our lives in alignment with Him, in accordance with His will, and in a manner that reflects Him and His love, especially in our interactions with others.

Reading God’s Word

Setting aside time daily to read the Bible provides the opportunity to connect with God each day. It opens us up to letting Him speak to us through what we read, to His instruction and guidance, to His help through life’s problems and difficulties. Regular reading of God’s revelation to us reminds us of the moral code which we are meant to fashion our lives around, and provides us with guidance when we are faced with decisions. It is a key element for those who seek to be like Jesus, because it is in the Bible that we hear His teaching, see the example of His love, and are introduced to the relationship with His Father that His sacrifice has opened up for us. As we abide in His Word, we become more and more aware of the value He places on each individual, and the love and compassion He has for every human being. As we begin to absorb the truth contained within these pages, as we ponder and pray about those truths, and as we apply them to our daily living, we begin to anchor both our inner and outer lives on the foundation of Christlikeness, on godliness, and on the truth of God.

Each day we are flooded with a barrage of input from a wide variety of delivery systems which influences us in one way or another. Taking time daily to read what God has said to us provides a way to navigate through the maelstrom of information and input that we are faced with. It enhances our spiritual ability to discern truth and falsehood. It makes it easier to keep our hearts centered on those things which are important to living lives of true happiness, inner peace, and alignment with God and His will. It helps us to survive and overcome all that life brings our way. As Jesus said: Everyone then who hears these words of Mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.^[1]Abiding in God’s Word brings us in regular contact with His Spirit. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.^[2] Part of having that contact with the Lord, of having that promised peace, is spending time reading His Word.

Carving out the time to read daily is no easy task—it requires self-discipline, as does each Spiritual Discipline. Like the workouts and training that athletes must do daily to maintain their conditioning and excel in their performance, taking regular time to read Scripture will strengthen your spirit and make you a stronger Christian—one who is grounded in God’s truth and love. The connection with God, that savoring of His Word, helps you to be Spirit-led in your daily interactions with others, in your decision making, and in your ability to stay strong in the face of daily temptations.

There is no specific formula for how much you need to read daily or what portions of the Bible you should read. The key is setting aside the time to do it and then sticking to it. It helps to have a good contemporary translation. The English Standard Version (ESV), the New American Standard Bible (NASB), and the New International Version (NIV) are known to be good and accurate contemporary English translations.

It helps to commit to reading a certain number of chapters per day, as having a realistic goal can motivate you to stick with your reading even on busy days. The book Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life makes the observations that reading 15 minutes a day will take you through the entire Bible within a year, and that reading three chapters a day and five chapters on Sunday will accomplish the same. It also points out that since the Bible contains 66 different books, for variety’s sake you might want to consider starting to read in three places—Genesis, Job, and Matthew—as this divides the Bible into three sections that are equal in length, so by reading the same number of chapters in each section each day you will finish the three sections, and thus the entire Bible, at roughly the same time.

Finding and following a Bible reading plan of some kind can help you stick with your reading and forge ahead when you find yourself in the more difficult portions of Scripture. There are a variety of apps for electronic devices which can help you design your reading plan, including some that provide the reading program and the text. Some people prefer to read from the pages of their Bible in book form. Whether you read from a Bible or on your computer or use a mobile app, what’s important is that you read it.

Information about apps:

http://thecripplegate.com/three-must-have-bible-apps/

http://appadvice.com/appguides/show/best-bible-apps-for-the-ipad

http://rachelwojo.com/4-fabulous-bible-apps-i-recommend/

Information about Bible reading programs:

http://www.ligonier.org/blog/bible-reading-plans/

http://www.navpress.com/dj/content.aspx?id=138

Ideally, you should read in a situation free from distractions, perhaps in a quiet spot early in the morning before your day begins or late at night when all is winding down. The quietness and absence of activity around you facilitates meditating on what you are reading. If early morning is not possible, try to find another time of day when it is. But even if you can’t carve out some quiet time, then read on the run, in whatever time opens up for you—or listen to it in audio form as you go. It’s a fight to keep your commitment to read/study the Bible, but doing so will make a difference in your life.

Hearing about God’s Word

Along with personally reading God’s Word, it can be beneficial to hear His Word spoken about as well. This would entail reading, listening to, or watching sermons, talks, discussions, and posts which pertain to the Word and godly principles. Anchor, Directors’ Corner and Just One Thing can help with this, and there are other very good sites where men and women of God speak about and teach God’s Word.

I’ve found that there are some teachers I like to hear, whose style and what they speak about resonates with me more than others. But other people I know love to listen to someone who doesn’t appeal to me. We’re each different, but the point is that it can be helpful to watch or listen to those who share God’s words in a manner which speaks to you and helps strengthen your connection and relationship with the Lord.

It’s often much easier to listen to someone else speak about the principles and teachings of God’s Word than it is to take the time to read the Word yourself and to think about and meditate on what you have read. While it’s spiritually feeding and beneficial to listen to sermons and read articles about the Word, it shouldn’t replace your time reading the Bible and benefiting from what the Lord Himself has to say to you personally through His Word.

Meditating on the Word

When you read the Bible or listen to others expound on it, it’s important to ask yourself what God is speaking to you about through what you’re reading or hearing. Take time to think about what you’re reading. If a passage stands out to you, read it again. Think about it; ask yourself why it stood out to you and what the Lord might be trying to tell you through it. If a part of a sermon you listen to speaks to your heart, listen to it again, and think and pray about it. Remember, the reason for reading or listening isn’t to get through the material as quickly as possible, or to cram in as much as you can in the allotted time, but rather to absorb it, and to let it speak to you and become part of you. It’s a time to let the Lord communicate with you through His Word.

Focusing on what you read or hear, and thinking more deeply about it, is part of meditating on God’s Word. Our lives are so busy, and we often feel we need to rush from one thing to the next, so it’s difficult to take the time to truly think about what we’ve read and how to apply it, but it’s important to do so if we want it to affect us.

In the Psalms we hear David speak of meditating on God and His Word:

I will meditate on Your precepts and fix my eyes on Your ways. I will delight in Your statutes; I will not forget Your word.^[3]

Hundreds of years earlier, God spoke to Joshua about the importance of continually meditating on the Word of God.

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.^[4]

The great prayer warrior George Mueller wrote regarding meditating on God’s Word:

What is food for the inner man? The Word of God, and here again, not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water passes through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it and applying it to our hearts.^[5]

Donald Whitney wrote:

The tree of your spiritual life thrives best with meditation because it helps you absorb the water of God’s Word. Merely hearing or reading the Bible, for example, can be like a short rainfall on hard ground. Regardless of the amount or intensity of the rain, most runs off and little sinks in. Meditation opens the soil of the soul and lets the water of God’s Word percolate in deeply. The result is an extraordinary fruitfulness and spiritual prosperity.^[6]

Reading, listening to, and meditating on the Word of God brings His blessings into our lives. As Psalm 1 says: Blessed is the man … [whose] delight is in the law of the LORD, and on His law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.^[7]

Reading God’s Word and meditating on it brings us into personal communication with God. As we meditate on what we’ve read, we create the opportunity for His Word to speak to our hearts because we put ourselves in the position of being willing to listen to Him. In meditating on His Word, we enter into His presence, hungering to learn, to grow, to change, to draw close to Him, to do His will. He desires to speak to each of us directly. However, if we aren’t listening or meditating on Him and His Word, if we are so busy reading what He’s said that we don’t give Him room to speak to us personally about what we’re reading, then we are truly missing something important.

Many Christians are happy to listen to what this or that speaker or preacher has to share, to be inspired by someone’s sermon, yet are much less inclined to have that one-on-one communication with the Almighty that comes when we discipline ourselves to read, study, and meditate on Scripture. Richard Foster addresses this point:

Human beings seem to have a perpetual tendency to have somebody else talk to God for them. The history of religion is the story of an almost desperate scramble to have a king, a mediator, a priest, a pastor, a go-between. In this way we do not need to go to God ourselves. Such an approach saves us from the need to change, for to be in the presence of God is to change. That is why meditation is so threatening to us. It boldly calls us to enter into the living presence of God for ourselves. It tells us that God is speaking in the continuous present and wants to address us … All who acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord are the universal priesthood of God, and as such can enter the Holy of Holies and converse with the living God.^[8]

Of course, meditating on what you’ve read or listened to takes time, and if you find you don’t have the time to stop and listen, then you might want to consider reading a little less to free up time to meditate on what you’ve read. Author Maurice Roberts wrote:

It is not the busy skimming over religious books or the careless hastening through religious duties which makes for a strong Christian faith. Rather, it is unhurried meditation on the gospel truths and the exposing of our minds to these truths that yields the fruit of sanctified character.^[9]

If we want godliness in our lives, if our desire is to emulate our Savior, if we want the light which shines through us to be the light of God and His love, then we need to take time with Him and His Word. Disciplining ourselves to take this time daily is a key component of Christlikeness. Of all the Spiritual Disciplines, this is the most important, as God’s Word—the Bible—is His revelation of Himself to humanity. Reading and meditating on it, applying it to our inner being and to our outer actions is vital to being like Jesus. It is through the regular deep absorption of the water of His Word in our hearts that we are gradually renewed and transformed to become more like Him. It is through the application of what we read and meditate on that we have the grace to live lives that are in alignment with His will. For His Word is a lamp unto our feet and light unto our path.^[10]

Take the time to commune deeply with God through His Word. It will change your life.

[Jesus] said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”^[11]

Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”^[12]

If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.^[13]

You have exalted above all things Your name and Your word.^[14]

How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to Your word.^[15]

I have stored up Your word in my heart, that I might not sin against You.^[16]

I will meditate on Your precepts and fix my eyes on Your ways. I will delight in Your statutes; I will not forget Your word.^[17]

Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.^[18]

(To read the next article in this series, click here.)

Note

Unless otherwise indicated, all scriptures are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

^[1] Matthew 7:24–25.

^[2] John 6:63.

^[3] Psalm 119:15–16.

^[4] Joshua 1:8.

^[5] Roger Steer, Spiritual Secrets of George Mueller (Wheaton: Harold Shaw, 1985), 62, quoted in Donald S. Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1991), 76.

^[6] Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines, 49–50.

^[7] Psalm 1:1–3.

^[8] Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline (New York: HarperOne, 1998), 24.

^[9] Maurice Roberts, “O the Depth!” The Banner of Truth, July 1990, 2, quoted in Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines, 55.

^[10] Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path (Psalm 119:105).

^[11] Luke 11:28.

^[12] John 14:23.

^[13] John 15:7.

^[14] Psalm 138:2.

^[15] Psalm 119:9 NIV.

Exorcism with Authority

How to overcome and get rid of the Devil’s pests

David Brandt Berg

1975-04-22

01/09/25 Some people drag a few husks with them when they come from the old life, especially those who have been involved with demonism, witchcraft, or devil worship. Sometimes this is a very hard thing to shake. Of course, I don’t see how a child of God can be demon-possessed, but they can be demon-oppressed, especially if they had a lot to do with those things.

People who have been involved in that, who have once been a channel for the Enemy, carry those things with them unless they have strong faith and can really fight the Enemy. So you really need to pray for them.

Those who come out of those things have to constantly baptize themselves in prayer, soak themselves in the Word, memorize and quote constantly to the Devil and to themselves. They have to wage a militant warfare against the Enemy! Of course, we all have to do this to a certain extent, but not quite the same.

You know the story Jesus told about the man who got all cleaned up, house swept and garnished and empty? Well, the devil that had lived there went and saw that it was still a pretty nice place to live, so he got some more spirits that were even worse than he was and came back and they all moved in (Matthew 12:43–45).

Apparently that guy didn’t move in the Holy Spirit, their archenemy, to fill up his house and take it over in order to keep out the intruders! So if you have been involved in that sort of thing, the best thing in the world for you to do now that you’re a Christian is to fill your heart and mind and spirit with the Holy Spirit and get baptized with the power of God to fight the Enemy.—To really seek God for the power of the Holy Ghost to get rid of those damned satanic spooks.

Ask Him to wash your mind clean of all that stuff “with the washing of water by the Word” (Ephesians 5:26), and try to forget it and rebuke it every time it comes to mind. Don’t even think about it. Don’t dwell on it. “Neither give place to the Devil” (Ephesians 4:27). Sin in your heart is a very dangerous thing, especially if you allow things like doubts and fears and a critical spirit to creep in, which the Enemy uses as a channel.

The Lord once said that the reason certain people were having so much sickness was because they were running around outside the tower of the Lord’s protection and they were not hiding in the secret place nor staying under the Lord’s wings. You’ve got to stay close to the Lord like a little chicken under the wings of the mother hen, in tune with Him and in touch with Him in prayer and really touching the Lord (Psalm 91).

We are in a spiritual war, and you have to keep in tune, in touch with the Holy Spirit and on God’s territory all the time, close to His Word and in the right spirit and constantly in prayer and seeking the Lord and praying for His protection and His help and thanking Him constantly for His blessings.

When you’re dealing directly with the Enemy’s power, you’d better know what you’re up against and know how to pray hard and get ahold of the Lord. You cannot do the Master’s work without the Master’s power, and you can’t deal with these things on a natural level.

Jesus said, “These signs shall follow them that believe, they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall be healed, they shall cast out devils.” And the disciples said, “Even the devils are subject unto us through the name of Jesus.” We who have Jesus have more power than the demons, because we have the power of God. “At the name of Jesus,” He says, “every knee shall bow.” He is more powerful than them all. (Mark 16:17–18; Luke 10:17; Philippians 2:10; 1 John 4:4)

If you believe it and claim the scriptures and command the demon to depart in the name of Jesus, the evil spirit has to obey and depart, because God’s Word says so! Jesus said, “All power is given unto Me in heaven and earth” (Matthew 28:18), and in the name of Jesus He has granted you the authority to command them to come out.

As far as the initial exorcism that the Lord and the apostles performed, they didn’t necessarily always have the cooperation of the individual. But to remain clean, then the will of the individual is involved and they must desire to remain clean, as the Lord Himself showed. (See Matthew 12:43–45.)

They have got to desire to remain clean, and in order to do so they must be repentant and be saved and have the Holy Spirit, have Jesus to protect them. Otherwise you could cast the demons out all day long, but if the individual’s not cooperative, they’ll just come right back in again.

And remember, one can chase a thousand, two can put ten thousand to flight (Deuteronomy 32:30). If there’s anybody there whom you don’t feel is really with you and in tune and united in the power of the Spirit, then ask them to please leave. Jesus made the unbelievers leave the room first, and then He commanded the girl to rise (Mark 5:40–41).

You have to be in total unity of the Spirit, really concentrating, united and praying desperately, all of you together, backing up the one who’s leading in prayer. You can’t just use ordinary prayer in a case like that, just “Lord bless” and “Lord help,” “please heal.” You can’t beat around the bush in these cases or try to save feelings by not dealing with the problem. You’ve got to name the Old Boy and sock him straight on with the weapons God has given us.

The Lord will answer your prayers. The Devil trembles when he sees the weakest saint upon his knees.

Copyright © April 1975 by The Family International

Activated, March 2003: The Battle of the Mind

Volume 4, Issue 3

2003-03-01

Personally Speaking

01/08/25 We’ve all seen cartoons of a person at a point of decision, with a guardian angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other, each trying to persuade the person to do or not do this or that. The message is simple, clear, and often amusing, but what few people seem to realize is that there is also a lot of truth to those cartoons.

Even a lot of people who believe in God don’t realize how real the spirit world is or what a major part it plays in their daily lives. Numerous verses and passages in the Bible make it clear that the Lord and His angels on one hand and the Devil and his agents on the other are constantly trying to influence us—and they do it through our thoughts from the unseen spiritual realm. “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12 KJV).

To use a modern analogy, God’s Spirit is like a radio station and our minds are like radios. God’s broadcasts inspire faith, hope, love, wisdom, truth, instruction, and other positive thoughts that inspire positive actions. The Devil is like another station. He deliberately tries to flood the spiritual airwaves with his lies and propaganda and time-wasters—anything to occupy our minds and distract us from receiving and following God’s messages.

Whose voice are you tuned in to? Who guides your thoughts and thereby controls your time and actions? This issue of Activated could change the way you look at your thoughts, which guide your life.

Keith Phillips
For the Activated Family

The Legend of the Magic Mask

There was once a king of a vast domain. He was shrewd and power­ful and feared by all, but no one loved him. Each year, as he became more severe, he became lonelier. His face reflected the bitterness in his soul. There were deep, ugly lines around his mouth, and deep, permanent furrows on his forehead.

But it so happened that in his realm there lived a beautiful girl whom everyone seemed to love. The king wanted to make her his wife, and finally he decided to speak to her of this love. He dressed in his finest robes, but when he looked in the mirror, he saw a cruel, hard face, even when he tried to smile.

Then a thought came to him. He sent for his magician. “Use your greatest skill to paint a mask that looks kind and pleasant and handsome. I will pay any price you ask.”

“This I can do,” said the magician, “on one condition. You must keep your own face in the same lines that I paint. One angry frown, and the mask will be ruined forever and I cannot replace it. You must think only kindly thoughts and do kindly deeds. You must be gracious to all men.”

So the magic mask was made, and it looked so natural that no one guessed it was not the true face of the king. Months passed, the beautiful lady became his bride, and the king fought hard to keep the mask from breaking. His subjects attributed the miraculous change in the king to his lovely wife, who, they said, had made him like herself.

Eventually the king regretted having deceived his beautiful wife and summoned his magician. “Take away this deceiving mask!” he cried. “It is not my true self!”

“If I do,” said the magician, “I can never make another. You will have to wear your own face as long as you live.”

“Better so,” said the king, “than to continue to deceive one whose love and trust I have won dishonorably. Take it off, I say!”

The magician did as he was commanded.

In anguish, the king turned to see his reflection in his mirror. Suddenly his eyes brightened and his lips curved into a radiant smile. The ugly lines were gone. His face was the exact likeness of the mask he had worn so long. When he returned to his beloved wife, she saw only the familiar features of the man she loved.

Yes, this is only a legend, but it teaches a truth: A man’s face portrays what is inside, what he thinks and feels. The wise and true Scripture tells us, “As [a man] thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7).

—Author Unknown

The Battlefield of the Mind

The mind is the great battlefield where relentless spiritual war is waged—the war for the control of people’s thoughts and, through their thoughts, their actions.

Most of the things that bring people down start in the mind: pride, jealousy, selfishness, hatred, covetousness, bitterness, worldliness, self-righteousness, unbelief, etc. They begin in the mind, take root in the mind, and fester in the mind—all through putting on the mind of man and the mind of the world instead of the mind of God.

The Bible has much to say about the need to guard our thoughts, about finding and putting God’s will above our own will, and about putting on the mind of Christ:

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5).

“Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth” (Colossians 3:2).

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2).

“To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace” (Romans 8:6).

“Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things” (Philippians 4:8).

It is through the mind that Satan gains entrance, through the mind that he tries to influence people, through the mind that he works to recruit the lost of the world to his side, and it is through the mind that he controls and manipulates his own.

And the Devil doesn’t stop with his own, of course. He also attacks God’s children, trying to hinder their happiness and well-being and usefulness to God by interjecting his negative thoughts into their own. But when they choose the Lord’s light over the Devil’s darkness, when they allow Jesus to control them by asking Him to give them His thoughts, anything good is possible.

How close we stay to the Lord and how much He is able to bless us as a result is determined in our mind, because this is where our will is set. This is where we choose Him and His ways, where we choose to believe His word above the Devil’s, where we are able to put on the mind of Christ.

“Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), the Bible tells us, and one of the best prayers we could continually pray is for the Lord to direct our thoughts and rid our minds of the Devil’s input, because for the Lord to bless and use us as much as He would like, He needs full control.

His thoughts cannot coexist with our natural minds, which are at odds with His mind. “The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be” (Romans 8:7). Our natural minds are easy prey for the Devil’s doubts and lies and propa­ganda, and can stifle the Lord’s Spirit.

This is the crux of the matter: If we’re going to be the kind of Christians the Lord wants us to be, we must be wholly His, and in order to be wholly His, we must put on His mind; we must more fully think His thoughts. How do we do this?—By putting off the mind of man, the mind of the world, the thoughts of Satan, the propaganda of Satan, the vanity of the carnal mind.

We must “gird up the loins of our minds” (1 Peter 1:13). That means to put up barricades to shield us from the Devil’s attacks through our thoughts. It means to allow Jesus full control. When we do, He is able to live in us and work through us like never before!

Huddersfield

There was once a rich landowner who decided to buy the entire village of Huddersfield, and over time he bought every piece of land in the area—every piece, that is, except one little plot. One stubborn old farmer refused to sell his tiny piece of land, and nothing would change his mind. The landowner even offered the farmer much more money than his property was actually worth, but the farmer was so fond of his land that he absolutely refused to sell. When the landowner finally gave up, he tried to encourage himself by saying, “What difference does just one little plot of land make? I’ve bought everything else, so Huddersfield is mine. It belongs to me!”

But the stubborn old farmer overheard him and said, “Oh, no it doesn’t! We own Huddersfield. It belongs to you and me!”

Don’t let the Devil be able to say that of you to God! “Aha! Look, God! Even though he belongs mostly to You, a little bit still belongs to me!”

—David Brandt Berg (D.B.B.)

Core 8-08: Jesus’ Power over Satan

2014-02-01

01/07/25 The Bible says that it was for the very purpose of defeating Satan that the Son of God was manifested or revealed. [10] And by coming to earth and bringing us His law of love and then dying to take our sins, He overcame the Devil. In fact, before Jesus could begin His ministry, He went into the wilderness and was tempted by Satan.

Mark 1:13 And He was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan, and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to Him.

Jesus needed to have this battle with Satan in order to put Satan in his place and to prove to Satan that there was no way that he could have power over Him. There is no scenario where Satan will triumph over Jesus. Jesus will always win. Jesus rules supreme, and His power is stronger than any of the power or attacks that Satan can come up with.

Footnotes

[10] 1 John 3:8

Core 8-09: Our Authority over Satan

You’re not strong enough to fight the Devil on your own, but through the power that Jesus gives us, you have more than enough authority and power over Satan. Since the Word is Jesus, the Word is what Satan fears the most, because the Word exposes and confounds him. It freaks him out so much that it makes him want to get away from you as fast as he can.

Another way to rebuke and bind Satan and his power is by calling on the name of Jesus. Just as Jesus rebuked Satan and commanded him to leave him in the Great Temptation, so can you do the same by using the authoritative and powerful name of Jesus.

Philippians 2:9-10 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth

When Jesus was with His disciples, He gave them power to cast out devils:

Luke 9:1 Then He called His twelve disciples together and gave them power and authority over all demons, and to cure diseases.

And this power is given to all of those who believe in the name of Jesus:

Mark 16:17 These signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons. …

Core 8-10: No Fear

Jesus said, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.” [11] When we receive Jesus into our hearts, we are His and the Devil cannot take us back, no matter how hard he tries.

But this doesn’t mean that we cannot get into trouble if we are careless or disobedient to what Jesus tells us, and not interested in obeying His admonitions. The Bible warns us to:

The butterfly and the sparrow
A woman told me she was once awakened by a very strange noise of pecking, or something of the kind. When she got up, she saw a butterfly flying back and forth inside the window pane in a great fright, and outside a sparrow pecking and trying to get in. The butterfly did not see the glass, and expected every minute to be caught, and the sparrow did not see the glass, and expected every minute to get the butterfly. Yet all the while that butterfly was as safe as if it had been millions of miles away, because of the glass between it and the sparrow. So it is with a Christian. Satan cannot touch the soul that has the Lord Jesus Christ between itself and him.

Good Thots 2, p. 1418

Footnotes

[11] John 10:27-28

Core 8-11: On the Winning Side

Though the Devil’s power is great, God’s power is far greater! And in reality, the Devil can’t have any power over your mind or heart unless you let him. If you choose to let God’s light into your life, the darkness will be forced to retreat.

The Devil may continue to fight you, but he can never defeat you if you call on Jesus’ help. In fact, the Devil’s attacks can cause you to grow even stronger spiritually every time you fight him back. As the famous quote from Edmund Burke says, “Our antagonist is our helper.” How true that is. The Devil’s attempts to discourage us, to frustrate our efforts, or to cause us to fear can actually strengthen our resolve to take a stand against him.

Ulysses S. Grant said, “The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike at him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving on.”

Ask Jesus to help you make your personal stand against any of the Devil’s attacks in your life. And then, keep moving on!

Core 8-03: The Battle Between Good and Evil

2014-02-01

Each day we’re faced with choices. When you have a run-in with one of your friends or a member of your family, you can either choose to work things out nicely or you can choose to argue and give each other a hard time. This is an example of the inner struggle between good and evil that we’re often confronted with.

It isn’t always easy to make the choice for good, because it’s within our human nature to get angry, frustrated, or to say the first mean thing that comes to mind. This is why we need Jesus to help us to take on His nature, so that we can more easily choose to have the right reaction, the loving reaction.

Two Wolves
In a story from Native American folklore, a grandfather explains to his young grandson the inner struggle between good and evil.

“A battle goes on inside us all,” the grandfather begins. “It is a battle between two wolves. One wolf is the embodiment of everything evil, like hate, anger, jealousy, resentment, greed, arrogance, lying, and selfishness. The other wolf is the embodiment of everything good, like love, joy, peace, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, empathy, generosity, compassion, truth, and faith.”

The grandson thinks about those words and then asks, “Which wolf wins?”

The grandfather replies, “The one you feed.

Activated, October 2006

Whenever you have a thought that causes you to feel angry toward someone, or bitter, unhappy, or critical, you are giving the evil wolf a good meal. How much better to make the good wolf stronger by feeding it kind, forgiving, positive, and constructive thoughts and actions! The more you feed the good wolf, the stronger he will grow.

The good news is that if you are staying close to God, then without even knowing it, you will be “feeding that good wolf.” Wherever God exists, the Devil cannot, because darkness cannot coexist with light.

Watch it: Evil is the result of men not having God in their heart

Core 8-04: Knowing Who’s Who

We can tell the difference between God’s good spiritual forces and the Devil’s evil spirits by “test[ing] the spirits, whether they are of God.” [4]

God’s power is creative and loving, while the Devil’s power is destructive and hateful. God’s Spirit ministers love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—all good things. The Devil and his evil spirits minister fear, hatred, bitterness, strife, misery, confusion, and torment—all bad things. [5]

Footnotes

[4] 1 John 4:1

[5] Galatians 5:22-23

Core 8-05: Heavenly Forces

There is, of course, the good side to the spirit world—the side that fights the Devil and those who follow him. This side not only includes God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, but also other spirits as well. You can find reference to these spirits in the Bible.

These include the seven spirits of God spoken of in Revelation 4:5, the seven stars or angels or spirits of the seven churches of Revelation 1:20, the four spirits of the heavens of Zechariah 6:5, and the multitudes of other celestial messengers, angels, or spirits that are mentioned in the Bible.

The apostle Paul calls this heavenly host a “great cloud of witnesses” that surrounds us. [6] Just like a cloud is composed of millions of tiny particles of moisture, this spiritual cloud is composed of millions of good spirits.

In the book of 2 Kings we learn about how God opened someone’s eyes to see into the spiritual realm and he got a glimpse of some of those many witnesses:

2 Kings 6:15-17 (NIV) When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. “Oh, my lord, what shall we do?” the servant asked. “Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” And Elisha prayed, “O Lord, open his eyes so he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

They are not only watching us, they are watching over us, protecting us, and trying to influence us for good. All throughout the Bible there are many promises of spiritual protection, such as, “The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear Him, and delivers them,” [7] and, “He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways.” [8]

These heavenly beings are also there to help us to fight the battle of good and evil mentally and spiritually, and to help us to choose what is right over what is wrong.

Footnotes

[6] Hebrews 12:1

[7] Psalm 34:7

[8] Psalm 91:11

Core 8-06: Strategy Against Satan’s Tactics

The Bible tells us to “fight the good fight of faith” [9] and warns us not to be ignorant of the Devil’s tactics. The Devil has no direct power over us physically, but he can try to influence our thoughts, attitudes, and decisions. We don’t need to fear him, but we do need to be on guard against him.

The Devil knows that if he’s too obvious with his attacks, then we would readily recognize his lies and know how to defeat him. So he often uses more subtle tactics, like twisting the truth to cause us to choose to do something wrong, or magnifying our lazy nature to keep us from choosing to make a positive decision.

Say you became sick or were involved in an accident. You feel that if you would have done something differently, this wouldn’t have happened. As a Christian, you know that God can use this situation to either teach you something good or bring you closer to Him. Once you have asked Him and have done your part to get His thoughts on the matter, then that’s that—you get better and move on. But the Devil is more than happy to play on your feelings of remorse. He will try to make sure that you don’t let go of that bad feeling, and he does his best to make sure that you will continue to beat yourself up about what you did wrong for as long as possible.

The goodness that Jesus gives us makes us feel forgiven, humbled, and thankful, so if you are instead carrying feelings of remorse, condemnation, and regret, you need to realize that this is Satan at work.

It’s important to recognize the thoughts and lies of Satan, because once you do, you can then access the power and promises of Jesus that He gives you through the words that are written in the Bible. The Devil cannot withstand the power of Jesus. His own power is weakened and he is then easily defeated.

Listen: Fight Like a Warrior

Fight Like a Warrior
A message from Jesus
The true warrior is always looking for a way to gain territory no matter how severe the attacks of the Enemy may be. Unlike earthly warfare, where you often retreat when casualties are high, or you concede defeat because you’re badly beaten, when it comes to spiritual warfare you never need to concede defeat, because you can always rely on Me to come through for you, and make every situation and every battle a victory situation if you never give up.

The way of man is usually to pull back in certain areas in order to reinforce other areas where major attacks have been launched, but that’s a very defensive approach. Often the best way to fight back is to not only stand your ground, but to launch an attack in several directions, so that the Enemy is the one who is then put on the defensive and sent running.

No matter how badly the Enemy attacks you, you have the power and the weapons to keep hammering away at him. You have the heavenly resources to keep blasting his forces to bits. And you have the gift of faith to hold tightly to, so that no matter how dismal the outlook may be, your faith in Me will sustain your spirit with the promise that I will be the victor, so long as you are willing to keep fighting and seeing the battle through.

Don’t give the Enemy the pleasure of seeing you pull back because of his scare tactics. Keep launching your attack. Keep sending volleys into Satan’s camp, no matter how hard he’s besieging you. The courageous man is the one who keeps fighting and moving forward even when he’s hardest hit, even when there are foes all around and the battles are intense. There is always hope of victory if you keep fighting.

Footnotes

[9] 1 Timothy 6:12

 Core 8-07: The Armor of God

In order to resist and fight Satan, Jesus has given us spiritual armor and spiritual weapons to use, which gives us strength to withstand his attacks. We must remember that the war of good and evil is not a carnal one but a spiritual one—one that can only be won through mind and spirit. And also one that is won through faith and belief in God’s Word.

Breakdown of God’s Armor
What do we need for protection?

We are fighting the devil—Satan. We are not fighting people, but the powers of darkness in this world, which is Satan and his helpers. The protection we need is the armor of God.

What is the armor of God, and how can we clothe ourselves in it? Let’s look at each piece.

Belt of truth—Standing firm in truth. Living our lives by the truth of God’s word.

Breastplate of Righteousness—Walking uprightly before God. Aligning our lives to His standards.

Shod feet—Standing with firm-footed stability, being ready.

Shield of Faith—Standing firm in our faith. This will squash all the fiery darts Satan sends.

Helmet of Salvation—Protection for our minds. Satan attacks us here more than anywhere. We need to be sure of our Salvation and not waver or doubt.

All of these pieces are for protecting us—and need to be put on daily.

There is still one other piece we need to be armed with. This piece is not for protecting us, but for fighting with.

The Sword of the Spirit—which is the word of God.

We cannot fight the enemy if we don’t know the word of God. It is vital for how effective we are when we use the sword, and how effective the rest of the armor is that protects us. No soldier goes to war with faulty weapons, or with faulty protection. Neither should we. The key here is to learn God’s word. Hide it in your heart. Then you can put on God’s armor and be able to stand firm.

1. S. Lowndes

As it said in the last paragraph, “We cannot fight the enemy if we don’t know the word of God.” This is a key point to remember, because it’s the secret to defeating and overcoming the power of Satan.

Ephesians 6:10-17

Core 8-02: How It All Began

2014-02-01

There is the side of good, which is God and His heavenly forces, and there is the side of evil, which is the Devil and his demons. These two sides have been at war since the creation of the world, and have been looking to influence the souls and minds of those on earth to affect the course of history.

However, God and Satan weren’t always at war. There was a time when Satan was on the good side; he was God’s right-hand man and was known as Lucifer. Before Lucifer became Satan, he was an incredibly beautiful creature, created out of precious stones and musical instruments. (Read Ezekiel 28:12-19 for a fuller description of Lucifer.) In Ezekiel 28:12 God said of Lucifer, “You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.” Sounds rather awesome!

Apparently Lucifer thought so as well, as his beauty eventually became his downfall. God said of him, “You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you.” [1] And what was that iniquity? It was pride. “Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty.” [2]

Lucifer first became proud because of his utter perfection, which then led to his pride in thinking that he could be equal to God.

Isaiah 14:12-15 How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’ Yet you shall be brought down to … the lowest depths of the pit.

From the day that Satan fell, he has been hard at work trying to prove God and His laws and principles wrong, both in the heavenly realm and here on earth. And for us on earth, this great battle between good and evil all began in the Garden of Eden, when Satan convinced Eve to eat a fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.; [3]

Footnotes

[1] Ezekiel 28:15

[2] Ezekiel 28:17

[3] Genesis 3

12 – Armageddon (part 2)

The Rise and Fall of the Antichrist

Scott MacGregor

2012-01-01

01/04/25 The prophet Joel also foresaw this gathering of the wicked at Armageddon to be cast into the winepress of God’s Great Wrath when he prophesied:

The Lord gives voice before His army. For His camp is very great; for strong is the One who executes His word. For the day of the Lord is great and very terrible; who can endure it? Proclaim this among the nations: “Prepare for war!” Wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near, let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, “I am strong.” Assemble and come, all you nations, and gather together all around. … Let the nations be wakened, and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; for there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations. Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, go down; for the winepress is full, the vats overflow—for their wickedness is great.” Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and moon will grow dark, and the stars will diminish their brightness.

Joel 2:11; 3:9–15

The Valley of Jehoshaphat is believed to be the steep-sided ravine that separates the Mount of Olives from the old city of Jerusalem, and that is now known as the Valley of Kidron. But it might not be talking about this particular place, as Jehoshaphat by interpretation means “the Lord is judge.” So here they could be entering into the “valley” of the Lord’s judgments.

Several more verses do point to the fact that this last great battle culminates at Jerusalem.

Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, and your spoil will be divided in your midst. For I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem; the city shall be taken, the houses rifled, and the women ravished. Half of the city shall go into captivity, but the remnant of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations, as He fights in the day of battle. And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two, from east to west, making a very large valley; half of the mountain shall move toward the north and half of it toward the south. … Thus the Lord my God will come, and all the saints with You. It shall come to pass in that day that there will be no light; the lights will diminish. It shall be one day which is known to the Lord—neither day nor night. But at evening time it shall happen that it will be light. And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the people who fought against Jerusalem: their flesh shall dissolve while they stand on their feet, their eyes shall dissolve in their sockets, and their tongues shall dissolve in their mouths.

Zechariah 14:1–7,12

This passage states that the Lord’s feet will land on the Mount of Olives during this great battle and the mount will split and a great valley will be formed. Could this be the valley of judgment that is talked about? Whether it is or not, the other important point from this passage is that this battle is taking place around Jerusalem. Since the Antichrist has already made his capital there, the looting, rape, and deportation of half the population that is referred to in the first part of the passage could be referring to when he initially took it over. But the “plague” referred to in the last part certainly sounds like a continuation of the nuclear carnage that began with the nuclear attack on Babylon.

The fact that Jesus touches down on the Mount of Olives is also a fulfillment of the angels’ promise to Jesus’ disciples at His Ascension:

While they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.” Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey.

Acts 1:9–12

Since Jesus Himself is trampling the winepress of the Wrath of God outside the city as stated in Revelation chapters 14 and 19, then it seems that from this and the other verses already quoted, that although the forces of the Antichrist are gathered at Armageddon, the Battle of the Great Day of the Lord culminates at Jerusalem or at least is fought in and around Jerusalem as well.

“Then I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in the midst of Heaven, ‘Come and gather together for the supper of the great God’“ (Revelation 19:17). This is not referring to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. The Marriage Supper of the Lamb has already taken place. This is a different kind of supper! This angel invites the carrion-eating fowls of the air to come and feast upon the bodies of these terrible people who caused untold destruction and who even tried to fight God to the very end. This angel cries out to all these vultures and buzzards, “Come and gather together for the supper of the great God, that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, both small and great” (Revelation 19:17–18).

Ezekiel’s description of this horrific Battle of Armageddon remarkably parallels John’s: “‘Speak to every sort of bird and to every beast of the field: Assemble yourselves and come; gather together from all sides to My sacrificial meal which I am sacrificing for you, a great sacrificial meal on the mountains of Israel, that you may eat flesh and drink blood. You shall eat the flesh of the mighty, drink the blood of the princes of the earth. … You shall be filled at My table with horses and riders, with mighty men and with all the men of war, says the Lord God” (Ezekiel 39:17–18, 20).

Now back to where we left off in Revelation: “And I saw the Beast, the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against Him who sat on the horse and against His army” (Revelation 19:19). Here the Antichrist makes a last-ditch stand to try to fight Jesus and His forces. “These will make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and those who are with Him are called, chosen, and faithful” (Revelation 17:14).

book of Jude also describes this: “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him” (Jude 14–15).

The final outcome of the battle is described in Revelation chapter 19: “Then the Beast was captured, and with him the False Prophet who worked signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who received the Mark of the Beast and those who worshiped his image. These two were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone. And the rest were killed with the sword which proceeded from the mouth of Him who sat on the horse. And all the birds were filled with their flesh” (Revelation 19:20–21). That is the miserable end of the Antichrist and all of his bestial followers who have persecuted and imprisoned and tortured and slaughtered God’s people and so many others in their reign of terror.

It says the Antichrist forces are slaughtered by the sword that comes out of the mouth of Christ. The prophet Isaiah also foresaw this when he wrote, “He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked” (Isaiah 11:4). In another passage Isaiah also writes: “For behold, the Lord will come with fire and with His chariots, like a whirlwind, to render His anger with fury, and His rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by His sword the Lord will judge all flesh; and the slain of the Lord shall be many” (Isaiah 66:15–16). The sword of the Word proceeding out of Jesus’ mouth is evidently going to be like fire to devour His enemies.

Following is another passage, written by the apostle Paul, that refers to the destruction of God’s enemies by fire:

It is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you, and to give you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from Heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He comes, in that Day, to be glorified in His saints and to be admired among all those who believe.

2 Thessalonians 1:6–10

This Battle of Armageddon is going to be a very great battle and a very great slaughter, and is surely the fulfillment of the wicked being cast into the winepress of the Wrath of God described in Revelation 14. And how long does the period of wrath and Armageddon last? We don’t know for sure, but an interesting passage in the book of Daniel, which could provide some insight to this, is covered in Appendix 5 of this book.

When the Battle of Armageddon is over and the blood has run so deep, there will be so many bodies left that the Scripture tells us it will take “men regularly employed” seven months just to bury the dead in Israel alone (Ezekiel 39:14–15)!

Yet there is one last foe, the ultimate archenemy of all that is good, that has to be dealt with.

Then I saw an angel coming down from Heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished.

Revelation 20:1–3

So the Devil is locked away for a thousand years. Although it will not be the last we hear of him, at least the earth will be free from his evil for a long time. What is to become of him after that will have to be left to the next book of this series, From the End to Eternity.

In conclusion, at this mighty Battle of Armageddon, Jesus, along with a little help from those who love and serve Him, not only conquers Satan and his forces, but as a result “the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!” (Revelation 11:15). God is going to take over the governing of this world, and He’s going to turn it right side up and run it the way it ought to be run, and those who believe and follow Him are going to help Him. Are you ready?

If you have not already received Jesus’ wonderful gift of salvation, you can do so by saying a prayer like the following:

Jesus, I believe that You are the Son of God and I accept you now as my Savior. Amen.

12 – Armageddon (part 1)

The Rise and Fall of the Antichrist

Scott MacGregor

2012-01-01

01/03/25 BEFORE GETTING INTO THE DETAILS OF THIS MOMENTOUS BATTLE OF THE GREAT DAY OF GOD ALMIGHTY, known more commonly as the Battle of Armageddon, it is helpful to understand a little background.

Megiddo was an ancient city of Israel. It guarded the Aruna Pass, the most important pass through the mountains of northern Israel. The city itself is in the Valley of Jezreel on the northern end of the pass. That valley opens up into the Plain of Esdraelon. The Kishon River runs northwest through Jezreel and Esdraelon and into the Mediterranean. The Harad River also drains the Valley of Jezreel and heads east to join up with the river Jordan.

The Aruna Pass is on the ancient trade route from Egypt to Mesopotamia, and as such Megiddo grew rich from the taxes it imposed on the merchandise that flowed through it. Because it was also strategic militarily, the area was the scene of many battles throughout history, the last fought between the British and the Turks in World War I. The ancient city was destroyed and rebuilt many times, but has lain in ruins since Roman times. The site of the city is now covered in the dirt and debris of millennia, and appears as a raised mound or tel and is called in Hebrew Har Megiddo, which means the Hill of Megiddo. This is rendered in English Bibles as Armageddon. Megiddo in ancient tongues meant “rendezvous” or “troop,” both fitting names for the place where the Antichrist gathers his troops for his final battle. It is also only 24 kilometers (15 miles) from Haifa, Israel’s main deep-water port and the most likely place for boats bringing troops and materiel from abroad to dock and offload.

But who exactly is the Antichrist gathering his forces to fight? It can be deduced that it is the remnants of any alliance of nations that he has been fighting all along. We have already seen that war has occurred, but now it seems that the Antichrist and the nations that oppose him are about to really go at it one last decisive time.

From reading over the books of Daniel and Revelation and other prophetic biblical passages, it seems that the Antichrist is embroiled in many wars throughout his reign, and the attack on Babylon the Great is the penultimate battle that precedes his final Battle of Armageddon.

The Rapture has taken place and the Wrath of God is being poured out—primarily it seems on the Antichrist and his forces, but also affecting every part of the earth. Apparently there are still nations even at this point that will not submit to the Antichrist, otherwise the Antichrist would have no one to fight against. The Antichrist must now be determined to wipe them out once and for all.

If these people and nations are fighting the Antichrist, then it is obvious that they do not worship him nor have they accepted the Mark of the Beast. By simple deduction we can then separate humankind at this time into three general groups: 1) those who are saved and were taken up to Heaven at the Rapture, 2) those who follow the Antichrist, and 3) those who are not saved but who nevertheless refuse to be allied with or subservient to the Antichrist and his regime. For the sake of simplicity in this chapter we’ll give this third group, those arrayed against the Antichrist, the moniker of Anti-Antichrists, or AACs for short.

The most likely interpretation of the Scriptures seems to be that the Battle of Armageddon takes place when the seventh Plague of the Wrath of God is poured out, after the Antichrist’s forces have gathered together in the vicinity of the Hill of Megiddo, Armageddon.

Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple of Heaven, from the throne, saying, “It is done!” And there were noises and thunderings and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth. Now the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. And great Babylon was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath. Then every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. And great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent [about 35 kg, or 75 lbs]. Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since that plague was exceedingly great.

Revelation 16:17–21

Upon the pouring out of this seventh bowl, a voice from the throne says, “It is done”—meaning, “This is the End!” This is the last scene of the horror drama of all the damage that man has wrought on Earth. This is the last horrific battle before the establishment of God’s kingdom on Earth. War is man’s most ardently pursued occupation, creating the most possible destruction, the ultimate manifestation of man’s inhumanity to man, and in this war the Devil and man have combined to bring about the most utter devastation ever!

One great final earthquake is going to destroy the “cities of the nations.” Whether this means all the cities of the world is not made clear, but nevertheless this earthquake is very destructive. Isaiah also envisioned this great final utter destruction at the time of the Battle of Armageddon when he spoke of “the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall” (Isaiah 30:25).

John’s apocalyptic vision is paralleled by Ezekiel’s description of the Battle of Armageddon in Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39. God told Ezekiel that there’s going to be a great shaking when God finally decides to judge the Antichrist. After he’s caused so much trouble for those who refuse to worship him, and has warred against any nations that oppose him, God finally will put a stop to him!

For in My jealousy and in the fire of My wrath I have spoken: “Surely in that day there shall be a great earthquake in the land of Israel. So that the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, the beasts of the field, all creeping things that creep on the earth, and all men who are on the face of the earth shall shake at My presence. The mountains shall be thrown down, the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.”

Ezekiel 38:19–20

Here again the great earthquake is predicted, and this time it gives its epicenter as Israel.

“And I will bring Gog [a name used both for the Antichrist and the Devil] to judgment with pestilence and bloodshed; I will rain down on him, on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him, flooding rain, great hailstones, fire, and brimstone” (Ezekiel 38:22). We just read in Revelation 16 that the seventh plague of the Wrath of God included mighty hailstones weighing over 35 kilograms (75 lbs) each. “Thus I will magnify Myself and sanctify Myself, and I will be known in the eyes of many nations. Then they shall know that I am the Lord” (Ezekiel 38:23).

In Revelation 19, John writes: “Now I saw Heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God” (Revelation 19:11–13).

Up until this time the Antichrist and his forces have been fighting the AACs who are arrayed against them. And it could be theorized that because of the immense power and resources the Antichrist has available that he is most likely getting the upper hand. But now a far more formidable foe has entered the battle, leading a heavenly cavalry charge.

Who is it that John saw coming on a white horse? Someone called Faithful and True, whose Name is called The Word of God. This can be none other than Jesus, “the Word [that] became flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).

Here is Jesus Christ, crowned with many crowns, not coming as a babe in a manger, not coming as a merciful savior. This time He’s coming with righteousness and with judgment. He is coming now as a great warrior and a judge to make war, as King of kings and Lord of lords!

And the armies in Heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

Revelation 19:14–16

“And the armies in Heaven … followed Him on white horses.” There are many references to horses in the passages about Armageddon. In Revelation 9:16 John sees a vast multitude of mounted horsemen and is told that they number 200 million. This is in the middle of a passage that talks about a very different kind of battle horses that have heads like lions that breathe out fire and tails like serpents that sting. It is very mysterious to us right now what these horses and their riders actually are.

“Out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations” (Revelation 19:15). He’s going to strike them with His Word. “The worlds were framed by the Word of God” (Hebrews 11:3). If He can make the whole world and the whole universe just by speaking the Word, how much more can He smite the nations with His Word?

“He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS” (Revelation 19:15–16). This picture of the grand finale of the judgments of God, with Christ coming and casting the wicked into the Great Winepress of God’s Wrath, is also described in Revelation chapter 14:

Then another angel came out of the temple which is in Heaven, he also having a sharp sickle. And another angel came out from the altar, who had power over fire, and he cried with a loud cry to him who had the sharp sickle, saying, “Thrust in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe.” So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth, and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trampled outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress, up to the horses’ bridles, for one thousand six hundred furlongs.

Revelation 14:17–20

From reading Revelation 14, it seems the city referred to in the preceding passage is Jerusalem. However, the site of Megiddo is about 100 kilometers (60 miles) to the north. If the rivers run with blood after the third bowl of wrath is poured out as we covered in Chapter 10, then this would literally be up to and even beyond the horses’ bridles. The horrific bloodletting at Armageddon would no doubt add to this grisly flow. One thousand six hundred furlongs, or stadia as it is written in the original Greek, is about 300 kilometers, and a horse’s bridle would be about one-and-a-half meters from the ground. So if this is literal, the carnage is going to be of such horrific proportions as to be almost incomprehensible. (to be continued)

11 – The Plagues of the Wrath of God

The Rise and Fall of the Antichrist

Scott MacGregor

2012-01-01

01/02/25 IN REVELATION CHAPTER 16, we are given a vivid picture of the hell that’s going to be unleashed on this earth after Jesus Christ has taken the believers, those who have accepted Him as their Savior, up to that wonderful wedding supper in Heaven. While that event is happening, God releases His final judgments upon the Antichrist’s empire. In Revelation 15, the introductory chapter to this event, we see that these final judgments will be delivered by “seven angels having the seven last plagues, for in them the wrath of God is complete” (Revelation 15:1).

The destruction of Babylon the Great occurs at the end of the Tribulation, either shortly before or after the Rapture. This destruction, as referred to in Revelation 17 and 18, sounds very much like a nuclear attack. How widespread an attack it will be, we don’t know, but it seems the events that are described now are happening in a post-nuclear-war world.

Much is heard today of weapons of mass destruction, which not only include nuclear weapons but also biological and chemical weapons. In a total war situation that would arise from a nuclear strike as devastating as described in the destruction of Babylon, we can assume that every weapon available in a reprisal arsenal would be utilized. The horrors unleashed would be unprecedented, almost unimaginable, and totally unpredictable.

Keep that in mind as we examine the Scriptures on the Wrath of God. Even though the source of the last seven plagues is spiritual, it seems that the actual physical delivery system, so to speak, could perhaps be the fallout from this nuclear attack and/or continued nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare between the Antichrist forces and their enemies.

John observes, “Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, ‘Go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth.’ So the first went and poured out his bowl upon the earth, and a foul and loathsome sore came upon the men who had the Mark of the Beast and those who worshiped his image” (Revelation 16:1–2). This first plague is poured out upon the earth and the people who have followed the Beast. The followers of the Antichrist who accepted his Mark and worshiped his Image develop horrible sores!

“Then the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it became blood as of a dead man; and every living creature in the sea died” (Revelation 16:3). Some of these plagues had already occurred to a degree during the judgments of God on the empire of the Antichrist during the Tribulation, as recounted in Revelation chapters 8 and 9. They were only partial at that time: A third of the waters became blood, a third of fish in the sea died, a third of the ships were destroyed, a third of the trees were burned up, and so on. But this time, due to these final seven bowls of wrath, the destruction seems to be total! It says the sea became blood—apparently the entire sea—and everything that lived in the sea died!

Then the third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters saying: “You are righteous, O Lord, the One who is and who was and who is to be, because You have judged these things. For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and You have given them blood to drink. For it is their just due.” And I heard another from the altar saying, “Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are Your judgments.”

Revelation 16:4–7

The third angel will pour out his bowl upon the rivers and fountains and they’ll become blood! There’ll be no way for the wicked to get a drink of water, there’ll be nothing to drink but blood! The angel says they’re worthy of it because they shed the blood of God’s prophets and His people, so they deserve to drink blood!—How the blood of the martyrs is avenged; those martyrs who cried out from under the altar in Heaven in Revelation chapter 6, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6:10). Well, here is the somber answer to their prayers!

Then the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and power was given to him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory. Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the Beast, and his kingdom became full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues because of the pain. They blasphemed the God of Heaven because of their pains and their sores, and did not repent of their deeds.”

Revelation 16:8–11

The fifth bowl is a direct hit on the Antichrist and his forces. While the first four seemed to generally afflict the entire world, this particular one lands right on the Antichrist and his kingdom. The curses and plagues and horrors will be so bad that men shall gnaw their tongues because of the pain. Yet in spite of all this, they curse God and don’t repent!—Think of that! It’s going to be hell here and hell hereafter for those who insist on being unrepentant and rebellious against God.

Isaiah, when prophesying against the ancient city of Babylon, seemed to also foresee this time of wrath and prophesied:

Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with both wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate; and He will destroy its sinners from it. For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be darkened in its going forth, and the moon will not cause its light to shine. I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will halt the arrogance of the proud, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. I will make a mortal more rare than fine gold, a man more than the golden wedge of Ophir. Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth will move out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts and in the day of His fierce anger.

Isaiah 13:9–13

The whole earth will become a disaster area under these awful judgments of God!

Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, so that the way of the kings from the east might be prepared. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the Dragon, out of the mouth of the Beast, and out of the mouth of the False Prophet. For they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.

Revelation 16:12–14

The sixth angel dries up the great Euphrates River to prepare the way for the armies of the east. In fact, the kings and armies of the entire earth will be summoned together for one last great battle. The Antichrist and his forces, even in their anger and their torment and their pain and their torture, are planning one last decisive battle for world domination. They are still reviling and cursing God and creating even more destruction in a final horrible war called “the Battle of that Great Day of God Almighty.”

The passage continues:

“And they gathered them together to the place called in Hebrew, Armageddon.”

Revelation 16:16

10 – The Marriage Supper of the Lamb and the Judgment Seat of Christ

The Rise and Fall of the Antichrist

Scott MacGregor

2012-01-01

01/01/25 AS YOU ARE HEADING UP INTO THE CLOUDS TO JOIN JESUS AND ALL THE RESURRECTED SAVED, you might be wondering “What next?” Well, my friends, it is time to party, and you are going to be one of the guests of honor. You are cordially invited to your wedding party. Welcome to the great “Marriage Supper of the Lamb,” where you, one of Jesus’ brides and part of His Church, the elect, the ekklesia, the called-out ones, finally get to celebrate your marriage with Jesus. You became part of His Bride the minute you accepted Him into your heart, and now you finally get to have the wedding supper, and it is going to be the party to end all parties—well, at least up until this point.

John described it like this:

Then a voice came from the throne, saying, “Praise our God, all you His servants and those who fear Him, both small and great!” And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty thunderings, saying, “Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns! Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.” And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. Then he said to me, “Write: ‘Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!’”

Revelation 19:5–9

From that point on, the Bible is silent as to what the celebrations consist of, but we can rest assured that if Jesus is planning the party, it is going to be totally out of this world.

There is another event that will apparently take place at this time, referred to in Scripture as the Judgment Seat of Christ. This is when the saved will come individually before Jesus Christ to receive their rewards. Paul writes: “We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. Then each of us shall give account of himself to God” (Romans 14:10,12). Also, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10).

Jesus said, “Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work” (Revelation 22:12). And, “The Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works” (Matthew 16:27). And also, “Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10). The apostle Paul, at the end of his ministry, shortly before his death, said, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing” (2 Timothy 4:7–8). This crown is your reward.

A lot of Christians get confused by the Bible verses on rewards and crowns, and apply them to salvation as something that must be earned. Salvation cannot be worked for and thus earned; it is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8–9; Titus 3:5). But you can work for rewards and you can earn praise and commendation from the Lord! A special, “Well done, good and faithful servant. … Enter into the joy of your Lord!” (Matthew 25:21). Although the good that you do in this life isn’t going to help to get you into Heaven, it will have a great deal to do with your reward and your position once you’re there.

When a heavenly messenger was speaking to Daniel, he said: “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever” (Daniel 12:2–3). Those who have been wise by living a life dedicated to being what God wants them to be, and to turning others to righteousness, will shine as the stars; but those who haven’t done much for the Lord will be pretty dull and some held in shame and even contempt.

So those who have done more will receive more rewards. But it also has to be understood that “the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). He knows what you are capable of and what you desire to do, and if for some reason your circumstances hold you back from being as much of a force for good on Earth as you would like to be, then those circumstances will be taken into consideration. Jesus is called the Righteous Judge, and your reward will be a righteous one. Nevertheless, it is important that we do our best to be and do all that God expects of us.

Paul wrote, “Now if anyone builds on this foundation [salvation] with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward” (1 Corinthians 3:12–14). Having received Jesus, if you live for Him and do what you can to be a living sample of His love for others, when you stand before Him at this great Judgment Seat, these works will endure the test, even as gold and silver endure and come through the fire. They will endure and you will receive a glorious reward. “That the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ!” (1 Peter 1:7).

But, the Scripture passage in Corinthians continues, “If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire” (1 Corinthians 3:15). Those who have received Jesus, but yet did nothing for Jesus in thanksgiving, who lived their lives selfishly and did not live by the golden rule of “whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them” (Matthew 7:12), will find their works burned as wood, hay, and straw, and will not receive much of a reward, if any. They’ll still be saved, but they’ll suffer such a sad loss! So if nothing else, this should be strong motivation to do our best to live the way God wants us to live and do the things He wants us to do on Earth, so that we can receive His reward and commendation in Heaven!

Meanwhile, as we are rejoicing at the Marriage Supper and receiving our rewards, the angels of the Lord are taking care of unfinished business on the earth.

09 – Jesus’ Second Coming

The Rise and Fall of the Antichrist

Scott MacGregor

2012-01-01

12/31/24 NOW WE MOVE TO THE LAST OF THE SEVEN TRUMPETS. The first six all heralded death and destruction on the Antichrist and his followers, and this last one is going to be the most horrible of all for them. However, for the followers of Jesus, it’s the most wonderful event of their lives! John recounts:

I saw still another mighty angel coming down from Heaven, clothed with a cloud. And a rainbow was on his head, his face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire. He had a little book open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roars. When he cried out, seven thunders uttered their voices. Now when the seven thunders uttered their voices, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, “Seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and do not write them.” The angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised up his hand to Heaven and swore by Him who lives forever and ever, who created Heaven and the things that are in it, the earth and the things that are in it, and the sea and the things that are in it, that there should be delay no longer, but in the days of the sounding of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, the mystery of God would be finished, as He declared to His servants the prophets.

Revelation 10:1–7

What is the “mystery of God” that should be finished that He has declared to His servants and prophets? It is what we have all been waiting for: the return of Jesus in the sky to rescue all His children. Jesus Himself told us that:

For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

Matthew 24:27,29–31

The Second Coming of Jesus Christ, often referred to as the Rapture,¹ will be the most anticipated and wonderful event for the Christians who have gone through the Tribulation. They have endured the depths of persecutions and the hell into which the world has descended under the Devil incarnate, the hideous tyranny of the Antichrist. Now their moment of release has come when they are to be taken out of this world and transported into the wonders and joys of Heaven. This is the real thing, not the ephemeral myth of a rapture before the Tribulation begins, which many sincere and dedicated Christians had been so deceived by. (See Appendix 1.) It will have been a very hard and difficult three and a half years, but now their deliverance comes.

Jesus described just how sensational His Second Coming will be. The sky is going to light up as though there were lightning, but this is much more than a mere lightning bolt that flashes for an instant—this is as bright as lightning and illuminates the entire sky, from the east to the west. Jesus said that just before His appearance the sun is darkened and the moon doesn’t shine, meaning the sky is completely dark. Then, as the powers of the atmospheric heavens start to shake as though in the throes of some colossal thunderstorm, the sign of Jesus Christ appears in the sky. Exactly what that sign is, we don’t know, but just like the armies of old followed a standard, a flag held in the vanguard, and oftentimes this was the first thing that came into the view of their enemies as the army approached, so it seems this sign is the first thing that those on the earth see. The Antichrist and his wicked followers are going to be moaning and mourning, but all those who have accepted Jesus are going to be rejoicing. Jesus appears in the clouds, and with a great trumpet blast, the angels start gathering God’s people from the four corners of the earth.

This description of Jesus’ return in the sky, visible to all, was also told to His disciples by angels as they witnessed Jesus’ ascension into Heaven after His resurrection:

Now when [Jesus] had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men [angels] stood by them in white apparel, who also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.”

Acts 1:9–11

The gathering of God’s children to Heaven during the Rapture is also described in the book of Revelation:

Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. … Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and on the cloud sat One like the Son of Man, having on His head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle. And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to Him who sat on the cloud, “Thrust in Your sickle and reap, for the time has come for You to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” So He who sat on the cloud thrust in His sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped.

Revelation 1:7; 14:14–16

This is the great reaping and calling home of all genuine Christians from the time of the early church on. Saint Paul wrote about this great event in several of his letters:

I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep [died], lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.

1 Thessalonians 4:13–18

Those he is referring to as having “fallen asleep” are those saved Christians who have died. Their bodies are dead in the grave, but their spirits are very much alive in Heaven with Jesus. When Jesus returns at this time, Paul says that all of these will come with Him. Why? Because a very important event is about to occur for them and for those of us who remain. When the Lord descends from Heaven and the shouting and trumpeting begins, the “dead in Christ” shall rise first. All those spirits whose bodies have been buried in the earth are going to receive physical bodies. However, it is not going to be the old body they knew, but a totally made-over body, regenerated and indestructible, a new heavenly body. We all then get caught up together in the clouds. Yes, we all sail up into the sky in our new bodies.

Saint Paul tells us more about this in his first letter to the Corinthians. “Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51–52).

The Bible also tells us that the supernatural, miraculous, resurrected, transformed, fleshly bodies of the future are going to be like those of the angels of God! “Nor can they die anymore, for they are equal to the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection” (Luke 20:36). But it’s still going to be you. You’re going to look similar, only much better! But it’s going to be you, the same body, otherwise it wouldn’t be a resurrection. (For more on these Resurrection bodies, see Chapter 3, “Superhuman Bodies!” in From the End to Eternity.)

And so we get delivered at the end of the Great Tribulation and then carried off to Heaven to the greatest of all parties ever held up till that time, the magnificent “Marriage Supper of the Lamb,” which we will cover in the next chapter.

An amazing thing about the Rapture is that at some point you will be able to mark the date, or close to it, on your calendar when it will happen. The Bible is specific as to how long the Tribulation lasts, and we covered this already in chapters 2 and 6. So, from the time the Antichrist sets up the Abomination of Desolation, which kicks off the Great Tribulation, you can mark off 1260 days. The Lord told us this so we would know how long we would have to endure the Antichrist’s tyrannical rule on Earth. It was to give us hope and help us hang on, knowing that rescue is coming.

On this point, some people may bring up the following Scriptures about not knowing the day or the hour of the Lord’s coming. Let’s examine those verses now. This is Jesus speaking to His disciples about His return:

But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of Heaven, but My Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left. Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

Matthew 24:36–44

Another passage on this subject is found in Paul’s first epistle to the Thessalonians:

But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness.

1 Thessalonians 5:1–5

It is obvious from the first passage that Jesus’ Second Coming is certainly going to come as a surprise to many. It is also true that at the time Jesus gave this discourse to His disciples, the only One who knew the timing of the Second Coming was God, Jesus’ Father in Heaven. Jesus didn’t know and the angels didn’t know and we still don’t know today. But why was He telling us about this and all the other signs of His return if He didn’t want us to be aware that the event was at least drawing close? He did and does want those who will actually witness the events (and His immediate audience, His disciples, were not going to) to know the approximate timing and to be prepared.

In the second passage, Paul makes it very clear that we are not supposed to let that day overtake us unexpectedly. We are children of the light and aren’t supposed to be in the dark on all this.

And finally, why would He keep telling us the exact length of time that the Tribulation would last if He didn’t intend for us to know when He was coming? Back in the apostles’ day, they didn’t need to know the exact timing of His return, because that event wasn’t going to affect them. But for us who are alive in these Last Days, and especially if we wind up in the Tribulation, the Lord wants us to know because it will help us endure to the end, either the end of our lives or the end of the Tribulation.

So, at this point we take a hiatus from the war as the Lord comes back to take us home in that marvelous event that we call the Rapture. We are taken up into the air, our bodies are changed and immortalized, and we are off to Heaven for the mother of all parties, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

But for the Antichrist and his ilk, it is the worst event. Those whom he has sworn to kill have been snatched from his clutches by his ancient and unbeatable foe, Jesus Christ. And the worst for the Antichrist is yet to come.

Notes

1. The term Rapture is not found in English-language Bibles but made its way into the Christian lexicon as a transliteration of the Latin for that event. Its biblical equivalent is the Resurrection of the Just, where believers, both living and dead, are taken up to Heaven at the last (seventh) trump, and given their immortal bodies.

The term Rapture as applied to the catching up into the heavenlies of the saved at Jesus’ Second Coming finds its origins in the Latin Vulgate translation of 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17: “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.”

The Latin word used to render “caught up” is rapiemur. Rapiemur is a derivative of the verb rapio (sometimes written raptio): to seize, snatch, carry away. Saint Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate Bible, apparently looked at the Lord’s return and our gathering to Him in the sky as a mass abduction of believers from the Antichrist Empire.

The actual English word rapture, meaning overwhelming happiness, also found its way into English from Latin roots, specifically from the medieval Latin raptura, meaning seizure, and is in turn derived from the classical Latin raptus, which means a carrying off or an abduction.

18: The Fall of the World System

A Study of Revelation: Revelation Chapter 18

A Study of Revelation

David Brandt Berg

1981-05-01

12/30/24 Revelation 18: “And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are  waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies” (verses 1–3).

This Babylon is not just the ancient Babylon of old—of which that Babylon was a type of the Babylon of all ages and the Babylon of today, the great commercial system of wealth, money, riches and materialism. The religion of the world is the worship of things and not God. That is the Babylon which He’s talking about. That is the Babylon which is used as the symbol of all other Babylons and world systems from the beginning to the end.

In fact, it dates from the very time that Cain disobeyed the Lord, and instead of sacrificing the blood sacrifice that he was told to, he decided he would sacrifice whatever he wanted to sacrifice, that he would set his own standards and decide on his own sacrifices, and that would be his religion. As a result, God was greatly displeased and refused to accept his sacrifice, but rather accepted the sacrifice of his dear brother Abel who sacrificed a blood offering, a lamb, symbolic of Jesus Christ, which was pleasing to the Lord. (See Genesis 4.)

And Cain was very angry with his brother Abel outside the Garden of Eden in the very beginning, because God accepted his younger brother Abel’s sacrifice and rejected his, the older brother’s. And the Lord asked him, “Why art thou wroth? Why is thy countenance fallen?” He said, “If thy sacrifice is not accepted, then sin lieth at the door” (Genesis 4:5–7). There are many people today who try to be religious and holy and have some form of religious worship, but it’s not God’s. It’s not what He has asked for. Only the blood of Jesus Christ can satisfy His commandments.

So Cain was so wroth—this first symbol of false religion and the worship of things and materialism and the gods of this world and disobedience unto the Lord—that he became very angry with his brother Abel, whose sacrifice was simpler and perhaps less abundant but was in obedience, a blood sacrifice of a lamb symbolizing Jesus. So Cain, the head of the world’s first false religion of disobedience to God and of substituting his own righteousness and his own way and his own sacrifice instead of that which was commanded by God, became angry with the true believer, Abel, there just outside the Garden of Eden.

Cain rose up in anger and tried to kill the true, loving worshipper of God, the one who had obeyed God and given the right sacrifice. He killed his own brother in a jealous rage because his brother’s sacrifice was accepted—so simple, so humble, but so obedient. And his own abundant sacrifice of his fruits of the field, his fruits of his own hands, his own labors, his own righteousness was rejected by God and displeased God, because sin lay at his door in disobedience to God.

This simple little picture of Cain and Abel and the murder of Abel by his older brother Cain in jealous rage is a picture of the false church and the true church from that time on through over 6,000 years of man’s history. The false self-dependent religion which rules over the kings of the earth has persecuted the poor minority of the true church of believers who love and obey God and believe His Word and trust Him and follow Jesus.

Here in this great book of Revelation we have two women pictured. One is this horrible whore who has deceived the nations of the earth and rules over the kings and the powers and the governments of the earth, always persecuting the church of Jesus Christ.

We see the two women of this book, one very good, beautiful, and pure like Mary herself, the bride of Christ; the other evil, wicked—though beautiful—a licentious fornicator, adulteress, mother of harlots, the false church.—The greatest religion of all, that of materialism, the worship of things, riches, wealth, power.

While the poor pitiful little true bride of Christ like Mary of old flees into the wilderness for protection by the Lord, she is persecuted by the Devil and hounded by his mistress, who at last gets her due. This Antichrist government, this great red beast turns upon her and devours her and destroys her with fire at the very end in the Tribulation; and his ten kings pitch into her, burn her with fire, and destroy her.

First of all, having come into power, the Antichrist, Satan in the flesh, the Devil-man, decides he no longer needs Babylon, the great commercial, city system of materialism, so he destroys it. Remember, this is a flashback; we’re going back again into the period of the Tribulation and Antichrist rule before the Coming of Christ and the wrath of God.

We’re going back to see what the Antichrist does to the great whore, he and his ten kings who turn upon her and devour her with fire and destroy her and eat her flesh.—She who made them rich and powerful, she who rode upon their backs as a queen, saying, “I shall see no sorrow.” She who was a king-maker, she who was an empire-ruler, the empress of the Antichrist, is finally destroyed by the Antichrist government itself as he demands that all men everywhere shall now worship him only as the world’s god.

In the eighteenth chapter of Revelation, the Antichrist destroys the world city system in what appears to be a final atomic war. God thinks it’s such a tremendous event that He devotes an entire chapter to it, describing how she is finally destroyed, how the world cities and their banks and office buildings and temples of worship are finally totally destroyed, along with a great deal of the world. Very suddenly, He says, in a day, in one hour!

Fourth verse: “And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled, fill to her double.” The angel is saying to God, “Double to her the judgment and the cruelty and the punishment and the persecution that she gave the saints.”

“How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day”—one day! The experts say the atomic war will be over in a few hours, in one day, perhaps one hour. “In one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire. For strong is the Lord God who judgeth her” (Revelation 18:5–8).

“And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, standing afar off for the fear of her torment”—lest they get caught in the fire—“saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city. For in one hour is thy judgment come. And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more.” No more commercial system.

“The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner of vessels of ivory, and all manner of vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and odors, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men” (Revelation 18:9–13). That just about covers everything that the great whore trades in—all of her products, goods, wealth, from virtually everything on earth, including the very souls of men, slaves of her religion.

“And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all. The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, and saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls. For in one hour so great riches is come to nought” (Revelation 18:14–17).

“And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off”—they didn’t dare come very close because of the horror of the atomic destruction and the fallout—“and cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city.” It must have been something like that at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness. For in one hour is she made desolate. Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her” (Revelation 18:17–20). The world city system, the Rome of modern days, tries to persecute and martyr the children and prophets of God because they’re thorns in their flesh and pricks in their eyes; they prick their conscience and make them feel guilty for their sins.

“And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all” (Revelation 18:21). With violence she destroyed many, with violence she destroyed nations, with violence she destroyed empires, countries, whole peoples with her hellish wars and bombs.

“And the voice of harpers and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee. And no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee.” No more engineers, no more manufacturers. “And the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee” (Revelation 18:22). No more production even of food and grain.

“And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee.” That’ll be the day, the night when all the lights go out, the night when there’s the great blackout, the greatest the world has ever known, and the world goes dark.

“And the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived. And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth” (Revelation 18:23–24). This witch who practiced her witchcraft and sorcery to deceive man, to deceive the entire world to follow the Beast and his Antichrist, is finally destroyed by her own lover—the Antichrist.

This Antichrist destroys her, along with his kings, who turn on her and burn her with fire and destroy her, and she is gone forever.—The harlot of the kings of this earth who have lived deliciously with her in luxury and wealth and have promoted her and carried her upon their backs to great power and glory.

At last she’s destroyed because she destroyed God’s servants and God’s children throughout time. She persecuted and harassed them, and finally killed and martyred many of them in these last days. Their message, their witness, their words of God needled her, tormented and annoyed her, so she tried to wipe them out to get rid of her guilty conscience and that convicting message, preaching against her sins and her abominations and her worship of this world, the god of this world, the Devil in the flesh and the things of this earth, having worshipped the creature and the creation more than the Creator (Romans 1:25).

So is destroyed her in whom was found the blood of the prophets and of the saints and of all that were ever slain upon the face of the earth. All the people of God in both Old and New Testaments were destroyed in her, this worldwide Babylon of sin and iniquity and mammon and materialism and the worship of the things of this earth instead of God. Then the Antichrist demands the worship of all men and claims he’s God.

That’s the beginning of the end. God is about to destroy Satan and his Antichrist kingdom and his beast and false prophet and all his Mark-takers throughout the earth. They have persecuted His children and have tormented them and killed them and harassed them from one end of the earth to the other.

Finally His children say, “Lord, how long? How long, O Lord, before You wreak revenge on these who have shed our blood?” (Revelation 6:10). And the Lord says, “Just a little bit, wait a little bit longer.” “For he which lives by the sword and kills by the sword must die by the sword; here is the patience and the faith of the saints.” For he that comes out of the pit, out of hell, must go into perdition (Revelation 13:10; 17:8).

In the nineteenth chapter we come to the end, the Battle of Armageddon, the return of Jesus Christ with His saints to take over the world and to set up the kingdom of God on earth, the great millennial kingdom of God! The curse is removed, man restored, and the beauty of God’s marvelous original creation restored here on earth for a thousand years. We’ll read about that beautiful millennial period after we read chapter 19 in which the final victory is won over the forces of the Antichrist and of Satan.

Copyright © 1981 The Family International.

07 – The Great Tribulation (part 2)

The Rise and Fall of the Antichrist

Scott MacGregor

2012-01-01

12/29/24 Certainly the power of these two witnesses is awesome. But it is not unprecedented. Elijah called down fire from Heaven and caused it not to rain for three years in Israel (2 Kings 1:9–15; 1 Kings 17:1; 18:1); Moses and Aaron brought plagues on their oppressors and caused the waters to be turned to blood (Exodus 7:17–21; 9:13–26). So these powers have been available to God’s chosen before, and they will be available again in the Endtime.

It’s going to be a time of great victory and marvelous testimony so that the whole world will hear. Multitudes of believers are going to survive right until the very coming of the Lord. So there are going to be many people still functioning for the Lord and surviving and living by faith and preaching the Gospel. There are going to be millions of them still alive to see the Lord come.

And although there’s going to be the most hell the world has ever known, there’s also going to be the most heavenly power and defense and help and protection. It’s going to be a time of great victory over the forces of Satan and tremendous triumph over the anti-Christ wicked. The Tribulation is not going to be a rampaging victory for the Devil. Supernatural, miraculous victories are going to be won over him and all of his powers. Don’t think that God’s people are all going to be cowering, hunted victims. Many will be mightily empowered to fight and battle in the defense of the Gospel right up to the end, alongside all the forces of Heaven, aided by the curses and plagues that God unleashes on the wicked.

Nevertheless, it will be a time of persecution, and even the two witnesses lose their lives as martyrs. Daniel explains: “Yet for many days [the people of God] shall fall by sword and flame, by captivity and plundering. Now when they fall, they shall be aided with a little help; but many shall join with them by intrigue. And some of those of understanding shall fall, to refine them, purify them, and make them white, until the time of the end; because it is still for the appointed time” (Daniel 11:33–35). Many Christians in countries that are closed to the Gospel already experience these kinds of conditions where they are persecuted and informers weasel their way into their fellowships, and some believers even die for their faith. But these conditions do have an end.

Aside from getting a little help from some quarters, there is a lot of help forthcoming from the spirit world. Revelation chapters 8–10 relay what will happen when the Seven Trumpets of the Tribulation are sounded in Heaven and seven mighty and fearsome angels begin to execute the judgments of God on the Antichrist’s empire.

The first angel sounded: And hail and fire followed, mingled with blood, and they were thrown to the earth. And a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up. Then the second angel sounded: And something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. And a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. Then the third angel sounded: And a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the water, because it was made bitter. Then the fourth angel sounded: And a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them were darkened. A third of the day did not shine, and likewise the night. And I looked, and I heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, “Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound!”

Then the fifth angel sounded: And I saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth. To him was given the key to the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke arose out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace. So the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke of the pit. Then out of the smoke locusts came upon the earth. And to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. They were commanded not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree, but only those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.

Revelation 8:7 to 9:4

Who are these ferocious insect-like creatures from the bottomless pit hurting and tormenting?—Those people on Earth who do not have the “seal of God” on their foreheads. Revelation chapter 7 describes how God had held back His avenging angels till those who were His servants on Earth had received this seal. We don’t know what form this seal will take, although it seems to be a spiritual rather than an actual physical mark. One thing we do know is that those who receive it are His people, and they are not on the receiving end of these plagues. It is the followers of the Antichrist who are on the receiving end, those who are trying to persecute and kill the ones who refuse to worship the Beast. For all the trouble, pain, and hurt they try to inflict on those who love Jesus, it sounds like the Antichrist and his followers come off the worst for it.

The Lord set a precedent for this kind of thing way back when the children of Israel were held as slaves in Egypt, in the days of Moses. Moses demanded that pharaoh give the Israelites their freedom but pharaoh kept refusing. God, therefore, sent numerous plagues against Egypt because of pharaoh’s recalcitrance. At least some of those plagues did not touch the land of Goshen, the area of Egypt where the Israelites lived (Exodus 9:26). And just as they were spared, we will also be spared much of the horror.

And they [the monster locusts] were not given authority to kill them [the Antichrist’s followers], but to torment them for five months. And their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man. In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them.

Revelation 9:5–6

These creatures have power to inflict pain with their stings for five months, and their victims will wish they could die but apparently can’t.

The shape of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. They had hair like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots with many horses running into battle. They had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails. Their power was to hurt men five months.

Revelation 9:7–10

Like much in the book of Revelation, this passage is cryptic; and although some have tried to explain exactly what these creatures are, it seems we won’t really know until we actually see them. But the good thing is that if you have the seal of God in your forehead, you don’t need to worry. And if you have Jesus in your heart and love Him and try to serve Him, then you qualify as a servant of God and you will have that seal. (See Appendix 3.)

Then the sixth angel sounded: And I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great River Euphrates.” So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind. Now the number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them. And thus I saw the horses in the vision: those who sat on them had breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow; and the heads of the horses were like the heads of lions; and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and brimstone. By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed—by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone which came out of their mouths. For their power is in their mouth and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents, having heads; and with them they do harm.

Revelation 9:13–19

This sixth trumpet obviously has to do with war occurring during the period of Great Tribulation. What these horses with heads of lions and mouths that breathe fire are is for now a mystery. But it seems that the armies involved numbered 200 million, and the casualties in that war were a third of all mankind. That surely sounds like a time of great troubles or Great Tribulation. If ever there was an entity who glories in destruction and would love to see the world engulfed in a conflagration of the magnitude spoken of here, it is the Devil. And he will be in the thick of it in the person of the Antichrist.

Notes

1. Now the angel who talked with me came back and wakened me, as a man who is wakened out of his sleep. And he said to me, “What do you see?” So I said, “I am looking, and there is a lampstand of solid gold with a bowl on top of it, and on the stand seven lamps with seven pipes to the seven lamps. Two olive trees are by it, one at the right of the bowl and the other at its left.” … Then I answered and said to him, “What are these two olive trees—at the right of the lampstand and at its left?” And I further answered and said to him, “What are these two olive branches that drip into the receptacles of the two gold pipes from which the golden oil drains?” Then he answered me and said, “Do you not know what these are?” And I said, “No, my lord.” So he said, “These are the two anointed ones, who stand beside the Lord of the whole earth” (Zechariah 4:1–3, 11–14).

Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Him, saying, “Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask.” And He said to them, “What do you want Me to do for you?” They said to Him, “Grant us that we may sit, one on Your right hand and the other on Your left, in Your glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you ask. Can you drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They said to Him, “We are able.” So Jesus said to them, “You will indeed drink the cup that I drink, and with the baptism I am baptized with you will be baptized; but to sit on My right hand and on My left is not Mine to give, but it is for those for whom it is prepared” (Mark 10:35–40).

07 – The Great Tribulation (part 1)

The Rise and Fall of the Antichrist

Scott MacGregor

2012-01-01

12/28/24 THEREFORE WHEN YOU SEE THE “abomination of desolation,” spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (whoever reads, let him understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house. And let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! And pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath. For then there will be Great Tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be.

Matthew 24:15–21

As we’ve seen in Chapter 4, the placing of the “abomination of desolation” represents the halfway mark in the Antichrist’s seven-year reign. Therefore, Jesus is here describing the beginning of the last three and a half years of the current epoch of the earth. In the parallel passage in the Gospel of Luke we see some more details of the events occurring at this moment.

But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near. Then let those in Judea flee to the mountains, let those who are in the midst of her depart, and let not those who are in the country enter her. For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! For there will be great distress in the land and wrath upon this people. And they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all nations. And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

Luke 21:20–24

Jerusalem is surrounded and occupied by the armies of the Antichrist, and Jesus basically says that those in the vicinity should run for their lives. Obviously it is not a peaceful occupation, and most likely it is the culmination of a war.

In Revelation 11:1–2 we read the following: “Then I was given a reed like a measuring rod. And the angel stood, saying, ‘Rise and measure the temple of God, the altar, and those who worship there. But leave out the court which is outside the temple, and do not measure it, for it has been given to the Gentiles. And they will tread the holy city underfoot for forty-two months.’” John is measuring a temple that seems to be a different one than the one described earlier in Revelation, for the previous temple was in the heavenly realm. This one has at least the outer court given to the Gentiles and they have it and the city of Jerusalem for 42 months, which is most likely the time of the Tribulation. It is also likely that this corresponds to the “times of the Gentiles” of the earlier passage in Luke. And it is a fair guess that the temple John was measuring is actually the one that is going to be rebuilt at Jerusalem.

The Antichrist, from what we have already covered, has apparently been mortally wounded and has literally come back from the dead. But now he is not just a pawn of Satan, he is totally possessed by him. He sets up both his image and his throne in the temple environs. All who will not worship him and take his infamous Mark are then declared beyond the law and are marked for extermination. Although all in this category are to be hunted down and killed, it appears from Revelation 12—the vision of the woman and the dragon—that those who are Christians are particularly singled out:

“Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the Devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.” Now when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child. And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Revelation 12:12–13,17

This sounds terrible for Christians—and certainly when compared with the temporal might of the Antichrist and his armies and his massive government apparatus, we might not seem to stand a chance—but we have one almighty ace up our sleeves: Jesus Christ Himself. Yes, He may at this time be unseen, but He will be fighting on our side and that means we will be the ultimate victors. We will come through this period on top in the end. It might look like we are losing at times, and we will suffer casualties, but in the end we will win, because the battle is Jesus’ and He always wins.

As the wise Jewish teacher Gamaliel said to the Jewish leaders when they planned to persecute the early Christians, “If it is of God, you cannot overthrow it—lest you even be found to fight against God” (Acts 5:39). The apostle John, one of the very people Rabbi Gamaliel was warning against harming, echoed this when he wrote: “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5:4–5). Also Paul, who had studied under Gamaliel, again reminded us of the inevitability of our victory when he said: “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:57–58).

However, for the formal, organized denominations with their big church buildings and economic and political clout, the handwriting is on the wall. Daniel prophesied of their troubles when he said, “I was watching; and the [Antichrist] was making war against the saints, and prevailing against them. … He … shall persecute the saints of the Most High, and … the saints shall be given into his hand. … He shall destroy the mighty, and also the holy people. … And when the power of the holy people has been completely shattered, all these things shall be finished” (Daniel 7:21,25; 8:24; 12:7).

Why would God allow this?—Because it is good for His people. It purifies His Church by driving them to Him in desperation. It “makes them white,” as Daniel was told by the angelic messenger (Daniel 12:10). Whenever persecution has come to Christians, it has always resulted in revival in the long run, with believers drawn closer to the values of Christianity. The Bible not only promises “all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution,” but also “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to His purpose” (2 Timothy 3:12; Romans 8:28 KJV).

Even though the Antichrist will be allowed to physically overcome the organized temporal power of the Christian denominations, he will not and cannot overcome Christians spiritually. The Lord says, “And they overcame [Satan] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death” (Revelation 12:11). The only power they’re going to have left will be God’s power. “Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more” (Romans 5:20). In the world’s darkest hour of greatest iniquity, many Christians are going to supernaturally, miraculously witness and shine brighter than ever before. “For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and deep darkness the people; but the Lord will arise over you, and His glory will be seen upon you” (Isaiah 60:2).

Furthermore, the Bible promises that during this time “the people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits. And those of the people who understand shall instruct many” (Daniel 11:32–33). This is very important because the raison d’être for the Lord’s people during this momentous and trouble-filled time is to witness to others and teach them and instruct them as to what is going on. The Antichrist regime will be horrible and oppressive, and many people are going to hate it and will want to know what they can do about it. Those who know God will be in their element because they will have multitudes of hungry hearts to win and teach the good news of God’s Word and Jesus’ imminent return.

Many are going to be more receptive than ever then, just like many are now in times of personal trial, emergency, catastrophe, illness, or accident. A lot of people are going to believe then, and many are going to need salvation and need the good news. Those who understand from the Bible what’s happening and what’s going to happen will be a great encouragement to millions of people throughout the earth.

It costs something to witness, and in that day it is definitely going to cost some Christians who “know their God” their lives. The Antichrist is going to try to wipe them all out because they’ll be telling the truth and exposing him. They’re going to be “instructing many,” warning them of who he really is. And he and his forces are going to be furious.

But if you love the Lord, don’t fear the Tribulation. God’s a much greater enemy to the Antichrist forces than they are to you. “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). As His Word has said, “It is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you” (2 Thessalonians 1:6).

Powerful men and women of God, just like the ancient prophets and prophetesses of old, are going to be God’s leaders and have supernatural, miraculous powers to protect and defend their flocks and followers and help them survive to the very end.

Two exceptional witnesses are mentioned in the following passage in Revelation 11:

And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy one thousand two hundred and sixty days [the Tribulation period], clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands standing before the God of the earth.¹ And if anyone wants to harm them, fire proceeds from their mouth and devours their enemies. And if anyone wants to harm them, he must be killed in this manner. These have power to shut heaven, so that no rain falls in the days of their prophecy; and they have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to strike the earth with all plagues, as often as they desire.

Now when they finish their testimony, the Beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit will make war against them, overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. Then those from the peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations will see their dead bodies three and a half days, and not allow their dead bodies to be put into graves. And those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them, make merry, and send gifts to one another, because these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth.

Now after the three and a half days the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them. And they heard a loud voice from Heaven saying to them, “Come up here.” And they ascended to Heaven in a cloud, and their enemies saw them. Revelation 11:3–12 (to be continued)