When I first began to pay attention to the Scriptures where Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, saying, “Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God” (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4), I assumed it meant a “falling away” from the faith, a denial of Christ and rejection of church affiliation. Yes, but much more, as current events and trends are showing. It is a turning away from morality and lawfulness, and that includes many in the “Christian” category, no less.

How many mainline churches and high-level clergy are embracing with welcoming arms the raging sexuality movement? The gender manipulation frenzy, the clamor for acceptance of homosexuality as a normal lifestyle, the hard-driven demand that abortion of babies in the womb, even partially born, is fully acceptable and legal—these trends have grown exponentially like a brushfire in these past few years. It is indeed like a frenzy.

The abortion issue ties in with this sexual revolution, for it has all the markings of nothing more than a major birth-control method. How to have all the sex experiences possible without any responsibility, that seems to be the hidden reason. How many of the 61 million abortions recorded in America since 1973 (Roe v Wade) were actually due to the health of the mother?

Oaths of office to uphold the Constitution mean nothing anymore. Gangs in streets opposing lawmen, destroying property and human lives, demanding open borders for illegals and providing safe cities for killers—the signs of a dying society are enormous.

What is to become of America? What is to become of the world?

In the “rat race” of this world, the rats seem to be winning. But when God shows up, the rats will race for the darkness, just as they have been for centuries. When Peter wrote these words in his second epistle, he revealed a great truth that holds up, and has held up for these centuries, of God’s purpose over all that time:

“…Knowing this first, that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.’

“For this they willfully forget, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

“But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:3-9).

In spite of scoffers and naysayers, God is fixed in His patient desire that all can be saved who would be saved, that is, willing to repent and be saved. The current question, then, is how long will He wait in these days for that final one to be born again before He returns for all those whom He has bought with His own blood?

In the days of Noah, all of the world except Noah and his family were in rebellion against God. And in the days of Lot, the whole city of Sodom was totally saturated with evil when Lot went out of the city and sudden destruction came upon it and its inhabitants. Luke 17:26-30 tells us that the Son of Man will come for His own, just like in the times of Noah and Lot, but during a time of economic and social revival or seemingly “well off” times, especially in America.

When Noah and his family entered the ark and God closed the door on them (Genesis 7:16), there was no more representation of righteousness left among physical mankind. Evil had won its final and ultimate conclusion. God’s judgment had also arrived, for the flood came and took away all evil in a cleansing of the whole earth. In 2 Thessalonians 2 we have looked at the compounding of a “falling away” comparable to, so Jesus said in Luke 17:26, “as it was in the days of Noah.” Further in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, verses 5-8, he writes this:

“Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming.”

The born-again believer is described and identified in this way in 1 Corinthians 6:17, “But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.” Thus, the “One who restrains, the restrainer” is the believer in Christ, indwelt by the Holy Spirit. The Lord has said to those who have accepted Him into their lives, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). (I quote these references to assert more forcefully that this passage, presenting the fact of the Rapture of the saints, is clearly the taking out of the earth the true body of Christ.)

It is comparable to the time of Noah in that, following that exit, there is no more representation of righteousness left on earth. Only left behind is the conclusion of evil—God’s judgment in the sudden destruction to follow, and then, seven years of tribulation judgment.

 In this Trump administration we have seen a reversal of the deceptive plan to destroy the sovereignty of the United States and initiate a New World Order that would front for a one-world government. That is clearly the underlying plan subtly pointed to when President Obama spoke at the 2016 DC Correspondents’ Dinner on April 30, 2016. In the video produced by C-Span and online on YouTube, he greeted the guests with, “You are all looking great…the end of the Republic has never looked better!”

Perhaps the guests, all news correspondents, thought this was a joke since that was somewhat the format of the evening. Yet, throughout his talk, he revealed his certainty of the coming results of the 2016 election…as he was so sure who would win it. One of those references went like this: “I don’t know who the next president will be, but I’m sure she will be a good one!”

But God had other plans, according to His long-suffering for those who would become born-again believers before His Appointed Time for that 7^th head of the Beast of Revelation, the one-world government. He said, in action if not words, “Barack Obama, you will get your one-world government, but it will be in My timing, not that of mankind.”

Take a look again at Luke 17:26-30 and see what happened, apparently, because the raging fight against the reversal of their intentions has never been so intense anytime in recent decades. The “falling away” from lawfulness is so deeply embedded in our governmental bodies, in society, in every corner of life that it is beginning to look like those days of Noah and of Lot and their surrounding conditions. The bowing down to the demands of pro-abortionists and their determined ally, Planned Parenthood, and the perverted sexual and gender manipulation frenzy is nothing short of astounding. As Romans 3:18 declares, “There is no fear of God before their eyes!”

It is not likely that God will come to earth and bargain with anyone, like He did before the judgment of Sodom (see Genesis 18). He will come like a thief in the night, and sudden destruction will follow immediately, according to 1 Thessalonians 5:2-3.

The remaining question, again, is “how full must the cup of God’s judgment be before the Son of Man comes?”

Contact email:  andwegetmercy@gmail.com  

It was Jesus who abruptly confronted Nicodemus that night, saying, “You must be born again!” (John 3:3-6).  It was a total shock to Nicodemus who was steeped in the tradition of the Pharisees, scribes and religious leaders of Israel. Jesus later warned the disciples, “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees” (Matthew 16:6). Their “leaven” or life-giving doctrine, so to speak, was the law which did not produce life but, actually, death.

So, what is this born-again thing and why a must?

Some have attempted to use that term to explain their change of mind or purpose, but it was not the transformation Jesus had in mind. The Bible speaks often of man’s need to repent of his sins, such as in Acts 17:30: “Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent,” and 2 Peter 3:9: “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise [of Christ’s return], as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”

New Year’s Resolutions are a familiar type of repentance, and you know how long that exercise lasts for most of us. So we can repent of our practices and habits to some extent, sometimes. Once I was a smoker and was concerned about getting cancer, so I chewed gum for a month instead of smoking. A month of that and I began smoking again as if I had never stopped. Later on, having a bad cold and sore throat, I was smoking menthol-flavored cigarettes and wishing I could quit the habit. Abruptly, that moment one night, I prayed (probably the second time I had ever done that), saying, “God, if You will help me quit smoking, I’ll try to do my part.”

The next morning I awoke with no desire for a cigarette, as was commonly the case, and felt clean and refreshed. I was amazed, and for two weeks I even told others how it had happened. Then, curiosity took hold, and I tested the “repentance” and found out that I could not do my part after all. Something else had to happen, but what was it?

It comes down to this—all people, all of us, are born of Adam. Through the generations, we arrive at our birth from our mom and dad with that spiritual and physical death written in our genes and DNA. How can we quit being a child of Adam, because no child of Adam will ever enter the kingdom of heaven? We must be born-again, a spiritual transaction. However, I was so spiritually dead that I did not grasp what God had done in me that I could not do.

It is a God thing. There is no act of repentance that mankind can undertake that will accomplish the transformation needed to change a person from one of Adam’s offspring to a child of God. Then why preach repentance to people? Man is not aware, really, of the depth of his separation from God. We are taught a concept of God that speaks of the love of God but leaves out the necessary justice of God, that He must confront the sinfulness of mankind. Romans 3:23 speaks to that, saying, “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”

Jesus came first to the Jews, for salvation is of the Jews, and the gospel was first to the Jews according to John 4:22 and Romans 1:16. However, He was not received by them, and John 1:12-13 tells us this: “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

It says, “…Who are born, not of blood,” that is, not of family inheritance, like a Christian family or as an American citizen. Then, “…Nor of the will of the flesh,” that is, trying to keep the law as best you can, or doing good works like baptism or joining a church or taking communion. Then, “…Nor of the will of man,” that is, by confirmation by a priest or some other third-party action. It is a God thing.

In Matthew 16:13-17, Jesus is inquiring of the disciples who people are saying He is, and they list several of the prophets. Then, Jesus asked them who they think He is, and Peter bursts out with, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” and Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”

So, what is so crucial about that, you may ask? Could “flesh and blood” have done that? No, never! That is our problem as sons of Adam; we are born spiritually dead—unable to comprehend or understand spiritual truths. Faith is a gift from God to those willing to accept it, and if you have noticed, the most often repeated word relative to salvation in the Bible is “believe.” The meaning of that word is not like a casual nod of agreement but is a belief that is defined more distinctly as “trust.”

The object of that trust and its trustworthiness is so much greater than finite man that it can only become real and effective by the revelation of God. It is unreachable by man in his own ability as a son of Adam. Two passages reveal this to us. First, in Matthew 16:15-17 above, Peter gives an answer that could only come from God, and Jesus commended him for it by saying, “Flesh and blood did not reveal this to you,” but it came from God. That is, neither Peter nor anyone can know that truth except that it is revealed by God to him.

Now, look at 1 John 5:1a, which ties this to the “born-again” requirement we are addressing:

“Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God….”

When Jesus is identified as “the Christ,” He is the Messiah—the promised One from heaven, the One who is God in the flesh. Believing that takes special revelation of God. That belief takes one out of the heritage and lineage of Adam and into the family of God as an adopted child of God. A person dies with Christ and rises with Him in his resurrection, just as Galatians 2:20 describes in the words of the Apostle Paul:

“I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me; and the life that I live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loves me and gave Himself for me.”

It is also spelled out in 2 Corinthians 5:17:

“Therefore, if anyone be in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed away. Behold, all things have become new.”

With the belief as in 1 John 5:1a above, so crucial to the saving relationship with the Lord, it is no wonder that the fact of God’s appearing in the flesh of mankind is denied in the foundational arguments of the false prophets. John also speaks to this in 1 John 4:1-3:

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.”

It is not surprising that the enemy would target the most important “bullseye” for his deceptive false doctrine. It is evident in Scripture that the devil continually challenged the claim that Jesus made of His deity, that He is the great “I AM before Abraham was” (John 8:58). And also, that belief of that fact is the doorway to eternal life, the “born-again” requirement for becoming a child of God. It is also evident that the necessity is that it be by a revelation of God and not of man’s effort. Paul sums it up in Titus 3:4-5 like this:

“But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.”

You must be born-again!

Contact email: andwegetmercy@gmail.com