It is my belief that this age of the Gentiles, this age of grace, is near its end, and following are some reasons why I think that.

First of all, Jesus aid, in Luke 21:28, “Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near,” just after He gave a whole list of cataclysmic events that will come upon the world so that men’s hearts will fail them for fear.

The Great Deceiver, whose goal is to lull everyone to sleep and unaware of eternal danger ahead, has come up with “man-made climate change” to explain it all. It was once called “global warming” until the heavy snow storms came upon us in the middle of the outcry of concern for global warming with melting of the icebergs and rising of ocean levels that would overcome the land masses.

In that list of stormy events Jesus said there would be earthquakes in different places, places that were not previously normal for them to be experienced. Ravaging hurricanes, ice storms, tornados with devastating effect have been happening.

The statement He made next, however, gives us the “times and seasons” in which these things would appear. He spoke, in Luke 21:29-32 in parable form, that the blossoming of the fig tree—a type of or identity of the nation of Israel—would mark the time of the end. Note His words:

“Then He spoke to them a parable: ‘Look at the fig tree, and all the trees. When they are already budding, you see and know for yourselves that summer is now near. So you also, when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near. Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all things take place.’”

If He meant the generation which heard Him say that, as perhaps some might want to argue, then you and I would never have been born. No, He was talking of the generation which would see the return of Israel to its place as a nation among the nations. This happened on May 14, 1948, sixty-nine years ago. How long is a generation in God’s timetable? Psalm 90:10 gives us a clue:

“The days of our lives are seventy years; and if by reason of strength they are eighty years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”

(This last part reminds me of that old faithful gospel song, “I’ll Fly Away” and probably is the source of that title.)

When He says “all things take place,” it is clear that He means the final seven years that are called the Tribulation period, for it ends with Jesus coming to the earth to reign as King of kings on earth for a thousand years. (See Revelation 20.)

Based on the accumulation of years since the rebirth of Israel, we are in the range of months only until Jesus comes in the Rapture of the saints.

There are other telltale events in this world, also, that indicate that the time is very short. In 2 Thessalonians 2:2-3 Paul tells us that a “falling away” must come before the appearance of the lawless one.  Some argue that this means “taking away” as in the Rapture, which is mentioned later in the chapter as being “when the one who restrains is taken out of the way.”

I looked at how about 52 English translations and paraphrases recorded that phrase, “falling away,” or if it were translated as “taking away” instead. Almost all were using “falling away” or a similar wording as their translation variation. The closest phrase used was “departure,” which can easily mean “departure from the faith.” None of them specifically identified the phrase with the Rapture, however.

It is totally conceivable that the end result of “falling away” from lawfulness will usher in that very image of lawlessness—the devil himself. That turning from lawfulness is confirmed by other Scripture, as follows, in spite of the argument as to the meaning of that phrase in the original Greek:

“Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron…” (1 Timothy 4:1-2).

 “But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away” (2 Timothy 3:1-5). 

“But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13).

“Beloved, I now write to you this second epistle (in both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder), that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior, 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” (2 Peter 3:1-7).

“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” (1 John 4:1-3).

(I have noted before that an uncle once complained that details of topics of the Bible were not put together under each respective topic heading, as in an encyclopedia, and now I have almost done the same thing. However, here I have quoted Paul, Peter and John to confirm the consistency of the Scriptures as one message.)

It is almost unbelievable what we see in the news every day , not only in America but the whole world, the turn to lawlessness. Terrorism runs rampant and it seems no one can get a handle on it with any authority. Political correctness has become the controlling principle for social relationships. There is a faction that is quick to call any contrary judgment to their way of thinking “racism” no matter what is the real issue.

Here in America the absolute hate for President Trump is so very vivid in the  liberal side of our culture that there seems to be no way to resolve the differences. The very things which the leftist Democrats have always said they are for are the things Donald Trump promised he would do and is doing them, yet their hate is so strong they will not cooperate at all to get those things done.

President Trump is president of the people of America, but he does not fit their mold of a president, so “he just is not presidential.” They strongly deny it, but it does appear that they would rather destroy America than to see President Trump succeed.

Check the source of their “wisdom.” Solomon wrote in Proverbs 9:10, “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom,” so it is no wonder that their default position turns out to be lawlessness, right out of the pit of the devil’s habitat.

Just like Jesus said, false prophets with their false doctrines are abounding and are giving the masses a casual attitude regarding any sense of impending judgment and the end of the age. A news person the other day told of a bumper sticker that said, “Jesus Is Coming—Look Busy.” When sunlight is filtered through darkness, its intensity is greatly diminished and therefore, its effect shows up as increased lawlessness, in spiritual terms.

Why does God allow such to happen? There seems to be a principle that God allows mankind to embrace sinfulness in a big way once he has rejected God as his Master. It confirms Man’s judgment for his rebellion. Yet, God says He is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” in 2 Peter 3:9.

 None will enter the presence of God having not repented and turned away from his rebellion against God and receiving Jesus as his personal Savior, just as John 14:6 declares that none can be saved except through Him. 

Contact email:  andwegetmercy@gmail.com   

 

 

When the apostle Paul described that “unknown god” to the philosophers at Mars Hill, it went like this:

“Then certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, ‘What does this babbler want to say?’

Others said, ‘He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods,’ because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection.

And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, ‘May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears.

‘Therefore we want to know what these things mean.’ For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, ‘Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription:’”

TO THE UNKNOWN GOD

‘Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: ^‘God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.

 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’

 Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead’” (Acts 17:18-31).

It’s a rather long quote but the context is important to the point I want to emphasize—“For in Him we live and move and have our being”—which is included in the quote above. It is a concept that all are likely not able to get our minds wrapped around easily if at all. What I am pointing to is told in John 4:24 when Jesus told the woman at the well this:

“God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

We mortals are locked into this physical world that we know by the use of our five senses—see, hear, taste, smell and feel. So the ability to grasp what it means that God is spirit and is everywhere, and in Him we live and move and have our being is almost impossible to comprehend and believe. That is where, then, our sixth sense comes into the picture—faith. None of the other senses can contribute to that one in our understanding of God.  Another applicable verse is Hebrews 11:6:

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”

A quick summary that I have mentioned before of the long-term plan of God to reveal Himself to man seems to take place over four eras of increasing revelation of God. In that first period, man lived by his conscience for there was no law of God yet revealed. Next, God selected a man named Abram and created a race of people for His own purposes of increased revelation that now was made more precise with the law that was summed up in the Ten Commandments.  

The next era or revelation strangely moves from that Spirit which is everywhere present and “in whom we live and move and have our being”  to a resurrected God-man named Jesus Christ. We are told in Hebrews 1:1-3:

“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”

Any one of us would have been as astounded as Peter and John when they peered in the tomb to see empty grave clothes lying there in the wrapped condition they were around that body but now there was no body there. Just a husk-like empty cocoon was what they saw. Later, Jesus made sure they knew it was really the Jesus who had walked with them for those many months:

“Now as they said these things, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and said to them, ‘Peace to you.’ But they were terrified and frightened, and supposed they had seen a spirit.

 “And He said to them, ‘Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.’

 “When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. But while they still did not believe for joy, and marveled, He said to them, ‘Have you any food here?’ So they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and some honeycomb, and He took it and ate in their presence” (Luke 24:36-43).

Was this a condition of His existence that was only to be seen in physical form while He was with them on earth in order to convince them of His resurrection? Asked in another way, is He just like that in His position in heaven now? We don’t know if fish and chips or honeycomb are eaten in heaven, but here is what Stephen saw as he was dying after being stoned to death, as reported in Acts 7:55-56:

“But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, ‘Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’”

But that was just for Stephen, the first martyr, you say? No, but for all believers, as John tells us in 1 John 3:2-3:

“Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”

 While this third period of His increasing unveiling of Himself to mankind by becoming a man not of Adam’s origin, but of God Himself, it seems to be the one in which there has been the greatest involvement in the affairs of mankind:

He was born of a woman, born under the law;

He lived as other men did, tempted as them but not a victim of sinfulness;

He suffered all of the atrocities that man could throw at Him;

He submitted to a cruel death on a cross on which He carried in His body the sins of mankind to secure their redemption, for those who would believe;

He returned to heaven at the right hand of God, the father of glory but sent His Spirit to indwell redeemed mortal man as His ambassadors to a lost world.

That final period of revelation of Himself will be the thousand-year reign as the king of Kings on the throne of David in Jerusalem, where His visible presence will be known by all mortals on earth during that time. As with all of those increased periods of revelation of the God of creation, it will end with mankind again rejecting His lordship and joining, for the most part, with the short rebellion of Satan and thereby also receiving that final judgment (see Revelation 20).

Even so, we are still mystified as to why God would have planned before time began to bend down, so to speak, and identify Himself with us as one among those He had created. The Bible does have some answers, however. When He created man and woman, He created and initiated the concept of family, which is the foundational unit of society, and which is therefore a prime target of Satan in his attempt to overthrow God’s authority.

The long-term plan God has for His redeemed and the reason for it is shown in Romans 8:29:

“For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.”

And again, in Hebrews 2:11:

“For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren.”

In a family there are brothers and sisters, both of course, and that concept carries over into our ultimate relationship with God in the person of Jesus Christ. God, the Father, remains the disembodied Spirit just as Stephen saw Jesus standing beside His glory. He moves upon the whole world and is a very present help in our times of trouble, as Psalm 46:1 and the context of Psalm 139 tell us.

This broad panorama moves from knowing God as spirit to knowing God as one like us in form yet perfect in His being, and who has redeemed us as a people for His name. According to His prayer in John 17, we will be one with Him as He is one with the Father. It is indeed a mystery, but beloved, we know that there will be no tears, no weeping or gnashing of teeth in outer darkness there, for we shall be with Him wherever He is!

Contact email:  andwegetmercy@gmail.com