The subject is the days of the
Son of Man. Our Lord said in verse 22, the
time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of
the Son of Man. Now our Lord was not a salesman.
He was entirely too honest to be a salesman. You know the job
of a salesman is to take the product he wants you to buy And
he'll tell you just about the good things about it. We all
do that. And we don't tell them about
the more distasteful things that might be associated with it. But our Lord, he was no salesman.
He wasn't trying to sell anything. He wasn't trying to get people
to make a decision for him. He was here to declare the message
concerning him. And he told the whole story. We tell those who would give
testimony in our courts, do you swear to tell the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth? And people swear to
do it and then they don't do it. Our Lord told the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And especially
was he careful to let his disciples know what lay ahead for them
as people who would be followers of the land. The Lord was honest
about what the life of faith is like. He encouraged the people
to count the cost. Salesmen want you to ignore the
cost. When I was a salesman for Orkin, the last thing they wanted
me to do was tell people what the price of the treatment was
going to be. Because Orkin offered, you know,
you could pay a monthly thing for 18, 6-12 or 18 months. And they told us in sales school,
now when you get to the end, don't tell them the cash price.
It'll blow them away. Tell them the monthly price.
And of course, you always start with the 18 months, because that's
going to be the lowest thing. So you can have this termite
protection for just $50 a month for the next 18 months. And people
go, oh, OK. But if you said, this will cost
you $900. No, I'm not paying $900 to kill a termite. The Lord
said, count the cost. And here's the cost. Here's the
cost. I feel I always gotta say this
when I make that point. The cost of following Christ
is never charged by God. Salvation's free. Absolutely,
completely free. God doesn't charge anything,
and here's why. Christ already paid everything. So when the Lord Jesus says,
well, you better count the cost. He's not saying that there's
a check you got to write him. It's not the world, or excuse
me, it's not God that charges you for following Christ. It's
the world. It's the devil. It's your own
flesh. It will exact a price for following
Christ. And he told them, count that
cost. He told them, he told his disciples, you know, the world
hates me and they're going to hate you too. They're going to
hate you on account of me. He didn't tell them about how
wonderful life would be and how successful their lives would
be. He said what lay ahead for them was trouble and persecution.
The apostles were also honest. I believe it was Barnabas who,
preaching, said it is through many troubles, through many tribulations,
that we must enter into the kingdom of God. Paul said, our sufferings
are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be
revealed in us. Now, why would he say something like that, were
it not that he were trying to encourage the people as they
went through very serious sufferings for the cause of Christ? I mean,
if suffering is nothing, you don't have to tell people to
be strong and endure through it, do you? And the Apostle Peter spoke to them about how they
were having to go through all kinds of troubles and trials
because of their faith in Christ. So you know what? We can take
all of these health, wealth, and happiness preachers and just
toss them in the garbage can. They're lying. Yes, God may let
you be healthy and believe Christ. He may let you be wealthy and
believe Christ, and He may let you be happy. And then again,
it might not go that way. You might believe Christ and
have some physical affliction that dogs you all your life and
maybe brings you to the end of your life rather young. You know,
we sing Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me, written by Augustus Toplady,
a great defender of the gospel of Christ. I think he was 36
when he died. 36. Wealth? Yes, there are a few
in the kingdom of God who have what we would consider substantial
wealth. But we also know this, grace and riches rarely mix. That's why Paul said, you see,
you're calling an election, brother, not many of you, and he mentioned
several things which, you know, like having influence in the
world and being particularly intelligent or educated and all
that, the things that the world esteems highly. So there's not
many of you that have these things. I read once that Queen Victoria
of the 1800s, who was supposedly a believing woman, but she once
said, I thank God for the letter M. And they were surprised. Why
would the Queen of England be thankful for the letter M? She
says, because Paul did not say, you see, you're calling an election,
brother, and there's not any of you of noble birth. or of
power not many. She said that letter M let me
in. So God's grace does extend to
all kinds of people but normally speaking his people come from
those that just get along and maybe have a very difficult time
of it. Happiness, well we have every reason to be happy don't
we? The fruit of the Spirit is joy,
and there is a spiritual joy in the believer. But he also
may be one who is of a particular personality or mental disposition
that doesn't let him experience emotional happiness very often. Or it may be his circumstances
in life are so difficult, it's just hard to be happy as we normally
think of the word. And our Lord was clear about
it. He was clear, this is the way things are for those who
follow me. Now this passage is about salvation
for it speaks of the Lord's return. He says, you will long for one
of the days of the Son of Man. And then in verse 24, he says,
for the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning which
flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. Now, prophecy is fascinating. Everybody likes, that is everybody
within Christianity, likes to delve into the scriptures of
prophecy. Why? Because everybody wants
to know what's going to happen. And we would probably be lying
if we said we weren't interested. And so I'm not going to stand
up here and say, I don't care whether I know when Christ is
going to come back, I'm curious enough that I kind of wish I
knew. But I've also been, by the grace of God, given enough
spiritual insight to realize the when's not the issue here.
But people get into, the prophetic scriptures are fascinating, and
many people fall into grievous error by trying to pin down a
single event and time for the fulfillment of these prophetic
scriptures. And there are preachers, and
I listened to a lot of them in my youth, preachers who make
their entire ministry out of trying to understand the times
and the seasons which God has set by his own authority, the
Lord Jesus Christ said. You know what? There's not a
person in the world who has the least idea of when Christ will
come back. In fact, you know, our Lord said
he didn't even know. He said, well, that's the Son
of God, that's God the Son. He's God, he knows everything.
He said, no one knows the day or the hour, not the angels,
not even the Son of Man, meaning himself. He said, the only one
that knows is the Father. This is something that God set
by His own authority. The Father who determines all
things has set the day of the end of the world. He knows it. Not a person in the world does.
But there is a threefold way. You know, preachers are probably
the only people that ever use a phrase like threefold, but
I don't know what else to say. Threefold way that prophecy is
fulfilled. Nearly all prophetic scriptures
have a threefold fulfillment. First of all, nearly every prophecy
in the scriptures points to some historic event within the experience
of the nation of Israel. And it was fulfilled, fulfilled
right there during the times between Mount Sinai and the destruction
of Jerusalem. Somewhere in it, it had that
fulfillment. And then secondly, there would
be the ultimate fulfillment of it. In other words, Those things
which God prophesied would happen there in the nation of Israel
had a more, or a grander and more ultimate sense in which
we were supposed to understand it. And then thirdly, there is
a fulfillment of these prophecies, maybe many, many times in principle. That is, and we're gonna see
it here, that this particular prophecy has all versions of
these fulfillments, something that happened to the nation Israel,
something that will happen in an ultimate sense in the fulfillment
of this, and then a many, here's another one of those preacher-only
words, a many-fold application of it, even down to the personal
experiences, individual experiences of God's people. Now this prophecy is fulfilled
in all those ways. Its direct reference was to the
suffering of God's church under Jewish persecution until the
Lord destroyed Jerusalem. Remember, the first ones to persecute
the church, it wasn't Rome. It was the Jews. They persecuted the people of
God. Anybody in Israel that dared
to say that Jesus is the Christ, Jesus is Messiah, came under
the persecuting power of the religious folk of that day. Stephen
is the first example we see of it, that is, of a martyr, I mean,
actually dying. being put to death, stoned, because
he believed Christ. But the apostles, as they went
out preaching, very quickly, they were being beaten, thrown
in prison. The church had a difficult time
there in Israel. But there would come a time when
the Lord would put an end to that. He would come. And when he came, That would
be the destruction of those who were persecuting his church.
Secondly, its ultimate reference is to the return of the Lord
at the end of this age. Now the scriptures say we're
in the last age and it's been the last age ever since Jesus
Christ ascended and was seated at the right hand of God. This
is the last age of the earth. When this age is over, it's over. We enter eternity, for lack of
a better way to put it. And so this has reference, this
scripture has reference to that. And then we also see a pattern
of suffering and deliverance that goes on. It's gone on several
cycles of it ever since the Lord left the earth. We see it in
different locations happening. We see it even in our individual
lives. When God allows us to undergo certain amount of suffering
for his name, and then at the appointed time, he brings us
deliverance from it. So all these things are applicable
to this scripture. Now the first thing here, in
verses 20 and 21, we learn the nature of God's kingdom. It says here, once having been
asked by the Pharisees, this is verse 20, when the kingdom
of God would come, Jesus replied, the kingdom of God does not come
with your careful observation. Now, it's the nature of religious
people to be more concerned with when than what. They said, when
will the kingdom of God come? It was pretty silly of them to
worry about when the kingdom of God was going to come when
they didn't even know what the kingdom of God was. And that's
actually because of their lack of understanding of what the
kingdom of God was. That's why they didn't recognize
the king when he showed up. They were looking for someone
to come in, you know, to gather the Jews together in a powerful
military force and throw off the yoke of Rome and make Israel
into the powerhouse country of the world. That's what they were
looking for. They thought that was the kingdom of God. And they
said, when's it going to come? And he says, the kingdom of God's
not going to show up in any way that you're going to be able
to detect. Ever so carefully, you might study the scriptures.
Ever so carefully, you might try to discern world events.
He said, you're not going to be able to figure it out and
discover it that way. Why? Because the kingdom of God
is not of this world. Our Lord Jesus said that to Pilate.
He says, are you a king? The Lord said, well, you said it.
Well, where's your kingdom? Well, my kingdom's not of this
world. And because it's not of this
world, the people of this world can't see it. They don't perceive
it. In fact, a person has to be first
born again, according to the Lord Jesus Christ, he must first
be born again by the Spirit of God before he can perceive the
kingdom of God. He said to Nicodemus, unless a man is born again, He
cannot see, meaning to perceive. He cannot perceive the kingdom
of God. Why? It's a spiritual kingdom.
And until a man is born again, he's not a spiritual person.
He's just an animal. He's just flesh. That spiritual
nature which God created Adam with, it died when Adam sinned.
It's inoperative or operates so poorly it's of no use. And
therefore the things of the Spirit of God are an utter mystery until
a man is born again. And the religion that I was raised
in, it said, you need to be born again. So you have to have faith
in Christ so you can be born again. That's backwards. We're
not born again because we believe. We believe because by the grace
of God, we've been born again. We've been given that spiritual
life, which enables us to perceive the things of God, to understand
it. And until that spiritual life
is given, they can't see, we couldn't see. This morning I
was talking in the Sunday school class about the gospel must be
revealed to people. I can preach it to you, brethren,
but I can't reveal it to you. And those of you that have been
saved by the grace of God probably know what I mean because you
heard the gospel, you heard the gospel, you heard it, and one
day you went, oh, now I see. Why? That was when God gave you
spiritual life so that you could see. God's kingdom is spiritual. The Lord Jesus Christ said, it's
not gonna come in a way that you're gonna be able to detect
because the kingdom of God is within you. Now that could also
be translated, the kingdom of God is among you. And I don't
know if we have to decide one or the other. If I did have to
decide one or the other, I think I would go with among you, and
here's why. The kingdom of God was among
them because the kingdom of God is defined by the king, and he
was right there among them. You say, where's the kingdom
of God? Wherever Christ is, that's the kingdom of God. And there
he stood right in front of them. And you know something? His words,
right over their heads. Remember, The people who asked
this question about the kingdom of God were the very same group
of people that Nicodemus belonged to, and it was the Lord who said
to Nicodemus, you, and the word is plural there, you, he said,
meaning you Pharisees must be born again. Obvious, isn't it? They didn't understand anything.
They didn't understand that was the king standing right there
in front of them, which means the kingdom of God was right
there among them. He cast out some demons and some
of them said, you know, muttered under their breath, he's just
casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub. Essentially saying
by the power of the devil, he's casting out devils. And Lord
said, that's stupid. Really, that's essentially what
he said. No, a house divided against itself cannot stand. He said, if I cast out demons
by Satan, well, that's Satan casting out Satan. How's that
work? He said, but if I cast out demons by the power of God,
then the kingdom of God is upon you. You know what? They still didn't see it. They
still didn't. The king was right there doing
his kingly work and they didn't see it. The kingdom of God. is defined by the citizens of
that kingdom. Wherever the citizens of this
kingdom are, that's the kingdom of God. And some of those citizens were
standing right there with our Lord Jesus Christ as he spoke
to those Pharisees and he said, the kingdom of God's among you.
And you know something? Evidently Nicodemus, the Pharisee,
was a citizen of the kingdom of God. We do find that he was
evidently a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. There were some
of the group of Pharisees who were the citizens of that kingdom
and were brought to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so
in that sense, he could say that kingdom of God's among you. You
don't even know it. It's infiltrated your own group. That's what I love when I think
about the kingdom of God. What I love about God's kingdom, it
comes in and the enemy thinks they're resisting and winning
and they don't even realize it's right there among them. But we don't want to altogether
dismiss the idea that the kingdom of God is in you because in this
sense it's in God's people. It could be what the Lord meant
was the kingdom of God is not something you can see because
wherever it is to be found it's inside that person. He may not
have meant. that it was specifically inside
any of those individual Pharisees. But I know this, the kingdom
of God is a spiritual kingdom and it's something that is found
within that person who's been born of God to perceive the kingdom
and be a member of that kingdom, a citizen of the kingdom. There
are a lot of people who think that we can establish the kingdom
of God on earth. Our Lord said, my kingdom's not
of this world. I sure wish that we had better
politicians than we have. But I don't know that there's
ever been a time when we couldn't have wished that. But there are
many who claim to be Christians, and maybe some of them are, but
they seem to think the best way to bring the kingdom of God into
this world is to somehow get Christians in places of power. Brethren, we could fill up Washington
with Christians, it still wouldn't be the kingdom of God. It wouldn't. The kingdom of God is not something
you can see. It's the work of God within the
hearts of His people. And it is a spiritual kingdom
that rules over all other spiritual kingdoms. Now Christ came into his kingdom
through suffering. He says in verse 24, for the
son of man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes
and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first,
as I was looking at this point, I thought, well, maybe I ought
to just entitle this message, but first, but first, yes, the
Lord's going to come into a kingdom. But first, he must suffer many
things and be rejected by this generation. The thief on the cross. I'm always
amazed by that particular story. Because of all the people you
think wouldn't be able to perceive what was going on, it had been
that thief. And in fact, he didn't perceive
it at first. Because the scriptures say, not
one, but both of those thieves were first cursing the Lord Jesus.
Somewhere along the line. That man on the cross, on the
right of our Lord Jesus Christ, he was born again right on that
cross. The Spirit of God gave him spiritual
life as he hung there with his physical life draining out of
him. And you know what he said when God gave him that birth? He looked over at another man
whose life was draining out of him. Our Lord Jesus. Who is actually, physically speaking,
in worse condition than himself. Because the thieves had not been
beaten within an inch of their life. They had no crown of thorns. They hadn't suffered a whole
night of being awake. They were in a miserable condition,
but not nearly so bad. It's the Lord, and He looks over
this man, and it's in worse shape than he's in, so far as what
the eye can see. And He said, Lord, remember me
when you come into your kingdom. Now, who would ever look at that
image of our Lord Jesus Christ there, hanging on the cross,
bleeding out from everywhere, beaten, bruised, whipped and
everything, who would look at that and see a king coming into
his kingdom? Nobody but somebody who's been
born again by the Spirit of God and realizes this kingdom is
not of this world, it's a spiritual kingdom. This work of Christ must be perceived
primarily as a sacrifice, it was, he offered himself without
spot to God. But in so doing, he defeated
that one who is called the prince of the powers of the air, the
god of this age. See, there is another spiritual
kingdom, and it holds all the people of this world in bondage
until Christ sets them free. And it expresses itself in many
ways. Some of the citizens of this kingdom express that they
are citizens of this kingdom by gross immorality, by all kinds
of corruption, they're thieves, they're murderers, they're perverts,
they're all kinds of things. Drunks, all of that. That's the
way they prove and show that they are natural born citizens
of the kingdom of the devil. Spiritually speaking. There's
another group too, and this is a group nearly everybody misses.
It's the legalistically religious person. You know, our Lord did
cast out some demons, cast out a lot of them, cast hundreds
of them out of one guy. But I never heard him call one
of those people a child of the devil. But he looked at those religious
leaders, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the priests, the temple guard,
all of them. And he said, you are of your father, the devil,
and the works of your father, you will do. He was a murderer
from the beginning. He was a liar from the beginning.
He said, and so are you. Who did he say that to? The people
who were most highly esteemed in Israel in that day. the people
who everybody said oh there's reverend so-and-so they didn't
use the word reverend they use the word rabbi but it means essentially
the same thing here's father this or his eminence that or
whatever they were held in high regard They were, and Paul said
that he was among them, and he described himself at that time
as concerning that righteousness which is of the law, I was blameless.
But what was he? He was a child of the devil the
whole time. You see, the devil can take the law of God, which
is just, righteous, holy, and good, and he can use it to bind
people to himself. Say, how does he do that? By
blinding him to what the law meant. So that they think that
the law was given to show us a pattern of how we must live
in order to gain the blessing of God. And that's exactly what
those Pharisees were doing. And it filled them with hatred
of Christ, hatred of their fellow man. It made them into violent
people. And all of that was the work
of the devil through the law. In fact, you know what the devil
is called in the book of Revelation? The accuser of the brethren. And how does he accuse the brethren? Well, what he does is he takes
the law of God, which is just, righteous, holy, and good. No
question about that. And he brings it to bear upon
our conscience, and he says, look what you just did. You can't
be a child of God if you did that. As it were, he comes before
God himself like he did with Job. And he said, well, of course
Job serves you. You don't let anything bad happen
to him. You let me get a hold of him,
he'll curse your name. You see, The devil doesn't care
whether we are good or bad, as men count good and bad. His only concern is that we not
trust Christ. And if he can get you to do that
by trusting yourself, that works. Or if he can get you to despair
of a hope in Christ by continually pointing out your sin to you,
that's fine with him. He can put you on a course of
law keeping, on a course of ceremonial observations, on a course of
whatever it is that the various churches tell people to do. But
so long as it's about something you're doing, it's not of God. The devil puts you on doing.
God puts you on believing. The kingdom of Satan was defeated
by the Lord Jesus Christ. Because when he offered himself
without spot to God, what did he do? He redeemed every last
one of God's chosen people from their sins. They were paid for.
Therefore, it says in the book of Revelation that that accuser
of the brethren has been cast out. And they cast him out, what? By the word of their testimony,
which was what? The gospel and by the blood of
the lamb. That's how the kingdom of Satan
is defeated. The kingdom of Satan's not defeated
by preachers going around bumping folks on the head and they fall
on the floor and writhe around and they claim, oh, I cast a
demon out of them. You ask me, those people look more demon-possessed
afterward than before. I tell you, this business of
salvation, this business of the work of Christ, it's a spiritual
work. And it's a work of greater power than you and I can imagine,
because it involves dealing with powers that we can't understand. So I've never been captive to
Satan. If you think that, then I fear
that you still are. Does that make any sense to you?
If you think you've never been in bondage to Satan, to me, it's
pretty good evidence you still are. Oh, what our Lord has saved
us from. He not only saved us from the
wrath of God, he saved us from the bondage of that foul spirit
who brought our first parent into condemnation and us along
with him. It says of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the first prophecy of his coming, that that serpent, who is biblically
identified as Satan, that serpent, he said, he'll strike at your
heel. He'll strike at the heel of the woman's seed, which was
Christ. He said, but he shall crush your head. And that's what
the Lord did. He stomped on that snake, crushed
his head. I remember something my dad said,
he said, you know how to kill a snake? I said, well, yeah. He said, yeah, you just cut its
tail off. You think about all there is to a snake is head and
tail, so either one works. It's the head that's the issue
though, isn't it? You crush the head, the rest of the snake's
dead too. I don't know if you've ever had much dealing with snakes,
but you can crush their head and they'll wiggle a lot afterwards.
And the devil's still wiggling right now. but his head's been
crushed by the Lord Jesus Christ. God has always had a kingdom,
but that kingdom came in full power when Jesus Christ went
to the cross, poured out his soul unto death, and delivered
all his people from their sins, and no longer did the devil have
anything that he could bring before God and charge them with,
and separate them from the love of God which is in Christ. He's
got nothing. Do you believe that? Now, I'll tell you this, if I
stood before God under my own condemnation, that is, if I had
to give, if I had to stand before Him and give testimony about
myself as a reason for Him to let me into His presence with
joy, I'd be in a real pickle. So I'll tell you, my testimony
about myself is what? I'm a sinner. And probably more
of a sinner than you know. And you know why I know that?
Because I'm more of a sinner than even I know. But I'm a sinner, and if I honestly
gave testimony before God, all I could do is condemn myself. But you know something? And this
is the bold profession that can be made by everyone who is in
Christ Jesus. I am without sin in the sight
of God. So that's pretty bold. Well,
it may be. But friends, if it's not true, then you're under condemnation. Because that's the only two statuses
there are. Without sin or under judgment. Cursing is everyone who does
not continue in every point of the law to do it. One failure
and you're out. If I am not sinless in the sight
of God, then I am bound for hell. If Jesus Christ, by His sacrifice,
did not put away every last one of my sins, then I am as lost
as if He didn't put away any of them. But it is written, and
it's prophetic, of all the people in the church of God, using Israel
and Judah as illustrations of them, it says, in that day there
shall be made a search for the sins of Israel and for the transgressions
of Judah and they shall not be found. Why? Because there aren't
any through Christ Jesus. There's nothing to find. And therefore the devil comes
in the presence of God and he tries to lay a charge to one
of God's elect and Paul says, who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? Who is he that condemns? It's
God that justified them. Who's going to lay anything to
their charge? Christ died for them, rose again. You can't make
sin stick to one of God's people in the sight of God. You might
bring their conscience under a sense of grief. You might bring
them into a period of doubt and all of that, but I'll tell you
all you've got to do is show them that gospel once again and
the Spirit of God give some power to the demonstration of that
gospel in their hearts. And I'll tell you, their sense
of guilt is gone. Gone. The devil holds people into the
bondage of legalistic religion by putting them under a sense
of guilt and say, you better get busy. You better get working. You got, I mean, you're behind.
God requires this of you and you haven't got it done yet.
And you know what the Lord Jesus says? It's done. It's done. It's the devil that's
saying it's not done. It's the devil that's saying
it's not finished. The Lord Jesus Christ said it
is finished and blessed be his name. It was. And there is no
more work to do. None. Christ, what is this day of Christ? Says you'll long for one of those
days of Christ and not see it. It's the days of the full revelation
of his glory and the salvation of his people. Those apostles were gonna go
out there and they were gonna be preaching, and they would
see some people believe, but what was gonna be their experience
was the more people believed, the more trouble they got into.
And he was saying, there's gonna come a day when you would wish
that I were there in my full glory, that I came and stood
there for you just as like I'm visibly standing before you right
now. I said, but you won't see it. Now, he's not saying they would
never see it. He just said there's going to be times when you could
wish for it and you're not going to be able to see it. And in
the book of Revelation, it speaks of that symbolically. It talks
about the souls of the martyrs being under the Ark of the Covenant,
in that symbolic representation of heaven given there. And it
says that the souls of the martyrs cried out, Oh God, how long before
you exact vengeance? upon our enemies and make them
give count for our blood. And there are times when God's
church goes through such difficult times and they say, oh Lord,
how long? How long? But here's the thing. We may not know how long, but
we do know this. It's only for so long. There
will come a day when Christ will reveal himself as he did there
in that day, about 70 AD, when the Romans came in and destroyed
Jerusalem. And when they destroyed Jerusalem
like that, they put an end to the Jewish nation and the Jews
were scattered everywhere and Jewish persecution ceased, it
stopped. And the Lord had saved his people.
His spiritual Israel that lived there in natural Israel. He spared
them. He saved them by destroying their
enemies. And there will come a day, and
I'm running out of time, so I gotta quick sum all this up if I can. There's gonna come a day It's
already been appointed by the Father. The Lord says that, I
mean, surely Paul said to those in Athens, he says, God has appointed
a day in which he will judge this world in righteousness by
the one whom he raised from the dead, Jesus Christ, the righteous
one. And I don't know when it's gonna
be, I don't know if it's gonna be today, tomorrow, or a million
years from now. Nothing in the Bible gives us
a clue. But we do know this, someday, Christ is gonna come
and put an end all this warfare against him and his people. And that will be the full salvation
of his people. That will be the ultimate day
of the Son of Man. We see some lesser ones. Why,
there was a long time of darkness for the church back in the 19th
century. Well, between about 500 and 1500
AD, all such darkness. There were so very few people
who actually believed the gospel. And those who did had to hide.
And if they were ever found out, that monstrous church in charge
in those days would persecute them. And you know they cried
out, oh Lord, how long? How long? And then in the early
1500s, the Son of God came. came in a spiritual way, and
he sent a kind of revival over there in Europe. We call it the
Reformation. God saved his people. He broke
the back of the enemy. He brought in his light and his
truth. And there's been even smaller events, and there may
have been events in your life. You know, until you knew God,
you were an enemy of God. You know that? He said, we were
enemies of God. Paul said that. Every last one
of us, we were enemies of God. And you know what God did? Because
we were enemies of God, that meant we were enemies of ourselves.
God killed us. What do you mean he killed us?
He killed us in Christ Jesus. And then his Holy Spirit came.
And he killed every hope we had of finding favor with God outside
of Christ. God declared war on us. And then
the Son of Man was revealed to us in all his power and great
glory to save. And he still comes. He's still
revealing himself to his people. through the preaching of the
gospel like this, through their own personal study of scriptures,
and they're seeking his face. And the whole time, he is destroying
their enemies and bringing his salvation upon them. When shall
the kingdom of God come? Too late to ask that question.
It's already here. And it's in within each of his
people. It's all over the world among
the people of this world. And it's gonna keep going and
growing until the last citizen of this kingdom has been called
out by the king. And then he shall descend from
heaven with a shout and with a voice of the archangel. And
I tell you, when Christ comes, nobody's gonna have to say, oh,
he's over here or he's over there. No, it says like the lightning,
which lights up the whole sky. When Christ shows up, everybody
knows. Everybody knows. Oh, what a blessed hope for the
people of God. Right now, we long for the days,
for one of those days of the Son of God, don't we? Well, what
are we supposed to do? Well, devote ourselves to things
above and not things below. It said, when that day comes,
don't let somebody, don't go back for what you had. If a man's
on a rooftop, there's not going to be time for him to go down
and grab a few things out of the house. Time to be gone. Well, when's it going to come?
Well, it's like the days of Noah. Nobody knew. They went on living
just like they always lived till the day God shut Noah in the
ark. And it was too late. And in Sodom
and Gomorrah, things went on just like they'd always gone
on until God took Lot out. And then the fire and brimstone
fell. When will Christ come? I don't
know. I know he's coming. And in that,
I have hope. And in that, I find strength
to endure. How about you? Oh, may the Lord
add His grace to that message.