In 1988, during one particular month, she called me. She asked me about my reservation and I said, yes I’ll be there. It was a couple days away from that particular time and she said, "Are you ready for next week?" I said, "Uh, yeah...I’m ready for next week," and I was trying to think, what’s next week? What am I supposed to be ready for? Is there something else coming that I should know about? She was so excited, like this was the biggest thing ever to happen. It was next week and I didn’t have a clue.

She said, "You know! Jesus is coming back next week!" She said, "You know! Didn’t you read that book, 101 Reasons Why Jesus Christ Will Return in 1988?" And although I had heard about that book, I had chosen not to read it. I choose not to read the books by date setters and those kind of things. The book sold millions and millions of copies of why 1988 would be the year that Jesus came back; and to the best of my knowledge, they were wrong! But many, many people throughout the years have set dates.

We are now ready to move into a new millennium. Can you imagine that? Most of us will be part of a very, very small group of people who will ever witness a millennium. That is, unless Jesus Christ comes first. We’re now into Millennium Fever and we’re hearing over and over again that This Is It. This Is The End! Whether it’s Christians, or New Agers, or cultists, or secularists--they’re all saying something is going to happen because we’re at the end of a millennium. And I’ll tell you, in the next couple of years on the talk shows, on television, in books and other literature, you’ll be hearing over and over again about the end of the world. However, many of us will just brush it off and say, well it’s not going to happen. It’s not a big thing. Yet, the Bible says very clearly that there will be an end time. There are beginnings and endings of seasons. There are beginnings and endings to periods of time. Everything has a beginning and an ending, and so too with this age.

Now, the Scripture in the book of Acts chapter 1 speaks about, in the first eleven verses, a very wide panorama of history. It begins with the resurrection of Jesus Christ and we read in Acts 1:3 these words, "After His suffering, He showed Himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that He was alive." Now we know that after Jesus Christ rose from the dead He appeared to many. In fact, on ten different occasions he appeared to groups--some of one, some as many as five hundred--to demonstrate that indeed He was alive. Jesus Christ also ministered after His resurrection. The verse continues to tell us the length of that. It says, "He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God."

Now when Jesus Christ rose from the dead on that Easter Sunday morning, that Resurrection Sunday morning, He began to appear to individuals. On ten different occasions there were ten (what we call) "post-resurrection appearances" of Jesus Christ. He also ministered as the risen Lord for a period of 40 days, this text tells us. He was on the earth in a resurrected, glorified body ministering about the kingdom of God.

In Acts 1, we see that period came to an end with what we call "the ascension" of Jesus Christ. In your Bible it says this in Acts 1:9 after He spoke about the Holy Spirit falling. "After He said this, He was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid Him from their sight." Now I’ve watched a lot of Christian movies try to picture this event. They’ve never done it any justice. Defying the laws of gravity, in a supernatural way, the Lord Jesus ascended into heaven and was covered by clouds as His disciples stood there looking into the heavens.

But as Jesus Christ ascended, they were given a promise that you and I are also given because Jesus Christ has not yet returned. That promise is found in verse 11. "Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven." There was a promise given by two angels standing by. Just as they saw the ascension of Jesus Christ (Jesus Christ rose from the dead, He ministered for forty days, He showed Himself alive with many convincing proofs on ten different occasions), now in a powerful way He ascended into heaven. And the promise is, that just as He ascended into heaven, He will come back.

Now the Bible tells us that when Jesus Christ returns, the world will go through the worst turmoil of all time, the great and horrific Tribulation when God’s judgment will visit planet Earth. You say, well how could it be much worse? Read the Bible and you’ll see.

You might be saying to yourself, why are we talking about the future when this is Easter? I expect to come to church on Easter and hear about the tomb and the soldiers and the grave clothes and all the people all around the resurrection story. Well, often we always look back. But the resurrection also requires us to look ahead because we are living in a period of time between the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus Christ and His return. It’s the days we call "The Age of Grace" or "The Age of the Holy Spirit" or "The Age of the Church". We are living in a period of time that began with the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ and will end with His return. The question we must ask ourselves is "When?". Isn’t it about time?

You see we wouldn’t be ready for the return of Jesus if it weren’t for the supernatural resurrection of Jesus. How can Jesus be alive and return to this Earth and take believers with Him and the judgment of God fall upon the Earth? It’s because God’s power was evident in the resurrection, it was evident in the ascension, and it will be evident in the return of Jesus Christ. So we must be prepared.

Now, when will it happen? When will it be? How can we know? Well, the Bible is a book of promises--promises to you and me about a number of wonderful things, promises to us that we can have life forever if we believe in Jesus, promises to have power to overcome our weaknesses, power to have victory--but there are also promises about things that will happen on this Earth.

When Jesus Christ came the first time, over 300 prophecies--can you imagine that?--were fulfilled in that first coming. There are also many, many prophesies that will be fulfilled in the second coming of Jesus Christ. If we study and look at them, we can understand that it’s about time! You say, Pastor, you’re setting dates! No, I’ll never set a date. But the Bible says to be ready because we do not know at what hour He will come.

We can, however, see the signs. In fact, in Matthew 24 the disciples asked, Lord when’s it going to be? "What will be the sign of Your coming?" and Jesus gave a number of signs. Today I want to share with you a few of those.

You see, in years past as we’ve studied prophecies, we can look at one prophecy and say, woah!, that’s today! We see famines, we see pestilence. Jesus must be coming! Or we look at another prophecy of Scripture and we see specific things. We say, yes that’s today! But never in the history of the church have we watched them all being fulfilled right before our very eyes. Every one of them. We see that now is the time, that the time is short and is coming soon.

So I want to look with you today at a few of these prophecies that point to the fact that the time is short, that His coming is soon, and they tell us that we must be prepared for His coming. Also, there are many of you who have never had the joy of spending time in this Book. For many of you, it’s been a dead book. You say, well it was written long ago. I don’t have time for it. It’s just not for me. I want to whet your appetite to how wonderful the news is in this Book--how wonderful it is to study it and to read it--because this reads just like the daily newspaper! You take out your news magazine, you take out your newspaper, you go into the latest news and you find things that are spoken of here in the Bible. This is the most remarkable book of all time. It’s the greatest news of all time and I hope that today I’ve salted the oats! So perhaps for some of you, for the first time--or for some of you, in a long time--you’ll discover or rediscover the awesomeness of what God gave us in His Word.

Now, what are these signs? The first sign we want to look at is this. The Bible says that in the end times.

Now most of us know the story about Noah and the ark. God judged the Earth with the flood because of the wickedness and sinfulness of men. What was the sinfulness? It was so much in the area of immorality and sexual sinfulness.

You ask, Pastor are you saying that all sex is bad? No. God gave us sex. God created man and woman. He created us and made us the way we are. Hebrews 13:4 says this: "Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure". God created human sexuality for the covenant of marriage and marriage alone. Any deviation from that is wrong--was, is, and always will be sin. Premarital sex, extra-marital sex, homosexual sex, all the perversions of bestiality and all the rest are outside of God’s covenant. The Bible says that in the last days there will be a rampant increase. The key phrase is "marrying and giving in marriage". You say, well what’s wrong with marrying and giving in marriage? It literally means wife swapping or partner swapping!

Now the Jews thought they had a way around immorality. God said, as long as you’re married it’s okay. So the rabbis thought, we’ll make divorce easy. In fact, they had all kinds of rules. Some of the liberal rabbis said there are all kinds of reasons you can divorce your wife. If she burns the breakfast, you can divorce her. If she doesn’t give you a son, you can divorce her. If you don’t like her looks, you can divorce her. You just write down, "I divorce you" and shout out "I divorce my wife". History tells us that a number of the people who were "religious" and "in their faith" had dozens of divorces. They went through serial immorality. They just called it marriage. And often today, of course, in our world people don’t even think about marriage anymore. It’s just living arrangement to living arrangement to living arrangement. It was wrong, it is wrong, it will be wrong. But God forgives all sin. But that is a sign of the times.

Do you know that you cannot turn on the television, you cannot watch a TV show, a movie or especially the soap operas (and they’re anything but clean!) and if you see anything that has to do with a sexual relationship, 95% of what you see occurs outside of marriage. Very rarely do we ever see a couple in what looks like will be a sexual situation having anything to do with marriage. We look at it and we laugh at it and it’s something funny and we are just being sucked into the trap of immorality. The saddest part is that this affects our children. We read in our newspaper, that one of the highest incidents of gonorrhea in the state is in--not New York City--but Syracuse. We find out that on college campuses 15% of all the women are now infertile and will never bear children because of chlamydia, a venereal disease that is sweeping the campuses. And hardly is said anything about it at all.

Sadly, it affects even our children. Dr. James Dobson, in his Focus on the Family newsletter in the March 1997 issue, received some letters from children. Look what has happened to our sexual revolution, how it’s destroying the lives of our children because we’re pumping all that garbage all of the time into their minds. Listen to these letters from some of these children: "Hi, I’m Christie. I’m thirteen years old. I wrote because I listened to Focus on the Family on July 18, 1996. I was trying to find a station to listen to when I came across the word ‘sex’. So I decided to listen to what they were talking about and not knowing it was a Christian station. While I was listening, I was thinking why do they think sex before marriage is bad?" This is a thirteen year old. "But by the time it was over I realized that it really was bad. Also they said they wished that more teens were listening. I know it won’t help much, but I’m going to tell all my friends about how bad it is because all of us, even me..." This is a thirteen year old. "...have talked about how excited we are about losing our virginity. Thanks again for the inspiring story." A thirteen year old girl. Her friends are excited about losing their virginity. Another letter goes like this: "Hello. I live in Chattanooga, Tennessee and I’m thirteen. I just got back from Colorado and I went to Focus on the Family. It was the coolest place in the world. Thanks, Dr. Dobson, because the place changed me. Seriously. I have been downloading and going to web sites with nudity, porn, and a bunch of other stuff. After I went to Focus on the Family, I couldn’t wait to go home and delete all these things." Thirteen years old. A teenage boy getting pornography off the Internet. One more: "I am one of the few virgins left in my high school. Some of the girls think that I’m mental or I must have something wrong with me. I’m starting to feel that I should just give up arguing with them."

It is true that most of our kids by the time they graduate from high school will already have lost their virginity. Folks, we are seeing an explosion! Mom and dad, my plea to you would be to protect your children, to train your children in the right way! It is destructive. God had an intention, a purpose and a reason for sex. But sex outside of marriage is destroying lives. If you would go to the counselors and the psychologists and the sociologists, you would find out how many lives are being destroyed. We are seeing this as a sign of the end of time.

Let’s look at the next one.

Listen to these statistics: It took over 1700 years from the birth of Christ for man’s knowledge to double. It doubled from 1750 to 1900, and again from 1900 to 1950. It went from 1700 years to 250 years to 50 years. It took only a decade for it to double by 1960. Today, it doubles every 18 months and is accelerating. Every once in a while, my kids will say to me Dad, I have to do a homework assignment. Could you go into the Internet and help me? A lot of people think that all you have to do is type in a subject and you’ll find a few articles and it’ll be really easy. Now if you’ve done that and typed in, you’ve gone through a search engine. And you’ve typed in something--you’ve gone to Yahoo or one of those web sites--and you’ve typed in something. All of a sudden it will do a search of all the documentation out there. Depending on how fast your computer is, in a matter of a few seconds or a little bit more. And all of a sudden it’ll say on your screen, we have found 10,524 matching documents. How many of you has that happened to? You know I’ve had as many as 100,000 and 200,000 documents and you can never look through all that. There has been such an explosion of knowledge! At the click of your fingertips you can have more information than you could ever use in a thousand lifetimes.

Look at the computer age. In 1943 Thomas Watson, then the president of IBM, had this word. They were just developing the first computers. And his words in 1943 were this: He said, "well maybe at the most, the world will need five computers." Hah! How many of us have at least one? And what about how quickly memory has doubled? Every six months chips are produced which are half in size and double in speed. A few years ago, many of us were so excited about our 286 with our ten meg hard drive and blazing speed of 16 megahertz. We said, whoa! I’ve got a fire breathing monster! Now, they’re boat anchors! Now you can’t give them away! In just a few years we’ve gone from the 286 to the 386, to the 486 and then the Pentium! Whoa, we’re really here! And we just got our Pentiums but then we went to the Pentium Pro and now everybody has to have the Pentium with MMX technology, cause that’s the hottest thing going and it’s just going to go on and on and on. Explosion of knowledge! Unprecedented! If you look at people who study particular areas, they can only focus on one small sliver of things because there is so much to know. So here again, the explosion of knowledge--a sign of the time. Yes, sexual immorality is rampant. Yes, knowledge is increasing.

Let’s look at the next one.

It will be a time when prophetic mysteries will be understood. Look at this verse in the book of Revelation. Revelation 1:1-3. "The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave to show His servants what must soon take place." Now that was written a couple thousand years ago. What’s "soon"? "Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophesy..." We’re blessed when we read the book of Revelation. "...take heart to what is written in it because the time is near."

Now when I was a new Christian, I heard that the book of Revelation is exciting. It’s prophecy! It’s end times! It’s great! And I read it and said, "Do I have it upside down? What is this stuff? What are these creatures? What is this weird stuff? This is a weird book. What does it have to do with me?" When I was a senior in high school, our Sunday school class told the teacher that we wanted to study Revelation. And we began to study it and after that class, I still didn’t understand what was going on.

I’ll never forget being in Bible college and I had a professor who was all excited about a particular thing in the book of Revelation. He said, "we finally understand something that didn’t make any sense to us!" Because the Bible says in that during the Tribulation God will send two witnesses who will be killed. Their bodies will lie on the streets of Jerusalem for three days. Now that makes sense--two people killed, their bodies lie in the streets. But the Bible says in Revelation that the whole world will see it! Now, I have to tell you something. For many years, prophetic scholars said, how can the whole world see? They’re going to be paraded through all of Jerusalem. How’s God going to do that? And then with the advent of television, cameras and satellites, this professor was now speaking to us. It was now the Olympics and it was the first time we could watch on television what was happening half way around the world because there was a satellite overhead. It finally made sense!

Now, if you don’t have the seal of God, you’ll have the mark of the Beast. There is technology today, by the way, for all people to have a mark. They can now take a computer chip the size of a grain of rice and plant it under the skin. You can go to the supermarket and have it scanned and you can have them take the money out of your account and they can find out all about you. That’s the technology we have today. It’s even being practiced and experimented with in several places.

The Bible says this, "They were not given power to kill them, but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes a man. During those days men will seek death but will not find it." That’s the horrible Tribulation. "...they will long to die, but death will elude them." God says that during the time of Tribulation, there will be creatures like locusts who have stingers that will go after only certain types of people--only people who have the Satanic mark or have the mark of the Beast on them. They’ll go and attack them, but they won’t kill them. They’ll torment them for five months. Now God can do anything, but it’s strange isn’t it?

You think that’s strange? Look at the next Scripture.

Well there are a number of ways that this can be. In fact, everything is in place technologically for this to happen today. For the first time ever, we can understand how this can happen. How many of you have heard of Robo-roach? Anybody heard of him? This is a roach of the best kind, the American variety, and the Japanese have developed a way under surgery to take out his antennae to put electrodes in. Time magazine, in 1995, did an article on this. By the way, on the top of his head is something that may even look like a crown.

Actually, it’s a little camera. And what they do is this. They can, through radio signals and a joy stick, move this guy frontward, backward, sideways, and around. Now the technology’s purpose is noble. Earthquakes, send little Robo-roach with his camera scurrying around can find bodies, save people. Wonderful use of technology. But now we have a way to move above what we want to. By way of a little joy stick. We can move him forward, backward, sideways. We can move him around by this technology today. In fact, in Japan, a $5 million contract was just awarded to the company that developed Robo-roach. So they can further sophisticate this technology. This is today! This was 1995! This is old stuff!

But you say, what about that face like a human? Hair like a woman? Of course, we can kind of picture the crown. Maybe that thing’s going to look like a crown on its head. We do that through genetic engineering.

Did you read what happened in San Diego just recently? It’s been in all of the magazines. They took part of a quail’s brain and they implanted it into a chicken. And the chicken began to take on the characteristics of a quail. It sounded and moved around like a quail. Genetic scientists have also found a way to grow a human ear on the back of a rat. Today!

Genetic engineering! And so now, reading the Scriptures is like reading science magazines! Here is a creature that’s moved around by a little joy stick or a bunch of them are moved around.

By the way, how do you make an army of these? Go ask Dolly. Remember the sheep? Cloning? You make one right, then you clone the rest! So we now have an army of them. We have a way to move them around and then we can put the face of a human on them or do whatever we want. We can make a super bug and we can make it sting like a scorpion.

You say, how is it just going to attack those with the mark of the Beast? Well as we said, the technology exists right now to implant a computer chip the size of a grain of rice under the skin of your hand, as the mark of the Beast is, or in your forehead. But in the next three years, global positioning satellites are going to be going out all over the universe, all over the world. Next year, 1998, Motorola is launching 66 global positioning satellites. So, with a cell phone you can call anybody anywhere in the world. If you are hiking in the Himalayas or if you’re hiding in the middle of a city and you have a sensing device, they will know where you are. There will be a way to track every human being in the universe.

And so now, Robo-roach works through radio signals, radio signals can come, and you can have these things anywhere in the world and move them around and they can attack. The technology is here today. For the first time ever. Since these prophecies were written we now see the possibility of them. We now understand some things which were not understandable before.

Let’s look at the next truth.

We’ve also read in the gospel of Matthew 24 that the love of many will grow cold. We probably see this happening the greatest in our society in abuse in the home. I remember one time a number of years ago in a different church during a youth group activity. There happened to be about seven teenage girls in the kitchen and they were just chatting among themselves. I looked at them and all of a sudden something came over me and I realized that every one of them had come to me at some point over the few years before that and had told me a horror story of abuse from a father, from an uncle, from a cousin, several from their brothers. And I thought, oh God, look at that! Their lives and the scars because of abuse. How can that happen? The love of many has grown cold and it is increasing.

Between 1986 and 1993, there was a 98% increase from 1.4 million to 2.8 million in abuse. At the same time, serious injury to children quadrupled. During that same time, the teen suicide rate rose 200%. Why are kids killing themselves? We have all the medicine, we have all the counselors, we have all the psychology, we have all the sociology, we have all the education! And people are killing themselves, they’re killing their kids, kids are killing parents, there’s horrific abuse going on, people are leaving their families...the love of many is growing cold. Where is love? Remember the old song? "I don’t care what you say, I won’t stay in a world without love"? The other song, "What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of."?

There are a series of articles just from our country which have been collected over the last several months whose headlines I want to read to you to demonstrate how the love of many has grown cold. "US Has The Highest Rate Of Child Murders". Isn’t that a good claim to fame for our "Christian" country? "Boy May Have Killed Self, Mother Over Internet Bills". "Son Charged With Killing Parents"--Hackensack, NJ. "Mother Charged With Starving Child To Death". Over and over again we read those headings. "Baby Girl Beaten To Death With Dog Chain By A Ten-Year Old Boy". "Boy Under Nine Accused Of Attempted Murder". "Boy Arrested In Murder Of Five Relatives". Just a few articles over the last several months to see this horrific thing of the love of many growing cold.

How do we explain it with all the knowledge that we have and all the understanding that we have and all the help that we have? We read over and over again about kids killing parents, and parents killing kids, and most murders are committed between friend and friend and relative and relative! The love of many has grown cold. And you will not know love until you find the love of God in Jesus Christ.

There’s a group out called "Marilyn Manson". Many of our kids listen to this group. The name is taken from Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson. Their latest CD is out called "Antichrist Superstar". Here are the words from one of their songs. It’s called "Irresponsible Hate Anthem".

The love of many will grow cold. This is what our kids are listening to and I can’t even tell you all the words, they’re so profane. "I am so all American. I sell you suicide. I am totalitarian. I’ve got abortions in my eyes. I hate the hater, I rape the raper. I am the animal who will not be himself." That’s what our kids are listening to! They’re being saturated with it. The Hate Anthem. "Hey victim, should I blacken your eye again? Hey victim, you’re the one who put the stick in my hand. I am the ism. My hate’s a prism. Let’s just kill everybody and let your God sort them out. Everybody is someone else’s..." and I won’t even say it. Rape, suicide, abuse, hate. The Irresponsible Hate Anthem.

What’s happening? You say wait, you don’t understand. That’s some little side-off group. They’re just not in the main stream. This CD came out in November, last year. It’s been on the billboard chart as high as number 3. It sold over 1 million copies. This is the stuff of hate and violence and of raping and immorality that our kids are being saturated with. Mom and dad, please! Don’t destroy your kids. Have the courage to say no! It’s not good for you! It’s not healthful for you! It’s going to hurt you! We don’t want you to listen to the Hate Anthem, but to the Love Story.

Let’s look at the next point.

This last Sunday night, one week ago, we read about the Halley-Bopp comet, being able to see it. And one of the reasons it will be so clear is because of a lunar eclipse. I was doing some reading on the Internet on this particular comet and it says we will see a blood red moon! I went, wait a minute! I read about that in the Bible! The Bible speaks about the moon turning to blood and I didn’t realize that the astronomers use the phrase "blood red moon". I did more studying and found out that, this year, four lunar eclipses, four blood red moons, every one of them falling on a Jewish holiday, a Jewish festival. The word festival speaks about it being a sign and God is showing us signs in the heavens.

Look at this cover from Newsweek.

"Doomsday Science: New Theories About Comets, Asteroids, And How The World Might End". We don’t have any more time to spend on this but there are so many signs taking place. All the floods, all the natural disasters--the tornadoes, we hear about them all the time--speak of these things intensifying. The Bible says that Jesus spoke about them being like birth pangs. Increasing in duration and intensity.

Listen to this. Recently the Philadelphia Inquirer had an article on earthquakes. It talked about the increase of earthquakes on the Richter scale of over 6.0. In the 1950s, there were nine worldwide earthquakes. Nine. Now, we had documentation then. It’s not like, you know, we were living in the Dark Ages then, right? It was the Happy Days. Remember? In the 1960s, there were thirteen worldwide quakes. In the 1970s, fifty-one worldwide 6.0 or greater. In the 1980s, eighty-six. From nine in the 50s, to eighty-six in the 80s. And in the 1990s, so far, up to 1997 one hundred plus. And at the going rate, the projection is two hundred. So we see these signs.

Let’s go to the next one.

Now, what is God doing? This is taken from an article called "The Day of God’s Visitation". Dick Eastman, president of Every Home Crusade said, "I’ve made eleven trips around the world in the last fifteen months. I’ve witnessed God’s hand at work. Nothing in the history of world evangelism compares with what is happening today." Here are just a couple examples of what is happening: in China, a communist country, there are 75 million Christians! It’s exploding there. Listen to this, "In China..." you won’t read this in your newspaper "Fongu County in China’s Unon Province has so many believers that it’s known as Christ County with about 90% of it’s 70,000 people professing faith in Christ." In China, a county of 70,000 in which 90% are believers in Jesus! "Impressed with the falling crime rate and other social benefits, local government authorities are actually encouraging people to believe." Hallelujah! Bless the Lord!

What about in Korea? In 1900 South Korea was considered impossible to penetrate. The country did not have a single evangelical church. By 1986, the country was 20% Christian. In 1992, 40%. 40%! The church doubled from 12.5 million members in only 6 years from 1986 to 1992. In 1986 South Korea had 25,000 churches. By 1992 the number had swelled to 37,000. We’ve seen the gospel go out to places it’s never gone before.

Take Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a Moslem country. How can we get the gospel to Saudi Arabia? It’s outlawed in the Moslem countries. We have to thank Saddam Hussein! You say, what does Saddam Hussein have to do with getting the gospel into Saudi Arabia?! A whole lot, because he invaded Kuwait. We then had to send our troops in and many of our troops are fine Christians who couldn’t help but share the Good News. There are now 3,000 believers in Saudi Arabia because of Saddam Hussein! The Bible takes the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. Amen?

But do not be deceived, God is not mocked. He is slow to anger to give people a chance to repent. But He will only let unrepented of sin go so far before He will bring judgement.

Folks, here are just a few of the signs. It’s about time for His return to this earth!

You say, Pastor is it today? Is it tomorrow? I don’t know. But there are two things I want to leave you with today. The first is this: the Bible is like reading your newspaper, like reading a magazine. It is so up-to-date. And the answers are here. They’re not in the ism, they’re not in the schism, they’re not in a cult, they’re not following a messianic follower. The answers are in following the teachings of God. I hope today that I’ve salted the oats a little bit--that you’ll look.

We need to act like the Bereans. The Bible says the Bereans studied the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. This book is true. The Word of God is true.

One other thing. Things are going to change. Soon the world will not be like it is. The biggest question we must ask ourselves is, if Jesus Christ rose from the dead and he promised to come back and he does come back, will I go? Am I one of His? Will I be one of them? You see, the Bible tells us in I Peter that God is not slack concerning His promises as some men count slackness; but He’s not willing that any should perish. He’s not willing that any of us should perish. He wants every one of us to have life everlasting. The Bible is true. God’s plan is true. The Word, the Bible says, is Truth.

Jesus Christ said there are two ways. He said there is a broad road that leads to destruction and when you go that way, it’s the easy way. Go with the crowd, do what everybody else does. Hey, this is fun! Go do it. The broad road. Destruction. But He also said there’s a narrow road that leads to life. How do you get on that road that leads to life? Jesus Christ said this in John 14:6 "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man comes to the Father but by Me." The resurrected Christ who lives in the glories of heaven soon will return and can come, by an invitation of His Spirit, into our lives to change us. To forgive us. To make us a new person. God’s promise of life is that we can live here, leave here today with our sins forgiven, Jesus Christ in our lives, and living a new life in Him. This book and this way is the only way that makes sense in this crazy world with a new Lord and a new Master and a new Savior and a new life. That’s His offer.

We have two choices--to accept it or to reject it. If I had in my hands $1 million and said that I’d like to give this to you tax free, you’d have a choice. Most of us would probably have a few bills to pay and we could find a use for that somewhere. I’d give it to you free. It’s yours. $1 million. Take it. But you wouldn’t have to, would you? It would be your choice. "I don’t want it! I don’t need it! I don’t care about it!" Most of us, we’d take it and we’d use it. But there is a choice. Receive that gift or reject it. So it is with the gift of God. God extends a gift to be received or rejected. And it’s far better than a million dollars. Far better! Abundant life, forgiveness of sins, a way to live, following God, being in His will, going to glory! Or a life of hopelessness, aimlessness, and purposelessness. And the worst is yet to come.

What about you who have not yet received God's pre-requisite for forgiveness for sin or your are just not sure about your eternal destiny? The Bible tells us about a raging fire prepared for the enemies of God. But God is not willing that anyone would go to Hell and suffer in a raging fire forever. So God has made it possible for your sins to be forgiven so you could have eternal life in heaven. But Heaven is not earned or deserved. It is by confession of sin and by inviting Christ to come into your life. So if you are not sure that if you died today that you would go to heaven, you can be sure right now_by being honest and sincere before God with all your heart. For the Bible tells us, that as many as received Him (Jesus), He gave them the right to become children of God, even those who believe on His name.

So I am going to pray a prayer of invitation to receive Jesus into your life. It is not like saying an "our Father" or like reading a prayer card, it is not the words that are significant but what it means. You are going to ask Jesus to save you from your sins, to come into your heart, to be the master of your life and to take you to heaven when you die. So if you are not sure of your salvation today, and the desire of your heart is for Jesus Christ to come into your life to be your Lord and Savior, make this your prayer.

Dear Lord, I am a sinner. I confess my sins to you and right now ask you to forgive my every sin. I invite you right now into my life, to be my Lord and my Savior. Thank you for coming into my life. May never be the same again. Make me a new person in Jesus Christ for I thank you in Jesus name. Amen.

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Maranatha

"Watch and pray, therefore, that you would be counted worthy to escape the judgment that is coming upon the earth and be able to stand before the Son of Man" (Luke 21:36).

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