If you are waking up today in Hubei, Daegu or Lombardy, you do not need me to tell you that this is a time of trouble.
If you have eyes to see and ears to hear, you will know that your Chinese, Korean, Iranian and Italian friends’ trouble will very soon be yours.
If you think that the Great Pestilence has not already caused untold hardship with more to come, then start reading different news.
As we near the last days, both godlessness and troubles will increase, and as has happened throughout human history, there will be those whose dying act will be to shake a fist at God.
Those alive in Europe today have lived through a time of unparalleled plenty, yet our godlessness has never been more evident. One need but open one’s laptop lid for a slurry of profanity, exploitation, sexualisation, degradation and stupidity to wash in from every corner of the globe. Sexual violence is sickeningly common. Mass culture emotionalises hard realities, and keeps us infantalised and disconnected from each other. We have abandoned profound truths in favour of idols and simulacra. We have torn to pieces every valuable social institution in pursuit of greed and pleasure.
When our dying act therefore is to shake a fist at God, how do we expect Him to respond?
“Because this people has rejected … Shiloah…”
And the LORD spoke to me further:
“Because this people has rejected
the gently flowing waters of Shiloah
and rejoiced in Rezin
and the son of Remaliah,
the Lord will surely bring against them
the mighty floodwaters of the Euphrates —
the king of Assyria and all his pomp.It will overflow its channels
and overrun its banks.
It will pour into Judah,
swirling and sweeping over it,
reaching up to the neck;
its spreading streams will cover
your entire land, O Immanuel!
Be in no doubt that Europe has rejected God! Today those churches that have not been converted into houses sit empty on a Sunday and Wednesday night. Our great cathedrals function as little more than tourist attractions. Public Christianity merely echoes popular concerns.
This is a crisis of our own making.
What other people than we Europeans have a greater legacy of faith?!
Were not our ancestors those Bogomils, Waldensians and Albigensians who for the sake of the Gospel counted their own lives worthless?
Can you not number Tyndale, Hubmaier and Cramner among your forefathers, who preferred the flame and stake to compromising on the teaching of the Word of God?
Did your ancestors not build a thick-stoned church or chapel designed to stand for a thousand years in even the most unprepossessing hamlet or village?
All the children of the twentieth century had to do was drink the “gently flowing waters”. The greater battles for religious freedom and equal justice under the law had been won by earlier generations.
Around the turn of the last century, it became clear that we were sick of Shiloah and had instead become enraptured with heralds of the dark side: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Ibsen and a host of lesser bellows.
“Devise a plan, but it will be thwarted…”
Huddle together, O peoples, and be shattered;
pay attention, all you distant lands;
prepare for battle, and be shattered;
prepare for battle, and be shattered!
Devise a plan, but it will be thwarted;
state a proposal, but it will not happen.
For God is with us.”
So war came.
A war so brutal came that we named it the “Great War”.
We, Europeans, killed each other by the millions.
We vowed never again, before commencing a second war more brutal and inhumane than the first.
We tried to legislate war out of existence and ended up fighting endless wars to keep the peace.
Even those like Leopold Kohr, who realised that there was a time for war and a time for peace, could not restrain themselves from devising federations that would affect peace on earth.
We birthed the European Coal and Steel Community, congratulating ourselves that we had made war history, when all we had done was export it to distant lands.
We devised plans to transcend not only war, but poverty and climate change.
These are cocky goals from a people who have abandoned God.
The plans of the godless availeth little.
“Do not fear what they fear…”
For this is what the LORD has spoken to me with a strong hand, instructing me not to walk in the way of this people:
“Do not call conspiracy
everything these people regard as conspiracy.
Do not fear what they fear;
do not live in dread.
The LORD of Hosts is the One
you shall regard as holy.
Only He should be feared;
only He should be dreaded.
And He will be a sanctuary—
but to both houses of Israel
a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense,
to the dwellers of Jerusalem
a trap and a snare.
Many will stumble over these;
they will fall and be broken;
they will be ensnared and captured.”Bind up the testimony
and seal the law among my disciples.
I will wait for the LORD,
who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob.
I will put my trust in Him.
Why do we call conspiracy what others call conspiracy? No doubt conspiracies exist, but even the most intricate go the way of Epstein. It’s not that conspiracies do not exist, but rather, their power is only ever a temporal power.
Why is it when disasters strike – as inevitably they must – all of a sudden we shift from arrogance and complacency to panic or hysteria? We worry over planetary extinction, volcanoes the size of Yellowstone, tsunamis that will wash away California, the “Big One”, nuclear holocaust. In all of this we worry only over death. We are like those who have stared into the abyss of human mortality and realised we have no answer to it.
Fear God, Europe!
Fear God, and not death!
Fear God who commands the eternal destiny of your soul!
“…they will curse their king and their God.”
Here am I, and the children the LORD has given me as signs and symbols in Israel from the LORD of Hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion.
When men tell you to consult the spirits of the dead and the spiritists who whisper and mutter, shouldn’t a people consult their God instead? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn.
They will roam the land, dejected and hungry. When they are famished, they will become enraged; and looking upward, they will curse their king and their God. Then they will look to the earth and see only distress and darkness and the gloom of anguish. And they will be driven into utter darkness.
When the crisis comes, to whom will you turn for help?
Will you seek answers from your government? Will your favourite columnist make it better? Or your guru? Or your medium? Of course, not!
To the law and to the testimony! Open a Bible while you still can! Commit its words to memory!
Learn about the troubles that are coming before they trundle through!
Multiple books of the Bible contain prophecies explaining things that were going to happen in the first coming of Jesus Christ, and things that are going to happen when He comes again. They will help you discern the time. You will not be surprised when wars, rumours of wars, pestilence, famine, death, the rebuilding of the Temple, and the replacement of currency with “the mark of the Beast” comes around.
The Bible is full of concrete eschatological prophecies. Learn them! God who knows the future prepared this book so you could be prepared for what’s to come.
But most of all, place your trust in Jesus Christ!
No one has ever lived a life perfect enough for a perfect God.
Christ paid the penalty for your misdeeds by dying on the cross.
All God asks is that you place your trust in Jesus’s death and resurrection, and claim the penalty that he bore for your sin as your own.
Anyone may claim to represent Christ, but if their words do not match what is written in the Bible, they are a fraud or phoney. The truth will set you free.
We may well be heading into times when people will roam the “land, dejected and hungry … famished … enraged.” People will look “upward,…curse their king and their God.”
Don’t be one of them!
Christ understands your suffering.
Seek the Lord while He may be found!
