TRIED BY FIRE

TRIED BY FIRE



                It is interesting how the truths of the bible remain somehow vibrant and relevant to our times. Truth is that way you know. Truth remains forever relevant simply because truth and reality is the same thing and reality doesn’t change unless God changes it.



                One major change in our reality happened at the cross where Jesus swallowed up all of human history by His death and then offered us a new kingdom by His resurrection. Of course this is a reality that only changes as we by faith enter into that new kingdom. For everyone else the same old darkness rules and all is vanity.



                Satan and men have tried to change reality by changing times and laws that God has set, but notice what the bible says about it: “And he will speak out against the Most High and wear down the saints of the Highest One and He will think to change times and laws and they will be given into his hand for a time, times and half a time.” Daniel 7:25



                This is speaking of the antichrist, or the spirit of antichrist, which has been around for most of 2000 years. Men have thought to change times and laws which God has set, and they will do so again at the end of the age, but God is only give them 3 ½ years to live in their delusion, but in truth, they will not have changed either time nor God’s Laws or His appointed times even one bit and they will play out exactly as God sad they would. Even their attempts to change reality are a part of Bible prophecy so who is fooling who?



                In the same book of Daniel we read of a king that tried to change God’s reality. God had given him a dream about his nation and a list of succeeding nations that would make up the whole of human history until a stone cut out of the mountain without hands would roll down and grind all of the nations into powder and fill the whole earth with the kingdom of God.



                The king Nebuchadnezzar didn’t like this dream or the great statue that revealed that even though Babylon was the head of gold, it would be overtaken and replaced by the joint nation of Medo-Persia. So Nebuchadnezzar, thinking to alter God’s schedule, built a giant statue, 9most likely of himself), and made it all of gold. He wanted Babylon to become a global kingdom that would rule the world forever.

                This makes Nebuchadnezzar a type of the coming antichrist, for as everyone can plainly see in our day, this antichrist spirit is rising up to build a New World Order… a global kingdom in defiance of God. Revelation 13 describes this coming kingdom for us. It is empowered by the same forces that Babylon was empowered by and it will demand our worship even as Nebuchadnezzar demanded the worship of his golden statue on the plains of Dura.



                Of all the people in the land of Babylon only three faithful worshippers of God refused to bow down to this golden statue and for their faithfulness they were thrown into a fiery furnace. But there was someone like the Son of Man standing with them in the flames and He delivered them untouched by the fire.



                Throughout Christian history faithful Christians have had to undergo persecution over and over again. Every kind of torture including being burned alive has been used to enforce man’s and Satan’s view of global control. During the Dark Ages even the church itself, having become corrupted by paganism had sought to fulfill Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of global control, but they failed at it, because globalism is not a part of God’s plan.



                It was God who established the nations from the times of Nimrod and His globalist Tower of Babel. God saw how corrupt mankind can become when they are given unlimited and united powers and so God Himself, gave them new languages and scattered them throughout the world. God destroyed their tower by which they had proposed to reach heaven and to re-establish contact with the fallen Nephilim gods that had ruled the world before the flood. God stopped it.



                But we are warned that these gods will return in the last days as it was in the days of Noah. The same tyrannical powers will rise up in what God calls the composite Beast that has all of the combined characteristics of all preceding globalist nations. It will rise to power infused with the same dragon-like powers of Satan and it will seek to destroy God’s kingdom and god’s people and to set up one last global kingdom in defiance of God.



                Amazingly enough large portions of the sleeping church today somehow think that bible prophecy has become irrelevant. Even as the global kingdom of the beast is surging and rising up all around them, they remain oblivious. Even as the very earth suffers major changes in weather and geology and national politics and morality and spirituality… many remain asleep and content to maintain yesterday’s comfort and complacency.

                But the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar is rising at a rapid rate. Even before the antichrist arrives we see the whole world wondering after the Beast. Even America was one of the foremost nations to push for this global dream, but God stepped into our politics. He upset the apple cart momentarily in order to give His favored nation time to repent and to turn from this rebellion. He restored our role as protectors of His other favored nation Israel and so god has continued to bless us.



                But we are living on borrowed time and America is indeed being weighed in the balances even as I write this. We watch with horror as large swaths of the church turn to follow after this globalist regime and to embrace its changing laws. They came into agreement with Satan that god’s laws are out of date. They embrace as normal what god has said is not normal. They turn in support of the slaughter of the innocent. They lock arms in their ecumenical fervor to rule the world with the beast.



                But the Bible tells us that when they finally get it all together including the ten kings that will rule the various sectors of the world under the beast, that it will suddenly come to an end having only reigned over the earth for one day or one hour. (Rev. 18)



                We, who belong to the Lord, have been privileged with inside information. We can know how this all works out. We can know in advance just how Satan’s fabled global kingdom will once again bite the dust and be ground to powder as the kingdom of Christ descends from heaven to set up a kingdom that will never end. We have this inside information and we have been commissioned to warn the world and to inform the citizens of earth concerning the nature and character and outcome of this beast… but the church is sleeping on it… playing church… arranging for our greater comfort and security even as the world plunges towards global destruction.



                Even as we watch plans being laid for the building of the very temple in which the antichrist will commit the Abomination of Desolation as predicted by Jesus, we take it all in as though it was not a sign of the very end of things… even as the giant forests and rain forests of Siberia and the Amazon burn up, destroying the lungs of the earth… even as millions of animals and fish and birds fall dead…even as our oceans reel under the death bringing weight of our garbage… even as our solar system is inundated with unprecedented cosmic rays that are heating up the cores of the planets causing volcanoes and earthquakes and sink holes… even as unprecedented storms  and floods and draughts ravage our planet, we barely pay attention.



                Here in America we think that we are somehow immune to global events. We think that we will never be tried by fire. We think that persecution will never come to our shores. We watch with complacency as others in the world are beheaded imprisoned, tortured and killed for their faith, but it will never come here. We are too big to fail… too great to fall.



                But America teeters in the balance as elections loom up in 2020. Will judgment fall next year or will God give us 4 more years of relative peace and prosperity in order to repent and to fulfill our role as God’s remnant people?



                We tend to look out there at the sin of the world and to think that earth’s course is determined by them… the sinners, but in truth the outcome of world events largely depends upon God’s people. It is our obedience and our power or the lack thereof that sets the tone of the nations. God is looking to us to rise and shine when darkness comes.  (Isa. 60)



                So are we preparing to face the onslaught of the globalist regime that will soon bring on the antichrist, or are we simply planning next week’s barbeque? Are we watching the signs of His coming or are we settling for yesterday’s traditions and comforts?



                Nimrod is rising again. Nebuchadnezzar is rising again to rule the world and it is said that he will be give temporary power over the saints to overcome them and persecute and kill them. All who dwell on the earth will worship, every one whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in eh book of life of the Lamb who has been slain.



                It is easy to presume during times of relative peace that God will yank us out of here untouched by the powers and persecutions of the antichrist. It is easy to presume that we have interpreted Bible prophecy correctly when all is well… but even now many prophetic Biblical scholars are beginning to re-adjust their thinking concerning end time scenarios. Are we willing to grow with God’s end time revelations as they unfold or will we stick with yesterday’s interpretations?



                Truth and reality are joining hands and so our interpretations of truth and reality will either stand or fall in the light of actual events. We need to keep in mind that there are thousands of interpretations of end time events. Every denomination has its own spin and every one of them claims to have the truth to which the world must come. But they all can’t be right and so it behooves us to keep our ear to the ground and our eyes on Jesus as we diligently seek His Word for understanding.



                The very last thing we should do is to abandon bible prophecy as being irrelevant for indeed it is more relevant today than at any other time in history. We are the generation that is to watch the unfolding of end time prophecy and to remain alive to meet our Lord in the air when He comes. But we need to bear in mind what Paul said in 2 Thess. 2:3, 4:



                “Let no one in any way deceive you for it (the coming of the Lord and our gathering to Him) will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.”

               

                 We will be here to see Nimrod/Nebuchadnezzar/ the Antichrist rise and so we must by all means prepare to stand like those three Hebrews stood in Daniel’s day.  In truth we are only promised that we will not be here for the wrath of God and so we must prepare for all other contingencies… for no one knows the day or the hour of His appearing. I am not making doctrine here. I am only waring us not to presume that we, in a sea of interpretations, are the only ones that have it right. Our time to study these things more deeply is now.



                We will yet have our turn to be tried by fire. Other Christians around the world are facing theirs right now. Will we also stand when our time comes?