Participants:
Series Code: ICJ
Program Code: ICJ190026A
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00:01 When a hurricane, a terrible hurricane approaches the coast,
00:05 there's a time to leave. 00:07 A time before it's too late. 00:32 One of the more recent terrible hurricanes 00:34 that hit the United States, I was reading the testimonies 00:38 of people who decided not to leave, some lost their lives. 00:42 Some lost everything. 00:43 And they said, "If I had to do this over again, 00:44 I wouldn't hesitate to leave." 00:47 They thought they could stay, but there's a time to leave. 00:52 And we need to leave while there's time to get out. 00:56 And there's a time that talks about that in the Bible. 01:00 Before I go there, I want to remind us of another time 01:03 in earth's history. 01:04 Germany was a great democracy. 01:07 And yet, it ended up buying into Hitler's formula 01:12 for prosperity and everything else. 01:15 And pretty soon it became clear where Hitler was going 01:17 as far as his attitude towards the Jewish people. 01:21 And some of the Jews decided to get out. 01:24 But there were a lot that decided to stay. 01:26 They said, "Well maybe it won't get so bad. 01:27 Maybe it will be okay. 01:29 I mean, we've got our home here." 01:30 There was all kinds of reasons. 01:32 But there was one man by the name of Oppenheimer 01:35 who decided to leave and take his family. 01:37 So they sold everything. 01:39 They were very quiet about what they did. 01:40 And they finally left and crossed the border. 01:44 And this is his daughter's statement 01:46 about what her father had to say. 01:48 This is Hanna Oppenheimer. 01:51 "The minute we crossed the German border 01:53 my father sat me down on his knee," she says. 01:57 "He explained why we were going to Jerusalem. 02:01 He said that Germany was no longer safe 02:04 and the Jews would no longer be able to lead a normal life. 02:09 Despite the fact that we had lived in Germany 02:12 for generations, he said we had to leave 02:15 while we could." 02:19 And they did. 02:22 The book of Revelation gives a call, 02:24 a call to come out of Babylon. 02:26 A lot of people say, "Well how can the mark of the beast 02:28 and all these things you're talking about, 02:30 how can that all take place?" 02:31 But many people would have said, "How could Nazism 02:33 ever risen in Germany either?" 02:36 But we go to the book of Revelation, 02:38 and the book of Revelation is warning us. 02:40 Revelation 18:1-5, "And after these things I saw another angel 02:47 coming down from heaven, having great authority..." 02:50 He's coming from Jesus, the incomparable Jesus 02:53 that we've been talking about. 02:54 Jesus is sending a mighty message, one last mighty 02:58 message to the world. 03:01 "...and the earth was illuminated with his glory." 03:03 So this is going to be a worldwide appeal. 03:05 It's going to be an appeal that says to everybody, 03:08 "You better listen." 03:11 "And he cried mightily with a loud voice, saying, 03:14 'Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become 03:19 the dwelling place of demons...'" 03:22 That's so sad. 03:24 Because Babylon really calls itself a Christian church, 03:29 or churches. 03:30 It's an alliance of churches, a denomination at the end of time, 03:35 according to Scripture. 03:37 "...has become the dwelling place of demons, 03:39 a prison for every foul spirit, 03:41 and a cage for every unclean and hated bird!" 03:44 It shows how terrible the deceptions will be 03:48 in the end of time. 03:49 Terrible deceptions. 03:53 Then he goes on to say, "For all the nations have drunk of 03:57 the wine of her fornication..." 04:00 In other words, they've become drunk. 04:02 They don't have good sense. 04:04 "'...the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, 04:06 and the merchants of the earth have become rich 04:10 with her luxury.' 04:12 And I heard another voice from heaven saying..." 04:15 And here it is. 04:16 "Come out of her, my people..." 04:19 In other words, in the end of time everybody is saying, 04:20 "Hey, we got rich. This is great. 04:22 This is wonderful, this is going to be a good thing." 04:24 And yet Jesus says, the incomparable Jesus 04:27 who loves us, says, "Come out. 04:29 Come out." 04:30 Come out. Why? 04:32 "...lest you share in her sins and you receive her plagues." 04:36 In other words, time is going to run out for Babylon. 04:40 It will no longer be safe to stay in Babylon. 04:43 We're not talking about a life on this earth, 04:47 like leaving Nazi Germany. 04:48 We're talking about eternal life. 04:51 It's not going to be safe. 04:54 Just like it wasn't safe in Nazi Germany to stay there. Why? 04:58 It goes on, "For her sins have reached to heaven..." 05:01 Another way of saying that is, she's filled up her cup. 05:06 Even Jesus, the great incomparable Jesus 05:09 who loves us so much, He can't do anything else. 05:13 He can't do anything else. 05:14 She's filled up her cup. She's not going to change. 05:20 "For her sins have reached to heaven, 05:23 and God has remembered her iniquities." 05:26 Now God remembers, God acts. 05:29 Not that He ever forgot, but it's a way of the Scripture 05:31 saying, "It's time now to act." 05:34 So this unfaithful church. 05:36 You remember, the book of Revelation 05:38 is a book of contrasts. 05:39 We have the faithful church who is introduced 05:41 to us in chapter 12. 05:44 She's clothed with the lights of the universe; 05:46 the sun, the moon, the stars. 05:48 And then we have this Babylon 05:50 who everybody really is attracted to. 05:53 She's very seductive. 05:54 We talked about her seducing and how she seduces the world. 05:59 And people are just flocking to her. 06:02 And she's in contrast. 06:03 Both of these women claim, in symbolic form, 06:08 symbols, of people who claim or churches who claim 06:11 to belong to Christ. 06:13 They claim they're His. 06:16 But there's a true one and there's one that's a false one. 06:20 It's just that simple. 06:22 So how do we know? 06:23 How do we know the difference between 06:25 the true, as it were, and the false? 06:29 Well, we know we're dealing with sin here. 06:31 We're dealing with a religious issue. 06:33 We know what sin is according to the Scripture. 06:36 Sin is the transgression of the law. 06:39 In other words, according to the New Testament 06:42 it's the violation of the law. 06:44 There's no judgment if there's no commandment. 06:46 So if you violate God's Ten Commandments, 06:48 you're asking for judgment. 06:50 Just like if you violate the laws of the land. 06:52 The laws of our land, the good ones, are given to us 06:55 to maintain freedom. 06:57 Well there's a lot of people that just, you know, 06:58 they want to do their own thing. 07:00 But if they do their own thing, it produces chaos. 07:02 And we lose freedom, and there's no freedom anywhere. 07:06 No, law is a good thing. 07:08 Good laws are a good thing, and they preserve life 07:11 and they preserve freedom. 07:13 And that's exactly, of course, what the Ten Commandments do. 07:17 It's the book of James, in James 2:10, that says 07:22 if you break any of God's Ten Commandments, 07:24 I'm paraphrasing here, 07:27 if you break any of God's Ten Commandments, 07:30 he says you've broken them all. Why? 07:32 Because they're built on God's love, 07:34 on unselfish love. 07:37 So if you violate any of them, you become selfish. 07:41 And selfishness is not going to be in the new earth. 07:43 Selfishness is the root and the cause 07:46 of all our calamities in this world. 07:49 I'm looking forward to that new heavens and the new earth 07:53 where righteousness and unselfish love is premium. 07:57 And that's where people are going to have a wonderful time. 07:59 A marvelous time. We've talked about that already. 08:01 But to get back to this, so the mark of the beast 08:05 which Babylon makes, she puts this together 08:09 in order to force God's people, to force everybody really, 08:13 to break God's commandments. 08:15 You know, already we have great churches 08:17 that are calling for the solution to climate change. 08:21 I'm not talking about climate change or that argument. 08:24 But they're calling for solutions to climate change 08:27 to being Sunday worship. 08:28 Getting everybody to come back and worship Sunday. 08:31 We've already seen that going out. 08:32 We're seeing atheists buy into that, 08:35 we're seeing secular people buy into that, 08:37 we're seeing religious people buying into that. 08:39 People saying, "Oh, yes." 08:40 And as disasters become worse and worse, 08:43 people are going to say, "We've got to fix this." 08:46 And Sunday will be a solution to it in their mind. 08:50 If they can just have everybody rest one day of the week, 08:53 they think they can solve the problem. 08:55 And they think they can solve poverty with it, 08:58 and a lot of other things. 08:59 So you're going to see this become very, very popular, 09:01 not just among church people, but it's going to be very, very 09:04 popular among people who are secular. 09:08 Even atheists are buying into it. 09:12 So the mark of the beast, of course, is to produce 09:15 a counterfeit Sabbath. 09:17 It breaks God's fourth commandment. 09:19 And it orders the murder of those who refuse to go along. 09:23 Just like in the days of Esther and Mordecai 09:26 when Haman went to the king and talked him into 09:30 murdering all the Jews. 09:32 And yet, God ended up rescuing them. 09:34 God will rescue His people. 09:36 That doesn't mean that many aren't going to lose their life. 09:38 It's going to be terrible persecution coming. 09:41 But listen, it's going to be worse for Babylon. 09:43 When Babylon falls, everything is going to come apart. 09:46 Everything they wanted, all the economy, all the luxury, 09:49 everything they've put their hopes in, this earthly life. 09:52 Just like the Sadducees and Pharisees in the days of Jesus. 09:55 They didn't want a self-sacrificing Jesus. 09:57 They wanted a king that would come and 09:59 give them, make Jerusalem the center of the world, 10:01 and earthly power. 10:03 So that's what Babylon, in the name of Christ, 10:06 offers the world. 10:07 But it's not going to work. 10:10 It's going to be far worse for Babylon. 10:12 It might be worse for God's people to start with, 10:15 but it's going to be far worse for Babylon 10:17 in the end of time. 10:19 So this murdering of God's people, 10:21 this persecution of God's people 10:23 will call down the seven last plagues. 10:27 Listen to the book of Revelation 18:23-24. 10:31 Listen to what it says. 10:33 It says, "The light of a lamp shall not 10:35 shine in you anymore..." 10:37 Talking about the destruction of Babylon. 10:39 "...the voice of the bridegroom and the bride shall not 10:42 be heard in you anymore. 10:44 For your merchants were the great men of the earth, 10:46 and by your sorcery all the nations were deceived. 10:50 And in her," Babylon, "was found the blood 10:54 of the prophets and the saints who were slain on the earth." 10:58 So there's going to be terrible persecution 11:00 by Babylon in the end of time. 11:04 Now Revelation 19:2 tells that God is 11:08 righteous for judging her. 11:10 "For true and righteous are His judgments, 11:13 because He has judged the great harlot who has corrupted," 11:17 corrupted, "the earth with her fornication." 11:21 In other words, because of being unfaithful to Jesus 11:25 and embracing the leaders of the world for their wealth 11:29 and their power, she's been unfaithful, 11:32 and this fornication has made the world become drunk. 11:37 But God knows what it is. 11:40 And it says that, "He has avenged on her 11:43 the blood of His servants shed by her." 11:46 Do you love the Lord enough to give your life for Him? 11:49 I mean, your life is not going to last that long. 11:51 I mean, in this world we live 70, 80, 90, maybe 100 years? 11:55 Maybe. Maybe. 11:57 But it all goes fast. 11:58 Have you noticed how fast time goes? 12:02 It goes quickly. 12:03 I mean, you know, when I was 10 years old it felt like 12:06 I was walking with a turtle. 12:08 By the time I was 15, I was on a bicycle. 12:11 By the time I'm 25, I'm riding down the interstate, in time. 12:15 By the time you reach my age, I'm on a space shuttle. 12:20 Time speeds up, it goes fast. 12:22 You look back over your life and you say, "Where has it gone?" 12:25 That's why I want life everlasting. 12:28 I mean, if you get everything in this world for this little life, 12:31 what have you got if you lose your soul, 12:33 if you lose eternal life? 12:36 So God says to people, "Get out of Babylon." 12:40 But where do you go? If you leave, you go where? 12:44 Well, there's two women that are symbolic here. 12:47 One is the faithful church, one is the unfaithful church. 12:50 And this is just as simple as ABC. 12:52 God is saying this, He's saying, "Leave the unfaithful, 12:58 unfaithful church, and go into a faithful church. 13:02 Because I'm going to protect that faithful church in the end. 13:04 Even if many people lose their lives, 13:06 a lot of them are going to go through terrible persecution. 13:09 And they're going to be ready for Me to come, 13:11 and I'm going to protect them. 13:12 I'll resurrect them, I'll save them. 13:15 They'll be ready for Jesus to come. 13:16 But you need to get into that church. 13:18 You need to get into that church." 13:20 You know, it's like being in Noah's ark. 13:23 And the hawk... 13:25 I'm making this up, of course. It's a parable. 13:27 The hawk says to the little dove, "I'm going to eat you." 13:30 And the little dove says, "I'm going to fly out of here. 13:33 I'm going to get out of here." 13:34 And the hawk moves closer. 13:36 But something to the little dove says, "Stay in the ark. 13:38 Stay in the ark, because there's a flood outside." 13:41 Jesus said, "There might be difficulty 13:43 in the faithful church, but you better stay in that church. 13:46 You better get into that church, 13:48 because there is coming a storm outside." |
Revised 2019-12-02