Wars and Rumours of Wars, men shall be lovers of themselves, earthquakes and natural disasters, global warming. I bet you’d say “Yeah, yeah yeah, I get it. We have heard these over and again, The world is coming to an end; Jesus is coming soon. Yes we know“.
I bet many believers are tired of talking about end time prophecies. Seems it’s just a preaching of doom with no hope for the future. To add to this, one might wonder why such a loving God we see in scriptures, would choose to rain down such apocalypse in the last days.
Hence, in a bid to escape these perceived gloomy pictures of the future, many believers choose not to talk about the end times, especially the book of Revelations.
To borrow the words of Tim LaHaye, the fact is “God has been given a bad press!” We have so misunderstood the “Merciful God of Prophecy” and His purpose for these prophecies.
This is the devil’s trick and that made us shy away from the very essence that empowers the church for true dominion in these last days. We are for sure in the last days. No matter how we pretend not to notice it, the signs are all over us in the local and foreign news. Once upon a time, all the suicide bombing we heard of were in Bagdad. But only a year ago, it became an almost everyday occurrence locally at our backyards. At least any true Bible believer ought to know we are indeed in the last days, no doubt about that. Well, funny enough, it is possible many of us don’t know because, we have now chosen to study what seemingly brings hope and comfort alone.
But to revert back to my previous question, “why would such a loving God as we see in scriptures, choose to rain down such apocalypse on the earth in the last days”? “Will a loving Father choose to punish our hearts with gloom, distress and hopelessness for the future?” Nah Nah Nah! In contrast, the Gospel is all about “Faith, Hope and Love”. Yet, all scripture is God-breathed, including the book of Revelations. So, if we can’t find hope and comfort in the book of Revelations, then something is wrong. We must have lost its essence. The Church robs itself so much by shying away from understanding what the Bible reveals about the future and the end times. How much I derive hope from the prophecies of the last days. If for nothing else, it keeps you more current than the Breaking news of CNN, giving you an edge and a divine direction in dealing with the affairs of our present life. When I talk about Hope in Future Prophecies, I am not just talking about Hope of being in Heaven (which in itself is the greatest of all hopes for any true believer) but I mean a hope of shinning forth God’s Glory as we Partner with Him in His Agenda for the time being on Earth. It is the most thrilling moment to be alive and the earlier you caught up with an “Understanding of the Times” the Better for You. Your ignorance won’t change the happenings either! This Series “Understanding The Times Is God’s Will For The Church” is my first series on the Word teachings section of this website.
It’s not a promise but a guarantee that’s lives would be transformed as we dive into a discovery (via God’s Holy Spirit) of The Significance of Understanding The Times and its role in empowering us the Church. Stephen Covey loves the phrase an “Aha! Experience” and I wanna borrow that phrase. It’s indeed gonna be an “Aha! experience” – a paradigm shift for many. I invite you to join me next week as we journey through this exciting and most significant series for us as a church today.