Preface: The following was first posted this past June. There are....in my opinion....two....events if you will....that happened over the past couple of decades....that in God's will....sealed the temporary fate of evangelicals and the church. The first is the disappearance of the Christian bookstore. There was a time....forty years ago....when there were at least a half dozen within driving distance from our home....and we owned one of them! They are essentially gone today. Thirty years ago I criticized Christian bookstores because of all the knick-knacks and wall coverings that were sold. It was only when they disappeared that I realized their value.....as we in evangelicalism are blind from reading all sides of Christian thought....and Christian history....now being relegated to reading only the books whose titles make it into our churches or our groups of Christian friends. This is a big deal folks! We used to be able to stumble upon the truths....and the better books.....but that...."supply line"....as I like to call it....is all gone. The second and more important event....events.....plural actually....is that all of the faithful minister's who once warned us are all gone....Graham and Sproul and Wilkerson and Keller and Baucham and MacArthur....just about all of them....taken home by God....their job done. We have hardly anyone left today to warn us. This also....is a big....big it deal....but it is part of God's will....until....circumstances dictating....many preachers....everywhere....will have no other choice than to stand up and warn....and call out....'Maranatha....Lord Jesus Come!'
I have no one to blame but myself. I wanted to know this stuff. I dedicated a good part of my life to it over the past forty years...and particularly over the past ten years. The Second Coming is upon us right now! There is none of this...'oh possibly fifty years from now"....or even....'oh possibly twenty years from now'....that all of us hear all of the time when the subject of the Second Coming might come up....which it seldom does anyway....because....bless those old-time religion folks from times past....but we're just a little bit smarter than them today.
In actuality....I would want it no other way....and I thank God for his mercies in letting such a plain and unadorned vessel as myself know these things. It's just that it is difficult to go day after day....and deal with friends particularly....and become somewhat of a pariah at times.....for who today wants to be confronted all the time with the 'bad news' that a hurricane and an earthquake of.....well biblical proportions....are just ahead?
Jeremiah tried to warn God that he was just a youth....but Isaiah said...."send me Lord"....and Gideon asked for proof after proof....and Jonah tried to go from one side of the Mediterranean to the other to get away from the responsibility. There are no Jeremiahs or Isaiahs or Gideons or Jonahs today....but there are....or were....MacArthurs and Sprouls and Billy Grahams and David Wilkersons and others who tried their very best to warn the church....but completed their tasks and were called home before the barometer dropped and the earth shook violently!
There was a little bit of Jonah in these men....but with me and plenty of others....and maybe even in the near future with you....we are just believers who read the Bible....for what it actually is....God's gloriously dictated letters of instructions to us! We are no more enlightened than Puritans in England who were kicked out of their churches rather than play the game....or the congregants in the pews in front of Jonathan Edward's who were so overcome by what they heard from the pulpit that they could hardly keep seated without sliding off onto the floor....or those that sat in Spurgeon's Metropolitical Tabernacle for forty years praising God....or those who went night after night to hear Martyn Lloyd-Jones preach the glories of God's gospel....or for that matter....the great multitude typified by the little old washer lady who scrubbed floors her whole life...maybe in aches and pain but also in joy....for she had also read and gloried in God's Word for what it is!
It is not as much the specific Bible prophecies that drive us....for multitudes today take those prophecies and run with them....many becoming national and international prophecy teachers....not because they see their own guilt and responsibility in all of what is happening....but rather that it is exciting to them! Well it is more that....for just as Jeremiah saw what the 'church' of that time had become....and he wept and wept....and warned and warned....for forty years....and then wrote in Lamentations on how it all came down....and just as Daniel saw the vision of what we ourselves are going to experience....much of it anyway....and he became seriously physically ill for a time....we see what God is telling us....about who we are....and it drives us to our knees!
There is also the timing aspect in all of this....for many studied and pleaded with God over the many centuries....but they were not the generations....but we are! We are seeing things....that their eyes were not opened to. They could never have envisioned the very real potential horror such as AI....nor atomic detonations....nor one man who could conceivably rule with anger and arrogance and a mesmerizing power....the entire earth! They could not see a chip under the skin....or electrodes and neural sensors hooked up to a human brain....nor pixels on a screen that can overpower words on a page!
Just as in the days of Jeremiah or Isaiah....we cannot see how far we have fallen. We cannot see how bad it really is. My iPhone received a weather alert early this morning....extreme fog conditions! That is somewhat the warning that I am giving to you. With your mind and your interests all over the map....you cannot see....(because of the fog)....what God's Word is telling you....but you will....as I will see many things to disturb and perplex.
If you are secure in the grace that God gives....to those who love him....(not those who love this world and all of it baubles....like World Cup soccer)....then you and I will be praising God in the same storm that is ahead. Yeah it is difficult even writing these things....but that is because I have multiple weaknesses.....we all do....or the church would not be what it is today.
