I am going to read from Ezekiel 7 and I will start reading from verse 1. Ezekiel 7:1-15:
Moreover the word of JEHOVAH came unto me, saying, Also, thou son of man, thus saith the Lord JEHOVAH unto the land of Israel; An end, the end is come upon the four corners of the land. Now is the end come upon thee, and I will send mine anger upon thee, and will judge thee according to thy ways, and will recompense upon thee all thine abominations. And mine eye shall not spare thee, neither will I have pity: but I will recompense thy ways upon thee, and thine abominations shall be in the midst of thee: and ye shall know that I am JEHOVAH. Thus saith the Lord JEHOVAH; An evil, an only evil, behold, is come. An end is come, the end is come: it watcheth for thee; behold, it is come. The morning is come unto thee, O thou that dwellest in the land: the time is come, the day of trouble is near, and not the sounding again of the mountains. Now will I shortly pour out my fury upon thee, and accomplish mine anger upon thee: and I will judge thee according to thy ways, and will recompense thee for all thine abominations. And mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity: I will recompense thee according to thy ways and thine abominations that are in the midst of thee; and ye shall know that I am JEHOVAH that smiteth. Behold the day, behold, it is come: the morning is gone forth; the rod hath blossomed, pride hath budded. Violence is risen up into a rod of wickedness: none of them shall remain, nor of their multitude, nor of any of theirs: neither shall there be wailing for them. The time is come, the day draweth near: let not the buyer rejoice, nor the seller mourn: for wrath is upon all the multitude thereof. For the seller shall not return to that which is sold, although they were yet alive: for the vision is touching the whole multitude thereof, which shall not return; neither shall any strengthen himself in the iniquity of his life. They have blown the trumpet, even to make all ready; but none goeth to the battle: for my wrath is upon all the multitude thereof. The sword is without, and the pestilence and the famine within: he that is in the field shall die with the sword; and he that is in the city, famine and pestilence shall devour him.
I will stop reading there.
As you probably noticed, it would have been hard to avoid the references to the end of the world. God actually said, “An evil…is come; an end is come; the morning is come; the time is come,” which are all synonyms for the end, for that last day that we know to be May 21 in 2011.
Just so that we can get a little perspective on how much time we have left before this day is come, we have right now a little over 17 months, which we could look at another way. That is 74 weeks and a few days, which is not very long. Or it is 523 days, which is 12,552 hours. Every six weeks, 1,008 hours pass or elapse. So the time left is very short; it is very short. I am sure that just like me, you can remember when we had four years, and then we had three years.
A lot of times, I go to the Family Radio’s Dynamic Bible Question Form. I recommend this to everyone because you can put in whatever Bible verse you want and you will get Mr. Camping’s “Open Forum” responses. It might be ten pages for a particular book and you can kind of listen and learn what you are interested in at that time. What is interesting is that they date all of his responses, and so you know when he gave a particular “Open Form” and that particular teaching.
One day I did this. In his response, he made mention of 40-something months left. The next thing I clicked on, he made mention of about 36 months, and so on. Time is flying. It is flying.
This reminds me of that song that said, “Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’, into the future.” I remember songs like this sometimes because they are actually noticing something. Yes, it is a worldly song, but they are noticing how fast time goes. The expression “time flies” is very accurate. It really does go quickly.
I remember recently when there were 1,000 days left. It was not that long ago, and now we are approaching 500. We have 18 days remaining in the year 2009, 19 counting today. Then it will be 2010 and we will be able to say, “Next year.” This is not far off. In less than three weeks, we will be able to say, “Judgment Day is next year because it will be May 21 in the year 2011.”
God has long prophesied of this day, told us about this day, and warned us about this day. For centuries, He has warned mankind in so many places in the Bible.
To start, let us go to Daniel 8:17:
So he came near where I stood: and when he came, I was afraid, and fell upon my face: but he said unto me, Understand, O son of man: for at the time of the end shall be the vision.
The Bible—in so many places that we probably could not count them all—mentions an end, that there is going to be an end.
For the child of God, this information is comforting, like we have talked about. We have talked about a verse in 1 Thessalonians 4 before. After the Lord speaks about the Rapture and His return and about all of His people being caught up to be with Him in the clouds, He says in the very last verse, 1 Thessalonians 4:18:
Wherefore comfort one another with these words.
This is a comfort to the child of God, the one whom God is saving, someone who has perhaps been struggling and afflicted and in such tribulation to where every day is a chore. There are many people like this in the world and they have to pray just to get through the day.
This is sometimes the atmosphere in the home with a husband who is pretty rough. He does not want anything to do with the Gospel, and yet he has a wife whom God has saved and it is not easy loving him with some of the things that he says and does and with perhaps the drinking and the mocking that goes along with their relationship. Things are not easy for a person like this. She often has to go into a closet somewhere in her house and pray. She has to pray for strength. She has to pray to love her husband.
We can multiply this situation thousands of times in different circumstances across the face of the earth for God’s people; however, it has always been a comfort for God’s people throughout history to know that there is an end to this life and to the things that go on in this world. This has always been a comfort, and yet now even more so because we can now know how long until this day. Yet at the same time that the elect are excitedly looking forward to the day of Christ’s return, there can also be sorrow and sadness.
In Daniel 12, we find several references to the time of the end. We read in Daniel 12:6:
And one said to the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, How long shall it be to the end of these wonders?
Then we read in Daniel 12:8-9:
And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things? And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.
“The time of the end” is the time that we are now in. The truth is that we understand so many things today that were never previously understood for the very reason that we are now at this time. It is because the end has come. We are at the time of the very end of the world.
Look also at Daniel 12:4:
But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
This is what has happened. God’s people have increased knowledge concerning the timing of the end of the world.
Compare this information with what we find in Ecclesiastes 1:18, which says:
For in much wisdom…
The Bible tells us that “the wise shall understand.” In Luke 21, it says that God will give us “a mouth and wisdom.” In Ecclesiastes 8, God says, “a wise man’s heart discerneth both time and judgment.” It is God who gives this wisdom:
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
So on one hand, God is increasing our ability to understand, which He has done. Yet at the very same time, this knowledge brings sorrow to the husband whose wife does not understand any of this, to the parents whose children give no evidence of salvation while the time to Judgment Day is counting down quickly, or to any family members who understand this.
Yes, we look forward to this day and there is excitement and it is a glorious day to look forward to. But at the same time, we see our family, we see our friends, we see these people in our lives day-by-day and this can bring sorrow.
Hopefully, this is sorrow that will lead us to pray more and to desire to witness more and to share this information more, because there is hope for anyone. There is hope for every person today that God might save them because “now is the day of salvation,” as the Bible tells us, and God could potentially save any person this day whom He would desire to save.
Let us also go to Matthew 13 in the New Testament where the parable of the wheat and the tares is being explained. It says in Matthew 13:39-40:
The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world.
Repeatedly, we see references to the end.
Look now at 1 Peter 4:7:
But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer.
This is speaking of the end being close at hand.
Also go to 1 John 2:15-17:
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
There is an end. There will be an end as God has repeatedly said.
Now look at Revelation 21:1:
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
Let us also go to 2 Peter 3:4-12:
And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise…
This is referring to the promise of His coming and the completion of all things.
…as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish…
This is referring to His elect.
…but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?
This is more language and a further description from God concerning the fact that the world will end.
Does anyone question this? Does anyone dispute that the Bible definitely says that the world will end?
We could read much more. We could read Zephaniah or we could read Joel or Isaiah. On and on and on, we could read that this world would end. Throughout history, the only question was: “When?” This was really the only question because man did not know.
The reason that man did not know was because God had sealed up the Word till the time of the end. Therefore, no one could know the timing of Christ’s return and the end of the world until we had actually entered into that time period of the end. At that time, God indicates that we can know.
Let us also go to Matthew 24:3, which says:
And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?
This end was certain. They knew that there was going to be an end of the world. But what would be the sign of this? What evidence would God give?
Of course, this is the first century A.D., and later in Acts God tells them, “It is not [of] you to know the times or the seasons.” This is because, obviously, it would be 20 centuries later, and so they had no real need to know, as is that phrase, “Do you have a need to know?” The disciples had no need to know about the end of the world, and yet Jesus uses their question as an opportunity to lay this out.
He is answering the question:
…what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?
A little further down, it says in Matthew 24:11-14:
And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.
So Christ gave three indicators just in these verses that we have just read.
Number one: there will be false prophets, because later on He says, “For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets,” which relates to the apostasy that we see in the churches and congregations today. We cannot find a faithful church anywhere in the world. God has brought the churches under judgment. This is the first thing that would be in evidence.
It is interesting when you are sharing with an individual who is a professed Christian but still in the church. When they hear about the end of the world, they normally, 99.9% of the time, say that “no man knows the day or hour.” This is why they believe that this cannot happen or that this cannot happen on the day that we say this is going to happen.
It is interesting that none of them say that God would not judge the church because of how faithful it is. I have not heard anyone say, “Look at how faithful we are! Look at how we are so desirous to keep His commandments! Look at how we are striving faithfully to obey the Bible, to obey the Word of God! We are making correction on doctrine.” No one is saying this. On this issue, there is complete silence. Their only response is, “You cannot know.”
But they are not really looking in the mirror and admitting, “Yes, we are not faithful. We are not.” They are not admitting that each church teaches something different. The Baptist and the Presbyterian and the Catholic and the Lutheran and the Independent, on and on and on, all teach something different on so many doctrines. Who teaches the truth? Obviously, if one church is teaching one way of baptism and another church is teaching another way of baptism, they both cannot be right. This means that there are errors abounding in the churches and congregations.
Even when they hear “judgment must begin at the house of God,” their normal response is not that they are faithful and that God would not judge them. It is usually something like they have to maintain the Lord’s Supper until He comes and, therefore, the Lord cannot judge them.
They are trying to grab hold of some kind of command that God has given to the church and through it say, “The Lord can never judge us because somebody has to have authority in order to continue to administer the Lord’s Supper to the congregation.” Or they say, “Someone has to baptize the children.”
But, no. God also told national Israel certain commands that they were to do continually, like keeping the candlestick continually lit, and yet that did not stop God from judging them and removing them from being His people when the time was right, when it became apparent that God was finished with national Israel.
So one evidence of the time of the end is that Jesus said that there would be many false prophets who would deceive many. This is what we see in the churches.
The second thing is what we find in Matthew 24:12:
And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
What about the iniquity in the world of our day? We have talked about this before. As God heard the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18, He did not hear the cry of sinners desperately broken before Him, “O God, save me!” He heard the cry of their wickedness. They were so wicked before the Lord that their evil brought His judgment upon them and He did destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. This is also as it was before the flood when God saw that the evil of man was continually coming from their heart. Again, this brought about His judgment.
These examples of judgment are just minor examples that Jesus refers to in the New Testament in reference to the time of His coming and what the people of the world will be involved with at that time. They will be eating and drinking, marrying and given in marriage. He gives the account of Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah. He says that people will be involved in planting and in building.
So God shows us that He notices the sins of man and that this angers Him and brings His wrath. He gives us the example of destroying Sodom because of their sin. He also gives us the example of when He destroyed the world of Noah’s day because of their sin, a handful of about a million people. God only saved eight people at the time of the flood, Noah and his family.
Sin brings about the judgment of God. Here we are now at the end, at that time when God indicated that “iniquity shall abound.” Is iniquity abounding today? It is not that bad, is it? It is not that bad out there in the world. There have been worse times, like in old Rome, that heathen nation with all of the things that they got involved in.
However, when we read about the Romans in the Bible, they are consistently referring to their law and how things must be done lawfully. Where is all that evil that they were supposed to have been committing?
Even if they were evil, is our evil today not as much as the early centuries of the world? Is it not as much as the people of Sodom? Is it not as much as the people of Noah’s day? Or is it 100 times more? Who thinks that this is too low? How about 1,000 times more? A million? How about seven billion?
In the world of our day, we have seven billion people, out of which there consists a small remnant whom God saves. He handles their sin and forgives their sin in Christ. Their sin is paid for. But this still leaves six billion and several hundred million who are not saved, who are going their own way, who are living their own life, who are doing whatever they want to do in thought, in word, and in deed, and they are doing this daily, today.
This cry, not for mercy but of evil and wickedness, is going up to the Lord presently. Yet God is longsuffering. He is kind and gracious and He is “not willing that any should perish,” not any of His people. This is why He puts up with this to a point.
I do not know what the world thinks about this. Well, actually, I do. I was in the world for awhile and the world just does not think about this issue. The attitude of the world is, “I can do whatever I want to do, whenever I want to do it. Plus now I have all of this technology that is available that permits me to do evil. I can have whatever my sinful desire is to the full and at any point.”
This is really amazing. I do not think that the people of the world today would even try to defend the idea that this world is not evil, that this world is not full of wickedness. Fifty or sixty years ago, when a lot of technology was developing and the world was feeling pretty good about itself after thousands of years of history, they were finally able to have motor cars and airplanes and fast trains and so on, and the world was feeling pretty smart and pretty good, “We have tackled all of these things. We were able to figure out all of these advancements in the world, so it is only a matter of time before we tackle the problem of man’s hatred to his fellowman and the lack of morality, and so forth.”
You can see this if you were to read the literature of maybe fifty or sixty years ago. Their way of thinking was that they thought that eventually man would evolve into a nicer person, a loving person. Yet this never happened, and now that is all out the window. Nobody even tries to bring this up anymore.
People realize that today’s world has multiplied sin to a degree that the world has never known. We could probably pile on the whole history of the world’s transgressions up until about the 20th century and compare the sins of man since and it would equal out somehow. This is because there are so many people living today and there are also so many opportunities to do evil that people are taking advantage of this and doing it.
This is why it says, “the love of many shall wax cold.” But Christ told us, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” If your love is waxing cold, you are not keeping His commandments. And if you do not keep God’s commandments, that is sin. It is transgression and iniquity, and this is what is going on today.
Also look at Matthew 24:14. It says:
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.
This is another very important key to the timing of the end. The Gospel has to go to all the world. But God, at the same time, has brought judgment on the church. Therefore, the churches cannot bring the Gospel to the world, and yet the Lord has said that this has to go out into the world.
This means that we can also know that another indicator of the end is when the few, God’s elect, have the means of sending the Gospel out into the world “as the waters cover the sea.” But how can this happen when we do not have the churches supporting the true believers and, instead, they are the enemies of the true Gospel? How can this be when those in the churches are attacking those who bring the true Gospel?
Well, God saw to this by opening up the electronic medium so that we have radio and Internet and television and satellite broadcasting today in order that a few people who are faithful to God could blanket the world with the information that is coming forth from the Bible.
In other words, the fact that we do have this medium available to us, a medium that most men use for evil, shows that God has been preparing the world for this time and that He opened up these secrets of technology in order to bring the Gospel to the whole world. This is the real purpose. It was not in order that people might be able to satisfy their sinful pleasures, but it was to bring the Gospel to the whole world.
Let us go back to Ezekiel 7:2-5:
Also, thou son of man, thus saith the Lord JEHOVAH unto the land of Israel; An end, the end is come upon the four corners of the land. Now is the end come upon thee, and I will send mine anger upon thee, and will judge thee according to thy ways, and will recompense upon thee all thine abominations. And mine eye shall not spare thee, neither will I have pity: but I will recompense thy ways upon thee, and thine abominations shall be in the midst of thee: and ye shall know that I am JEHOVAH. Thus saith the Lord JEHOVAH; An evil, an only evil, behold, is come.
When God is making reference to evil here, “an evil…is come,” what would this mean? This would be referring to Judgment Day. This means that this is a synonym for the word “end.” Actually, “the time is come; an end is come; the morning is come; an evil…is come” are all synonyms pointing to the end of the world.
The Lord does use this very same word for evil to speak of man’s sin, as well as in other ways. One way in which He refers to evil is when He brings a horrible thing into the world like an earthquake or a hurricane or a tidal wave or a tsunami.
So God says in Isaiah 45:7:
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I JEHOVAH do all these things.
However, we cannot charge God with evil. He is perfect and good and just. He never commits evil and He would never create evil in a person’s life where they commit sin. This is not what He is saying. He is saying that when the hurricane comes on the sea and hits the coast of Florida and there is tremendous damage where maybe one or two dozen people die in that hurricane, He did it. God did this.
We normally hear people being interviewed after something like this and they do not want to think that it was God’s doing. They usually respond, “No, this was just Mother Nature. Nobody can control this. It just kind of happened by itself.”
But God is the Creator. He is the One who made the world and He is the One who orders the world. As far as weather or everything else, including earthquakes, God is in complete control and He takes full responsibility concerning this kind of evil: “I did it. I created it.”
So, too, if we go to Proverbs 16:4 where it says:
JEHOVAH hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.
This is May 21 in 2011, which will be a good day for some, for the Lord’s people, but an awful day for all of the rest. It will be an evil thing to be left behind. Would it not? To face five months of torment will be an evil thing. To be in a position of “weeping and gnashing of teeth” and to have no hope of salvation because “the door” will be shut will be a very awful, ugly, and evil thing. But God says that He has made “all things…even the wicked for the day of evil,” for that awful day.
Let us also go to Proverbs 22:3, which says:
A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.
Have you ever wondered about this verse? The prudent man, the wise, foresees the evil.
May 21 in 2011 will be Judgment Day, that evil day. Who will understand this? The Bible tells us that “the wise shall understand.” How about the wicked? The Bible says that “none of the wicked shall understand,” none will get this, none will understand.
A prudent man foreseeth the evil…but the simple pass on, and are punished.
We can see the wise and the foolish in this. These are just a couple of different words to describe the very same thing.
In the parable of the ten virgins, “five of them were wise, and five were foolish.” God sent a cry at midnight, “Behold, the bridegroom cometh.” Did he come immediately? No, because there was time for the wise and the foolish to have a discussion concerning the oil. There was even time for the foolish to go in search for oil. It was after these things that the bridegroom came. Then the wise entered in “and the door was shut.”
We know that when God shut the door on Noah after the seven days, it was the 17th day of the 2nd month. May 21 in 2011 is also the 17th day of the 2nd Hebrew month when the door will be shut. God’s people see this and understand this. They can foresee this because God has given them this ability.
There is a lot more that we could discuss. Let us go to Amos 3:6-7:
Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and JEHOVAH hath not done it? Surely the Lord JEHOVAH will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.
This is referring to this evil that He is about to do. Remember with the Ninevites, God intended evil against them, and so they cried mightily to God and repented in sackcloth and ashes and fasted. Why did they do this? They did this because they had a hope, as it says in Jonah 3:8-10:
But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.
He was going to destroy them and their city.
There is no way that this world is going to escape destruction. God is certainly going to destroy the earth and the world as He has promised, but an individual can find refuge and can find escape because God is merciful. Therefore, anyone can, just like a Ninevite, go to God and beseech Him for mercy and cry out to Him that He might save them before this evil day comes.
One last time, let us go to Ezekiel 7. It says in Ezekiel 7:6-7:
An end is come, the end is come: it watcheth for thee; behold, it is come. The morning is come unto thee, O thou that dwellest in the land: the time is come, the day of trouble is near…
It is coming. It is coming for each one of us. This day cannot help but come and it is coming very quickly. It is approaching rapidly.
I really hope that no one is thinking, “Well, I hear all of these things, but I am just not ready. I am just not ready. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe in a month, maybe in 2010, that is it; that is when I am going to get ready. That is when I am going to get serious and go to the Lord, or maybe May 21 in 2010 when there is a year left.” But these same people will be saying, “Maybe in the fall of 2010 or maybe at Christmastime in 2010 or maybe New Year’s in 2011 or maybe in the spring in 2011 or maybe May 20th in 2011.”
This is really presumptuous of anyone and it is very dangerous. This is indicating that what you are really saying is, “I want to continue in evil and in the things that I want to do, and I do not want God to interrupt me.” Yet they will say, “Well, maybe I will try to turn when it gets closer.”
What they are failing to realize is that they cannot turn. This is not in their control. This is not under their power. This is why there should not be any delay from today. Today is the day of salvation. God does not say that tomorrow is the day of salvation.
Let us stop here and have a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank You for this warning that You have given us. You have blessed us by this. As Jacob blessed his sons concerning things to come, You have blessed us with information, with knowledge. Father, we pray that we would not despise Your goodness and forbearance and Your longsuffering nature in allowing us as individuals to live and continue on. We pray that we might be moved by Your Spirit to go to You and to cry out to You as the Ninevites, as Bartimaeus, as the publican, as David, that we would cry for mercy. We ask Father that You might grant Your mercy. Have mercy on our children. Have mercy on those who are very young who maybe do not understand or who cannot comprehend just how short 17 months is. We pray that You would help us to be good parents, to be good fathers and mothers, to pray more diligently for our children that You might have mercy upon them. Father, we pray for the rest of this day. We ask that You would be with us and that You would guide us in the things that are pleasing to You. We pray this in Christ’s Name. Amen.