7 Significant Events Before the Return of Jesus Christ

Well, greetings once again, brethren. As you know, we are a prophetic church. Our church that looks forward to the return of Jesus Christ in this earth, and we are a church that believes in prophecy, that understands the importance of prophecy. And I thought that would be a good topic for us to cover today. This is actually an update to a sermon that I gave two and a half years ago, and it's the seven significant events that have to occur before the return of Jesus Christ. And these events are in progress, but none of them have been fulfilled. They are all very significant events that we need to watch out for, that we need to be aware of, that are very important events to occur before the Kingdom of God can be established on the earth.

Let's begin by going to Luke 21 and verse 36. And here's what the Scripture says. Here's what Jesus reminded us in Luke 21 verse 36. He said, watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass and to stand before the Son of Man. So what Jesus is saying, he is saying, keep your eyes open to what's going on in the world around you, but that alone doesn't make you worthy. Watching doesn't make you worthy. He says, pray always that you may be counted worthy. What makes us worthy is the forgiveness that's offered to us by our Savior Jesus Christ.

That relationship, that forgiveness that he offers us is what makes us worthy and gives us the ability on Judgment Day to stand before Jesus Christ without guilt. So that is what we have to understand is why we pray always. But Jesus did say, watch therefore. Keep an eye on world events and things that are going on in the world to understand prophecy and how it is moving forward. And that's what we're going to take a look at today during this sermon. So there are seven significant events that occur before the return of Jesus Christ and will begin with number one, event number one.

And that is the biblical prophecy portrays the decline of the United States and the Western European nations. This decline is already in process. All you have to do is read the financial pages of any newspaper in Europe or the United States and you will see that we are all struggling financially.

We are all in a recession. A number of nations in Europe are on the brink of bankruptcy. So we are all in a decline and it can be caused by a combination of war. The wealth of the United States has been depleted the last decade through a series of wars, a war in Iraq, a war in Afghanistan. A lot of our resources, a lot of our national treasure has been spent on those wars. Financial collapse is an inevitability for the nations in the Western world and of course we all face social breakdown. If you think that the riots in Greece and the riots in these nations where they have to implement tough economic measures in order to get their finances balanced in Greece or in Britain or in these other nations, if you think the social breakdown has been difficult there, it's nothing compared to what you'll see in the United States because we're going to have some serious problems within this country that we'll talk about as we continue to go along.

Here's what the prophet Hosea wrote about our Western nations at the time of the end, at this age that we live in. Hosea chapter 4 verses 1 through 4. It says, Share the word of the Lord, you children of Israel, for the Lord brings a charge against the inhabitants of the land. There is no truth or mercy or knowledge of God in the land. And that's certainly what we see today. We see that God has been taken out of our schools. We see that God is being slowly dismantled out of our government. If you look at the newspapers, you see financial corruption by business leaders.

You see financial corruption by our politicians. You see a nation that is explained here in the Continuing Diverse by swearing and lying and killing and stealing and committing adultery. They break all restraint with bloodshed upon bloodshed. Therefore the land will mourn and everyone who dwells there will waste away. And that could be implying environmental disaster. With the beasts of the field and the birds of the air, even the fishes of the sea will be taken away. Now let no man contend or rebuke another, that is, God correcting the nation through the prophet.

For your people are like those who contend with the priest. There's constant bickering. There's constant arguing. What we even see in our political arena today. Remember the old fashioned political beliefs this nation was built on called compromise? Where everybody gives up a little bit and everyone gains a little bit to get a bill passed, to get something done that helps the nation. Well now our politicians are so polarized. They're so far apart that all that they do is talking points. I think the worst thing that ever happened to our politicians was the development of CNN and Fox News.

Because all these people do is get on television now and get their talking points. They sound like parrots. I can tell you what they're going to say before the words even come out of their mouths. But unfortunately that is the kind of nation we have. Everyone is contending, is arguing with one another, and no one is listening. Therefore you shall stumble in the day.

The prophet shall also stumble with you in the night. In other words, it's a nation that has lost its ability to lead. It's a nation where the president says if you lead from behind. I'm not sure what leading from behind is. I thought you were a leader if you stood up in the front. If you were the first one to take the bullet, that's what leadership is. Leadership isn't leading from behind. But that is the state that our nation finds itself in today. So watch for the continued moral and cultural decline in the United States and Western Europe.

It continues to happen. Our obsession with celebrity is another example of the eroding leadership and moral depravity in the United States. The United States not only has more people in jail than any other nation on earth than we do. 7.4 million Americans are either in jail or on parole have been through our legal system. 7.4 million people. So we are a nation with eroding moral depravity, with severe social problems, and that is going to continue.

Watch out for the United States to become a secular, post-Christian nation. And it was a nation I think that's moved beyond the needs of our own people. Where we get to define what the rules are, we get to define what morals are. Not a god, not the word of God, but the leaders get to define what is good, what is bad, what is right, and what is wrong. Our society now worships the almighty buck more than the almighty God. And if you take a look at the roots of the recession that we're in now, it's all due to greed.

Greed on everybody's part. Greed in the part of business owners, who were not happy with the margins that they had, who wanted to put Americans out of work and move overseas so they could increase their profits. The greed of the politicians, who think that all you do is create a new program and go out and pluck dollars off of the money tree to pay for it. And the real world doesn't operate that way.

We have a nation that is embedded in materialism, embedded in greed, as I mentioned last week, the Sunday plane dealer had three and a half pounds of printed material for all the ads on Black Friday. Three and a half pounds of paper. Of buy this, of buy that, of buy this, of sell, of buy that on sale. Not that that buying itself is a bad thing, but we become a nation whose whole economy survives by you going out and buying something. That's what keeps our economy going. We don't make anything anymore.

All we do is sit around and sell each other our services. We've lost our manufacturing ability in this nation. We're a nation now that depends on other nations to make things for us. And that puts us in tremendous risk in the world that we live in. In Europe, watch for the break up of the United Kingdom and Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland become semi-independent nations with different agendas from England. I keep in touch with the BBC, the Wales page, thank you. And I can tell you by reading the BBC that Scotland is very close to seeking independence. The English had hoped by giving Scotland and Wales their own parliaments that that would placate them and they would be happy just to have a little bit of self-governance for themselves.

But the former Celtic peoples in the British Isles are not happy with just a little bit of independence. They want independence all the way. In Wales now, the land of my ancestors, children are taught Welsh in school. All the signs by law now have to be bilingual. The Welsh have their own TV channel, a BBC channel in which Welsh exclusively is spoken of and they're still not happy.

So look for the break up of the so-called United Kingdom to occur in the future. Watch for increased cultural tensions in the United States as we become so divided and hardened in our opposite views on virtually any topic that virtually nothing receives broad support anymore. Our politics, as I mentioned, are no longer founded on the ability to compromise, the ability to give a little and take a little. Now we have narrow partisan positions on virtually every problem we face in the United States. Because the only way we can get anything done is if one single party controls the House, the Senate, and the presidency.

And I don't care what party it is, that is not a good thing. Our founding fathers wanted deadlock. Our founding fathers built within our Constitution the need to compromise to get anything done that was built into our system of governance because they knew that when one party gains too much control, they knee-jerk to the left or to the right, suddenly, dramatically affecting the equilibrium of the nation.

But we no longer compromise in our nation anymore, in our politics. It's now just narrow partisan positions. And this is going to lead to more selfishness. It's going to lead to more social programs. It's going to lead us down the path that we don't want to go. The second significant event that has to occur before the return of Jesus Christ is the rise of regional world powers.

In the past, in our history, nations were great. Rome was great. Greece under Alexander the Great was great. Babylon was great. The United Kingdom was great. Spain was great. And we're all colonizing nations. But what we see in the Bible that knew thousands of years ago before it occurred, the Bible talked about something called globalization. What does that mean? Globalization means that regions of the world would become great, not single nations. So another thing we're going to see is the creation of regional powers in the place of single domineering nations.

And these regional powers are formed for their own financial benefits. They usually have something in common, like a religion or like a culture, and they want to have mutual protection, and they want to have the financial benefits that come by bonding together. The Bible spoke of this end time New World Order thousands of years ago. It was prophesied. Here's an example. Daniel 11 and verse 11. And the king of the south, you see that's a region. Doesn't say the king of Egypt. Doesn't say the king of Jordan.

This is a regional group of nations that are banding together. The king of the south, the south region, shall be moved with rage and shall go out and fight with him, with the king of the north who shall muster a great multitude, but the multitude shall be given into the hand of his enemy. So here's a prophecy about a united European power that we'll be discussing more in a few minutes, known as the king of the north. And yet another regional power, known as the king of the south, that's going to be a group of Islamic Arab and Persian nations that are banding together to protect their oil interests and their Islamic culture because they're going to feel threatened.

And when it says here that the king of the south shall be moved with rage, this could very well be the result of Europe invading the Middle East and while they're at it seizing and taking over some of the oil fields of the king of the south. That is why the king of the south could very easily be moved with rage and attack the king of the north. Take a look here at verse 40.

At the time of the end the king of the south shall attack him, and the king of the north shall come out against him like a whirlwind with chariots and horsemen and with many ships. And he shall enter the country, overwhelm them, and pass through. So the European power is going to have a tremendous military might, and the king of the south will not be able to stop the king of the north from invading these nations and literally just marching right through them, much like Hitler did in the early part of World War II through Europe. Continue, he shall also enter the glorious land. That is what we tend to call the Holy Land, Palestine, where Israel is located, including Jerusalem.

And many countries shall be overthrown, but he shall escape from his hand, Edom, Moab, and the prominent people of Ammon. These are very small people that will not be considered significant to the king of the north. He will stretch out his hand against the countries, and the land of Egypt shall not escape. So Egypt, here specifically mentioned as one of the nations as part of this regional king of the south that will not escape devastation by this war. So what may cause this war between these two regional powers?

This is from an article, Geopolitics of the EU Energy Supply, that's just taken, as you can see from the web, from a website, Euroactive.com. And here's what you find. Here's what the article states. The EU's energy dependency, as in the European Union, will climb from 50% in 2000 to 70% in 2030, that's in just 30 short years, from 50% to 70%. The particular situation for the main imported fossil fuels was described as follows.

Specifically, oil, because the king of the south dominates the oil supply. Here's what the article says. 45% of EU oil imports originate from the Middle East. So do you think Europe depends on those oil fields controlled by the king of the south? Do you think in the wintertime, in northern Europe, that oil is important to heat homes? That it's important to keep those factories cranking out in Germany and the other industrialized nations of Europe? You bet it is. Another point that said by 2030, 90% of the EU's oil consumption will have to be covered by imports. So this makes Europe very vulnerable to needing oil. So it makes sense that this struggle between the king of the north and the king of the south could very well be rooted in the demand to have oil, to control oil.

So watch for increased tension between the Muslim world and Christianity. This increased tension will result in eventual wars. We've already seen a number of wars. Frankly, the War of Iraq.

Our presidents don't want to say it, frankly, but our war in Iraq was a war between Christian values and Islamic values. Our war in Afghanistan is a war between Christian values and Islamic values.

We can expect to see more wars like that in the future. Do you think the Catholic Church will simply sit by and allow Islam to dominate traditionally Catholic Europe? There are a lot of immigrants going to Western Europe at this time, many of them coming from Arab or Islamic nations.

Do you think the Catholic Church will quietly sit by and allow nations to be dominated by this new culture? Do you believe that ancient nations like France and Belgium who have a proud history of their culture will allow new immigrants to just come in and begin to dominate their nations who have a counterculture to the thousands of years of the French culture? You know that 19% of the French population is born born. In Paris, in major cities today, 50% of the children being born have at least one parent who's an immigrant who came in from another area of the world. 50% one out of every two children born in Paris. Now, immigration is a wonderful thing in itself. Our nation was founded on immigrants and we came from many different lands. We came from Africa, we came from England, Germany, Holland, Central Europe, Asia, but immigration is wonderful within one or two generations. The people who immigrated blend into the culture and become part of the social fabric of that nation. They bring skills and talent to make that nation great and strong.

Immigration is bad when people immigrate into a nation and they refuse to become the fabric of that nation, when they isolate themselves, when they have cultural habits that are contrary to the nation that they have immigrated to, when they resent the people, the native people who live in that nation they have immigrated to. That is a recipe for civil war and civil strife and we can expect to see that going on in a lot of these European nations in the future who have very high immigration difficulties and challenges. Some nations recently have passed laws so Islamic girls cannot wear their head garb into their schools and that has caused a lot of controversy and you can be sure that more laws will be passed as the native people of these nations say to themselves, hey, why should my 4,000 year old Dutch or German or French or Belgian culture just simply be discarded because we have immigrants come in who have a different philosophy, a different cultural event, who look upon everything that I accept is right and good and wholesome, look upon that as somehow deficient or not good enough or not pleasing Allah and we're going to see a lot of increased social tensions. I'd like to ask the question, will the concept of democracy survive in nations that become controlled by Muslim citizens? Here's a little forecase. What are we seeing in Egypt as the Arab Spring evolves and as these people who rioted and were able to shed the shackles of the dictators who control them, who are they voting in the office? They're voting ultra-conservative Islamic religious zealots to control their nations. So nations that were once at least quasi-democratic or least friendly to the United States are now becoming nations that are being controlled by religious leaders, ultra-conservative religious leaders who want to change those nations and make Islamic law be the law of those nations. This is from yesterday from Yahoo, from the Yahoo website. This is just was printed on AP News Wire yesterday. Quote, Egypt's ultra-conservative Islamist party said Friday it plans to push for a stricter religious code in Egypt after claiming surprisingly strong gains in this week's initial round of voting for Parliament. The first election since Hosni Mubarak's ouster. That trend is confirmed and extended over more rounds of voting would give the religious parties a popular mandate in the struggle to win control from the ruling military party that took over from Mubarak and ultimately reshaped a key US ally. Egypt is no different than other nations recently since last year who got rid of a dictator, who had elections, and these ultra-conservative religious leaders are now the majority of their parliaments. And they are taking nations that were more open, more temperate, more conciliatory towards people of opposing religious views, and they are actually going backward and imposing Islamic law in these nations and making it very difficult. They'll make it very difficult for non-Muslims to even live and survive within these countries. So watch for regional trading blocks in North America, in Europe, in the Middle East, and in Asia, to become powerful political partners leading to trade wars between different regions of the world.

Watch for the United States to lose influence in the world as power is redefined. It's going to be more based on economy and the strength of your economy and on the strength of your currency, rather than simply on military strength. The US is the only superpower in history not interested in conquering the world. Have you ever thought about that? Look at the history of the world. Greece, from Alexander the Great, he wanted to conquer the whole world. He wept. He died around age 30 because there were no more worlds to conquer. Look at Egypt. Look at Rome, the dominance of Rome. Then we had the rise of the European nations. Portugal and Spain, Holland and Germany and Britain. What did they do? They went around the world planting colonies. They went around the world with an intent to control the world. The United States is the only superpower in history that does not wake up every morning and say, how can we have troops and take over Australia tomorrow? Or Europe? Or South America? We just don't have that desire. That's not built within our value system. It's because we know, deep down, that military dominance, first of all, you cannot be that dominant to control the world. Hitler found that out. Military strength no longer controls the world. What can control the world is if you own all the shepherds. The golden rule, he who owns the gold makes the rule. Have you ever heard that version of the golden rule?

That is what financial dominance does. Now, I want you to take a look at this chart, and I hope that you can see it well. I don't see my pointer found here. Maybe I do.

All right. This is the United States of America's debt as a percentage of gross domestic product. Your gross domestic product is the total output of the goods and services of a nation, the value in dollars, the wealth that you have as the total output of services and goods of your nation. So this chart shows the amount of debt, meaning what you couldn't pay for and had to borrow as a percent of your gross domestic product. Now, let's take a look at the history here. Hopefully, you can see some of these things, and this pointer isn't going to do any good.

Let's take a look over here. You had a little blip in World War I, and it went up to about 25%.

Went down again. You had a huge jump, naturally, through World War II. We were 108%, which means our debt was greater than our gross domestic product. But that came down again. Even when the war on terror started, our economy was growing so dramatically that even the cost of the war on terror kept our debt as a percentage of GDP low. So look what has happened here. And again, this is from the Heritage Foundation. It's made calculations from the Department of Treasury and the Institute for the Measurement of Work in the Congressional Budget Office.

Here we are right here at about 75%. But look what happens from this point, what is projected to happen from this point to the year 2060, 344%. Now, let me assure you that that will never happen, because history shows, and Europe is proving once again right now, that when you hit 100% for two or three years in a row, you are on the verge of collapse, financial collapse. In other words, you cannot continue to have greater debt than your GDP. That means you are rapidly declining and ready to collapse. This year is provided by the International Monetary Fund, and this shows an international debt comparison, gross debt, as a percentage of GDP. Now, let's take a look at some nations that have been in the news recently. Greece noticed 2,704%, 103% in 2010 projected to be 130% this year. Greece virtually is in bankruptcy. It's on its knees, asking the European community to bail it out. Take a look at Italy, which is also facing a severe financial crisis, 112% in 2007, 116% in 2010, and in 2011, 119%. It's also on its knees, and just to dodge a bullet. Now, I'll talk about Japan a little later. Look at poor Japan, 167%.

Then the earthquake occurred in a nation that's already been in like a 15-20 year recession, 197, 204% debt. Now, look at the United States, 62% in 2007. Ah, we must have had a stimulus package!

Yeah, it stimulated things, right? It stimulated our debt, 92%, and it could reach 100% this year. The point is that you cannot have a greater debt than your total gross domestic product for more than a two years, or you literally say collapse. And you know what? There are a lot of American economists who understand this. The problem is that our politicians have lied and deceived the American people for so long that they lack the courage to come out and say, I'm sorry, we cannot afford to provide you everything we said we would. Yes, we know for 50 years we told you we could provide these programs and we could do all these things for you, but the truth is, if we don't stop now, we are all going to be living in poverty.

That's the truth. But there just are not enough courageous people who are willing to face the problem. Now, did Greece face the problem in time? No, their politicians dithered away until the crisis struck. Did Italy face the music? No, they continued to dittle away until the crisis struck. Would the United States bite the bullet and deal with our looming financial collapse? No, I can assure you that our politicians will continue to lie until the very last minute, and then they'll say, oh, we suddenly have a crisis. Now we're going to have to do draconian measures to solve our financial problems. So this is where Western Europe and the United States is today regarding the debt that we have as regional powers. Number three, another significant event before the return of Jesus Christ is the rise of 10 European nations into another regional superpower. These nations are the last resurrection of the Roman Empire, and collectively they're called in the book of Revelation the Beast power. After the decline of democracy in Europe, which will be caused by a number of things, it could be caused by a response to immigration problems, it could be caused by a financial collapse of more nations, aside from just Greece and Italy. Well, something is going to bring about a collapse in the democratic culture of Western Europe, and a strong Germanic influence is going to rise up to control this power. This is this rise of the Beast power in Europe is the first woe or the fifth trumpet in the book of Revelation. Let's read about the Revelation chapter 17 and verse 12.

It says, The ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have received no kingdom as yet. And this was true at the time this was revealed to John. But they will receive authority for one hour, which means this regional power is going to last a short period of time, authority for one hour as kings with the beast. So these ten nations, these ten kings, are with the beast and they're given authority for one hour. These are of one mind. It means for a short period of time they all band together with the same goal, the same desire, and they'll give their power and authority to the beast. So these ten nations give their sovereignty, their individual sovereignty over to a federal government, over to a dictator, led by, combining these ten nations together, this empire. They turn it over to this federal government who will be led by a charismatic autocratic dictator. And people will want this dictator. People's events will resolve and people crying out for this dictator to lead them, to restore order and harmony in this part of the world. So what is the beast? The beast is a short-lived end-time empire that's ruled by Satan. And it's composed of ten nations. In Daniel chapter 2 it's referred to as the ten toes. And then in Revelation 17 there's the ten horns. So it's ten nations. And Satan will cause the human dictator of his empire to be worshipped worldwide. Not simply in Europe. This charismatic individual will be worshipped worldwide. And Satan will transform the political and military might of this empire, this beast, into a great religious crusade. We'll see that the beast will merge with something else. It will merge with a church to develop, to emphasize a great religious crusade. This is also the final beast mentioned in Revelation chapter 13. And here it is. Revelation chapter 13 verse 3. It says, that all the world marvels. So when these ten nations become a federal empire, all the world will marvel at the sudden rise of this powerful empire. And they follow the beast. So they worship the dragon who gave authority to the beast. The dragon is none other than Satan the devil. And they worship the beast. Again, this is all the world. This is a universal religious system. They worship the beast saying, who is like the beast? Who was able to make war with him? And he was given a mouth speaking great things and black swanese. And he was given authority to continue for 42 months. Then he opened his mouth and blasted me against God for three and a half years to blaspheme his name, his tabernacle, and those who dwell in heaven.

And it was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every tribe and tongue and nation. So, third coming to be for our nation and for us as individuals, brethren, some very difficult times ahead. And I have to be very frank with you because I'm sometimes disturbed by things that I read and brethren in the church who see these events coming to pass and almost rub their hands together with belief. It was like goody-goody, look at all of these wonderful things happening. Do you realize what this is going to mean to us as a people and us as a church? First of all, I want to remind you that ancient Israel suffered before they left Egypt. The same first few plagues as the Egyptians did. And when this economy goes down, we could walk in here one day and have 80% of us unemployed. We will have brethren who are losing their homes because they can't make their house payments. Not one or two in a congregation, most. We will have people who have lost their jobs. People have no source of income or food.

Now, we read about a difficulty for three and a half years with the persecution from the beast power, but even before then, for a decade, much like the Great Depression, we as a church and as a people could be persecuted and struggling to survive. These are very terrible days that are coming ahead of us. And we should look at these times and understand that this is a time to be sober. This is a time to anticipate the sadness that will occur before the good news of the coming kingdom of God. It is not a time to be gleeful. It is not a time to have an attitude, well, I told you so, or I'm smarter than everyone else, or goody, goody, goody, look at all these wonderful things happening. There is going to be a lot of pain and suffering, not just in the world, but in the early stages, pain and suffering to the members of the Church of God. And we need to understand that. That is very serious and very sober to realize that. So watch for the continued unification of the European Union and Western Europe into emerging eventually of 10 powerful nations with the world's largest economy that eventually dominates the United States of America. And when I say dominates, I mean literally dominates, controls us financially, and decides what our values will be and depletes us of our financial wealth. Watch for the decline of a democratic influence in the European Union and adrift to autocratic leadership dominated by Germany. And I can tell you that at times of crisis, people always look to a strong leader. They're always willing, when they're in a period of crisis, they're willing to give up their liberties in the hope that their political messiah will solve their problems for them, will help them.

And again, this may be a reaction to Islamic immigration or a financial social collapse that will occur in Western Europe that will cause this autocratic leader, this autocratic leader of this federated government who controls the beast power to rise. This is from Wikipedia. This is what it says about the European Union, I thought you might find interesting. The EU has established a single market across the territory of all its members.

A monetary union, the Eurozone using a single currency, comprises 17 member states. In 2010, the EU generated and estimated, get this, 26% share of the global gross domestic product. That's just Europe. They produce 26% of the gross domestic product of the world, making it the largest economy in the world. That's today.

That's right now. It is the largest exporter, the largest importer of goods and services, and the biggest training partner with several large countries such as China, India, and the United States. So watch for the abdication of Britain as it moves away from the European Union. Britain has a proud and deep culture of democracy, and Britain as Western Europe descends into autocratic rule. Britain is going to pull back, and they're going to say, no, that is not part of our culture. That is not acceptable to us. The British to this day continue to use the pound and their own currency.

They are not fully merged into the European Union even at this time. So eventually there are going to be 10 nations to form this final union. There presently are 17 member states in the Eurozone, so the number are going to drop out. Watch for the continual decline of Russia as it finds itself outside of both Western Europe. It's never quite fit in, and it's never considered itself an Asian nation. This is very sad because the Russians, the Soviet people, are very talented.

They have the talent, they have the natural resources, they have all the ability to be a truly great people. But they have this historical autocratic culture that started with Zard, who held the country back, then it was Soviet premiers who held the country back, and now it's so-called presidents that hold the country back and deplete its greatness.

Poor Russia just cannot seem to find the kind of leadership that make itself great. I was rather amused this week that the president of Russia declared after another space disaster, Russia's had a number of satellites it has put up in the air recently and they've either failed. And the answer by the president of Russia is he said he was going to punish some of the scientists and so on who are responsible for these space failures.

Now in the United States we would hold a committee, we would spend a lot of time trying to find out the cause of the problem, the approach of the Soviet Union, is just a beathead and that's how we solve problems. And it is this mindset that has kept them from truly being a great nation. Number four, the fourth significant event is the prominence of a super powerful church over the European superpower itself.

As the new European political power develops, an influential religious leader will arise to revive leadership and unity to this regional power. Why is this important? Look at how different the peoples in western Europe are. Most of them speak different languages. Frankly, the Germans and the French don't like each other. Most of the people in Europe have different cultures. They do have one thing in common. Do you know what one thing they have in common? The one thing they have in common are the roots of the Catholic Church.

Now some of them may be Protestant today, many of them may be secular and just nominal Catholics, but the one thing that all these diverse countries have in western Europe with their cultures and their languages and all the things that tear them apart, the one thing they have in common is the roots of a Catholic culture that carried them through the Middle Ages and well into the Protestant Reformation and to recent times when they became greatly secular after the Second World War.

The Book of Revelation refers to this church unkindly as the great whore. Is that politically correct? Am I allowed to say that?

The monogamously challenged and the leader as the false prophet.

Let's read about this in Revelation 17 and verse 5. And on her forehead a name was written, mystery Babylon the Great because the beliefs of the root beliefs of this religious system go all the way back to Babylon. Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth and I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus and when I saw her I marveled with great amazement. But the angel said to me, why did you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her which has the seven heads, it's a resurrection to the Roman Empire, and the ten horns, the ten nations that have merged into this federal government known as the beast.

So the beast has as part of its system a religious leader, a religious philosophy. Again spoken here in the book of Revelation as the mother of harlots. So there's a strong religious philosophy within this regional power in Europe that has arisen. Watch for Pope Benedict to die within the next few years. I believe he's in his 80s so he's getting up there in age and to be replaced by another non-Italian Pope.

The period now is controlled by non- Italians for the first time in the 2000-year history of the Catholic Church. There are non- Italians now that literally control it and then to the next Pope will be. This next Pope could be more autocratic and he could be more exclusive in his theology. One of the things that Pope Benedict has done for those that are, you know, watching the Catholic Church closely is he has pulled in the reigns from the so-called Vatican Council that occurred in the 1960s that tried to liberalize the Catholic Church and he's pulled the reigns in a little bit and has made the Church more exclusive in its theology.

So he's gone, he's made the Church go backwards a little bit. Expect to see that increase. Watch for a resurgence of Catholic dogma and suddenly an increased number of visions and miracles. There are people, I was reading about, say, what we need is another miracle of Fatima to build the faith of us faithful Catholic believers.

So, you know, today we laugh and we mock at the person on eBay who's selling a piece of toast that looks like the Virgin Mary and we all get a laugh out of it. But there's going to come a time when people are going to claim to see visions and miracles of the Mother of Christ. Look for increased Marianism, which is reverence for the Mother of Christ. That was another thing that the Catholic Church in the past was much stronger towards.

Vatican II kind of watered down the idolization of Mary a little bit in the Catholic Church and now many want to go back and look at her as the Mother of God, as the co-redemptress of human beings along with her son Jesus Christ. So look for increased Marianism within the Catholic Church. Watch for the political leaders of the European Union to look to Catholicism as the glue, as the bond that holds this new union together in spite of their other language and cultural differences. The Church of Rome historically has had a unique way of bending to political opportunities. It was during the Second World War when the Catholic Church never condemned the German atrocities that it knew were occurring against Jews and others in concentration camps.

Also, during Vatican II, again, this occurred in the 1960s, it was a council held by the leadership of the Catholic Church. It didn't even condemn communism in the height of the Cold War. So the Catholic Church has the ability to flex and bend politically depending on what is advantageous for the Church. Watch for increased tension between Catholicism and Islam as the Catholic Church aggressively responds to Islamic influence in Western Europe.

And don't forget why these tensions exist. From the Muslim perspective, if you are a Muslim, you look at the Catholic Church as predatory, trying to get converts, and Muslims resent that. Many Muslim nations, as a matter of fact, if you convert from Islam to another religion, the punishment is death. That's certainly part of Sharia law. Muslims also look at Catholics as heathens. They say, because you believe in three gods. You don't believe in one god, you believe in three gods. What the Catholics call the Trinity. So the Muslims resent the Catholic Church for that.

On the other hand, Catholics view the conversion of Muslims as necessary to save them from eternal damnation because they don't accept Jesus Christ as the son of God to forgive sin. So there are strong cultural differences, religious differences that go back thousands of years all the way back to the Crusades, of course.

Number five of the seven significant events before the return of Jesus Christ, the creation of a powerful Asian regional power. Again, we're getting back to these regional powers. The Bible revealed the creation of a great Asian regional power whose massive armies will attack Europe in the latter days. Its cultural influence is so deep, it will even rise again after the millennium. And why is this so deep? It's because in this part of the world, their culture has never accepted monotheism. In this part of the world in these Asian nations, they have always worshipped many gods. So the understanding of one supreme superior god is foreign to their thinking, is foreign to their culture. Revelation chapter 9 and verse 14 saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet release the four angels who were bound at the great river Euphrates. And that is a river that you have to cross from Asia in order to get to the Middle East. Release the four angels who were bound at the great river Euphrates. So the four angels who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. A lot of people. Third of mankind will die. This obviously is a combination of nuclear weapons and a combination of just standard military light. Now the number of the army of the horsemen. Here's the size of the army.

200 million. That is phenomenal. No one had ever had an army anywhere near 200 million and it said I heard the number of them. Now how and where is this possible? Well China alone has a population of 1.3 billion people. India has a population of 1 billion people. So when you start looking at the population sizes of Asia and you realize what they could achieve as a regional power, arming themselves and preparing their military, you realize that this number is totally possible.

This attack on the European armies by an Asian colossus is the sixth trumpet plague. And here's what it says in Revelation 16 and verse 12. Send the six angel cord out his bowl upon the great river Euphrates and its water was dried up so that the way of the kings from the east.

So again, this is an Asian regional power. Might be prepared.

Watch for China to become a dominant financial and military power in Asia as its 1.3 billion people continue to enter the middle class and their economy continues to modernize. I can assure you that unlike Americans, Chinese officials are not wringing their hands over global warming.

They're saying, what global warming? There's money to be made here. Global warming.

Watch for Japan to have a declining secondary influence in Asia.

And as a secondary influence in Asia and in the rest of the world, did you remember its death percentage GDP in the chart that we saw earlier? It's been an amazing, to me amazing, the fall of Japan. In the 1980s, Japan was the nation on the rise. You remember when they were buying properties? And for those of you who have been around so long enough, they were buying properties in the United States. Every company went to Japan to find out what Deming taught them about how to grow their companies and make them great. And to see the tremendous decline of Japan, I mean, they're entering like the tenth year of a recession. Their economy is anemic. They are struggling as a nation. And you will not find that they have a powerful influence in the end times.

This is an article also that just came out this week that I thought you might find interesting. This is from the Daily Mail, which is a British publication. And the headline said, China has up to 3,000 nuclear weapons hidden in tunnels. And the crux of the article was that Georgetown University students spent three years, got a hold of secret military documents and internal Chinese blogs. And he focused on a research center on 3,000 miles of underground tunnels that were dug and revealed after a 2008 earthquake. And this study claims that China could have as many as 3,000 nuclear warheads, far more than the current estimates between 80 and 400. So again, that just highlights the dramatic impact that China is going to have in the future of our world. This is from Wikipedia regarding China. As of May 2011, the largest single holder of U.S. government debt was China. With 26% of all foreign-held U.S. Treasury securities, China's holding of government debt as a percentage of all foreign-held government debt have decreased a bit over the last year, but are up significantly since 2000, when China held just 6% of all foreign-held U.S. Treasury securities. So we are indebted to China. Since the year 2000, we've gone from them holding 6% of our debt to 26% of our debt. That is not a healthy position to be in.

So watch for an unstable peace between many Asian nations in that part of the world that will lead to small wars, problems between India and Pakistan are going to continue because they're religiously based, culturally based. Watch for political instability to increase as millions of people in India enter the middle class and they're going to seek greater political freedom. They're going to want their peace of the pie. They're going to want to be wealthy. A modernized China will intervene to stabilize Asia as a major trading and military region of the world. So we're going to see China taking a leadership role in this regional area of the world. Number six.

Of the seven significant events, the Church of God completes the Great Commission. The complete gospel message of the kingdom has to be preached to all the nations of the world. We'll see that in a minute by the Commission we were given by Jesus Christ. When I say the complete gospel message, it's because the gospel message includes more than the fact that Jesus Christ died the savouciest of our sins. That's certainly part of the gospel and that's very important. But the gospel also includes the fact that he preached the good news of the coming kingdom that would solve all these problems that we've been talking about. That's the good news. That's part of the gospel that we have been called to preach. Jesus said in Matthew chapter 24 and verse 14, and this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations and then the end will come. So that's a mandate. That's a commission that your Church of God must complete. That is a significant event that has to occur before the kingdom of God can be established. Here are some of the fruits of that effort, by the way. We oftentimes don't focus on that. Revelation chapter 7, as the result of preaching the gospel to all the nations of the world, here's the positive result of that, of people who come out of the Great Tribulation. Revelation chapter 7 and verse 9, and after these things I look and behold, a great multitude which no one could number of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues standing before the throne and before the Lamb clothed with white robes. It means they repented. It means they responded to that final gospel message and they repented of their sins with palm branches in their hands, crying out with a loud voice saying, salvation belongs to our God who sits in the throne and to the Lamb. So they acknowledge Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. That is the result of us doing our job, our commission, our mandate of preaching the gospel at the same time. We should never lose sight of why that is so important. Revelation chapter 10 and verse 11. I'm going to read this from a different translation in New Century version. Then I was told you must prophesy again about many people, nations, languages, and kings. And I was given a measuring stick like a rod and I was told go and measure the temple of God and the altar and count the people worshipping there. You see, God knows who his own are. No matter where they may be on earth, no matter what organization they may be part of, Jesus Christ knows his sheep.

And his sheep respond to the call of their shepherd. And continuing here, but do not measure the yard outside the temple, outside of the church. Leave it alone because it has been given to those who are not God's people. And we live in a very dangerous world. And they will trample on the holy city for 42 months. We read about that earlier. That's the European regional power, known as the beast. And I will give power to my two witnesses that prophesy for 1,260 days. And they will be dressed in rough cloth to show they're sad. So they're not rubbing their hands and glee. Goody-goody. They're very sober. They're very sad about the warning message that they have to give to these nations and the punishment that they will face. So watch for the Church of God preach the Gospel until it is forcibly shut down. Some people say, well, the Gospel ended, you know, in 1995. Or the Gospel ended when Mr. Armstrong died. And there's no need to preach the Gospel today. We'll just sit in our living room and listen to 40-year-old tapes and feel good.

That is not the commission that Jesus Christ gave his Church. We will preach the Gospel until word shackles. Watch for the Church to expand its technology to preach the Gospel in many languages to literally reach billions of people. All of this growth in technology is going on for a good reason. And that good reason is so that the Church of God, with a small number of people, can have a powerful impact in preaching the Gospel. And I want to emphasize again, this is not simply a limited warning message to the United States. The Gospel is the good news, is an obligation we have to the whole world, not simply to western nations. We need to reach everybody. Watch for God to use two uniquely called individuals that receive international media attention and to powerfully preach the Gospel at a warning message to the entire world. I want to give you a hint. The two witnesses don't need to tell you they are the two witnesses. If someone has to tell you he's one of the two witnesses, he is a fraud. The two witnesses will be known by their positive fruits. Jesus said in Matthew 7, verse 20, that you should know religious people by their fruits. I might also add that the two witnesses will pay their taxes. You can be sure of that.

Watch for God to use the technologies that mankind is developing and discovering to instantly reach billions of people of all languages with the Gospel message. There's something there called Google Translate. You look at the page in English, you check the language you want. I would recommend Welsh. On the slide, it translates what that page was into a number of foreign languages instantly.

That's the kind of technologies that we are now being able to tap into the priests of the Gospel. So instead of us having people sit at the desk from 15 foreign languages and translate every blog and everything that we're saying into that foreign language, now an individual can go on the site from anywhere in the world, choose their language, and bingo, that quick, that blog is translated into the language. Now, is it perfect yet? No, it's still a work in progress, but it gets better and better all the time. I'm just trying to give you an idea of our use of technologies in order to preach the Gospel to the world. We need to reach billions of people of many, many, many different languages with the Gospel message. That is our mandate. That is our commission. That is what Jesus Christ expects us to do. And the seventh significant event, which frankly is the one that I try to work on more than anything else, because here's the reality of what I've been talking about today. Five out of the seven significant events you and I have no control over. So we can read about it. We can think about it. We can meditate on it, but those events are totally out of our hands. The last two are things that we can work on. The first one we just read about being part of preaching the Gospel to the world. And this one here, I think, is most important. It certainly ties in with number six. But the seventh significant event is that the bride of Christ prepares for his return. The end-time Church of God prepares itself spiritually, mentally, emotionally to serve with the living Christ upon his return to earth. This preparation time to become ready is necessary to prepare the saints to rule in the kingdom of God. These are people who are filled with God's Spirit, who realize the power that resides within them to overcome anything. These are people who believe in the purpose of their lives. That purpose is to serve others and to develop the fruits of God's Holy Spirit within themselves. Revelation 19 and verse 8. And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. The fine linen, brethren, is not the righteous thoughts of the saints. It's not the righteous intentions of the saints. It is the righteous acts. That means doing something of the saints. That means overcoming those personal problems that we have been struggling with for years. Brethren, I'm going to be very frank with you. I have known too many people in my church career with very serious personal issues who would dive into prophecy and study it for hours as an excuse not to deal with their real problems. They tried to mask who and what they are by just studying prophecy all the time. And prophecy is great. Prophecy will come true. God's word is sure. But it's time for the bride to make herself ready. And that means to overcome the sins, the flaws, the weaknesses. We have to get rid of our soiled garments so that we can put on fine linen, clean and bright, so that we can have righteous acts. It says, let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His wife has made herself ready. That's our job. Then He said to me, right, blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And He said to me, these are the true sayings of God. So watch for God's church, those who have God's spirit, become more enveloped and committed to disciples more than ever before. To live, to think and breathe the kingdom of God. Watch for them to focus on spiritual growth and on developing the fruits of the Holy Spirit rather than idolizing dead saints or reliving the past over and over again. It's time to leave the past in the past.

And it's time for the church of God to move forward in the 21st century.

That's what we must do. And we must make ourselves ready. There still are too many of these qualities among God's people. This translation was from God's word for today. Now the effects of the corrupt nature are obvious. Elicit sex, perversion, promiscuity, idolatry, drug use, hatred, rivalry, jealousy, angry outbursts, selfish ambition. It's good one for we in the ministry to think about. Conflict. Do we cause conflict? Do we break up families? Fractions, envy, drunkenness, wild partying, and things like that. I've told you in the past and I'm telling you again the people who do these things will not inherit the kingdom of God. In contrast, verse 22, with the spiritual nature, the bride making herself ready produces love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, not contention, not breaking apart family, not someone's ego getting in the way, gentleness, and self-control.

There are no laws against things like that. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their corrupt nature along with its passions and desires. If we live by our spiritual nature, then our lives need to conform to our spiritual nature. Again, it's the righteous acts of the saints. Brethren, that's our sermon for the day. Let's look forward to a time when the kingdom of God will arrive on this earth. Let's look forward to a time when all of these events will be behind us. And we can look on the pedestal of the kingdom of God and just see eternity.