Are We Prepared for the Hard Times to Come?

In 1947, my family moved to East Tennessee. I think I've mentioned to many of you that we moved about 12 miles from where I am presently living. During that period of time, until I went to Ambassador College, we lived on two farms in the area. We had electricity in the house, but that was about it, as far as the house. One of the houses we lived in was 90 years old until it burned down. Prior to coming here, we lived in Kentucky, and we lived in two separate houses that I remember there on a dairy farm. One lacked electricity at all. We had kerosene lamps, and I remember my mother ironing with a gas iron. You would have these little nodules, and it would heat the thing up. I also remember her putting iron on fire to heat them up and doing that. We didn't have electricity in one house, and we had carry water about 50 yards. It was one of my jobs to go down the hill to pump the water and bring it back up, so we would have water to drink. I didn't think too much of that at the time. It was just the way things were. This was back in the mid-40s. We did not have much money, just like a lot of people didn't have much money back at that time. But we grew all of our own food. I remember having these large gardens, and we would go out. We would grow just about everything we could grow to be able to eat. We had to go out. When the blackberry season was in, my mother would make us go out and pick a water bucket full of blackberries every morning until they ran out. We'd have 200 half-gallon jars of blackberries. We grew chickens, and of course, we had hogs also at that time. We always had something to eat. I always looked to the fact that we had plenty of woods, ponds, fish, and swim. We had places you could run around. At the time, I never felt deprived. Somewhere toward the end of 1957, our house burned to the ground. Everything we had was destroyed. We were just left without anything. We worked for it. We were sharecroppers. We had a house down on the Hawassee River. We moved down there to an even older house. You did have electricity, but we were all alive. We still had food to eat. We had no electricity there. In all of these places, we did not have indoor facilities. If you wanted to take a bath, you got into the big tub. You took a bath, and then the next person climbed in the tub. The last person in was probably dirtier than when he got into the tub. When I went to Ambassador College in 1959, we still did not have indoor plumbing. I remember going to Ambassador College and being in a dorm. You turned the faucet on, and you had indoor plumbing. You could take a shower, which was terrific. In 1963, Norm and I got married. Our first assignment was to go to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Akron, and Toledo. We were in that three-church circuit. We had actually a very nice apartment. We started out, though. We didn't have a stove. We had a hot plate. We didn't have chairs to sit on. We had two crates that we sat on. We had a bed that had been given to us. After a while, you began to accumulate. We were given some furniture. That type of thing. That's the way we started out. It's amazing, though, what happens over the years.

Over the years, you begin to find... Well, you begin to prosper a little more. You have a little more. You begin to accumulate. Most homes today have two or three bathrooms, don't they? If you go out to buy a house, and it only has one bathroom, you say, No, thank you. Generally, most homes have two bathrooms, two and a half bathrooms. Three. We have dishwashers in our home today. We always had dishwashers in our home. I was one of them. We have showers and tubs today, all over the Chattanooga area, in this area of the country.

Not only do you have a tub, you have a Jetta tub. You have that type of a tub and shower. We have ovens today, not only the ovens, they're self-cleaning ovens. Not only are they self-cleaning, maybe a lot of times they're double ovens. We just sort of take these things for granted today. There's a force of people in our country, in the United States, that they generally have more than one television. People talk about how poor they are, and yet they've got two or three televisions. They'll have a car or two. They'll have things that we would have never thought of.

I remember my dad worked in Chattanooga. He did two jobs. He worked in Chattanooga on the railroad, and he farmed. He would get up in the morning about 6, go farm to 12, and then he would go to work, as he called it. He'd leave about 1 o'clock, go to the railroad, work from 3 to 11, come home, and keep repeating that over and over. He generally had a series of old cars, and every day we were changing a tire. I got pretty good at repairing tires back at that time.

We didn't have a lot, but it seems that people today who are considered poor have more than a lot of people did back then. Even the poorest of people today seem to have a cell phone. Everybody has a cell phone that they walk around with. Even the poorest generally have a refrigerator, stoves. I remember for years we had an icebox. Dad would come home, he would bring a block of ice. We'd stick the thing in the bottom, and it would last for a week. He'd buy another block the next week. That's where you would try to keep things cold during that period of time.

How many of you here remember the Depression? Not going to be too many, but anybody here remember the Depression? Is that before your time? I tell you what, nobody's willing to admit it. When you look at pictures from the Depression, and on the Internet you see these things floating around all the time, back in the 20s and 30s, early 40s, you don't see very many fat people back at that time.

They're very emaciated looking, thin. A lot of people hobbled all over the country. I know my dad did. Men would jump the rails, they would go across the country looking for jobs, live in camps, anywhere they could find something. They were striving to find work. It was a hard time. In many families, everyone that family worked or did something. My mother's family, she had to drop out of school when she was a sophomore. She did all the cooking, all the housekeeping, took care of everything.

And everybody else was out either looking for work or working. They were doing something, and everybody moved back together. Families lived together, and they were trying to take care of things. Many people worked for 18, 20 hours a day. We've talked to Norma's dad. Now, he remembers the Depression.

We talked to Norma's dad. He used to work 18 hours a day, 10 cents an hour. There were days that he worked for a dollar a day. And he worked, and he'd bring the money home and give it to his dad. He was still a teenager at that time. And when I say he worked, when you hear him describe what he had to do, he worked like a slave. He really worked hard. Yet in the Western world today, we realize that we've entered, embarked on some very difficult times, have we not? Economically, in many different ways. Today, millions are out of work.

We see a lot of homeless people out on the streets. Foreclosures are in the hundreds of thousands today, as far as foreclosures on houses. And yet, the majority of people in this country and most Western nations still have food to eat, still have a place to sleep. And even though they may not have, quote-unquote, the American Dream or the palace that they were hoping for, they still have it much better than the third world countries. If you ever have a chance, again, you need to try to travel in areas of the third world, perhaps for a feast, if you just have the opportunity.

You begin to see that even the poorest of the poor in this country have it so much better than most of them. If you ever tried to get into a good restaurant on Saturday night, Sunday night, in this country, you wouldn't know that there's a depression going on because they're full. And it just seems that, you know, that's the way it is. People still eat out, still drive nice cars, still dress well, still try to keep ends together.

And it's taking a little more time. People who are able sometimes will work two or three jobs. Their body's working, trying to keep it together. Would you believe it if I told you, these are the good times? Now, you and I might say, well, what do you mean these are the good times? Things are bad, and when you look economically, morally, and you know any way you want to look at it, things are degenerating, and I would agree with that. But the hard times are yet to come.

The Bible talks about the fact that here in the future, that there are going to be times of trouble, difficult times, hard times that we're going to be faced with. We still live in an age where the blessings that God gave to our people, the blessings as a result of Abraham's obedience, and we are the recipients of those.

Those blessings haven't been totally stripped away from us. We're still the recipients of those blessings. Do we understand the difference between what the Bible states are going to be tough times and the good times? It's like the book of Proverbs, and Proverbs 24, and verse 10 tells us, that if you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.

So God wants us to be strong. Jesus Christ made a statement, and let's go back to Luke 23, Luke 23.31, and our Bibles, Luke 23. And we'll begin to read here in verse 31. Christ made a statement, and we'll go back and read this in context after we read this verse. Christ said, if they do these things in the green wood, what will be done in the dry? Now you might scratch your head and ask yourself, what's he talking about here? The green wood and the dry.

Let's back up to verse 26. This is where Christ is being led away to be crucified, and it says, as they led him away, they laid hold of a certain man, Simon, a Cyrenian, who was coming from the country, and on him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after Jesus. And a great multitude of the people followed him, and women also mourn and lamented him. So they were mourning and crying and lamenting for Christ and what he was about to go through.

And Jesus turned to them and said, daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me. Weep for yourselves and for your children. For indeed the days are coming in which they will say, blessed are the barren and the wounds that never bore, and breasts which never nourished. The times were going to get so difficult and so bad, it would be better not to have children to look after.

And they will begin to say to the mountains, fall on us and to the hills, cover us. For if they do these things in the green wood, what will be done in the dry? Jesus Christ was referring to the fact that here they were taking him, somebody who was innocent, somebody who had never sinned, during a period of time in Jerusalem where basically it was okay, good, and they were going to crucify him, and they were mourning and they were lamenting.

But he's telling them, there's going to come a time when you are going to have to go through tribulation yourself. There's going to come a time when you're going to be faced with all kinds of difficulties. And it's the difference between burning dry wood, because at that time things are going to really happen, and green wood, which is green, which does not burn that easily. As an example, the young literal translation of verse 31 says, For if in the green tree they do these things, in the dry, what might happen?

And then the New International Version says, For if the people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it's dry? And then the Message Bible says, If people do these things to a live green tree, can you imagine what they will do with dead wood?

And if God did not spare Christ, allowed him to die, and was not punishing at that point an unrepentant nation and the leaders, that there was going to come a time when divine judgment would come on them. And they would be like the dry wood. They would be consumed. They would be destroyed. And so Christ was giving them a warning. We remember in Matthew 24, He likewise gave them a warning of what was going to happen as far as future events. So if this happened to Jesus Christ, and at that time what's going to happen to sinners are to the unrepentant if they don't repent, if they don't change, if they still follow their ways.

Let's go over here to the book of Acts, Acts 8 and verse 1. In Acts 8 and verse 1, we have an example of what happened in the first century.

We find persecution set in on the church.

In chapter 8 here, verse 1, Saul was consenting to his death. This is where Stephen was stoned. And at that time a great persecution arose against the church, which was at Jerusalem. And they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.

Now you just stop and think about this. The church is just newly started. Stephen is martyred. Even though thousands had been converted, the church is being persecuted. These Jewish leaders detested them, looked upon them as competitors, and so they were persecuting them, so much so that people were scattered all over the place. Now you would think that they would consider that a terrible time, which it was. I'm not downplaying that. But compared to what was going to happen in the future, this was still the green time, because the dry time was going to come a little later. There was going to come a time in the future when multiple thousands of Christians were taken out and martyred. They were put in the arena and had to fight wild beasts and wild animals.

Nero took Christians, attached them to stakes, covered them with tar, and lit them as lights at his parties. And things that he was doing. I mean, toward the end of the first century, when you look at the persecution that went on in the church, you find there was a horrendous persecution that took place. What happened here was bad, but compared to what was going to take place in the future, there wasn't a comparison. But I want you to notice, they were scattered. And you read in verse 2, The devout men carried Stephen to his burial, made great lamentation over him. As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house, dragging off men and women, and committing them to prison. Therefore, those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word. They didn't stop preaching, they continued. Then we find that Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ to them. And the mulletude with one accord heated the things spoken by Philip. And you find verse 7, The plain spirits crying out loud voice came out of many who were possessed. In verse 8, you find that there was great joy in that city as a result of the people being scattered. You see, those who went scattered went everywhere preaching the gospel. Philip, one of the original seven deacons, went about preaching. So the persecution, even though it scattered the church, it did not stop the message. The message continued to go on, and there was a great amount of joy that took place. Now, with that in mind, let's go back to Matthew 23, verse 37. Matthew 23, verse 37. Jesus Christ, before the Olivet prophecy, overlooked Jerusalem, and he saw the city. And notice his lamentation here. He said, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who were sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. See, your house is left to you desolate. For I say to you, you shall see me no more till you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Jesus Christ knew what was going to happen to Jerusalem. He knew the future. And so he was lamenting, and he was talking about how he had sent the prophets, how he had come. And they were not willing to listen. They did not heed. Now, beginning in verse 9, chapter 24 and verse 9, we find here that Jesus Christ prophesied at the severe time, coming on the nation in the future, and not only on the nation, but also on the church that would take place.

This began in verse 9. He says, Then they will deliver you up, the tribulation, they will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. Now, that happened in the first century. In the first century, it was simply a type of what's going to happen at the end time. We know the prophecy is dual, and there is a dual application to this that will occur in the end time. In verse 10, many will be offended and will betray one another and will hate one another. And many false prophets will rise up and deceive many, and because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will wax cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. Jesus Christ here went on to prophesy about the destruction of Jerusalem. We know that in 70 AD, that Titus surrounded Jerusalem, and Jerusalem was destroyed. The Jews were scattered, what was called the Diaspora, and they were scattered all over that area of the world.

Now whether it's accurate or not, I don't know. Josephus claims that 1,100,000 people were killed during the siege, and that a majority were Jewish, and that 97,000 of them were captured and enslaved. Quoting says, a slaughter within was even more dreadful than the spectacle from without. Men and women, old and young, insurgents and priests, those who fought and those who treated mercy, were hewed down in indiscriminate carnage. The number of the slain exceeded that of the slayers. The legionnaires had to clamor over heaps of the dead to carry out the work of extermination. Now this is what Christ was talking about. This is what he prophesied. This is why he lamented over the city of Jerusalem.

Many fled to areas around the Mediterranean. Titus reportedly refused to accept a wreath of victory, as there was no merit in vanquished people forsaken by their God, he said. So he looked upon the Jewish people as being forsaken by their God at that time.

And God did withdraw his protection and allow that to take place. Now we know that the church, shortly before this, was warned to flee. And the church fled to Pella. And so when all of this carnage took place, God protected the church in Pella. The nation underwent a horrible devastation. That was the dry time that Jesus Christ was referring to. The hard times that were going to come. The difficult times that they were going to be faced with. And even though today we're faced with problems as a church, we're faced with problems even as a nation and as a people, we have not yet come to what the Bible would describe as the dry would or the dry times. In Matthew 10 and beginning of verse 16, Jesus Christ prophesied again of what is going to happen here in the future. What we will see before us. Verse 16, Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents, harmless as doves. But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to the councils. They will scourge you in their synagogues. You will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, as a testimony to them and for the Gentiles and to the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, do not worry about how or what you should speak, for it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you. Christ did not promise that everybody would be totally protected from this, that some would be brought before kings and rulers, the Apostle Paul being an example of that and what happened to him. Now, brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father, his child, and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. So a time when families will be divided and when people will turn on their own families. And you will be hated by all for my namesake, but he who endures to the end, he says, will be saved. Now in verse 23, when they persecute you in this city, flee to another.

Now that happened, as we read back in Acts 8, they were scattered. They were being persecuted in Jerusalem. So they scattered, and they went into Samaria and many other areas preaching the gospel. So even though things are not pleasant today, even though the church, as I said, is faced with problems, a nation is faced with problems, not everybody in this country is prospering the way that they'd like. We're still living in the green times, as far as the analogy that Christ mentioned. There is coming a time of trouble on our nation, a time of trouble on the church. In Jeremiah 30, Jeremiah describes it in this way, Jeremiah chapter 30, beginning in verse 4.

When he says, now these are the words that the Lord spoke concerning Israel and Judah. Thus says the Lord, verse 5, For we have heard a voice, a trembling, of fear, and not of peace. Ask now and see whether a man is ever in labor with child. So why do I see every man with his hands on these loins like a woman in labor? And all faces turn pale. It says, the last for that day is great, so that none is like it. So there's coming a day without parallel in history, and it's called here, it is the time of Jacob's trouble.

But he shall be saved out of it. So it doesn't mean he won't go into it, but he will be saved out of it in the future. So there is coming a time of trouble that has never been such before. Now we could go through any number of scriptures where the Bible describes what happens where a third of people die in famine, a third die in the Holocaust, a third are taken captive, a tenth are left alive. Nationally, today, we're faced with economic problems, moral problems, and difficulties. And the Bible indicates that unless we as a nation repent, unless we change, unless we mend our ways, that those problems are going to escalate and finally will lead to what is known as the Tribulation, the time of trouble on Jacob. Backing up to Isaiah 1, beginning in verse 2, Isaiah 1-2 describes the sins of our people. It is a very clear description of some of the problems and difficulties that we see that we're faced with today that are going to exacerbate, that are going to multiply, intensify, get worse. Isaiah 1, beginning in verse 2, Here, O heavens, give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. So God says, looking at our people, they've rebelled against me. Remember last week I read from the book concerning what our forefathers said about religion. This nation was based, the Constitution was written, and a number of the early documents were written, based upon the fact that the early founders of this nation believed in God. They believed in what they called natural law, which is what they would look and call, we would call today, the spiritual law of God. And they believed in that, and as time has gone on, we find today in this country that we have gotten further and further away from that. And today in school you can't even bring a Bible, you can't talk about God in a sense of religion, you can discuss religion as a class project, you can talk about Hinduism, you can talk about Shintoism, you can talk about Islam, Confuciusism, and so on, but you can't discuss Christianity. So God says they rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner, the donkey its master's crib, but Israel does not know. My people do not consider. Alas, God says, a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are corruptors, they have forsaken the Lord. And that describes what's occurring within our nation, that many are forsaking God. They have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel. They've turned away backwards.

Why should you be stricken again, God says? Why should you go into tribulation or captivity? You will revolt more and more. Then He says, the whole head is sick, comparing the nation to a body. The head would be the leaders and those who are directing them. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. They have not been closed up or bound up or sued with ointment. Your country is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire.

Strangers devour your land and your presence, and it is desolate and overthrown by strangers. So the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a hut in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city.

Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us a very small remnant, we should have been like Sodom. We would have been like Gomorrah. So God is describing the destruction, that there is only going to be a small remnant left. In verse 10, He says, Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom, give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah. And again, God is describing the makeup of our peoples and how we have turned away from God His laws in His way of life. And we practice things that God says should not be practiced. Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 28, explains that God gives time of repentance. When God sees our people drifting into sin, racing into sin, He doesn't just immediately come down and, boom, punish us. He gives us time of repentance. But there comes a time when we have to change. There comes a time when God maybe removes blessings, He removes various things from us. And if our nation does not heed, then national captivity will occur. Now, the Bible clearly also illustrates that there's going to come a future time of trouble for the church likewise. Let's go over to the book of Daniel. The book of Daniel. And we'll turn to chapter 11, beginning in verse 32. Daniel 11, verse 32. Now, I know here we're also dealing with a duality. It says, And then it goes on to talk about, So, we discover that there are those who understand who will fall. And that can be applied. I think it was applied back during the time of Antigas, Epithanes, the Maccabean, the Jewish leaders at that time. And certainly, I think, has an application here at the end time. So, rather than everywhere you read in the Bible, you find that if our nation does not repent, that there will be national captivity.

And that we, as a church, must likewise be careful. Let's go over to 1 Timothy 4, 1 Timothy 4, beginning in verse 1. It says, So, we have lived to see, especially back in 1995, many who have walked away from the church, walked away from what they believed, walked away from the Sabbath and the Holy Days, and returned, just like the Bible says in Peter, like a sow returning to a wallow or a dog returning to its vomit. God says that if we know the right way, we give it up, we go back to what we believed before. Those are not my analogies. Those are the analogies that God has given, that this is the way He describes it. Let's go over to 2 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, chapter 2. Here's a whole chapter that reveals at the end time what will happen.

Again, we've got to be careful that we are not taken in by these types of deceptions. The Apostle Paul had to defend himself here, because as he reiterates here, there were those who were writing letters claiming that they came from Paul, when they didn't come from Paul. Notice what he says, Now brethren, concerning the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, so this is talking about Christ's second coming, in our gathering together to Him, you can go back to Matthew 24, where it talks about when Christ comes, He'll circle the earth like lightning, going from the east to the west, and He will gather, you know, His flock together. They'll meet Him in the air. He says, We are not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled either by spirit, or by word, or by letter, as from us. So, you know, there were some who were writing, saying, well, this is from Paul, as though the day of Christ had come. Because verse 3, he says, Let no one deceive you by any means. For that day, the day of Christ, will not come, unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.

So verse 4, I think, certainly ties in with what we read back in the book of Daniel. And Daniel 11 also ties in with Daniel the 9th chapter, ties in with Revelation 13. If you want to put all those scriptures together. Now Paul says in verse 5, he says, Do you not remember that when I was still with you, I told you these things? And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. So there was a specific time that this man of sin, man of perdition, would be revealed. And it was not at that time. Because he goes on to say, For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with his breath of his mouth. So this lawless one, who is claiming that he is God, is going to be at the end time when Jesus Christ will come back, and Christ will deal with him personally. He says, The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders. So he is going to come along and perform signs and wonders, and people will be deceived by it.

And then he goes on to talk about, And so the Apostle Paul showed that at the end time, that there is going to be a false prophet that will rise up, who will have a major influence in this world, who will deceive people, there will be the false prophet, and there will be the great political leader that will rise up in Europe. And they will be working together, one with another.

In Luke 21, verse 7, Luke 21 is a parallel chapter to Matthew 24, Mark 14.

Luke 21, beginning here in verse 7, we read, Take heed, that you not be deceived, for many will come in my name, saying, I am he. And the time is drawn near, therefore do not go after them. So there have been all kinds of people come along setting dates, saying that Christ was going to return on such and such a date.

Then he talks about wars and rumors of war, and the nation will rise against nation. Verse 11, great earthquakes, pestilence. Verse 12, But before all these things they will lay hands on you. See, before all of these things come to a climax, he says, they're going to lay hands on you, talking about the true servants of God.

Persecute you, deliver you up to the synagogue and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and rulers for my name's sake.

And it will turn out for you for an occasion to testify.

And then he says, don't meditate. God will give you what to say.

In verse 16, you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers and relatives, friends, and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all for my name's sake, but not a hair of your head shall be lost. By your patience possess your soul, he says. Then in verse 34, take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be weighed down with carousing. Now here's the warning to us at the end time.

Take heed, he says. Be careful. Lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and the cares of this life. And that day come on you unexpectedly.

For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch, therefore. This is a scripture we've quoted many times. Watch, 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.

Brethren, the days of the dry wood are coming.

And we need to be prepared.

They're coming on the world.

You go back to Jeremiah, the 25th chapter, and you'll find that God talks about a time of trouble that's going to come on the whole world.

He says it will go from nation to nation. The whole nation, you know, country will be devastated by it. We find that it's going to come upon the nations of Israel, the time of Jacob's trouble. And it's also going to come on the church. In Revelation 12, Revelation 12, we're all familiar with the history here of the church. In Revelation 12, Revelation 12, 13, there's going to come a time here in the future when Satan the Devil is going to come down against the church in a very hateful way. He says, When the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child.

But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle, and she might fly into the wilderness to her place where she's nourished for a time, that's a year, times, probably a couple years, three years, and a half a time, three and a half years from the presence of the serpent. So wherever this is, wherever God takes his church for three and a half years, they're going to be protected from the presence of the serpent. So the serpent spewed water out of his mouth like a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood.

That could be a literal flood, or it could be an army. In the Old Testament, water is used many times for an army. We read here, The earth helped the woman, the earth opened its mouth, swallowed up the flood, which the dragon spewed out of his mouth. And the dragon was enraged with the woman. Brethren, Satan hates God's people. Satan hates and detests what we're doing, because he knows one day we will supersede him. That God is offering to us something that he never offered to the angels, and the fact that we can be a part of his family, and that he will give us eternal life.

And he knows that eventually we are going to judge angels likewise. So the dragon was enraged with the woman. He went to make war with the rest of her offspring. So not everybody goes to this place. It says, Who keeps the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. So there are some who still keep the commandments, still have the testimony, and yet they will go, will be left behind, and have to be persecuted. In Revelation chapter 3 and verse 10, Revelation 3.10, we find that when you look at Revelation 2 and 3, the seven churches here, that there's a group that God promises to protect in the future.

And it's talking about the same period of time, because He says here, Because you have kept My commandment to persevere, or to endure, remain faithful, to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial, which shall come upon the whole world. This isn't just something happening in Jerusalem or Judea or the U.S., but something is going to come upon the whole world to test those who dwell on the earth. He says, Behold, I am coming quickly. Hold fast that you have, and no man take your crown. So again, we find the promise of protection here in the future.

And yet, if you'll drop down here to verse 14, here's another group that you find. The angel to the church in Laodicea. And God says in verse 15, I know your works, that you're neither cold nor hot. I would that you were cold nor hot. Because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I'll vomit you out of my mouth. Because you say, I'm rich. Now, I want you to notice here, it's not just talking physically about people having money. You say, I'm rich.

In other words, rich spiritually. I become wealthy. I am need of nothing. And do not know that you are what? Wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. So he's talking about spiritual qualities here. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire. Tie this in with 1 Corinthians 3, where we find if we build on the foundation, gold, silver, precious stone, it will endure what hay and stubble has burned up. So he says, you've got to go out, go through the fire, fire being a symbol of tribulation, trial, testing, so that you can be refined.

Then he says, as many as I love, I rebuke and chasten, therefore be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come to him, dying with him and he with me. Brethren, have we ever stopped to think about Jesus Christ at the end time, looking at his church, who's standing there knocking? He's standing there wanting to, if you want to say, come in as it talks about here, I stand at the door and knock.

That we have to hear his voice. How do we hear his voice? This is his voice. This is his message. This is what he's trying to get through to us, his word, the scriptures, how to live, how we should treat one another, how we should approach life.

And if we read this, as I read to you last week, if we build on a rock, we will stand. If we build on the sand, we won't. And so, this is in essence saying the same thing. That he's knocking, he's saying, look at yourself, evaluate yourself. All of us need to look at ourselves and make sure that we are right with God. And we all have faults. We all make mistakes.

We're all wrong. We need to change where we see our human flaws. And God will be with us. So, brethren, it's up to us to change. And it's up to us to obey God and follow Him with our whole heart. You'll find in all of these messages to the seven churches, God says, I know your works. And then He begins to describe their deficiencies, their good works, bad works. We all are to have works. Good works towards one another, but I think works also includes what we call doing the work, proclaiming the gospel. So, brethren, we need to listen.

We need to pay attention to the Scriptures. And again, not just here, it's not the hearers, but the doers who will be justified. God is looking for those who will do. So it is interesting that Jesus Christ, shortly before He was crucified, turned around and told the women following Him, don't weep for me. WEEP for yourselves, because if this is happening during what He called the green tree, guess what's going to happen during the dry?

We could say the same thing. Even though things aren't that great for many in this country, maybe many of us, you are struggling. This is still as far as the nation is concerned. And even with the church, this is the green time. This is the time that God gives us to do something. God gives us time to change. He gives us time to grow.

He gives us time to obey Him. But there will come a time, the dry time, when that will be over, and when God will begin to punish the nations, this nation, and He will have to deal with those who have not listened. So let's all make sure that we do pay attention, that we listen, and that we respond when Christ knocks.