As In the Days of Lot

One of the things that I mention to those that speak here in Garden Grove, in Orange County, or other places, on the importance of speaking on timely topics that people are thinking about. That's why we always talk about knowing your audience. The principle is found in Matthew 24, verse 45. It says, Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season? Now, of course, this is given in antiquated language, but there is a clearer meaning. For instance, the Passion Translation, modern version of it, it says, Who is the one qualified to oversee the master's house? He will be a reliable servant who is wise and faithful, one he can depend on. The master will want to give him the responsibility of overseeing others in his house, for his servant will lead them well and give them food at the right time. So, we know it's important to look at the times we're living in, not always have to talk about modern times. We always divide speaking into three main sections, which has to do with doctrine, Christian living, and prophecy. This one's about prophecy, because there's a lot on our plate right now. Notice in 2 Timothy 4, verses 1-4, what Paul told Timothy to preach about, and how to preach. This is a good model for those who do speaking. 2 Timothy 4, verses 1-4. It says, I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice there's no Holy Spirit, never a third person. One message that I want to give about how in the Bible itself there is not one person that writes in a Trinitarian mentality. None of them. They always bring up God the Father, Jesus Christ, but no one else there on the throne. It says, Who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom? Preach the Word. Talk about God's Word. Be ready in season and out of season. Be ready in a moment's notice, if necessary. Convince, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and teaching. Many times you have to have patience, dedication, perseverance. He says, For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine. Talking about church brethren in church. They will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers. They will start listening to what they want to hear, not what God's Word says. And they will turn their ears away from the truth, which was brought up in the first message, and be turned aside to fables, myths, falsehoods. This season is based on two falsehoods. One is Christmas, which is not the time when Christ was born. In the Bible, it never tells us anything about this time of the season. And then we have the New Year's celebration, which was the old pagan Roman holiday. And so it's a season that is filled with fables, and it says to us that persevere in God's Word.

Now, Jesus Christ mentioned about worsening world conditions before His coming. Notice in Matthew 24, Matthew 24, in verse 12.

This is called the Olivet prophecy because it was given at the Mount of Olives. And He said it in verse 12. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. So Christ predicted before His coming that iniquity, as other translations have it, sin in others. Because that's what it means from the Greek anomia, which means the breaking of God's laws. So as the breaking of God's laws become more prevalent, a lot of people, the brethren, they're going to get more lukewarm in their faith. They're not going to have the spiritual strength necessary. Then He says, verse 13, But he who endures or perseveres to the end shall be saved. He's the one, or she is the one, that God is going to save and bless as well. And so I'd like to focus, like I said, this sermon on prophecy, in Luke 17, verse 28.

Luke 17, verse 28.

Christ describing again His return. And He says, Remember Lot lived in Sodom, which was a very corrupt city that was destroyed by God. And He says, as in the days of Lot, they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built. In other words, nobody paid any attention to the warning signs. Nobody was concerned about the multiplication of sin in the area, except for Lot and his family. But on the day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.

So what were some of these characteristics of the city of Sodom in particular? Gamora was another one that was close by, and then there were a couple more in that plain. It's interesting to see the underlying conditions that are described by the Bible. Notice in Ezekiel 16, Ezekiel 16, and verse 49. Ezekiel 16, verse 49, he says, Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom, because they lived pretty close to that city. She and her daughters, and here are six characteristics, had pride, so they didn't want to be corrected. They were very proud. They had a lot of prosperity. Things were going very well. And they didn't want to hear anything about God's laws or the sin that was rampant in the city. It had fullness of food. So in this beautiful plain, watered by the Jordan River, they had crops, and they exported, and they had money to spare, and plenty to eat, wine to drink, and abundance of idleness. So because they didn't have to work as hard, because they had very fertile land, and things were just growing, and people had a lot of time on their hands, and they started looking for other things to do.

Neither did they strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. They didn't think about those that were less well-off. People were in that customary rat race, trying to get to the top, the top dog as far as money, power, influence. And they were haughty. So again, it's repeated, that attitude, where they didn't want to be corrected, they didn't want to change their lifestyle, you couldn't do anything about that, and committed abomination before me. And so, abomination has to do with those perverted sex sins they were creating. And then, it says, therefore I took them away as I saw fit. God's judgment finally came down on them. So when Christ said that, as in the days of Lot, so will it be in the days when Jesus Christ is going to return to the earth, He's warning us. It was going to be a time where we do have abundance of bread, we do have idleness, people don't have to work and slave away as they did 100 years ago. And people have a lot of distractions, and of course, money becomes a God to so many. And so, you start seeing the same conditions for a corruption of society. I watched a documentary about the fall of Rome, and one of the series mentioned about Nero and how things got so corrupted. And I was impressed with what the historian said. He said, first comes moral corruption, and then comes political corruption. So as corruption becomes more widespread, then it infects everything. And you see more political corruption as a result.

So we are experiencing the same conditions as those in the time of Sodom, as in the time of Rome. And COVID is appearing to be more like a biblical plague as punishment for sins. Now again, we can't say that it is one of those conditions that triggers the return of Jesus Christ. But we have to be aware this is a very unusual year, and this COVID plague has not diminished. It has increased. People thought things were going to diminish, and they haven't. Actually, COVID appeared over a year ago, December 16, 2019. It appeared at Wuhan, China. That's when they started going to the hospital. And guess what? A year later, it has infected 80 million people around the world. And it is close to having killed 2 million people. Right now it's 1.75. But they project. It will pretty soon rise to 2 million. It's causing economic and social havoc around the world. Governments are having to invest and take money out where they don't have it. They're talking about inflation coming back. Here's a magazine of the economists last week. Will inflation return? The great danger. Because you're multiplying. And remember, true economy is based on mathematical laws. And you can't just push it so far. And that rubber band, you stretch it far enough, it's going to burst. It's going to break. So that's a big concern. That economic situation. Countries are suffering enormously. Africa now is starting to multiply its cases. So there's going to be famine. There's going to be a lot of economic distress. There's going to be tension among the nations. All of these things are happening before our eyes. And we have to see. Is this a momentary situation? Will COVID just come and eventually go? And we get back to a normal period for a time? Or are we going to see other earth-shaking events happening in the future? Only God knows. And He said He would reveal it to His servants, the prophets. And those are now part of God's Church. And He will reveal in the future. Right now we're all being tested about our faithfulness. Now, does God sometimes deal with sin through plagues? Having plagues appear? Yes, He has. Notice in Genesis 15, talking about sin abounding, it happened over in ancient Canaan as well. In Genesis 15, verse 15, Abraham was told by God, Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried at a good old age. But in the fourth generation, they shall return here. Now, one thing you can notice is that God told Abraham, you're going to die, and you're going to be gathered with your fathers, as I mentioned in a message before. Nothing about, hey Abraham, you're going to go up to heaven now. You're going to be here with me. Yeah. You have an immortal soul that we're going to be able to greet you in heaven. No? He says, you are going to go to your fathers in peace. Fathers are buried. And then it says, but in the fourth generation, talking about His descendants, they shall return here to the land of Canaan. For the iniquity of the Amorites, which are the Canaanites, in other words, for them, is not yet complete. So God was giving time to the Canaanites to see if they would repent so that judgment wouldn't fall on all of them. But He said that it would take about four generations for that judgment to come on the land of Canaan.

Of course, that happened when Moses and the Israelites were given the Promised Land, because the Canaanites were the ones that disqualified themselves from it. Notice in Duraami 28, verse 21. Duraami 28, verse 21. It says, The Lord will make the plague cling to you until He has consumed you from the land which you are going to possess. In verse 15 He explains why. It says, And one of the things will be plagues, which are these epidemics, like the one we are experiencing.

Also in 2 Chronicles 6, this is the prayer by King Solomon. As He inaugurated the temple, He prayed before God, the dedicatory address, and He said in verse 28, 2 Chronicles 6.

It says, So we see, that is one of the ways that God is going to be able to live. So we see, that is one of the ways that God gets people's attention. And God warns the entire earth that if we continue sinning and forgetting about obeying God's laws, there's going to be a curse that will fall upon the earth. Notice in Malachi chapter 4, starting in verse 4, it says, Now remember, God was there in Horeb. This is Mount Sinai. He gave to Moses the commandments. And then Moses gave them to the people.

He says, He says, There's going to be a message, and this could have to do with the two witnesses that appear. It can also be before that time. We don't know. But there will be a warning to the world. And He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.

And so it's very important what family is about. Turning the hearts of the children to the fathers, instead of turning the hearts of the children to the world and letting the world dictate the values of the children. No, they should look at their parents, at their family, keep that family structure intact, and then create your own family structure when you get a chance. When you marry, if you have children or not, whatever it is.

But God wants the family to persevere because He knows that's where the lasting values, where a family is just completely torn up and broken up and children don't have fathers or mothers to teach them and they have society do it. That's the grave danger. And God says if He sees that the family structure is deteriorating, being destroyed, He is going to curse this earth. One of the examples that really upset me when I started reading this happened to be in The Economist magazine of all places.

The Economist is a serious magazine. It analyzes world conditions. It's been around for a whole hundred and fifty years or so. A British publication, more serious than any American publication. It mentioned about what's going on with girls that are teenagers and how so many of them are being trapped and deceived through the Internet and YouTube videos. A whole culture that tells them that, well, if maybe you don't feel too comfortable with your body and you should change your sex and start getting involved and getting all these hormonal treatments.

This has become a scandal just in the past month or so. I just finished reading a book called, Irreversible Damage, The Transgender Craz, Seducing Our Daughters. The author here, I'm going to bring her name up in a moment, but she was so concerned she investigated what was going on. It was flying under the radar. The media wasn't picking it up. It wasn't something well known.

The author mentions that transgender clinics in the United States went from one in 2007, now there are 50 transgender clinics, and through such acts as the Affordable Care Act and others, children can get free hormonal treatment. They can get hormonal blockers that block the puberty period in their lives.

All of this, which is quite expensive, now it's all under the Equality Act, that insurance who provide such services as hormone treatments for women, well, if a person comes and says, well, I feel I need to be a transgender, they get paid all the hormonal treatment. These are many times children, 12, 13, 14 years old. They have no idea what they're getting themselves into. There used to be like 0.01% of the population that was transgender.

That's like one in every 10,000 people. There were almost all boys at that time before 2012. Now, three-fourths of the one having all of these changes to their sex, they are girls under the age of 18 years old. What happened? Author Abigail Schreyer mentions the results. Between 2009 and 2017, the number of high schoolers who contemplated suicide increased by 25%. The number of teens diagnosed with clinical depression grew 37% between 2005 and 2014.

This trend is growing. The number of teens diagnosed with clinical depression grew 37%. And the worst hit experiencing depression at a rate three times that of boys were teenage girls. That's what is being affected the most. Now, in the U.S., they calculate around 3% of the 20 million teens say they are transgender or they're not so sure what their sex is. That is close to 60,000 girls. And she documents in her book the main reasons. First, the smartphones the kids carry around. She quotes this author, Twenge, in the magazine The Atlantic. It says, it's not an exaggeration to describe iGen.

That's the new generation. That's a generation born after the iPhone in 2007. They're called iGens. As being on the brink of the worst mental health crisis in decades, much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones. The iPhone was released in 2007. By 2018, a decade later, 95% of teens had access to a smartphone and 45% reported being online almost constantly. Common Sense Media had a poll and found that the average teen is on the phone nine hours a day looking at all of this media stuff.

Nine hours. That's more than a full working day. And, of course, they can fall into the evil side of the Internet where they have all of these transgender sites and all of these people promoting it. The girls are losing their innocence. God created them to be pillars of family values in the home. And Satan wants more than anything else to destroy the innocence of those young girls.

To destroy the family structure, their ability to reproduce. And remember, Satan can't do that. He can't reproduce. He is sexless. And he resents that. The Bible highlights the importance of girls with their innocence until marriage. The importance of it. That used to be the norm. Notice in Deuteronomy 22, where God's law about virgin girls is mentioned. Deuteronomy 22, verse 17. Let's start here in verse 13. It says, Normally that had to do with clothing, with the menstrual cycle of the woman.

To show that she still was not pregnant. It says, Now he has charged her. Well, verse 16. And the young woman's father shall say to the elders, I gave my daughter to this man as wife, and he detest her. Now he has charged her with shameful conduct of not being a virgin, saying, I found your daughter was not a virgin.

And yet these are the evidences of my daughter's virginity. And you had to show that the woman basically had never had sexual relations. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. Again, that the woman had regular menstruations, and that there was no pregnancies or anything like that. Then the elders of the city shall take the man and punish him, and they shall find him one hundred shekels of silver.

That's a lot of money. And give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought a bad name on a virgin of Israel. And she shall be his wife. He cannot divorce her all his days. In other words, he already went into her, and nobody else was going to marry her. So he was obligated to take care of her. But if the thing is true, and evidences of virginity are not found for the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house.

And the men of the city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done a disgraceful thing in Israel to play the harlot in her father's house. So you shall put away the evil from among you. Of course, there had to be a very serious punishment, so that all of this immorality would not multiply like it has today. And that today it's not looked at as any problems at all. But it undermines the family structure. God cares so much, because he is a family. He's going to bring children into his kingdom, and he compares the church to a bride chase that will marry Jesus Christ. And so he's still thinking about family.

And when you undermine that, about the young girl's innocence, you are destroying a basic foundation of family life. Now that doesn't mean, of course, that you can't go forward and do your best, and families, just like all sin, can be forgiven, and a person can change and repent. But it's still a fact that those who remain virgins until marriage are the ones that have the best relationships, because they don't have any other people to think about. But again, God is not looking so much at the person as he is the family structure, which is being undermined and destroyed like never before.

And so parents know the dangers of that evil side of the Internet. There's a good side to the Internet. It's a wonderful source, like an encyclopedia. They've got many good things, but there's also the other side, the corrupt things. They can corrupt a child or a teen, and some politicians, the schools, especially here in California. It's awful to read about how they're promoting a lot of these changes in sex, and beginning at kindergarten level.

They start questioning the child and causing doubt. What are they? Whether they're sure they're a boy or a girl, and then all of these ideas start. I was watching a video about the Bible, and it brought out the point. One of the scholars mentioning how authentic the Bible is, and he brings out the point that Satan has the old method that is tried and true, from the Garden of Eden to today. What are the three things that Satan always has as a technique, as a strategy? First, cast doubt on God's Word, on His laws, on His truths.

Don't attack it so much. Just bring in doubt. Are you sure about this? Because once doubt settles in, then the second step is unbelief. You start saying, well, hey, I don't believe this anymore. Then comes the third step, which is disobedience. Then you start disregarding God's laws, but it always starts with doubt. Then unbelief, and finally disobedience. That's what we're seeing in society today. The tipping point, which is becoming more and more clear, was in 2015, dealing with the sexual identity of people when the Supreme Court ruled that, hey, you have to accept all of these different, first of all, gay marriages.

Of course, it wasn't just that. Now you've got transgender marriages. You've got all of this slew of different genders. Of course, at that time, the administration of that day just celebrated. People just said, well, what can we do? In these past five years, it hasn't only been warp speed that they've developed a lot of these vaccines. It's been warp speed as far as the degeneration of morality that has happened.

I'll never forget when I asked a member here, he was a World War II veteran, passed away a couple years ago, Wade Nelson. I used to like to take him to lunch, and I asked him after this 2015 ruling by the Supreme Court, Wade, what is it that has impacted you most in your entire life as far as society? He said the ruling in 2015 was a shocker. I was talking this week with a widow who is a minister's wife.

The minister died years ago, and she says, I can't recognize my country anymore. This doesn't look like my country. What is going on? It's like they've kidnapped the country. It's become something different. And of course, the next step, this next year, they want to have the Equality Act passed, which means all genders have all rights. You can't question anything. Businesses have to accept whatever it is in this way, and it is perpetrating the breaking of God's laws, based on the Seventh Commandment, about regulating the relationships between a man and a woman.

There is some good news, though, just like in this edition of The Economist, that I brought out December 12th to the 18th of this year. And that is that in England, there was a young lady that went to one of these gender clinics around the age of 14 or 15. And at that time, many times, boys and girls, they get confused. They're trying to develop their sexual identity. And this person went, and it was a young girl. And she said, well, I'm having these issues. I don't know exactly how I feel in my body. And of course, they've been looking at YouTube videos and transgenders and all these people that promote it.

And finally convinced the person to go ahead. And they supplied them with all of these puberty blockers, and the hormones to change the person to a male. But what happened? When this girl got to be about 19, 20, she repented and said, this is not what I want. And so now she sued the gender clinic because they had not explained the alternatives. They just went ahead and said, oh, this is what you want? Well, the government is paying for this. And you can have all of these operations and hormones.

And guess what? The ruling just came out last week. And the judge ruled in the girl's favor and said, these clinics did not really warn her of everything that was going to happen. And so now, as on page 60, they actually had two articles dealing with this subject. I'd like to read here what it says. First of all, in Canada, which is very liberal, they've got also these hormonal treatments. Operations are basically free for these young kids. It says, some parents in Quebec, which has its own curriculum in school, are also objecting to some of these teachings.

When Catherine, a consultant, asked to see the content of her six-year-old sex education class in here, kindergarten, the school refused to show them what they were teaching the children. So, she made a freedom of information request. It turned out teachers are told that, quote, children can begin to explore their gender identity between the ages of three and seven, and that sex is, quote, assigned, in other words, something that you have to figure out, at birth, rather than observed.

Instead of seeing what sex a person is, no, you eventually have to be assigned by someone else. It goes on to say here, after this ruling in England against the gender clinic, I think there is going to be an avalanche of lawsuits, says Diana Kinney, recently retired professor of psychology at the University of Sydney, but they won't be in time to save a generation of adolescents who have been wrongly diagnosed as being trans or transgender. So this is what's happening before our eyes.

So what can we do in the midst of this Sodom and Gomorrah society, especially seducing teenage innocent girls? First, let's always look at Matthew 6, verse 33. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. So get your priorities straight and teach them to your children. What are those priorities, according to the Bible? First, God and your life. Put God first. After all, you pray to God. You don't pray to your parents, do you? Because God is above your parents. Put God first in His word, His way of life.

And that's what's going to straighten out most things in life. You're going to have a trustworthy guide to your decisions. If you use God's word and you ask God for wisdom and guidance. Number two, family and health. That should be the second thing. Concern yourself, put in your family and your health in second position.

Thirdly, is the church, the brethren, our spiritual family. Fourthly, friends, community, and the rest of the world. Serve them after you've served all these others. As myself, what is so important? God, my wife, my four daughters, my ten grandchildren. That's where I focus. And then the church.

Take care of the church. Afterwards, friends and community and everybody else. But it's so important to have that family structure in place. Secondly, let's read Ephesians 5 and verse 15. Ephesians 5 and verse 15. It says, See then that you walk circumspectly, in other words, carefully, wisely, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, taking advantage of it, using it well, because the days are evil. Society is evil. Don't let it corrupt you. Therefore, do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

And we can look at that in God's word. So, for parents, wisely monitor what your children are seeing on the Internet. I now know that you can have some apps that will actually alert parents if children are going into some wrong websites. Thirdly, make your home fun for kids. Participate with them.

Give them challenges. Teach them about God's word. Teach them sports. Get out there. Help them. Be involved. I love to teach my grandkids a little bit about tennis, and that's a way of bonding with them. It can be any sport. It can be any game. It can be a household game that you play with. But be involved. Be there for them. It says in Ecclesiastes 11, 9-10, in the Good News Bible version, Young people, enjoy your youth. Be happy while you are still young.

Do what you want to do, and follow your heart's desire. In other words, the goals that you set. But remember that God is going to judge you for whatever you do. Don't let anything worry you or cause you pain. You aren't going to be young very long. So take advantage, and the family is so important.

Finally, fourth point, pray every day, thy kingdom come. Who knows? Maybe this COVID plague could be the beginning of birth pangs of a coming kingdom. Only God knows. He will reveal it to the church when it's time. We don't know if we have years ahead, and this is just a momentary glitch, or if it is something that is going to be the beginning of the birth pangs. I'd like to end with that scripture in Matthew 24, verses 7-8, in the Passion translation.

Modern translation. It says, in the end time, it says, quote, nations will go to war against each other, and kingdom against kingdom. I don't know how many of you have been reading about Russia and China setting up a military alliance between the two. That could certainly be Gog and Magog in the future. Again, that was an area where those ancient countries lived, but they're seriously talking about setting up a military alliance. It goes on to say, and there will be terrible earthquakes, seismic events of epic proportions.

Scientists say that the earthquakes have increased in frequency and intensity in the past 50 years. Then it goes on to say, horrible epidemics and famines in place after place. This is a horrible epidemic. Famines? I just read. What about the locust plague that was invading East Africa? Well, it's going down to the southern part of Africa now. All of these places are causing famine, causing all kinds of drought, and they don't have enough to eat.

Then it finalizes with this phrase, this is how the first contractions and birth pangs of the New Age will begin. Remember, what we're looking at is the beginning of the end of this society, but the beginning also of the future society that Christ is going to bring. That brings us hope. If we have to enter this time tunnel of three and a half years, so be it.

But there is that light at the end of the tunnel, and that's the light of Jesus Christ in His return in glory and majesty. Let's do what we can to save our children from this modern Sodom. What it has to be. Remember, lots days as it was then.