THE END IS JUST THE BEGINNING

#1 · September 9, 2008, 3:29 pm

Quote from Forum Archives on September 9, 2008, 3:29 pm
Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>
THE END IS JUST THE BEGINNING

September 7, 2008

TEXT: Revelation 22:7-21

Last month, I began showing the video companion to the book Epicenter by Joel C. Rosenberg. Joel is a Jewish Christian who has written the fiction novels The Last Jihad, The Last Days, The Ezekiel Option, and The Copper Scroll. Each of these novels have caught the attention of several high ranking American and international political figures because of the eerily uncanny way that Joel has been able to almost predict events. For instance, Joel explains in Epicenter that on the morning of September 11, 2001, he was putting the finishing touches on my first novel, a political thriller called The Last Jihad, which opens with radical Islamic terrorists hijacking a jet plane and flying an attack mission into an American city. (Joel C. Rosenberg, Epicenter, Tyndale, 2006, p. 1) In The Ezekiel Option, he also wrote about a dictator rising to power in Russia, Iran building nuclear weapons, and then Russia and Iran forming a military alliance in which they vowed that Israel will be wiped off the face of the map forever. He wrote all of this before Ahmadinejad, the current president of Iran, came into power. (Joel C. Rosenberg, Epicenter, Tyndale, 2006, p. xv) One can see, then, how Joel Rosenberg has captured the attention of more than a few world leaders and diplomats.

Naturally, one of the burning questions that they eagerly seek to have answered by Joel is, How did you come to write about such events before any of it happened? Rosenberg is forthright in his answer: It comes from the Jewish Scriptures, the book of Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39. Its what many refer to as the War of Gog and Magog. ((Joel C. Rosenberg, Epicenter, Tyndale, 2006, p. xv) Rosenberg subsequently wrote Epicenter as an explanation of how he came to write his previous fiction novels and to answer questions that have been raised from the novels and the prophecies upon which they are based.

Joel Rosenberg is hardly the first author to ponder Scriptural prophecies such as are found in Ezekiel and apply them to current events through works of fiction or non-fiction or both. Some authors, like Rosenberg, have an above average knack of discerning Biblical prophecies and current events and, along with his personal experiences and insights, combining them into plots that come amazingly true. Rosenberg makes no claims that his observations are meant to be predictive, or that we are now living in the Biblical end times, but he does create an environment that has caused a lot of people both Christian and non-Christian to pause and consider the implications that are raised. Are we living in the final days leading up to the second coming of Christ?

Ezekiel, of course, is not the only book of end times prophecy of the Bible. Nearly the entire book of Revelation is devoted to apocalyptic descriptions of the years leading to the final return of the Lord and the establishment of His eternal kingdom. Twice in the final chapter of Revelation, Jesus declares, Behold, I am coming soon! And in the next to the last verse, he states, Yes, I am coming soon. Are we living in the final days leading up to the second coming of Christ?

I have not been gifted with anywhere near the insights exhibited by Rosenberg, and I am unable to connect the dots as well as he has done. So, in all honesty, I have no idea how close we are to those final end times. I readily admit that it appears that quite a few prophecies, as explained by various Biblical scholars, are falling into place and being fulfilled today. I am equally aware that many other periods of history have had critical, earth-shaking events that have made believers think that their generation would experience the return of Christ. Jesus made the bold claim, Behold, I am coming soon! But he also made that declaration to believers about two thousand years ago. That leaves a lot of room for speculation.

Although I do think that it is always relevant and appropriate to evaluate current events in light of Scripture, it is not my purpose this morning to try to explain whether or not we are living in the final days of Biblical prophecy. As I have said already, a lot of events are happening that fit with the prophecies. At the same time, I know that no scholar, no matter how diligent and sincere, has yet figured out every detail of prophecys meaning. There could be some keys to the puzzle that remain unknown for hundreds of years yet.

What the Bible makes clear is that Christ will return to this world and that the time leading up to his return are what we know as the end times. It is also known as the day of the Lord. Almost every time that the day of the lord is mentioned by the prophets, it is accompanied with a warning. For instance, in the book of the Bible we recently began studying, the prophet Joel wrote, What a dreadful day! For the day of the Lord is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty. (Joel 1:15) The book of the Revelation is likewise filled with sobering warnings about the pending judgments. The time leading up to the return of Christ will be filled with catastrophes. People will suffer. Some will suffer because of persecution by the hands of those who hate God. Others will suffer because they are the recipients of Gods judgment. They will be times filled with terror and dread. But through it all, we will hear Jesus declare, Behold, I am coming soon!

The truth of the Revelation and all the other prophecies that God is still fulfilling is that it is not really the end. They are not really end times in the sense that once they are completed nothing follows. Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. With the Lord, the end is just the beginning.

This is why we are not to face the future with the dread of one without hope. Clearly, events will happen which will be exceedingly difficult to endure. But such things have been happening ever since the original sin of the first man and woman. Some catastrophic events, I believe, are preparations for the actual end times and the wars to come. And there is no reason for Christians to sit idly by and just wait for disaster to strike. We all have heard stories of groups of people who have left everything and gone off to await the coming of Christ. Friends, that is not a Biblical response to current events. Christians are to be proactive. We are to be actively growing in our own relationship with God, and we are to be actively engaging our neighbors with the message of Gods love. We are to continue to be beacons of light and hope in a fallen world, and we are to pursue ways of justice and peace. So at all levels of our lives personal, communal, national, and even international Christians are to continue to obey God and to make His will known. We are certainly not thwarting Gods will by seeking peace instead of war.

Nevertheless, there will come a time when the forces arrayed against God will become so overwhelming that believers will be forced to make tough choices like those experienced by other Christians in earlier time periods and even in other parts of the world in our day. We know that in places like northern Africa and the Middle East faithful Christians endure tremendous persecution for their faith. Men and women are tortured and killed; children are kidnapped and sent into slavery. Christians are not allowed to participate fully in their marketplaces, so they frequently face hunger and other deprivations. They live the lives described in Hebrews 11:35-38, Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. It is truly a sad thing to learn how terribly humans can treat one another, and it will only get worse as the end gets nearer. But we are never without hope. Hebrews 11 ends with promise: These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:39-40) The end is just the beginning.

As Christians, we clearly live in two worlds. Our relationship with God, the spiritual world, is vital. It is Gods kingdom that prevails now and forever, so it is to Him that we owe our allegiance. We owe God our very life. At the same time, we live in this present world, and we are not called to abandon it. None of the disciples abandoned it. God has not abandoned it, for it is through this present world that god will build His future world. I do not know all of the details, but He speaks of a new heaven and a new earth and a new Jerusalem. So our present home plays an important part in Gods plan.

However, we are to refrain from mistaking our present world with our future home with the Lord. We live in a finite temporal world now; we will live in Gods everlasting world in the future. This is why we have hope. This is why we have a strength to endure the struggles that come. This is why we can say with assurance that the end is just the beginning.

When it comes down to it, this is too much for me to take in. One of the most dizzying things I can do is to contemplate the full meaning of eternity. I cannot grasp it completely. To think of being free from the constraints of time and to dwell in the house of the Lord forever is, as I said, dizzying. I just have to accept it, not figure it out. It is a promise from God, and only God can fulfill it. It was in my first college math class that the reality and impact of a verse from Amazing Grace was impressed upon me. While talking about the meaning of infinite number sets, Professor Strickland made reference to the hymn, saying that its author had a good understanding of the meaning of infinity: When weve been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun, Weve no less days to sing Gods praise, Than when wed first begun.

Whether it is our generation or some subsequent generation, we will have to face our end times. But God gives us this promise: the end is just the beginning.

Rev. Charles A. Layne

First Baptist Church

PO Box 515

179 W. Broadway

Bunker Hill, IN 46914

765-689-7987

bhfbc@bhfirstbaptist.com

www.bhfirstbaptist.com
-- To unsubscribe, send ANY message to: abesermons-unsubscribe@welovegod.org   

Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>

September 7, 2008

TEXT: Revelation 22:7-21

Last month, I began showing the video companion to the book Epicenter by Joel C. Rosenberg. Joel is a Jewish Christian who has written the fiction novels The Last Jihad, The Last Days, The Ezekiel Option, and The Copper Scroll. Each of these novels have caught the attention of several high ranking American and international political figures because of the eerily uncanny way that Joel has been able to almost predict events. For instance, Joel explains in Epicenter that on the morning of September 11, 2001, he was putting the finishing touches on my first novel, a political thriller called The Last Jihad, which opens with radical Islamic terrorists hijacking a jet plane and flying an attack mission into an American city. (Joel C. Rosenberg, Epicenter, Tyndale, 2006, p. 1) In The Ezekiel Option, he also wrote about a dictator rising to power in Russia, Iran building nuclear weapons, and then Russia and Iran forming a military alliance in which they vowed that Israel will be wiped off the face of the map forever. He wrote all of this before Ahmadinejad, the current president of Iran, came into power. (Joel C. Rosenberg, Epicenter, Tyndale, 2006, p. xv) One can see, then, how Joel Rosenberg has captured the attention of more than a few world leaders and diplomats.

Naturally, one of the burning questions that they eagerly seek to have answered by Joel is, How did you come to write about such events before any of it happened? Rosenberg is forthright in his answer: It comes from the Jewish Scriptures, the book of Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39. Its what many refer to as the War of Gog and Magog. ((Joel C. Rosenberg, Epicenter, Tyndale, 2006, p. xv) Rosenberg subsequently wrote Epicenter as an explanation of how he came to write his previous fiction novels and to answer questions that have been raised from the novels and the prophecies upon which they are based.

Joel Rosenberg is hardly the first author to ponder Scriptural prophecies such as are found in Ezekiel and apply them to current events through works of fiction or non-fiction or both. Some authors, like Rosenberg, have an above average knack of discerning Biblical prophecies and current events and, along with his personal experiences and insights, combining them into plots that come amazingly true. Rosenberg makes no claims that his observations are meant to be predictive, or that we are now living in the Biblical end times, but he does create an environment that has caused a lot of people both Christian and non-Christian to pause and consider the implications that are raised. Are we living in the final days leading up to the second coming of Christ?

Ezekiel, of course, is not the only book of end times prophecy of the Bible. Nearly the entire book of Revelation is devoted to apocalyptic descriptions of the years leading to the final return of the Lord and the establishment of His eternal kingdom. Twice in the final chapter of Revelation, Jesus declares, Behold, I am coming soon! And in the next to the last verse, he states, Yes, I am coming soon. Are we living in the final days leading up to the second coming of Christ?

I have not been gifted with anywhere near the insights exhibited by Rosenberg, and I am unable to connect the dots as well as he has done. So, in all honesty, I have no idea how close we are to those final end times. I readily admit that it appears that quite a few prophecies, as explained by various Biblical scholars, are falling into place and being fulfilled today. I am equally aware that many other periods of history have had critical, earth-shaking events that have made believers think that their generation would experience the return of Christ. Jesus made the bold claim, Behold, I am coming soon! But he also made that declaration to believers about two thousand years ago. That leaves a lot of room for speculation.

Although I do think that it is always relevant and appropriate to evaluate current events in light of Scripture, it is not my purpose this morning to try to explain whether or not we are living in the final days of Biblical prophecy. As I have said already, a lot of events are happening that fit with the prophecies. At the same time, I know that no scholar, no matter how diligent and sincere, has yet figured out every detail of prophecys meaning. There could be some keys to the puzzle that remain unknown for hundreds of years yet.

What the Bible makes clear is that Christ will return to this world and that the time leading up to his return are what we know as the end times. It is also known as the day of the Lord. Almost every time that the day of the lord is mentioned by the prophets, it is accompanied with a warning. For instance, in the book of the Bible we recently began studying, the prophet Joel wrote, What a dreadful day! For the day of the Lord is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty. (Joel 1:15) The book of the Revelation is likewise filled with sobering warnings about the pending judgments. The time leading up to the return of Christ will be filled with catastrophes. People will suffer. Some will suffer because of persecution by the hands of those who hate God. Others will suffer because they are the recipients of Gods judgment. They will be times filled with terror and dread. But through it all, we will hear Jesus declare, Behold, I am coming soon!

The truth of the Revelation and all the other prophecies that God is still fulfilling is that it is not really the end. They are not really end times in the sense that once they are completed nothing follows. Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. With the Lord, the end is just the beginning.

This is why we are not to face the future with the dread of one without hope. Clearly, events will happen which will be exceedingly difficult to endure. But such things have been happening ever since the original sin of the first man and woman. Some catastrophic events, I believe, are preparations for the actual end times and the wars to come. And there is no reason for Christians to sit idly by and just wait for disaster to strike. We all have heard stories of groups of people who have left everything and gone off to await the coming of Christ. Friends, that is not a Biblical response to current events. Christians are to be proactive. We are to be actively growing in our own relationship with God, and we are to be actively engaging our neighbors with the message of Gods love. We are to continue to be beacons of light and hope in a fallen world, and we are to pursue ways of justice and peace. So at all levels of our lives personal, communal, national, and even international Christians are to continue to obey God and to make His will known. We are certainly not thwarting Gods will by seeking peace instead of war.

Nevertheless, there will come a time when the forces arrayed against God will become so overwhelming that believers will be forced to make tough choices like those experienced by other Christians in earlier time periods and even in other parts of the world in our day. We know that in places like northern Africa and the Middle East faithful Christians endure tremendous persecution for their faith. Men and women are tortured and killed; children are kidnapped and sent into slavery. Christians are not allowed to participate fully in their marketplaces, so they frequently face hunger and other deprivations. They live the lives described in Hebrews 11:35-38, Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. It is truly a sad thing to learn how terribly humans can treat one another, and it will only get worse as the end gets nearer. But we are never without hope. Hebrews 11 ends with promise: These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:39-40) The end is just the beginning.

As Christians, we clearly live in two worlds. Our relationship with God, the spiritual world, is vital. It is Gods kingdom that prevails now and forever, so it is to Him that we owe our allegiance. We owe God our very life. At the same time, we live in this present world, and we are not called to abandon it. None of the disciples abandoned it. God has not abandoned it, for it is through this present world that god will build His future world. I do not know all of the details, but He speaks of a new heaven and a new earth and a new Jerusalem. So our present home plays an important part in Gods plan.

However, we are to refrain from mistaking our present world with our future home with the Lord. We live in a finite temporal world now; we will live in Gods everlasting world in the future. This is why we have hope. This is why we have a strength to endure the struggles that come. This is why we can say with assurance that the end is just the beginning.

When it comes down to it, this is too much for me to take in. One of the most dizzying things I can do is to contemplate the full meaning of eternity. I cannot grasp it completely. To think of being free from the constraints of time and to dwell in the house of the Lord forever is, as I said, dizzying. I just have to accept it, not figure it out. It is a promise from God, and only God can fulfill it. It was in my first college math class that the reality and impact of a verse from Amazing Grace was impressed upon me. While talking about the meaning of infinite number sets, Professor Strickland made reference to the hymn, saying that its author had a good understanding of the meaning of infinity: When weve been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun, Weve no less days to sing Gods praise, Than when wed first begun.

Whether it is our generation or some subsequent generation, we will have to face our end times. But God gives us this promise: the end is just the beginning.

Rev. Charles A. Layne

First Baptist Church

PO Box 515

179 W. Broadway

Bunker Hill, IN 46914

765-689-7987

bhfbc@bhfirstbaptist.com

http://www.bhfirstbaptist.com

-- To unsubscribe, send ANY message to: abesermons-unsubscribe@welovegod.org