A Biographical Prophecy: End Times People (Pt. 2)

A Biographical Prophecy. End Times People (Pt. 2)
The Bible tells us that people will become more and more depraved in the Last Days, and that trend is evident right now. What can we do about it? Dr. David Jeremiah offers insights from God’s Word to help us shine our light more brightly in this darkening world.

Dear Lord,
Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week..

Many are lonely. . Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

But thank you for joining us today. This is kind of an ugly picture that we’re painting.
Uh that um that God tells us this, this is what it’s going to be like in our society as the time of His return draws nigh.
And if you don’t believe it, you’re just not paying attention because these things are everywhere evident as we’re discovering as we look at this passage in Second Timothy in times people, a biographical prophecy, you know, um this is the time of the year when many, many people tour Israel and we have done it at this particular time in years past.
I cannot tell you what a thrill it is to go there and to see the sites that you’ve been reading about and hearing about.
If you’re a Christian for many of us, since we were little Children, those sites are still there.
They’re authentic. Most of them, I’m sure there’s uh some imagination uh mixed into a few places.
But most of them places like Nazareth, uh the Jordan River and the Garden of Gethsemane, the Garden Tomb.
Those are all places that they’re verified.
They’re, they’re the places where it really happened and to see Galilee to be on the Sea of Galilee to be, uh, in, uh, which is, uh, where, where Peter lived, these are all just incredible things and you never forget them.
And I just want to make sure you’re doing everything you can to make our tour to Israel in March of 2024 a part of your bucket list.
And perhaps one of those things that gets realized as you pray about it, the dates of the 12th through the 22nd, we’ll have Michael Sanchez, Yuri Vega.
Um, and many others with us to make this a very special time. Ok.
Well, let’s, uh let’s take part two. Now of end times people, a biographical prophecy.
Now, I’m going to do something right now that I, I’ve fought with myself all week as to whether I should do this or not.
So, I’m not really sure whether I should do it, but I’m going to do it.
So, one of my favorite preachers is Tony Evans. I love Tony Evans, believe it or not.
When I graduated from seminary, I went back and I taught some postgraduate courses and Tony Evans was in my class.
My great claim to fame was I was Tony Evans teacher for one semester.
And so everything good about him, he learned from somebody else. If he’s messing up, it’s my fault.
You know, that don’t you, Tony and his family have been friends of ours for.
So many years and I love to hear this man preach because what an orator he is when he goes off on one of his orations, he just bell binds you.
And I heard one in one of his messages recently that totally illustrates what I’m talking about.
And I can’t be Tony Evans. So don’t get your expectations up.
But I’m going to tell you what he said.
If you’re a messed up man and you have a family, you’re going to help make a messed up family.
If you’re a messed up man, contributing to a messed up family and your messed up family goes to church, then your messed up family is going to make its contribution to a messed up church.
If you’re a messed up man, contributing to a messed up family, resulting in a messed up church causing a messed up neighborhood and your neighborhood is part of a city where you messed up neighborhood is going to make its contribution to a messed up city.
If you’re a messed up man, contributing to a messed up family, resulting in a messed up church causing a messed up neighborhood that resides in a messed up city.
That’s part of a messed up county and your county is part of the state.
Well, your messed up county is going to make its contribution to a messed up state.
If you’re a messed up man, contributing to a messed up family, resulting in a messed up church causing a messed up neighborhood that resides in a messed up city.
That’s part of a messed up county contributed to a messed up state and your state is part of the country.
Well, guess what? Your messed up state is going to make its contribution to your messed up nation.
And if you’re a messed up man contributing to a messed up family, resulting in a messed up church causing a messed up neighborhood that resides in a messed up city.
That’s part of a messed up county that’s contributing to a messed up state.
Your messed up country is going to make its contribution to a messed up world.
So do you get that?
I wish I could do it like him but I can’t, but I love the way he does it and love most of all his point.
It starts with individuals, doesn’t it? We look around, we say, oh this, my church is a mess.
Well, you probably had something to do with that, right?
If you’re looking for a perfect church, you even find it, don’t go there because you mess it up.
And so, you know, we’re always looking for some corporate answer to the problems, but the problems are ours, our families are what we create them to be our counties or what we allow them to be our cities.
It’s all about us. So unless we’re willing to take insight on ourselves, we don’t have much of a chance to get better do we?
So we have selfish people, we have families that reflect on the selfishness of the people in them and then those families go into churches and cultures and societies and the society becomes what the family is.
So what do we do with that?
I mean, in this message series, I’ve been trying to tell you here’s where we are, here’s what that means and where do we go from here?
So here’s the end of the matter.
How do Christians live in such a place where selfishness reigns and immorality increases?
How can we be different kind of end times people in a broken world.
Let’s take a page from Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography, Franklin described the darkness that filled the streets of Philadelphia during his day.
It was pitch black at night and people were sleeping on the streets and they were stepping into mud, puddles and stumbling over rough stones and even worse crime was growing.
It wasn’t safe to be out after sunset.
So Franklin waged an intense campaign to persuade everyone to light the area around their own house, but he got nowhere.
Finally, he just did it himself, but only in front of his own house, he planted a pole in front of his porch with a kerosene light on top of the pole.
That night in the city of Philadelphia, there was one house bathed in warm glow, the lamp cast light on the street giving passerbys a feeling of well being and safety.
But the next night, another house had a lamp and then another and pretty soon almost the whole city was lighting the walkways in front of their houses.
At night, Franklin learned something.
He learned that our example is often greater than our words and our admonitions.
And that’s what we need to learn with that in mind.
I want to lift you out of second Timothy and take you to Ephesians five.
And this is the passage that says for you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
That sentence is short enough to memorize, but it’s powerful enough to illumine the pathways around your life.
First of all, you need to remember the grace that you received.
How do we walk in the light when our society is defined by end times people, how do you be a Christian if you’re surrounded by people who are doing the kinds of things we’re watching right now?
Literally destroying the fabric of our country.
Well, you have to experience God’s grace through an encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ metaphors involving light pervade scripture and Ephesians 58 describes the difference that comes over us when we have grace with Christ.
Before that moment, we live in darkness as deep as underground caverns.
We are spiritually morally personally and eternally in pitch blackness.
But the moment we come to Christ, he pushes down the lever that connects us to the throne of grace and he switches on a billion megawatts of light inside of our souls.
That experience is so vivid that many Christians describe their moment of grace in bright terms.
So first of all, remember your salvation, remember the grace you receive. Remember that?
But for the grace of God, you would be a part of this culture, doing the things that right now are so hurtful to you without Jesus Christ in your life, you are capable.
I am capable of all those things that we watch that are just making us shake our heads.
Number two, reflect the light that you have become.
That brings us to our next tactic for living in these dark times. We have to exude God’s light.
We have to convey it, we have to reflect it. We have to radiate it.
That’s what we read in Ephesians 58 walk as Children of light for the fruit of the spirit is in all goodness, righteousness and truth.
Finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. Men and women.
I am concerned about the way this present darkness is casting the shadow over many churches and over many Christians.
Too many people in our community of faith are trying to blend the light and the darkness so they can kind of come up with a grayness in their life and that doesn’t work.
It’s a devilish lie to believe that we can be Christians without being different and distinct from the world you can’t and you can’t marry the world so that you’d be more acceptable to them.
A lot of my younger friends who are pastors are doing that now with many of the social issues that we’re facing in this country as followers of Jesus, we have left the kingdom of darkness and we are now Children of light.
So now we must walk, we must live as Children of light.
We have this ceremony here on Christmas Eve that’s always so meaningful to me.
And I know it’s more meaningful to me than anybody else because I get to stand up here and watch all of you light your candles.
It starts out just like in Ben Franklin’s story.
It starts out with my grandson who’s been walking down that aisle now for over 12 years and bringing me the original candle.
And I take that original candle with that light and I light all of the servers and little by little, they light the rows in this building until when it’s all done, you look up and this room is full of light.
The light has dispelled the darkness. Ladies and gentlemen, we only one candle each of us.
But the Bible says when you have a city on a hill where all the candles are lit, no one can deny the truth.
So the most important thing we can do as Christians in the darkness of our time is to let our light.
So shine that men will see us and they will give glory to the Father Castle Field Church is in the center of Derby UK as a section on its website for its members to share how they found the light of Christ.
So here’s one that showed up on that website, Amanda grew up without a Christian background except for a great aunt who would talk about the Lord and give out Bibles.
And when Amanda was 25 she was studying at a university, feeling very depressed and having trouble finding employment.
One night, she was walking home on a cold February evening, she heard someone singing behind her.
He was singing loudly. Amanda turned around and said, why are you so happy?
He said, I’m praising the Lord. He makes me so happy.
It turns out the man was a Nigerian evangelist. And over time he answered Amanda’s questions.
He gave her literature, pointed her to the passages of scripture, explained the gospel simply through his words so that she can understand it.
And one evening she said something supernatural happened.
A light switched on and I believed Jesus had died on the cross for my sins and it all became so personal.
I gave my life to Jesus that February night in 1998 and Jesus became my Lord and Savior.
Note that phrase, a light switched on. How many of you can say today?
I remember the day when the light switched on. Can you say amen?
Amen when I read that story, I could almost hear that Nigerian evangelist singing as he walked through the dark streets of Derby, his faith lit up the sidewalk and he was living out the words of Christ who says to us that we are the light of the world and a city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.
Finally, remember the grace you receive, reflect the light you’ve become and reveal the darkness that you see.
The Ephesians passage goes on to tell us something else, have no fellowship with the untruthful works of darkness, but rather expose them for it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret.
But all things that are exposed and are made manifest by the light for whatever makes manifest is light.
Therefore, he says awake, you who sleep arise from the dead and Christ will give you light.
If you turn over a brick on a bright day, you’ll see a whole world of bugs and pests fleeing in every direction.
These creatures prefer the darkness and the light expels them.
And in the same way, the world is ill at ease when we walk in the light and seek through our lives to reveal Christ’s holiness.
Did you notice how this happened naturally after you gave your life to Christ?
All of a sudden the people around you started looking at you differently. What’s wrong with him?
He doesn’t laugh at my dirty jokes anymore. What’s wrong with her?
She doesn’t like to get wasted on weekends anymore. We reply.
Well, you know what, I’m a child of the light and I can’t have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.
Some people will turn away from us, some will continue to be our friends.
But our joint activities will become different and some of them will follow your trail of light and find Christ for themselves.
Let me give you a key little principle that I found really helps the word fellowship in Ephesians 5 11 is translated from the Greek word.
The last part of the word means fellowship, but the prefix soon is the Greek word for the word with it means participating with someone and doing something.
This verse tells us that once we become a child of the light, we can no longer participate with those who are doing the works of darkness.
You can’t fellowship with them doing what they do. That’s what it means.
It doesn’t mean you tell them you don’t want to see them anymore.
You don’t want to be their friends, but it means you don’t do what they do.
You don’t fellowship soon with them.
John says for everyone practicing evil, hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.
But he who does the truth comes to the light? You and I are Children of light.
I don’t want to be a negative person offensive, making people uncomfortable or drive people away.
We can’t help being lights in the darkness wherever we go and it’s going to be different for you.
If you live for Christ, if you’re not trying to be gray, if you’re not trying to mesmerize your own self by marrying the darkness with the light, which doesn’t work and is not acceptable and will just lead you wrong.
If you’re trying to really be the light, you just need to get excited about this.
Someone isn’t going to like you as much as they did before.
But what I know is this, everybody in the world, whether they like to admit it or not is looking for light.
They’re searching, they’re trying to figure out why they are the way they are, why they do what they do.
They’re looking for someone to help them.
And if you don’t shine the light, if you compromise your witness, they won’t come to you because they’ll see the phony of who you are and what you’re doing.
So interesting to me what happens when you become a Christian.
But one day I was at this barbershop and my friend and I was getting my haircut and he knows I’m a pastor and we have a good positive relationship.
And all of a sudden this guy comes in and he sits down in the other chair and he starts in with vulgarity like you would not believe he’s telling a dirty joke.
And he’s trying to make and he’s laughing and he’s like, you know, and my barber, he doesn’t realize I’m sitting there looking at the mirror and he’s behind me so I can see him and he’s telling his barber friend the pastors in the house.
Come on, why wouldn’t he just do what he wanted to do if he’s who he is?
Because when you’re the light, you bring condemnation to people who are in the darkness.
You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to do anything. People will be different around you.
That doesn’t mean you’re better than they are. That just means it’s the light that dispels the darkness.
Did you know that in the English language and in the language itself, there is no word for darkness.
The word for darkness is coined. Darkness is just the expression of the absence of light.
So darkness isn’t a quantity. It’s the absence of light.
When you walk into a situation, you change the darkness, you become a part of lighting up that area where you are, the light of the world is coming through you.
And Jesus Christ is living his life out in you.
That brings me back to Sean Hopwood with whom we began, remember him.
He was going to prison at the age of 23.
As time went by, he got a job in the prison library and he began reading books about the law.
And as he learned about the law.
He began taking on cases for fellow prisoners writing petitions they could use in federal courts.
They called him the jailhouse lawyer Sean also began corresponding with a friend named Annie, his secret crush through high school.
Furthermore, his parents let him know they continue to pray for him and his mom.
She kept sending him Christian books.
One day Sean’s prison friend, Robert had a life changing experience with Jesus Christ.
Sean took all that in and he found it increasingly difficult to rationalize his own darkened life.
After Sean was released from prison.
In 2009, he and Annie were engaged and they asked Pastor Marty Barnhart to officiate the wedding.
But Barnard wanted to talk to them first.
He asked them what they believed about Jesus and he said they could be forgiven by the shed blood of Christ.
And the pastor’s exact words were, yeah. Even you Sean, here’s what happened next.
The next day, I couldn’t accept the feeling said Sean that God had been pursuing me for a long time.
And that if I just abandoned my stubbornness and selfishness and hand everything over to him, I would find redemption.
What does it mean to be redeemed? And how do you redeem yourself after robbing five banks?
Well, the answer is you don’t. The answer is that you need some help. In Ephesians 17 through eight.
Paul writes that in Christ, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.
In accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us to put it differently because of our sins and none of us.
And surely no former prisoner like me said, Sean can be redeemed on our own.
We need the gospel of grace which says that each of us matters and has worth because we’re made in the image of God grace says we are not defined by our failures and our faults, but by a love without merit or condition God’s grace was enough to redeem me.
He said, Sean and Annie asked Christ to come into their lives.
They were married, they were baptized, they moved to Seattle.
So Sean could attend the University of Washington Law School and believe it or not today, Sean is a professor of law at the Georgetown University in Washington where he is spreading the light every day.
We’re living in a messed up world. Let’s face it.
The Bible warns that in the last days, prayer times will come, society will go from bad to worse.
But remember the city of Ephesus was also a place of darkness.
In Paul’s day, the city to which his letter was written yet, Paul viewed the Christians there as Children of light, their presence lit up the city streets with the glow of Jesus.
So even in dark days, you can experience God’s grace exude his radiance, exhibit his holiness and in a world increasingly dominated by the end times, God has empowered you to shine and how many of, you know, the darker the night, the brighter the light.
So let’s don’t complain about the world in which we live. Let’s take advantage of the difference we make.
Let’s don’t be obnoxious weird people. You know, some Christians are like that.
When you see people like that, you don’t want what they have, you want to get away from them as far as you can.
But if you’re gracious godly people and you let your light so shine and when others are being cruel, you’re kind, when others are doing the things that Paul described people do in the last days, you don’t do that.
You are not an alpha, primitive Christian, but you’re a Christian in the truest sense and you live your life that way, you will make a difference in this world.
And if all of us determined to let our light shine, we can light up this world just like we light up this church on Christmas Eve.
Amen. You know, that’s a great vision to have.
I’m going to be a light today when we go to do our rallies and, and we’re getting ready for the ones in the fall.
Uh Everybody gets a little wrist band when they come in and it has four different colored lights on it.
And the lights are not controlled by the people who wear the bands, they’re controlled by a guy sitting up in a control booth.
And so he can turn all the lights on at the same time and he can change the colors, he can make them vibrate.
It’s one of my favorite pictures in the rally scene because it is a reminder to all of us.
Yeah, it’s dark out there. You can sit around and curse the darkness or you can just be a light, be different.
Show people what it’s like when Christ is living in your heart, it’s a great reminder to all of us that the time in which the Bible was written, the people who, who read these words that we read for the first time were living in a much darker time than we are.
And yet they held up their light and they let their light shine so that men would see their good works and glorify their father in heaven.
What a goal for all of us. Well, thank you for being with us today.
Tomorrow we’re gonna talk about cancel culture. Oh, my goodness. It’s captured everybody’s attention.
It’s a political prophecy and we’ll talk about it tomorrow right here on turning point.
I hope you’ll join us and have a great day.