Chapter 11: Apathy

Is going to be a month filled with good news, blessings, healing, peace
and breakthrough. God will come through for you. This will be a month
to remember.
———-

In The Book of Signs, Dr. David Jeremiah offers answers to questions including:

• What does the Bible tell us about the future?
• How much can we understand about biblical prophecy and its application in our lives?
• What signs and signals will precede the end of everything as we know it?
• Which of those signs and signals have already come to pass, which are we experiencing now, and which are still to come?

An epic and authoritative guide to biblical prophecy, The Book of Signs is a must-have resource for Christians seeking to navigate the uncertainties of the present and embrace God’s promises for the future with a renewed sense of hope and purpose.

Chapter 11, apathy. The late A w Tozier wrote about what he called the decline of apocalyptic expectation in the contemporary church.
Tozier felt that believers were forgetting the importance of Christ approaching return.
And he compared that attitude to the generation just prior to his own.
He wrote there was a feeling among gospel Christians that the end of the age was near and many were breathless with anticipation of a new world order about to emerge.
This new order was to be preceded by a silent return of Christ to earth, not to remain, but to raise the righteous dead to immortality and to glorify the living saints in the twinkling of an eye.
These he would catch a away to the marriage supper of the lamb while the earth meanwhile plunged into its baptism of fire and blood in the great tribulation.
This would be relatively brief, ending dramatically with the battle of Armageddon and the triumphant return of Christ with his bride to reign for 1000 years in recent years.
However, the church has forgotten this truth, Christians rather than being distinct from the world around them and living in expectation of their Lord’s return have become so much like the world that sometimes you can scarcely tell the difference between the two.
Many churches reflect an apathetic rather than serious attitude toward the coming of the Lord.
Apathy according to Webster’s is the feeling of not having much emotion or interest.
An apathetic Christian is a cynical one. A person who simply doesn’t care anymore about the signs of the time.
This is not to say that we who are believers should be walking around with our heads down in some sort of doomsday mentality.
That’s not what the Bible is all about. The coming of Christ is not a negative subject.
It is the brightest, most radiant star on the horizon, but it is also a teaching attended by stern biblical warnings as God’s people.
We cannot allow those truths to be shunted off to one side. In over 50 years of gospel ministry.
I have watched evangelical preachers gradually change their attitudes about declaring the return of Christ more and more.
I’m hearing that the subject is not relevant enough to occupy a Sunday morning message.
If you’re going to talk about the return of Christ, it’s being said, let it be in a seminary classroom or in a weekday Bible study, but please don’t spend an hours teaching in time matters on Sunday mornings to people with family struggles, business failures, and a host of other emotional and physical problems.
That is so irrelevant. Irrelevant.
I can promise you one thing with a strong sense of assurance.
One minute after the rapture, the subject won’t be irrelevant at all.
It will be the very definition of relevant, a dominant theme.
One of the positive aspects of being an expository preacher is that you have some built in protection to keep you from getting off on special interest areas or lingering on favorite topics.
If you teach the word of God systematically and you are true to the text, you have to deal with God’s priorities as they surface in the scriptures from week to week.
And if you happen to be teaching through the gospels, you will come to Matthew 24 25 find yourself headlong in the second coming of our Lord beginning at verse 36 in chapter 24 we find these words but of that day and hour, no one knows.
No, not even the angels of heaven but my father only but as the days of Noah were.
So also will the coming of the son of man be for as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered the arc and did not know until the flood came and took them all away.
So also will the coming of the son of man be then two men will be in the field, one will be taken and the other left, two women will be grinding at the mill one will be taken and the other left watch.
Therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.
But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into.
Therefore, you also be ready for the son of man is coming at an hour.
You do not expect verses 36 to 44 the disciples you might remember had asked the Lord three specific questions regarding future events.
His answer in the passage we just read came in response to the last question Lord, when will these things happen?
He had told them about the cataclysmic events that would occur at the end of the age.
And the disciples were just as curious as we are. When Lord, when when will all this take place?
The Lord answered them but didn’t give them everything they wanted to know.
Instead he gave them what they needed to know.
Someone said that good preaching is giving people what they need disguise is what they want.
Master preacher that he was the Lord Jesus gave his hearers just what they needed and they were all ears.
The information contained in these two chapters of Matthew is primarily addressed to those who will be alive during the generation of the tribulation.
But believers today need to heed the voice of the Lord as well.
He will come for us at the rapture of the church which will also be at an unknown day and hour.
So why should we concern ourselves after all?
Someone might reason if you can’t know the when and the where, why even worry about it.
It reminds me of a question and answer sequence. I heard some time ago question.
What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy answer? I don’t know. And I don’t care.
That’s the way a lot of people feel about the rapture.
They don’t know and they don’t really care yet.
Scripture keeps repeating the theme of his coming over and over.
Like the clear tolling of a great bell on a frosty morning. Be prepared, be ready. He’s coming soon.
Some have tuned out the sound of that bell.
They’ve grown used to it in the way people become accustomed to the familiar chiming of a grandfather clock in the den.
Can you hear it as you turn the pages of your Bible?
Hear it in Paul’s great rally and cry to the Romans and do this understanding the present time.
The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.
The night is nearly over the day is almost here.
So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.
Let us behave decently as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery.
Not in dissension and jealousy, rather clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.
And do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.
Romans 13, 11 to 14 in the N I V.
Hear it in the apostle’s strong commendation of the first generation church in Corinth.
He wrote, you come short and no gift. Eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
First Corinthians 17. Hear it again from his prison cell.
When he pinned timely encouragement to the Philippians, he wrote for our citizenship is in heaven from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, Philippians 3 20.
Hear it from the writer of the book of Hebrews who urged his readers and let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing but encouraging one another.
And all the more as you see the day approaching Hebrews 10 24 and 25 in the N I V.
Hear it from James as he wrote, you too, be patient, strengthen your hearts for the coming of the Lord is near James 58.
Hear it from Peter, the end of all things is near, therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray first Peter 47.
Hear it from the elderly apostle John little Children. It is the last hour.
And as you have heard that the Anari is coming.
Even now many Anari have come by which we know that it is the last hour.
First John 2 18 hear the echo of that great bell in the concluding words of the Bible.
He who testifies to these things says surely I am coming quickly. Amen.
Even so come Lord Jesus revelation 22 20. What do you do with biblical emphases? Like these?
Ignore them, shelve them, skip over them, set them aside to deal with more relevant personal matters.
We practice such neglect, I believe at our own spiritual peril.
If you go back through all those passages, you will find that in almost every everyone, the future truth impacts some present responsibility.
It is the knowledge of his eminent return that puts urgency in our walks, determination in our service and gravity in our decisions and conversations work for the night comes some Christians tell themselves they have a lot of time to win friends and family to Christ.
We think in terms of seasons and years, but we may not have seasons and years.
We may not have the luxury of waiting for that ideal moment when everything falls into place and the door swings wide open.
Why not? Because Jesus may come tomorrow morning, Jesus may come tonight at the stroke of midnight and then it will be too late forever, eternally, too late.
The harvest is passed, the summer is ended and we are not saved. Jeremiah 8 20. Yes.
It is common to hear people speak of prophecy, buffs and smile indulgently at their preoccupations.
Yet, the truth is the prophetic teaching of scripture is some of the most practical in all of the word of God.
We must not compartmentalize these great teachings into some obscure curiosity corner out of the mainstream of our daily lives.
We must not shrug off prophetic issues saying the scholars will deal with that stuff.
I’m just going to worry about raising my Children and taking care of daily life.
Don’t do that friend because the blessed hope of his coming will impact your daily life like nothing else.
In the remainder of this chapter, I want to identify three attitudes that our Lord warned against.
In Matthew 24 Jesus warned against a cavalier attitude.
As I mentioned earlier in this chapter in Matthew 24 37 to 39 Jesus used an illustration that would have sparked immediate recognition in every one of his listeners he said, but as the days of Noah were so also will the coming of the son of man be for as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered the arc and did not know until the flood came and took them all away.
So also will the coming of the son of man be Jesus said that when the son of man returns, it will be the way it was before the flood.
What was it like?
Then Genesis 65 tells us that when the Lord looked down upon his creation, he saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Now, today’s culture may not be quite there but who can deny we’re headed in that direction.
Contrary to the fondest hopes of the evolutionist, this world is not growing better and better.
In fact, it is precisely the opposite and the thoughts of men’s minds.
You wonder sometimes when you see the vile stuff reported in the news, how could anyone ever think of something so evil?
That’s the way it was just before the flood.
I want you to understand that the growing evil on this planet is not what the Lord was talking about when he spoke of eating and drinking that went on before the flood.
I’ve heard preachers say you see how terrible it was.
They were out gorging themselves with food and drinking themselves under the table, gluttony, drunkenness.
Well, then what are you going to do with the rest of it?
What about the phrase that says they were marrying and giving in marriage? That sounds almost wholesome.
No, Jesus is not speaking primarily of humanity’s evil activities in this passage.
His message is rather that people across the world in that day were all caught up in doing ordinary things.
They were cooking meals, they were drawing water from their wells. They were celebrating weddings.
They were taking life as it was day by day and they were completely ignoring the warnings of Noah.
Life went on and that fanatic kept building a ship, the size of a football field and talking about rain, whatever that was.
So, they didn’t pay any attention. How long did Noah preach to these people about the coming flood?
Do you remember 120 years? I mean, that’s a long time to preach one message.
How many different ways can you say it’s going to rain?
But that’s the message he brought faithfully repeatedly passionately. That’s what this preacher of righteousness did.
And everybody passed it off with a smile, a shrug of the shoulders and a shaking of the head.
Noah’s neighbors might have said of his preaching. You’re not relevant. Noah.
If you must preach, talk to us about the real stuff of life, talk to us about marriage and raising kids and earning a living.
Don’t keep harping on some future judgment that nobody believes in. Anyway.
Get a life preacher, eating, drinking, marrying, having kids, working 9 to 5, kicking back on the weekends, life goes on.
And rather than turning to God in repentance, the population didn’t do anything.
Men and women drifted along with the prevailing culture, the prevalent attitudes and the Bible tells us that this is the way it will be before Jesus comes again.
Sounds a lot like our world today, doesn’t it? Nobody has time for prophecy.
Nobody wants to talk about the second coming. Hey, I’ve got to go to a wedding this afternoon.
We’re having a dinner at our house tonight. We’re going for a few drinks after work.
We’re having a baby in March. I’m taking the grandkids to the zoo. I finally made manager.
My career starting to hum. So, just as in Noah’s Day, people move through life in a cavalier heedless sort of way.
They look forward to the future and take no heed of God’s warnings. They live in the same way.
They have always lived the people of Noah’s Day ignored and even ridiculed his warnings.
He preached for 120 years and not one single individual outside his immediate family, believed him.
He preached and preached and preached. He gave invitation after invitation.
And then the last day of opportunity passed by and someone somewhere felt the first raindrop that ever fell and then the heavens opened up and the fountains of the great deep broke loose and God closed the door to the Ark.
Peter, the apostle has a word to say about this. Notice, the startling parallels with today’s world.
First of all, you must understand that in the last days, scoffers will come scoffing and following their own evil desires and what will they say?
Just listen, they will say, where is this coming?
He promised ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.
Doesn’t that sound familiar? But they deliberately forgot that long ago by God’s word, the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water by these waters.
Also, the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. Second Peter chapter three verses three through six.
What is Peter saying? He’s saying the time immediately before Christ’s return will be just as it was during Noah’s day.
The public grew bored with Noah’s preaching, the old man was politically incorrect.
He kept saying what people didn’t want to hear for as long as most people could remember.
He’d been hammering away about judgment and an approaching flood. But where was it? Where was the water?
Where was the rain? And because God’s judgment didn’t appear on their monthly calendars, these people assumed it couldn’t be real.
Jesus warned against a Cavalier attitude. You may have such an attitude yourself.
You may say, oh, here we go again. Jeremiah is off on another prophecy trip.
What’s this his second book on this stuff or his third? Doesn’t he have anything else to say?
I have written some books about this subject because it’s important and people who refuse to believe that’s true will one day take notice of their surroundings with a different attitude, members of their immediate family will be missing.
They’ll knock at the door of a friend’s house. And no one will answer.
The car will be in the driveway and the lights will be on inside, but nobody will be home and they will begin to wonder as panic, grips their throats.
Why didn’t I listen when they were talking to me about the Lord’s return, Jesus gave a second warning.
Jesus warned against a careless attitude.
As we discussed earlier, the Lord tells a little story in Matthew 24 42 to 44 watch.
Therefore, he said for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.
But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into.
Therefore, you also be ready for the son of man is coming at an hour.
You do not expect Jesus does not say that he’s like a thief, but he uses the modus operandi of a thief as an illustration to make his point.
In fact, the Bible uses that word picture a number of times notice Luke 12 39 know this that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into.
And first Thessalonians 52 for you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord.
So comes as a thief in the night. It’s also in Second Peter 3 10.
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night in which the heavens will pass away with the great noise and the elements will melt with fervent heat.
Both the earth and the works that are in. It will be burned up.
Revelation 33 says, remember therefore how you have received and heard? Hold fast and repent.
Therefore, if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief and you will not know what hour I will come upon you.
And revelation 16 15 adds behold, I am coming as a thief.
Blessed is he who watches and keeps his garments? Lest he walk naked and they see his shame.
What was Jesus saying? I believe the message was simply this just because you don’t see this taking place right under your nose.
Don’t become careless in your attitude. Jesus warned against an approach that says I haven’t been robbed this year.
So I’m turning off my alarm. I’m leaving my doors unlocked. I’m not collecting the newspapers from the driveway.
Nobody’s ever robbed me. Nobody’s ever robbed my neighbors. It won’t happen to me.
Perhaps you could testify that real people do get robbed. Maybe you became careless or heedless.
And the thing you thought would never happen did happen. That’s what Jesus was saying.
He was warning against a careless, reckless, self, deceptive attitude that keeps insisting it can’t happen to me.
Yes, it can. Jesus Christ will return without any announcement.
One day, God will say that’s enough and his judgment will fall upon the earth and upon all who have rejected his son.
But there is also a third warning, Jesus warned against a callous attitude.
Jesus told yet another story to make his point clear.
He said, who then is a faithful and wise servant whom his master made ruler over his household to give them food in due season.
Bless it is that servant whom his master when he comes will find so doing assuredly, I say to you that he will make him ruler over all his goods.
But if that evil servant says in his heart, my master is delaying his coming and begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with the drunkards.
The master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him.
And at an hour that he is not aware of and will cut him in too and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites.
There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Matthew 24 45 to 51.
Here, Jesus described two servants who work for an absentee master.
One servant is good and faithful, the other evil and faithless.
The first servant represents believers who will be on the earth before the Lord’s return.
While the evil servant represents the non-believers, the Lord declared that every person in the world holds his life, his possessions and his abilities and trust from God and every individual will be held accountable to the Lord for what he has done with that trust.
This evil servant displays the dominant attitude of callous procrastination.
He doesn’t really believe the master will come back any time soon.
So he has no motivation to cease doing all the evil things he has become accustomed to doing Christ’s word of warning to him was that he had better be careful because he doesn’t know heaven’s timetable.
Even as a pastor, I hear people say things like the following.
Yeah, I believe in the coming of the Lord.
But I’ve got some wild oats to sow and some crazy things I wanna do.
I’ve got this all figured out pastor.
When I first begin to see anything that looks like the saint is coming, then I’ll pull my life together and I’ll be ready to go up.
First of all, I question the sincere faith of anybody who reasons like that.
That’s not the way a real Christian reasons.
But even if you could reason like that, how foolish, what folly to do such a thing for in such an hour as you think not.
He comes Matthew 24 44. Not long ago, I was talking to a man about the Lord.
He wanted to become a Christian. He told me, but it wasn’t convenient for him at that time.
So he put it off. I wouldn’t want to be in that man’s shoes.
If he continues to procrastinate and one day has to stand before the throne of judgment.
Can you hear him mumbling as he stands before the Lord of the Universe saying, well, Lord, I was going to accept you and follow you, but well, it just wasn’t convenient.
The hard truth is it won’t be convenient for God to allow you into heaven because it wasn’t convenient for you to accept his provision for your sins.
William Barkley, one of the great historic commentators of the scripture relates a fable in which three of the devil’s apprentices were coming to this earth to finish up their apprenticeships.
They were talking to Satan, the chief of devils about their plans to tempt and ruin man.
The first devil said, I know what I’ll do.
I’ll tell them there is no God and Satan said that won’t delude anybody. They know there’s God.
The second one said, I’ll tell them there’s no hell, you will deceive no one that way.
Satan replied because men know deep in their hearts that there is a place called hell and a punishment for sin.
And the third said, I know what I’ll do. I’ll tell them there’s no hurry.
And Satan said, you will ruin men by the thousands.
The most dangerous of all delusions is that there is plenty of time in the mid eighties.
I was working on a project about the Book of Revelation called Before. It’s too late.
I came across a story about a time when the Pacific Northwest of the United States witnessed a cataclysm, unlike anything our nation had seen for generations old.
Harry was a stubborn man. He’d become a legend in the Pacific Northwest though he was warned repeatedly that his life was in jeopardy.
He just laughed. Red flags and danger signs are often ignored.
And Harry, well, he was just a picture of that kind of person.
He lived at the foot of a quiet mountain.
At least the mountain had been quiet for 100 and 23 years.
Sometimes she stirred to spit, Cinder and ash or drew a lava from her Cameron’s crater.
Occasionally she looked down steep snowfields and rumbled a muted threat to the people who explored the lush forest and mountain meadows below.
Some thought Bigfoot, the legendary giant beast stalked her slopes.
But Mount Saint Helens was seething inside, ready to unleash her force upon unbelieving admirers.
She was awesome and mysterious but only threatening to the few who understood her power in March of 1980 an earthquake measuring 4.1 on the Richter scale registered near Mount ST Helens in southwestern Washington State Forest.
Rangers were advised of possible dangers from avalanches which could trap skiers or climbers. Most folks were unconcerned.
The mountain setting was tranquil as people anticipated a time for renewal. The earth was singing with new warmth.
Then on March 27th, a ranger heard what he thought was a sonic boom, the mountain had erupted.
Scientists rushed to assess the explosive potential of the mountain. They painted a frightening scenario of future destruction.
People listened but many could not comprehend a disaster of such magnitude.
And old Harry, he probably read the news stories while he ate a solitary breakfast and fed scraps to his 16 cats.
Nobody knows more about this mountain than Harry and it don’t dare blow up on him.
He bragged days and weeks passed. Some became impatient with the geologists negative reports.
People would lose their concern of anything ever happening and wanted to get back to business as usual.
Everybody heard the geologists say what they wanted to hear them say they weren’t really listening to them at all.
When sheriff’s deputies ordered all residents on the shores of Spirit Lake at the base of the mountain to leave for safety.
Harry said, I’m living my life alone. I’m king of all. I survey. I’ve got plenty of whiskey.
I’ve got food for 15 years and I’m sitting high on the hog Sunday morning.
May 18th, 1980 the mountain exploded and hurled pulverized rock and ash almost 14 miles high.
The force of the blast flattened trees Uprooting and smashing them like millions of dominoes spreading out from the crater.
Steam ash and gasses spouted from the incinerated vegetation.
Mud flows flooded the rivers and transformed the beautiful mountain lands into a ghastly charred landscape.
The mountain’s vengeance was 500 times greater than the nuclear bomb that leveled Hiroshima.
The warnings were over, there was no longer any time to run. No one ever saw Harry again.
A scary story. Yes and more.
It is also a true picture of how people stubbornly refuse to listen to the truth because their minds become filled with other things.
Don’t be one of those people. The mountain may not be erupting at just this moment.
But can you feel the earth trembling part three heavenly signs with act three, we reach the middle of the story and a glimmer of hope arrives.
It all starts with the rapture of the church as described by the apostle Paul in first Thessalonians 4 16, for the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God.
Can you imagine how stunning, splendid and sensational the sight of Christ descending from heaven will be?
But that’s only the beginning.
The rapture will immediately encompass the resurrection of dead believers and the transformation of living believers, all of whom will be changed in the twinkling of an eye.
Jesus will then escort them to heaven. A heaven even more amazing than you.
And I could ever imagine their believers will experience the judgment seat of Christ where rewards for faithful service will be handed out and where a praise and worship celebration unlike anything witnessed on earth will begin.
Let’s continue our study of the 31 undeniable signs of the apocalypse by looking together at six heavenly signs designed to give us confidence in a chaotic world.
Chapter 12 rapture in October.