Is The End Of The World Close? | Billy Graham

If Jesus came back today, would you be ready? Billy Graham explains how you can be in this 1993 sermon from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“Only God can give us a selfless love for others, as the Holy Spirit changes us from within. This is one reason we must receive Christ, for apart from His Spirit we can never be freed from the chains of selfishness, jealousy, and indifference. Will others see Christ’s love in your life today?”
― Billy Graham, Hope for Each Day: Words of Wisdom and Faith

From our archives, the Billy Graham classics.
Now, today I want you to turn with me to Second Peter, the second chapter Beginning with verse five, I hope you brought your Bibles because we want to talk about a very important subject today, the judgment of God, the love of God and the coming again of Jesus Christ and the end of the age, not the end of the world.
There’s not going to be an end to the world, but there is going to be an end to the age in which we live that’s dominated by the devil and dominated by evil that will come to an end.
And Christ, the Messiah is going to come back. We want to talk about that a little bit today.
The second chapter of 2nd Peter. Now 2nd Peter in your Bible comes right after first Peter.
If you’re having trouble finding it Beginning with verse five and spared not the old world but saved Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them with an overthrow, making them an example, unto all those who would live ungodly in the future and deliver just lot vexed with the filthy lifestyle of the wicked, for the righteous man dwelling among them and seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds.
The Lord knoweth how to deliver the Godly out of temptations and trials.
If you’re going through a serious temptation now or a trial, now, God knows how to deliver you if you’ll turn to him and pray by faith and believe and to reserve the unjust under the day of judgment.
Those that are outside of Christ, those that live wicked lives are being reserved until the day of judgment.
There is a judgment day coming.
The biblical story of Sodom and Gamarra comes down to us today as an example of what could happen even in this decade or in the decades ahead.
If we don’t turn to God now, Sodom and Kamara were two cities and they were at the place that now the Dead Sea is in the Middle East.
The dead sea is 10 miles by 50 mile inland lake in the Lower Jordan Valley.
It’s a mineral saturated body of water which is 1260 ft below sea level.
It’s the lowest part of the world in Genesis 13, we read about Abraham and Abraham is going through that part of the world with all of his flocks and all of his family going to the land that God had promised him.
He was a man of God and he had his nephew with him by the name of lot.
And he saw that the servants lot and his servants were not getting along too well.
So he said to lot lot, let’s divide. We’ve gotten too big.
There are too many others, too many cattle, your cattle and my cattle are getting mixed up.
You choose wherever you want to live.
If you want to go west toward what is now Palestine, or if you wanna go across the Jordan and go to the Jordan Valley which is lush, like a garden of Eden.
You take a choice and I’ll take the other way.
So lot looked all around and he looked down to Sodom.
He looked down toward Gama and he saw that that was a very wealthy part of the world, a very wonderful part to live in.
He consulted his wife. She said, by all means, we want to go to Sad.
She wanted to go where the good times were.
And so lot told Abraham, all right, Uncle Abraham, we’re going to go, we’ve chosen to go down to Sodom and Gamarra to go down to the lush valley of the Jordan and we’ll take our cattle and our servants and our people and our family and that’s where we’ll go.
Abraham agreed said, all right, the dead Sea was surrounded in that time, it was no dead sea of course, but at that time, it was a lush, unbelievably lush part of the world.
But with their wealth came a lifestyle of hedonism, sexual obsession and perversion.
The like of which has hardly ever been equaled in the history of the world.
So that today, the word sodom is used to describe a certain lifestyle that people may adopt as God has sent a flood to destroy our corrupted humanity in Noah’s Day.
So upon Sodom and Gomorrah, he sent a totally destroying judgment of fire and that fire, a brimstone that fell upon sodom and not only destroyed it but sank that part of the world to the lowest part of the earth.
Now, what were the sins of sodom? Why did God allow that judgment to fall?
The first sin that they had was false security.
They were secure and we today have a security behind our oceans and behind our military power.
President Yeltsin has stated that the whole world could be standing unknowingly on the edge of an abyss.
And you saw in your papers this morning the problems they’re having in Russia right now, in the government, we have a false security world to them that go down to Egypt.
Now, Egypt in that day did not have much to do with the Israeli people.
And yet time after time, the Israelis would go down to Egypt for help and he said to them to go down to Egypt for help and stay on horses and trust in chariots.
But they look not to the holy one of Israel, neither seek the Lord.
Now, the Egyptians are men and not God and their horses flesh and not spirit.
Isaiah, the prophet is speaking in the 31st chapter when he says that they had false security, they thought they were absolutely secure.
Nobody could ever take sodom. And Then the 2nd sin that the scripture mentions is pleasure.
They live for pleasure.
In job 25th chapter, it says the joy making of the wicked is short and the joy of the hypocrite.
But a moment, you only have a moment to enjoy it, then you have eternity to regret it.
The scripture says there are pleasures in sin for a moment.
Then it’s all over and then there’s nothing but the remorse and the guilt.
The scripture says there is a way that seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
Even in the laughter. The scripture says, the heart is sorrowful and the end of m is heaven is even when you’re laughing many people in Psalm 53 1, it says the fool has said in his heart, there is no God.
But if you go back to the original language in Hebrew, here’s what it says.
The fool has said in his heart, no to God.
He’s not saying there’s no God. He’s just saying no to God.
You see, you can’t prove scientifically that there is a God and you can’t prove scientifically.
There’s no God, but everybody knows there must be a gun.
And then there’s another sin that sodom and gamma committed.
It was over indulgence, the majority of the world, a great part of the world lives under what we call the poverty level.
And in Luke 21 it says, and take heed to yourselves lest at any time, your hearts be overcharged with surfing and drunkenness and the cares of this life.
So that, that day comes upon you unaware, John Eastwood wrote some time ago.
People do not decide to be drunkards or drunk addicts or prostitutes or murderers or thieves, but they pitch their tent to sodom and the powers of evil overcome them.
And how many of us are like that? We pitch our tent towards subtle.
We sort of live half in sodom and half with Abraham.
We sort of enjoy sodom. We long for the things that Saddam has.
We’d like to have the fun and the pleasure we imagine that they’re having.
We’d like to have all that money, but the powers of evil will overcome you and you will die before your time and be lost from God.
In June the 12th verse, it says there are spots in your feast of charity when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear.
How many times we see charitable events?
And we thank God for those that are sincerely interested, but they go to have a big time and to be seen and there’s a spot in their charity and that’s the spot.
And then the people of Sodom and Gamarra had some new strange gods whenever a man seeks or honors or exults anything more than God, that’s idolatry.
And there are many of us that are guilty of idolatry, but we don’t realize it In Psalm 44.
It says if we have forgotten the name of our God or stretched out our hand to a strange God shall not.
God search this out. Romans one.
It says we’ve changed the truth of God into a lie and worshiped and served the creature more than the creator.
We worship our bodies and we worship our good times and we spend more on our cosmetics than we do worshiping God and Christ.
That’s modern humanism. And then they were also guilty of greed.
Greed was a plague on the lives of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.
And one of the addictions that today has thousands of Americans in its vice is gambling and part of the gambling motivation is greed.
Workers throughout the industrialized world are becoming increasingly traumatized by overwork and their effort to earn more than their needs require.
So we neglect our families to get more money so that we can and we don’t really need it.
God has promised to supply all of our needs, but he’s never promised to supply all of our greed.
And then in the sins of sodom and so bad that God gave them up In Romans one, it says that God just gave them up three times.
He said he gave them up. Has God given you up.
Know the very fact you’re here today shows that God has not given you up.
God is still speaking to you. There’s still a chance for you to come to Christ.
There’s still an opportunity you receive the love of God and the gift of God in Christ.
In 2nd Timothy three, it says men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous boasters, proud, blasphemous, disobedient, unthankful, unholy.
And anyone who believes in high morality today is laughed at Jeremiah said that they had forgotten how to blush and there’s a lot of truth in that.
Now, God warns sodom.
He sent some angels to Abraham to tell Abraham what he was going to do.
He was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone.
And Abraham said, wait a minute, if I would find some real believers in sodom, If I found 50 righteous men, would you spare it?
And God said, yes, He couldn’t find 50.
So he said to the Lord, Alright, Lord, what about if I found 40?
Then after a while he said 30, then 20.
Finally, he said, if I find 10, Lord, would you spell them?
And God said Yes, if you find 10 righteous people in sodom, I’ll spare sodom.
But he couldn’t find them. And that is a lesson to us.
The importance of a dedicated minority, a minority of people who believe and who live in except the Lord of Host had left unto us a small remnant.
We should have been a sodom and we should have been like unto Gara says, Isaiah 19 to you Christians.
Jesus gave a warning.
He said, remember lot’s wife, the angels told you not to look back.
If you did look back, you’d be turned to a pillow of salt.
Well, she did look back and she was turned to a pill of salt.
And Jesus said, remember Lot’s life. That’s an example for us today.
Remember Lot’s wife, one of the shortest verses in all the Bible. Don’t look back.
Many of us look longingly at the world and many are like demos having forsaken Christ because of the love of this present world.
Now the climax of history is going to be judgment.
The Bible warns that the world is in for a gigantic judgment.
The only bright spot is the promised return of Jesus Christ because the scripture teaches from one end to the other that Christ is going to come back someday.
He’s going to set up his kingdom and evil and the devil are going to be eliminated and this is going to be heaven on earth.
When Jesus comes back, you see Jesus Christ loved us so much that he went to the cross and died for us.
He took all the hell and all the judgment on Him at the cross.
And the scripture says, God so loved the world.
God so loved this present world that he gave his only begotten son.
That who that includes you who believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
You say, well, when is Christ going to come back?
Jesus said, but that day and hour, I know no man, no, not even the angels of heaven, but my father only, we don’t know the day.
Don’t, don’t speculate it’s coming. It’s sure he left us certain signs.
I wish we had time to go into all of them today.
I believe that every one of those signs is being fulfilled right now and Christ could come back at any time.
Fuck. How will Christ come for the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout and the voice of the archangel and with the Trump of God and the dead in Christ shall rise first.
What a glorious time. That’s going to be when Christ returns the voice of the archangel.
I’m looking forward to hearing that voice. I’ve never heard an arch angel and the Trump of God.
What Trump trumpets? That’ll be also be a time of personal judgment.
When you, if you really never received Christ, now you may be baptized and you may be confirmed and you may be a church member and all of that.
That’s wonderful. I’m thankful, but that’s not enough.
Jesus talked to Nicodemus and said, Nicodemus, all your religion is not enough. You must be born again.
The moment you receive Christ, the moment you open your heart and surrender to him as Lord and master and Savior.
At that moment, your name is written in the Book of Life.
And if my name were not written in that book of Life, you’d never get me out of this stadium until I’d made sure it’s been written there because only those who are written in the Book of Life are going to enter the Kingdom of God.
You see, for those who are written in the Book of Life, Jesus Christ died on the cross.
They put nails in his hands and a spike through his side and a crown of thorns on his brow.
And he suffered one of the most agonizing physical deaths that a person can suffer.
But that wasn’t his real suffering.
The real suffering of Jesus Christ was when he said, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?
Because in that moment God took your sins and my sins and laid on Christ.
He bore our sins. He went to hell for us. He took the judgment for us.
So the cross is a judgment. What do you have to do?
Repent of your sins?
And you’re not sure that you’ve repented to surrender totally to Christ, your heart, your mind, your body, Your Life So that Christ is 1st in your life.
I’m going to ask you to make that commitment this afternoon.
I’m going to ask you to do what we’ve seen. Thousands of people do this past week.
Get up out of your seat from all over the stadium and come and stand in front and after you’ve all come, I’m going to say a word to you and have a prayer with you and you can get up and go back and join your friends.
We’re going to give you some literature, a book that will help you in your Christian life.
But you get up and come and don’t delay because he says now is the accepted time.
Today is the day of salvation. You may never have another moment like this.
As long as you live, when will you ever see another thing like this in Pittsburgh?
Maybe another generation or maybe never. And as far as you’re concerned, it may never be.
We’re going to wait for you.
You come from way up there wherever you are, God is speaking to you and back here where the seats are filled in, you come and join them.
Just as hundreds of people have responded to Mister Graham’s invitation to make a public commitment to Jesus Christ.
So can you write where you are? Just call the phone number on your screen right now?
Special friends want to help you with this important decision. So don’t wait, please call now.
You that have been watching by television Here in this Great three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh Where three rivers come together right here.
You have heard the message and God has spoken to you and we’ve seen hundreds of people come here.
Many more hundreds. On the way you can make your commitment to Christ where you are, you can say yes to Christ.
He loves you. He wants to forgive you.
He wants to change you and give you a new life.
Let him come into your heart right now.
Just say, Lord, I am a sinner and I’m sorry, I do repent of my sins as best.
I know how. I’m not sure that I know how but Lord help me to repent and help me to believe.
Lord, I need your help even in the believing and help me to follow you and serve you.
He’ll help you. Now, if you make that commitment, call that number on the screen.
Now we’re going to wait for others that are still coming down the aisles, there’s still time for you to make that important decision.
Take a moment right now to call the number on your screen.
Someone will pray with you and talk with you about your spiritual condition and the hope and forgiveness found in Jesus Christ.
Call right now. This concludes our spring television series.
We’re so glad you joined us just before we leave you for this time.
We want to remind you to pray for Billy Graham and the team as we prepare for special meetings in Cleveland, Ohio and Atlanta, Georgia in the days ahead.
Now for Billy Graham and the entire team, this is Cliff Barrow saying goodbye and may God bless you if you just prayed that prayer with my father, or if you have any questions about a relationship with Jesus Christ, I would just call that number that is on the screen.
There’ll be someone there to talk with you, pray with you and answer those questions and remember God loves you.
If you would like to commit your life to Jesus Christ, please call us right now.
Toll free at 18777724559. That’s 1877772 45 59.
Or you can write to us at Billy Graham one Billy Graham Parkway Department C Charlotte, North Carolina 28201.
Or you can contact us on the web 24 7 at peace with God dot TV.
We’ll get the same helps to you that we give to everyone who responds at the invitation on behalf of Franklin Graham and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
Thank you for watching and thank you for your prayers.
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