Topic: Church
And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. (Matthew 24:4-8 KJV)
This past week, Eastern Region of the United States had 5.9 magnitude of earthquake, severe thunderstorm, and Hurricane Irene. From all three storms, many reports came in and said that some people have died, injured, and suffered. It was unusual that all three storms were happening in one week.
As we read in Matthew 24:7, these terrible storms are the signs of the end time. Of course, this earth would not be perished forever, but it will be renew as the original form of the earth in Genesis 1-2. But, to get renew the earth, God must bring judgment to the earth to separate the sins from righteousness. He cannot build His government on the earth until He would wipe away all the dirt (sins). As we continue to study on Rebuilding the Temple of God, I’d like to discuss on signs of the end time. I am not going to encourage you to look for these signs every time that tragedy would happen in your community, state, country, or world. But Jesus told us to be ready for His second coming and become His bride.
First thing that Jesus warned us about the deception from false prophets and teachers. Apostle Paul warned us in I Timothy 4:1, “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils…” Nowadays, we see many media evangelists are teaching the Gospel from their own interpretation of the Bible. This is why United States have so many Bible versions. Currently, we have more than 100 Bible versions rather than King James Version of the Bible. Our country is accountable when we’d try to twist God’s words from the original translation (see Revelation 22:18-19 KJV). I am guilty of this, too, when I discovered this as I got into in-depth study of the Bible.
When we’d turn on TBN, CBN, or Daystar, we hear many teachings on finance, Christian living, end time prophecy, or how to receive blessing from God. What about how God can get blessing from us? Or how we’d need to build solid relationship with God? Our mission is not for us to become multimillionaires, but to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ to others who don’t have relationship with Jesus Christ. Today, many churches are emerging together with other religions, such as Roman Catholicism, Islam, Jehovah Witness, and Mormonism. Currently, many media evangelists are trying to push us toward to Chrislam (Christianity-Islam). If this would success as they succeed Christianity-Catholicism, we will have big issue.
We’d need to rely on God and not mislead by false teachers and prophets.
