Experience TRUTH - #31

Nakita Kolov, the Russian nightmare.

No, the devil's nightmare here. From it's time to man up. Challenging men to step into their true manhood. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it.

Share it. But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network. For the most millennial, so many signs and times and speculation about when Christ is coming back.

So many systems that many of you believe, many of you debate, many of you don't have a clue what I'm talking about. This is Stu Epperson, this is Experience Truth, and we're getting into the words of Jesus. When's He coming back? What are those signs that accompany His return on Experience Truth today? We're getting into that right now. Robbie Dilmore's with me, the Christian car guy. Robbie, we've got a great passage. This is heavy stuff. We're going to really try to get through this.

And what to look for? In the middle of all this, Jesus says, look to heaven. Look up. When I look to heaven, do I look for Jesus to come? Read this passage and let's jump right into it. Watch the chapter and verses and then jump in there.

Luke 21, 25-38. When these things have begun to happen, look up and lift up your heads because your addemption draws near. Then he spoke to them a parable, look at the fig tree and all the trees.

And when they are budding, you see they know for yourselves, you see and know for yourselves that summer is now near. So you also, when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near. Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by no means pass away. But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing drunkenness and cares of this life, and the day come on you unexpectedly. For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch therefore and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass and to stand before the Son of Man. And in the daylight, he will, excuse me, and in the daytime, he was teaching in the temple, but at night he went out and stayed on the mountain called Olivette.

Then, early in the morning, all the people came to him in the temple to hear him. So- A powerful word from God. And you ever ask a question, Robbie, and you get a lot longer answer than you expected? Well, the disciples had a lot of questions for Jesus, but this one happened to elicit the longest answer that Jesus gave to any question ever, and it has to do with prophecy. A giant chunk of your Bible, if you clipped out everything having to do with the return of Christ and prophecy and what's coming still to happen in future history and eschatology, which is the study of end times, if you clipped all that out of the Bible, your Bible would be very thin, because a huge chunk of scripture is dealing with that content. And so, when Jesus is asked a simple question, in verse seven of chapter 21, when will these things be?

And what sign will they be about to happen? And he goes on a long, long trail with this answer for the disciples, and he elaborates and elaborates and gives them all kinds of things, maybe more information than they wanted, but he opens up with the signs of natural disaster. These verses, verses 20 through 24, by the way, go into the fall of Jerusalem, which by the way, Christ has talked about it quite a bit, how this is going to be trampled over, and it's going to be horrible for the women who are pregnant in those days, and all the distress, the edge of the sword, all the captivity, oh, the time of the Gentiles being fulfilled. Verse 25, he gets into the signs of the natural disaster. We've got this political, governmental disaster in these earlier verses. Verse 25, sun, moon, stars, and other natural catastrophes will intensify closer to his return. It's really interesting, this statement here, verse 26. Men will fail from the fear that will be gripped. This will be accompanied by a great amount of fear.

Ask that first question, Robbie, and we'll get into the context. After 2,000 years, how could we be sure he'll return anytime? What still has to take place?

Yeah, so this is the answer Jesus gives. There have been abnormal weather patterns. There have been terrible hurricanes, disasters, earthquakes since this time. But there will be such an intensity of these toward the end times. We will know. There will not be any secret. There will be nothing hidden at that point in time.

It'll be out in the open for us to see. Verse 27, I love this, Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. So you've got the powers of earth shaken. You've got the earth shaken. You've got men worldwide in a global pandemic of fear, paralyzing all kinds of men, and then Christ comes back. We're getting to this next question because this is really going to go deeper.

Why is the eternal accuracy of His Word so important? As you're looking in the future, as you're banking on what's going on, if Christ's Word isn't accurate and what He says isn't true, we've got no hope for anything. We're done. We're toast. It's over. The show's over.

And God bless all the wonderful folks at Wilkins and our friends at AFA, all the friends that carry this program. It's over. We don't have a leg to stand on if we don't stand on the Word of God. It's interesting, at the beginning of this discourse where it talks about things you're going to pass away, toward the end of verse 33 it says heaven and earth will pass away, my words will not pass away, and we're coming at it at the end. But Jesus Christ is staking His name, His reputation, His deity, His resurrection status, His kingly authority on His Word coming to pass.

The question is, am I going to be gripped by fear of all the craziness and the chaos in the culture? Or am I going to live in faith in His Word, which faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God? So what does it mean to watch and pray? Always.

Wow. So there's repeated calls from Jesus to watch and pray. You might remember a couple of them, Robbie. We like the night coming up here that He's going to be betrayed in just a chapter or two away, where Jesus is praying with great agony, sweating as it were drips of blood, and the disciples are sleeping, and Jesus tells them to do two things, watch and pray. And how those two are connected, because we used to teach our kids, don't pray with your eyes open, right? So there's this idea of being vigilant, there's a war going on, right? And we are to be ever, like Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 5, be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary the devil is roaming about like a roaring lion, seeking who may devour.

We have an enemy that wants to kill us, so this idea we're at war. So there's the watching, being vigilant part, but then there's the praying part, which is to say, utterly depend on God. Prayer has everything to do with prophecy. It's the last verse of the Bible is a prayer, where John says, even so, come Lord Jesus, He's praying. After this amazing book of Revelation God gives him, and this glimpse into heaven, into the heavenlies, into the throne, and into the end times, seeing ahead of all of us, He prays, come Lord Jesus. How often do we pray that, you know? Oh, it's beautiful. And you know, I think about Nehemiah when they're building the wall, right? They're sitting there with a sword in one hand, shuffling the other.

That's kind of where that is, that we're to be busy. And in prayer, all at the same time, you know? And if you look at this language, verse 27, the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. The word cloud there is cloud used often throughout Scripture, associating with God's great glory. There was a great cloud enveloping them on the Mount of Transfiguration. There was the cloud of God's glory leading the children of Israel, you know, protecting them from the sweltering heat in the wilderness, and leading them in the desert. You also have the clouds in 1 Thessalonians 4.17. We'll meet him in those clouds when he returns, Daniel 7, 13, and 14. This imagery of clouds is powerful. But then verse 28, look up.

Isn't that cool? Robbie, don't we be reminded once in a while to look up? Next time things get really bad in your family, even an argument you're having, a struggle, some intense, woeful things happening to you, just say those two words, look up.

Why are those two words so critical right now? When things get so bad, there's this call by Jesus to a heavenward gaze. Look up.

Just two words, Robbie. It's a beautiful thing. We talked about it before in Exodus, when they were getting bit by the snakes.

Same kind of thing. In order to be healed, they had to look up, and so God's been teaching us this for some time. When you get bit, look up. And look up. The next part, lift up your heads. Another great statement. Lift up your heads. Don't be down. Don't be depressed, or don't let the fear paralyze you. Lift up your heads. And this is a great statement here, your redemption draws near.

There is a drawing near. James 5.8. Be patient and establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draws near. Jesus Christ is our redemption. Now wait a second. Am I not already redeemed by him at the cross?

Of course you are. But there's this final redemption that Romans 8 talks about, where he says all creation is longing and groaning for that culmination of redemption we have in Christ when he comes and he changes our broken earthly dying bodies into perfectly redeemed resurrection bodies. And this corruptible will put on incorruptible, right? In 1 Corinthians 15, the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised, be raised incorruptible. O death wears thy sting, O grave wears thy victory.

So our redemption's drawing near. Now then he speaks this parable of the fig tree, which is really, it gets deep, Robbie. This idea of all the trees there are, they're already budding. You see and know for yourself that summer's now near. The fig tree would demonstrate in springtime, when it starts to bud, you know that, hey, you can look at the tree and know the seasons. It's obvious.

It can't hang on a bud if it's not spring, which brings us into summer. And then he says this statement, see you also that when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near. Your redemption is near. In the prior verse, the kingdom of God is near here. Assuredly, I say, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

So there's a whole lot of heaviness in here, Robbie, and I don't even know where to begin to unpack that. There's a lot of controversy, a lot of folks confused. This is one of the most difficult texts in all of scripture, where he says, heaven and earth will pass away, or this will not happen until this generation passes away. So the key is understanding what the word not means.

Some falsely use this verse to claim that Jesus and the Bible are full of contradictions. Because he says, well, this is all going to happen before this generation. Some say, well, this means that it already happened, and it's done.

It's put to bed, and we're just going to live out until things are going to maybe just end, or get a little bit better, or whatnot. But they're wrong, because there's so many things specifically mentioned in this thing that have not happened yet. For one, most theologians believe that this generation, when it says this generation will not pass away, means the Jewish people. And some believe that Titus' siege in AD 70, which would just be about 40 years after this, these words of Christ, would bring the culmination of the destruction of Israel and this horrific apocalyptic judgment on the nation Israel. That wouldn't be the end of the earth. That would be a local apocalypse.

That wouldn't be a global apocalypse or destruction. So that's why you've got to take this scripture. And so there's some partial fulfillments there, but it's important with biblical interpretation. All the great ones say this, don't ever be concrete about something that the scriptures are not totally clear about, and you interpret scripture with scripture. So what we do know is he is coming back, and his word does not fail. We also know we're out of time for this edition of Experience Truth, Robbie. But keep studying the Word, reading the Word, memorizing the Word, meditating the Word, and share the Word of God with someone, and tell someone today to look up, because the Lord is coming back. This is the Truth Network.