Carter Conlan from the historic Times Square Church in New York City. The Bible warns that in the last of the last days there will be a dramatic increase in lawlessness. If you think it's dark now, it's not even remotely as dark as it's going to get, and the behaviors and the violence and the immorality are going to be on such a scale that it will make Sodom and Gomorrah look like a kindergarten picnic.
Thank you for joining us today for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlan. During the last days, a very dark and evil period will come upon the earth. God will pour out His judgment on all the unbelieving people alive at this time.
Many will die, and many will wish they had died because of how horrible this tribulation period is going to be. But Carter has a promise he wants you to hear about. He'll explain more as we join him now with his message titled, The Last of the Last Days.
Here's Carter. I'm going to speak to you today about the last of the last days, the last of the last days. We've been in the last days since the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. That's the period of time biblically known as the last days. The last days began with the ascension of Christ, continued with the day of Pentecost, Acts chapter 2, and will culminate or finish with the return of Jesus Christ. If the early apostles thought they were in the last days, we are now in the last of the last days.
The Apostle Peter warned us that these days should not overtake us as a thief, should not come upon us so suddenly that we were unprepared for it. I remember back in the year 2001, it was about the month of April when the Holy Spirit started speaking to our hearts in this church that there was a time of crisis coming to the city. We knew it was the voice of God so we canceled the missions conference, we canceled the women's conference, we canceled our guest speakers, we began to meet. And the Holy Spirit said, bring the people to the throne of God and teach them how to find grace to help in time of need for a season of distress is coming to the city.
And they're going to need to be strong, to not be part of the fear in a sense that will be in our streets. You know, during the next few months, we had such a phenomenal presence of God come into the sanctuary. We would sometimes sit for up to 20, 25 minutes in absolute silence and the presence of God was touchable.
I don't know how else to describe it. And God was preparing our hearts. Now, there were some people here that said, hey, we didn't come to church for this. We came to church to be blessed.
There's always, there's always people who come to church and it's all just about me, myself, and mine. I didn't come here to be prepared, to be ready to help somebody else. I came here to be blessed.
So they left, a few left, not it wasn't that many, but a few left and they found a place more conducive to their pursuits at that time. But thank God when 9-11 came, we were ready. Thank God that we were ready as a body to receive people in the, I don't, I can't even count the numbers of people that came to Christ.
There's no way to count it. I do remember one Tuesday night I had to ask the people to stop kneeling in the aisles because they were creating a fire hazard in the church and they did. And there were just, just multiples and multiples and multiples of, of people who'd come to Christ. But the point being we were ready. And so I want to talk to you about the last of the last days and it comes with an incredible promise from God, an incredible promise. I'm going to have to go through some of the things that we're going to have to face in the last days before I get to the promise. So stay with me, please, because there's something for you at the end. Acts chapter 2, part of verse 17.
And I just want to start with the part at the beginning. It shall come to pass in the last days, says God. It shall come to pass. When God says it shall, that means it will. That means it doesn't mean that it might, should, possibly will, will come just for a few.
No, it shall come to pass. When God speaks, his words have the same authority as when he said, let there be light and light came. As when God spoke into dust to the earth and Adam became a living soul. As when he stood in the boat and he said to the wind, be still and to the seas, be calm. And immediately the storm ceased. When he stood before the grave of Lazarus and called him out after being four days in the place of death.
You see, it's that powerful. God says it shall come to pass in the last days. As I said earlier, the last days began with the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ and will end with his return. But there is a moment where we become aware that we're living in the last of the last days.
I don't know how long the last of the last day season will be, but I don't think it'll be as long as some would like it to be. I think it's going to come upon us suddenly. The Bible says it's like a woman about to give birth.
The labor pains in the beginning are far apart, but as the birth draws near, they become closer until it's a constant in a sense at the giving of birth. It's like that, the scripture says. There's coming a time when all of the evil around us, it will get progressively worse and worse and worse and worse. People will look and say, what's happening to this world? Since COVID seemingly shut everything down, it's as if a baptism of confusion and lawlessness and division has really hit the entire world that we're living in today. So many are scratching their heads and saying, what's going on in this world? Well, this world is launching its final rebellion against the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It's always been in the heart of humankind to go its own way, to do its own thing, to craft its own rules of what's right and what's wrong.
The essence and the nature of sin in the Garden of Egypt is to actually rebel against God, but there's been a restraining force, a restraining power in the world against that, instituted, governed, carried by the Spirit of God. There has been a restrainer. One day the scripture tells us that the restraining hand of God will be lifted and humankind will devolve into a depravity never, ever seen on such a scale in all of history.
We've seen this depravity from time to time, as in the Holocaust in World War II, where it's unbelievable how inhumane humanity can become with other human beings in the name of what they believe is virtue, and yet we know it to be evil, absolute unmitigated evil. Now I want you to imagine that on steroids with restraints removed, nothing to stop it. The hand of God has been lifted. Many believe that's the rapture of the Church of Jesus Christ. I happen to concur with that, that one day the Bible says that the Church of Christ is going to be lifted from the face of this earth. The restraint in that sense will be taken away from this world, and whatever remains in this world will be free to practice its debauchery and its lawlessness on a scale that's unimaginable. If you think it's dark now, it's not even remotely as dark as it's going to get, and the behaviors and the violence and the immorality are going to be on such a scale that it will make Sodom and Gomorrah look like a kindergarten picnic.
The Bible warns that in the last, of the last days, there will be a dramatic increase in lawlessness. That part of the human heart that says we do not want anybody telling us that there's a right and a wrong beyond what we believe right and wrong should be. You now have this concept in society today of your truth and my truth.
Have you noticed that? You'll tell somebody, say, I believe that two and two equals four, and I think I can empirically prove it. And they'll look you right in the eye and say, well, that's your truth, but I believe that two and two equals five.
And it's insanity. Truth is being crafted. It's not based on any reality, just like when the children of God, when Moses was gone for a season, they crafted a golden calf and somehow convinced themselves that this calf that they made with their own hands had been the power of God that brought them out of Egypt and was going to lead them now into a place of promise. The stupidity of the human heart is staggering at times when you take away the restraints of God. There's almost nothing that we will not craft, and no matter how deep or dark a lie it is, we will want to parade it as truth. And isn't that exactly what we're facing in our world today? Paul paints this incredibly dismal picture, 2 Thessalonians 2 beginning at verse 7, he says, the mystery of lawlessness is already at work until he who restrains it will do so until he's taken out of the way. There's this push against the ways of God, and we're seeing it in full force in our country today, a push against what God says is biblical morality, a push against truth, a push against everything that is holy and righteous and just and true.
And isn't it amazing how people now in authority even can get up and bold-facedly lie and they don't even blink when it's proven to be wrong? Can you imagine with the restrainers still here, can you imagine what will happen when the restrainer is taken out of the way? When that of God which holds back this evil is suddenly removed, then the lawless one will be revealed. Satan of course is at the heart of this rebellion against God and those he chooses to put into authority, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan with all power, signs and lying wonders, and with all unrighteousness, deception among those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie, that they only be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. There's nothing in my mind more terrifying than when you see the hand of God having been lifted from somebody who wants new truth, and I've seen that more than once in my lifetime. When you're looking into eyes so dark and into logic so foreign to the ways of God that you can no longer, even people who once walked with God and you can't reach them, there's something has happened and there's a mist of blindness that's come upon their lives and no matter what you say they can just shrug it off. There's no conviction, no desire to turn back to God, no desire to return to truth because they did not receive the love of the truth.
God, it says, shall send upon them strong delusion. If today you can hear his voice, don't harden your heart. That's the best advice I think as an older saint I can give you. If you can hear his voice, if he's telling you to turn away from something, turn away from it now.
If he's telling you to move towards something, he has to move towards it now. If you can hear his voice, don't harden your heart. The old time saints used to call it gospel hardening when you hear truth for so long and have resisted it for so long that suddenly you don't hear it anymore. It's like a veil comes over the ears and over the heart.
There's no longer any ability to hear. Now Paul also paints a dismal picture of this time when humankind moves to a collective level of depravity that's rarely if ever been seen in the world. Listen to what he says in 2 Timothy chapter 3.
Know this, in the last days perilous times will come. Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, and that means a standing and cursing God, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, potty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power, and from such people turn away. In other words, this entire rebellion will clothe itself in its own homemade religion. It doesn't say that they will reject religion. They just reject God.
They will form a religion that allows this kind of behavior to exist and somehow validates it and makes it a good thing. It's a form, but it has no power in it. It cannot change the human heart. It can't transform a society.
It can't do anything. The power of God is not in it. Of this sort are they who creep into households and take captives of gullible women loaded with sins and led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jamborees resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth. Men of corrupt minds disapprove concerning the faith, but they will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all as theirs also was. And so what you see in this is when Moses was sent by God to bring the people out of captivity, out of years of captivity in Egypt, and then to bring them into a wilderness.
How attractive is that? Not into the promised land yet, but into the wilderness first. It speaks to me of a place of trust in God. Out of captivity into a place where I don't know where I'm going, but God's taking me there. And I choose to sacrifice here. I choose to thank him here.
I don't see his promises yet fulfilled, but I believe he's faithful. And so God, thank you for taking me out of captivity. And I'm not sure where I'm going, but I am sure you're going to take me there.
So I'm going to sacrifice here. I'm going to thank you. I'm going to praise you here. So important to learn to praise God in the wilderness.
Hallelujah. You can't wait until all your promises are fulfilled to start praising him. You start praising him now. Start praising him before your prison door open. Praise him before you're blinded eye see. Praise him before your wounded heart is healed. Praise him when you don't know where you're going, but you're not going back to where you used to be. You know that much, but you don't know where you're going yet.
But you start praising him and saying, God, I believe that all things work together for good because I love you and I am the called according to your purpose, not my purpose, but your purpose. As we heard about Joseph being in the prison, God, I don't know how this promise is going to be fulfilled, but I know you're going to fulfill it. It's going to be done your way.
It's going to be done in your time. And you have set my life apart for the sake of others. That's what we teach at our Bible school. Christianity is living for the benefit of others. It's not just for me.
It's not just for my food, my career, my home, my life, my happiness, my job, and all these things. Ultimately the purpose and the pleasure of God's power in our lives is for the sake of other people who need to know him through us as Lord and savior. Now there's going to be a religion that's going to resist this, a religion that had gained access to the throne, a pharaoh, and could imitate the power of God, but only to a point. There's a lot of imitation of the power of God.
It's usually accompanied with a lot of smoke and a lot of noise. But there's a lot of imitation. And so they were able to imitate certain things. When Moses and Aaron showed up, they could imitate the rod turning into a serpent.
They could imitate the frogs coming out of the river. There's certain things they could do, but there was a line that they could not cross. And that was when God told Moses to bring life out of the dust. You see, you and I were created... Our first father was created from the dust. Adam was... God put some dust in his hand and he breathed upon it, and that pile of dust became a living soul. And we are the children of that pile of dust.
Do you know that, right? We are the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. They are our first parents. Ashes to ash and dust to dust. I've said that at so many grave sites now that it's kind of ingrained in me now.
This is where we came from and this is where we're going to go one day. But only God can give life to my pile of ashes. Do you understand that? Nobody can imitate that. You can't fake that.
You can't pretend that, Sarah. Only God can breathe into my life and take me where I need to go and make me into what He's called me to be and give me what I need to have when I get there. Only God can bring life from the dust.
Only God can bring that kind of life into any of us. This is what will manifest their folly. There will come a point where it becomes obvious to the honest seeker of God that these men and women do not speak for God because no matter how much they strut and preen themselves on in public or wherever it is, they cannot bring about anything in my heart that allows God to bring change into my life. You see, because their whole focus is about themselves, they can't bring people into a focus of others.
They can't because it's never at the center core of anything they preach, teach, publish, or defend. In 2 Timothy chapter 3, Paul tells us about the season that we're probably living in now where marriage and family and fatherhood and motherhood will be mocked and directly undermined. Children will be indoctrinated in godlessness. Pleasure and not purpose in life will be promoted. Immoral lifestyles will be celebrated. Prayer will be taken away from our children, from our schools. Obscenity laws will be softened.
Pornography will be promoted in all media outlets. Many churches will back down, discredit the Bible, and actually begin to resist the truth. When that decree came from Nebuchadnezzar, who built a statue as he saw it in the image of himself and his worldview as it was of what the future is going to look like, he sent a decree. And he said, everybody, when you hear the music, you bow before my image of man as it is. You bow before that golden image. And if you refuse to bow, you're going to be thrown into the furnace.
It's going to get hot for you if you don't bow. Many of you know what I'm talking about today. That same spirit is in the workplace that same spirit is attacking the people of God all through our society today. You bow, you bend, you agree, or you burn. That's really what people are being challenged with today. Now there's a lot of people that claim to be people of God of that generation that bowed.
I have no doubt. And they had all the reasons why this was probably legitimate in the sight of God. And I don't know any of their names. None of their names are recorded. Do you know any of their names? Did any of them have any effect on their society?
Absolutely not. But the one thing I do know, I know the names of the three who didn't bow. Hallelujah. I know the names of the three who decided no matter what you do, no matter the threats you send my way, I am not bending my knee to a homemade image of God or man. I am going to serve the living God and him alone will I bend my knee to. So you throw me in the fire if you want. You take away my freedom if you choose to do so, but I'm going to serve God and it's only Jesus Christ that I will bend my knee before in this or any other generation.
This religious system will progress no further. Their foolishness will be made known. And you asked me the question, you say, well, then how are we going to stand in the last of the last days against such a flood of evil? Some of you came in here with that question today. God almighty, how am I going to stand in the workplace? You can't even have a conversation about something biblical anymore without being labeled a hater or somebody who was unnecessary or being vilified or lied about or slandered or set up.
And I know you face these things now in the workplace. We asked the question, how do we stand in the last of the last days against a flood? Now Isaiah chapter 59 and verse 19, the Lord says, when the enemy shall come in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him. Now standard is a banner.
A standard is like a flag. And the best definition I read, it's when the Lord decides to enter the fight himself, God says, okay, this is enough. I'm coming down.
I'm going to enter the fight. And he raises a banner around which he calls his soldiers to gather. It's a gathering point.
You know, of course the flag for us, the banner is the cross of Calvary. It's the place where the victory was won. It's the place that God is calling us to. It's the place which we're now called in the last days to the banner because his promise is it shall come to pass in the last days.
We can't even begin to understand the depth of what he's about to do. But I do know by God's grace, we are invited to be part of it. You were never God's plan B, do you understand? Or C, D, E, or F. You were always plan A in the kingdom of God. When you go into the book of Corinthians, you just see it clearly. God chooses the foolish and the weak and the nobodies and the nothings and those things that are despised and the poor empower by the cleansing of his blood filled with his Spirit, bringing us where we could never go and giving us what we could never naturally possess and making us into what we could never be so that he might be glorified. And together, you and I will move into this mountain of confused humanity.
Talk about confusion. It's on every level, but here we go as the body of Christ moving into this mountain of confusion for perhaps the greatest whoever calls moment in the history of the world. But in verse 21, as signs in the heavens begin to actually increase, he says it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. But it's you and I moving in the empowerment of the Holy Spirit into this mountain of darkened humanity and whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. That's what I want my life to be. That's what I want your life to be.
It's a life that causes people to call out to God. David the king said, I was sinking. So if you're sinking today, then you're okay. You're okay. He's not going to let you go down.
Don't you worry about that. And David said, the Lord reached down and picked me up and set me upon a rock. He put my feet on a solid place and he put a new song in my mouth, even praise to our God.
And I love the King James Version. He says, many shall see it. It doesn't say they'll hear it.
They'll see it. He puts a song on us that can be seen before it's heard and they will fear and they will trust in God. In other words, the song of confidence in God is so deep within us. The song of God's ability to change us from image to image and glory to glory by the spirit of God. The song of the ability to see a future when others around us don't. In Acts 27, when the ship was going down, somebody called for the apostle Paul.
Up to that point, they couldn't care less about what he had to say. But when the ship was going down and the scripture says, and all hope that we would be saved was lost, somebody somewhere said, where is that guy that said he's got a word from God? And your life and mine are going to do that in this generation as our confidence in God is going to tell people to get a hold of the cross. The cross still floats, folks. It still can get us to shore.
It's still trustworthy. And as we begin to trust in God, a song of confidence will be placed in our hearts. And because of it, people around us, your family, your brothers, your sisters, your friends, even your enemies, will see the presence of God in your life and they will begin to turn to Him because they see that song of confidence that comes from the indwelling of God's Holy Spirit. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
Hallelujah. The message today has been brought to you by Carter Conlon from Time Square Church. For more information, log on to tsc.nyc. That's tsc.nyc. And to be with us next week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.
