Here's Ann Graham Lotz. As you watch for the signs, you just watch for the ones that say record-breaking of biblical proportion and within one generation. One generation, these signs increasing in frequency, increasing in intensity. We want to welcome you to the weekly program Living in the Light with Bible teacher Ann Graham Lotz. The disciples asked Jesus a very important question.
What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? Jesus answers this question by telling them about the signs of the times. And Anne Graham Lotz reminds us that the signs will be the characteristics of the last generation before Christ returns at his second coming. Today, Anne will explain these signs as she puts them in five categories called birth pangs. She'll be using various scripture references to further teach on this fast-approaching event.
Here now is Anne. When I was a little girl, I grew up right across the valley. And if you go down Interstate 40, go east, and you exit on Highway 9, you go left, you're going to go through a little town of Black Mountain. And if you keep on going, you'll come to Montreat, and that's where I was born and raised. But Black Mountain has railroad tracks that go right through it.
So if you go on Highway 9, you're going to cross over those railroad tracks. When I was a little girl, my daddy traveled a lot by the train.
So the airport in Asheville was teeny tiny. People didn't so much come and go out of Asheville.
So he would get on the train, and he'd go to Washington, D.C., or to New York, and that's where he would fly out of.
So when he would leave, I would come back from school, and I would say, well, Mother, where's Daddy? And she was, oh, you know, he's gone.
So she never made a big deal of his leaving at all. It was almost like a common day occurrence kind of thing. But when he came back, it was a big deal. And we celebrated his coming back.
So when we knew he was coming back, he would come back on that train. And the train would come into Black Mountain. But my grandmother, who had a great sense of fun and she helped to raise us, she would pile us kids in her car. And we'd drive down. It wasn't Interstate 40 then.
It was just Highway 70 going down to Old Fort.
So Old Fort is a town that's in the foothills at the bottom before you start to climb up to come into the mountains. And so she would drive down to Old Fort. And Old Fort, those same railroad tracks go through the middle of Old Fort.
So there was a crossroads there and the lights that would flash. And so we would wait and we would see the train coming in from New York or Washington, coming in and it would go through that intersection in Old Fort. And the lights would flash and the train would go on and it would go on up the mountain. And then my grandmother, we saw the train, we knew daddy was on it. We would get in the car and she would race up the mountain.
and her car would be faster than the train because the train had other cars, and it was going up a steep grade, so she knew she could beat it. We would come to Black Mountain, we'd get out at the railroad tracks in Black Mountain at the train station that's now a gift shop, I think, but we would stand in front of the train station, and we would wait for that train. And the tracks, if you look at them, when you cross those tracks in Black Mountain, there's almost like a quarter of a mile of straight track. Then it takes a sharp curve to the right, and you can't see past that curve.
So we would stand there on the tracks and would just be staring down the train tracks. We knew the train was coming. I mean, we saw the lights flashing in Old Fort. We saw it go through. We knew it was on its way coming up the mountain.
And we would just watch and watch. And it just seemed to take so long. We waited and we waited and we waited. And then we heard the whistle blow. And then we see the big headlight of the train coming around the curve.
and the train would pull up to the station and daddy would get off. And I'll tell you how I feel at this moment. I know Jesus is coming. I saw him cross that intersection. Lights flashing.
I know he's on his way. I see the signs. He promised that he would come. I know he's coming. It just seems so long.
But I'm waiting. It's almost like the psalmist, my eyes fail from looking upward, just so expectant. But I think I hear the whistle blowing, and I can almost see the light coming around the corner. And he's coming. You and I need to be ready for the moment when we see him face to face.
So how do I know it's so imminent? Jesus told the Pharisees in Matthew 16 you can discern the signs of the weather you know when it's red sky in the morning sailors take warning red sky in the evening sailors delight and I mean he didn't say exactly like that but he said you know you can look at the sky and discern the weather but you don't know what the signs of the times are and what time was it in the Pharisees day it was time for the Messiah the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecy And he was walking in their midst, and they missed him. I just wonder, with all the signs he's given us, we don't want to be in danger of missing what the signs are telling us.
So in Matthew chapter 24, open up your Bibles, and Jesus, this was the last week of his life before the cross, he would teach in Jerusalem during the day, he would cross the Kidron Valley in the evening, and he would go to Bethany to spend the night.
So this is one of those days when he had been teaching, He crossed the Kidron Valley, but he sat up on the Mount of Olives. And he was looking out over the Mount of Olives, and the disciples pointed out, look at that beautiful city and all the beautiful buildings. Isn't it a spectacular sight? And Jesus said in Matthew 24, verse 2, Do you see all these things? I tell you the truth, not one stone stands here that will be left on another until every one will be thrown down.
And as he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him and they asked privately, tell us when will this happen When will Jerusalem be destroyed And we know that 70 AD right When the Romans came in and destroyed it and you can see the piles of stones that are still left there piled one on top of another So they destroyed the city But then they asked a second question They said what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age How will we know when we're the last generation? In other words, there is a generation that will be last, but how will they know they are? And that's the question he answers. And so he goes into the signs of the times, the signs that will be the characteristics of that last generation before he returns.
So I've taken the signs and I've put them into five categories, okay? And we call them birth pains. And I take that from verse 8, because in verse 8 he says, there'll be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains. And when I was pregnant with my first child, Jonathan, you know, it came to the time to give birth and my labor pain started out is a low back pain.
And I thought, this isn't so bad. What's all the hype about? You know, this isn't. And those of you who have given birth, you know that the pain's increased in frequency. It's not just every five minutes and it's every four minutes and three minutes and two minutes.
And when it increases in frequency, it increases in intensity until at the end of that, when they increased in frequency, increased in intensity, it was so painful. I thought I can't take another pain, and then the baby came.
So Jesus said the signs he gives.
So when you talk about famines and earthquakes, and there have always been famines, always been earthquakes, always been wars, always been whatever. But he's saying when you see them increase in frequency, it's not just every hundred years.
Now it's every 10 years. Not just every 10 years, it's every year.
Now it's not just every year, it's every month and then every week. And not only increasing in frequency, increasing in intensity, they're record-breaking.
So as you watch for the signs, you just watch for the ones that say record-breaking of biblical proportion and within one generation.
So not sprinkled out all over the generations, but all condensed in one generation, these signs increasing in frequency, increasing in intensity. All right, those are the birth pains. And then they're going to do that to the point that the kingdom comes and Jesus will come.
So the first category of birth pains. I've called it spiritual, but probably religious would be a way to put it. In verse 5, many will come in my name claiming I am the Christ. Those are false Christ. Christ is a New Testament word for the Old Testament, the Messiah.
And a Messiah was someone who is to bring peace and prosperity. And so many people will come and say, we'll give you peace and prosperity if you just have our kind of government, if you just vote for me, if you just, you know, bring in our kind of system if you just do away with all the borders and we have a one world whatever and everybody live. And I saw even a thing that was actually built. It looks like an ant farm, except for it's for people, you know, where they put everybody condensed so that you just live within one block inside this. It's amazing.
And it's like a hundred miles long. And so they just say that that will bring peace. Everybody will get along.
So many false messiahs. Second one is persecution of Christians. He said in verse nine, you're handed over and put to death hated by all nations, and the disciples, of course, were followers of Jesus. And the persecution of Christians in 2021, 360 million people, Christians, suffered a high level of persecution. And today, the greatest persecution is taking place in Afghanistan, Nigeria, in India, and we can add Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China.
My youngest brother, Ned, has a ministry in mainland China called East Gates, and he said for a while, you know, it depended on the province you were in, but pretty much things were okay. And then in the last year, the persecution has just ratcheted up in China. But because the disciples were also Jews, I think it means an increase in anti-Semitism. And I don't even have to give you examples of that. But Joel Rosenberg came up and he said, since the Hamas attack on October 7th, worldwide, anti-Semitism has increased 500%.
And I won't even go into the things they're saying and they're chanting in the streets. And I will say this, that when they chant from the river to the sea, that means they want to annihilate the state of Israel.
So while they're saying that Israel is guilty of genocide, what they're calling for is a genocide against Israel.
So anti-Semitism. Divisions within the church, Verse 10, many will turn away from the faith and betray each other. And I just thought the church believers, people who call themselves by God's name, are so divided, whether it's over gay marriage or gay ordination. I have a friend who's one of the global leaders for the Anglican Church. They just had a big meeting in Uganda where they voted to divest themselves from the Archbishop of Canterbury over theological issues.
I think it can be over the style of music, ordination of women, over the gospel. When we say that Jesus is the only way and the Bible is without error, then there's division. And that will increase as the time draws near. False prophets, verse 11. Many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.
And a prophet is someone who is supposed to get a word from God and give it to the people. A false prophet is someone who said he had a word from God, and he gives it out, but it doesn't come from God at all. And I won't go through examples of that, but watch out for those who are in pulpits, those who have even seminary degrees, those who have ministries, those who have written books. Just watch out, because there are false prophets out there that say they have a word from God, and they can have a big following, and they can be popular and charismatic and move people to tears and move people to laugh, all that kind of stuff, but they're not from the Lord at all. And that will increase.
And I think social media has ramped that up.
Social media and the internet so that a lot of things are being watched and visible and accessible that wasn in the past So those are what I would call the spiritual birth pains or the birth pains in the religious realm All right Then we get to the national birth pains Verse six there will be wars and rumors of wars. And I don't have to list those for you either, but the war in Ukraine, the war in southern Israel, the rumors of war with Iran and Hezbollah and China invading Taiwan and just even And people saying that we're going to have in America what just happened in southern Israel because of the invasion that we've experienced in the last two years. And nation rising against nation is in verse 7. That's the Hebrew term for a world war, as I understand it. And we know in the last century we've had two world wars at a time when the United Nations was established to bring peace.
Interesting. But people now are saying we're on the verge of the third world war. and somebody said that the whole world is now our battlefield.
So environmental birth pains would be the next one. Famines and earthquakes in verse 8, but you can include floods and tornadoes and forest fires and just all sorts of environmental disasters. And 2023, I didn't know this until I looked it up, but it broke the record for having the most billion-dollar disasters within one year. In America, we've had $57 billion disasters already, and that includes Maui and hurricanes, and Adelia just hit the Big Bend in Florida, and the thing that was unusual was that it hit the Big Bend. Just watch for the record-breaking and the things that haven't happened before.
Otis was a hurricane that just hit on the Pacific coast of Mexico, Acapulco, and the thing that was interesting about Otis was that she was just a category one hurricane. And overnight, she went to a category five and hit that city and just demolished it. August was recorded as the hottest month ever worldwide. Record-breaking forest fires in Siberia. Can you imagine?
Floods in Alaska, a heat wave in the Andes. Libya had catastrophic flooding that killed 5,000 people, 10,000 still missing. I didn't even to read about that until I looked up the statistics. And I just saw, because my granddaughter's getting ready to move to Italy, northern Italy has had a record-breaking flood in Tuscany, and you just see cars just floating down the streets like they're in a river.
So those are some of the environmental signs such like that, but then there have been cosmic signs. In verse 29, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from the sky, the heavenly bodies will be shaken. And Joel 2 verse 31, as well as Revelation 6 says, the sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood. When the sun turns to darkness, that's a solar eclipse, right? And when the moon turns to blood, that's a lunar eclipse.
And the rabbis say that a solar eclipse is a warning to Gentile nations, but a lunar eclipse is a warning to Israel. And November 18th and 19th, we're scheduled to have the longest lunar eclipse of the 21st century.
So just all sorts of signs that God is giving us. In fact, Genesis 1, I don't want to digress, but when it says he gave the sun and the moon for signs and seasons, he gave it as signs.
So spiritual birth pains, national birth pains, environmental birth pains, personal birth pains. In Matthew 24, verse 4, verse 5, verse 11, verse 24, Jesus said, do not be deceived. And when you look at what's happening in America and the world today, the deception is mind-blowing. The fact that intelligent people can believe a lie and communicate lies as though it's truth, and they say it so many times, people begin to believe a lie, and then you just see the deception going. And I think the rioting in the streets is one example of that.
When they are so deceived into thinking Israel is the perpetrator, and Israel is the one who's genocidal, and Israel is the one who's attacking, that Hamas, they're freedom fighters? That's what they're saying? They're resistance movements? Oh my goodness.
So just be not deceived. The way you're not deceived, you saturate yourself in the Word of God. You know your Bible, and then And when something false comes across your way, you'll know it. You may not know how to answer it, but instinctively, you know, that's not right.
So, saturate yourself in God's Word. And I'm going to turn to 2 Timothy 3, verse 1. This is personal birth pains. Mark this. There will be terrible times in the last days.
People will be lovers of themselves. Oh, my goodness. How narcissistic can people get? and you go on social media and people just want to be seen. They want to be known.
They want to be popular. They want to have a following. They just love themselves. Lovers of money, do anything for money. Boastful, proud, abusive.
Oh my goodness, have we ever seen such abuse of children? How can we give in to people that say a child doesn't know if it's a boy or a girl and mutilate their bodies, which will never be able to be recovered from. That's abuse. Disobedient to their parents if they even have any parents. Ungrateful, unholy, just disrespectful to the things of God.
Without love, they're heartless, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. They have a form of godliness. They can be religious, but they deny its power. They have no relationship with God, and they deny the power of the cross, have nothing to do with them Paul says And you and I are living in that kind of culture that describes our day So not just in America It worldwide now It not just in the United States So there an increase of wickedness in verse 12 going back to Matthew, when he says there'll be an increase of wickedness, and haven't we seen that? There's no respect for law and order anymore.
There's wickedness in our court system. There's wickedness amongst our law enforcement. There's wickedness in the streets. There's wickedness in the highest places in our country and our government and whatever you can get by with, whatever will get you a vote, whatever will make you the most money. There's just an increase of wickedness.
I think Mexican cartels, Antifa, the Palestinian, if you want to call them protesters, whatever, it's just an increase of wickedness that we see in the country and in the world.
So those are just personal birth pains, and that's just some of them. There are others that I won't go into.
So all of those, the spiritual, the national, the environmental, the personal birth pains, to me, tell us that they're just increasing in frequency, increasing in intensity. You can feel the intensity, the oppression, the darkness that's coming in. But there are two birth pains that I want to point out because there are two positive ones. These are the global, what I would call global birth pains. in verse 32.
Now learn the lesson from the fig tree. This is Matthew 24. As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that the summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.
So he could say you can apply it just to the science. When you see them all happening within one generation, then you know the end is near. But the fig tree represented the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, and several days before he had been using it to describe the nation of Israel.
So some people, including myself, think that this could be a reference to the nation of Israel, that for 2,000 years was dormant. She was a fig tree that had no leaves or no signs of life. And then in 1948, the nation of Israel suddenly came to life, and she was recognized as a nation by the United Nations. Isaiah said, can a nation be born in a day? But she was.
She was born in a day, and she put forth her leaves. And is Jesus saying that the generation that sees Israel reborn as a nation after 2,000 years of dormancy, could that be the last generation? And one reason it's meaningful to me, she was reborn on May 14, 1948. I was born May 21, 1948.
So one week later, exactly to the day, she was reborn on a Friday. I was born on a Friday. one week later, and I believe if I live out my natural lifetime, I will live to see the return of Jesus. And I haven't believed that since I was a child. Yeah.
But to be honest, I believed I would live to see the rapture. I never thought I would live to see what we're seeing in the world. I don't know why I thought we would just be taken up out of here before all this goes down, but here we are.
So we need to be watching. We need to be smart. We need to be alert. And also I think, shall I say we need to be grateful that God would trust us with the responsibility and the privilege of being in the last generation, making him known when everything is getting so dark, lifting up the light.
So when you look at the birth pains, I believe they all indicate as they increase in frequency and intensity that this is the last generation, my lifetime, whatever that is. I'm 75. You've already figured that out. I was really expecting to come my 70th year, but 75th year. And in the scripture, a generation can be 20 years, 40 years, or 80 years.
So five more years, Lord. but whether that's true or not I don't know I just know that it's very significant and I want to be ready so in the meantime of course we're in a battle and I want to talk about the battle Priscilla Shire has a great illustration that I've used before and she she's let me use it but when her youngest son was little she took him to like a fall festival at the church and they had pickup trucks they're all lined up in the parking lot and in the back of the pickup trucks were games that the kids could play.
So the most popular game was one in this pickup truck. There was a blanket stretched across the pickup truck, the bed, and then holes were cut in the blanket. And they had little pop-up puppets that were coming up through the holes. And the game, the child was to get a, I don't know if it was like a fly swatter or it was a plastic bat, but he had to hit those puppets that were coming up to make them stay down. But if you hit one, another one popped up.
And they have those same kind of game at the fair, whack-a-mole, I think it's called. And so she said she was standing there. The line was so long. All these little children wanted to play this game. Finally, her little boy pulled away from her.
And before she could catch him, he ran to the pickup truck and he jerked the blanket off the back of the pickup truck. And underneath were all these adults, you know, with their hands going up. And the point is that you and I can see the conflict and the battle, but that's not the real problem. The real problem is underneath. And the real problem is the devil himself who is orchestrating things, and we're in a spiritual battle.
You can hear Living in the Light with Ann Graham Lotz weekly, and for ways to experience the God-filled life as you pursue your personal Bible study, go to anngramlotz.org, and she'll help you get started with free resources you can use and share with others. Join us here each week for Living in the Light.
