Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. One day the race of life will end. The last lap will be run. The Bible gives us signs that point to the time when that last lap may start and why we must be faithful to the end. Stay with us.
From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, they say it's darkest just before the dawn. As we explore what is God up to, tell us about the final battle. Dave, first of all, I want to say that one of the most difficult problems that Christians face is this.
How could a good God allow all of the evil that is taking place in the world? How does he manage it, and is it part of his program?
Well, the answer to those questions are, yes indeed, God has evil under control. I've written a book entitled God's Hidden Agenda, Uncovering His Good Plan in an Evil World. I want people to be able to see. that evil is not out of control even if it appears that way to us. Because God is God, and regarding the final battle, by the way.
It's very clear that in the end, Jesus Christ wins. I want you to listen now and then following this message I'm going to be giving you some contact info so that you can get a copy of this book. Yeah. A number of years ago, I read a story of a young boy who was reading a novel in the living room. His mother called to him and said, Johnny, come to the dishes.
He said, No, Mom, I can't, because right now I'm reading a novel, and the villain has the hero down, and he's about to kill him.
So I can't come now. I have to see how the story turns out. But as most mothers do, she persisted. And after being persistent, he knew that he had to go, so he flipped to the last page. of the book and read it.
And that afternoon, when he went into the kitchen, evidently, he said, You know, the villain is doing fine in chapter 6. But is he ever in for a shock when he gets to the last page?
Now, you know, any evaluation of the way in which the world is going needs to include the fact that the bad guys seem to be winning. This is not an optimistic day and age in which to be alive. Remember the days when we actually thought that maybe we could win the abortion war? Looks more doubtful now than ever. Are you aware of the fact that the militant homosexuals have won so many advances through intimidation that they have the news media not only totally on their side, but also they campaigned early in the AIDS phenomenon for the right to infect others with this disease?
I'm not talking about your average homosexual who struggles with homosexuality, I'm talking about the militants. And there's a big distinction between them and others who may perhaps understand. That they have this difficulty which they don't seem to be able to get over. But we're living in a day and age when there are expansive rights being given. To homosexual groups.
The far-reaching implications are chilling for society. We have a divorce rate. We have movies that are filled with violence and occult and moral impurity, and Christians Oftentimes are watching these and filling their minds with all kinds of things that are totally contrary to what the Bible teaches and yet justifying it on a number of different grounds. because the human mind has the ability to justify anything that the human heart really wants to do. Isn't it interesting that in the drug war, which some people think that we're beginning to win?
The drug war, the more information that goes out, the more people we have on drugs, billions of dollars spent, and yet there's very little evidence that we're able to clean the place up because the human heart craves it. There is this high that people have. And you look at society and you see the breakup of the home, and you see the frustration and the emotional and spiritual entanglements that people have as they grow up because they don't have a good set of roots at home. And you say to yourself, how much hurt can there be in this world anyway? It's clear that the villain has the hero down, if there are any heroes left.
and about to kill him. And that's why today we want to look at the last page. We're going to find out how it all ends.
Now if you've been here, you know that this is the seventh in a series of messages entitled What is God Up To? And in some senses the most important message comes next week. The title is Looking Back to Planet Earth because we're going to pretend that we are looking at Earth from the vantage point of heaven and eternity and finally answering the question of what in the world was God up to and was all the evil and all the pain in the world worth it to pull off whatever he had in mind.
So I hope that you're here next week to hear the final message in the series. But what is God doing today? What is it that He's doing today? He is calling out a people for His name. The purpose of the church in the world is to tell men and women that there is an eternity to which all of us are moving with great speed and necessity, and that we must prepare to meet our God.
Now, there are many other things that flow out of that message, but that is the bottom line. How has Satan tried to thwart the purpose of God in the world? First of all, he's always tried to get the church diverted. First of all, it was through awesome persecutions.
Sometime I'd like to preach a couple of messages on the early persecutions that went on in Rome and some of the other countries, because we don't know anything. We don't know anything about what suffering is. You know, it's one thing to die yourself. You can be a hero and you can say, sure, I'm willing to be eaten by the lions, and you can walk out there and they have you for breakfast. But what about your wife and children?
What about your family? How do they react? How would they get along without fathers? And how do children get along without mothers? It's excruciating.
During those early centuries, there was so much anguish. It's unbelievable. And yet, you know that more people have probably died for the cause of Christ in the last century. Then even in the first century. It's just that we live in this bubble of protection called the United States of America.
But there are other countries in the world where there is intense persecution, where there are massacres and death, and it's all around.
Now, first of all, then, Satan tried persecution, it did not work too well. Even the pagans began to get nauseated at the amount of blood that was shed by Christians.
So what he tried to do after that was politics. He tried to get the church wedded with the state. And when the church got wedded with the state, it lost its central focus almost immediately because then the church became interested in such things as political strength and political power and money and corruption. And the gospel, instead of being the news by which people are born again or saved, became adherence to a set of laws or principles. within the church and within society.
And this, of course, was also combined with many pagan ideas. And so the light of the gospel almost was extinguished.
Now you find also that today Satan uses many of the same tactics of diversion. There are people today who actually think the responsibility of Christianity is to Christianize America through laws.
Well, I believe in fighting for just laws, but that isn't the principal responsibility of the church because man has a problem that cannot be solved by temporal laws because he has an eternal soul and it takes an eternal answer to an eternal problem. Satan also likes to unite various liberal Christian groups. Just last night, I was talking to somebody who. I was talking to him about a retreat that some people were at, an ecumenical retreat, where a prophecy came supposedly from God, from Christ, and says, My body on earth is broken. Please put my body together.
May all the different religions of the world and all the different branches of Christendom get together.
Well, you can be absolutely sure that that prophecy, if it was supernatural at all, was not from God. It was not from the God of the Bible or the Lord Jesus Christ of the Bible. But people think that if we become involved in social action, brotherhood, get people together, translate the gospel into political and social dimensions, we will therefore accomplish something in this world. That may be important, but not the important thing that the church is to be doing. You and I are to say to men and women that the world is really disintegrating and God has almost abandoned the whole thing as it rushes to destruction.
And our responsibility is to tell men and women that there is a Savior who is able to save them out of the mess of this world and a worse mess. in the world to come.
Now I told you at the beginning though of this message that today we're going to turn to the end and see how it's all going to end. I've been emphasizing during this series that the earth is actually a stage on which God has enacted a drama. Good and evil, justice versus injustice, Satan versus God. This little planet was taken in the great canopy of the universe, and all the angels and the demons and mankind and God, it's all happening here. We are where the action is, little planet Earth.
But today we want to hurry on and we want to see how the curtain is going to fall, and we're going to get to the final act of the drama. What I'd like you to do is to turn to the end of the book, the book of Revelation, and I would like to just mention briefly today three final events. that are the last chapter. The last chapter is of planet Earth. We want to see how it ends.
Because if we can see that it ends in triumph, we'll be able to get from here to there with a whole lot more enthusiasm. First of all, the first great event, and we're talking about grand finales here, these are not little insignificant events. These are the biggies. These are the cataclysmic events that are still going to take place on planet Earth. I mean, now we're talking the intervention of God.
First of all, Christ will return. Christ will return. And His return, really, is in two stages. Revelation chapter 19, you'll notice in verse 7, we begin with the marriage supper of the Lamb. And you know who's going to be at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb?
We will be there. People say: are we going to eat in heaven? You folks on Optifast, are you going to eat in heaven? The answer is: yes, of course, you're going to eat in heaven. People think that in heaven we're going to be spirits.
That's nonsense. You're not going to be a spirit in heaven. After Jesus Christ had his resurrection body, he said, Touch me, because a spirit doesn't have flesh and bones. And then he ate fish with the disciples along the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Yes, we're going to eat at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
The rapture of the church will have been taken out. I'm going to be saying a lot of things today. In many respects, this message is very simple because I'm just going to be reading Scripture. But on the other hand, it does bring together a lot of strands, which I don't have time always to stop to explain. But notice it says in verse 7: Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to him, for the marriage of a lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready.
And it was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. And he said to me, Write, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said, These are the true words of God.
Now, that's a scene that is taking place in heaven. The marriage supper of the Lamb. But what's happening here on earth? I'll tell you what's happening on earth. Is that you have a period of great tribulation, and the purpose of the period of great tribulation is first of all that wickedness might literally run its course.
The church is the salt of the earth. The church is the light of the world. And when God takes the church out, all wickedness will be rampant with incredible abandon. And that's when you have Antichrist raising himself and saying, I'm God, and people are actually believing it. If Shirley MacLean is God, why can't the Antichrist be God?
So, people will believe that the Antichrist is God and they will worship him. And those who do not worship him, the Bible says, will be put to death. It will be wickedness. in its fullest dimension. Another thing that's happening during that period of great tribulation is God is preparing the nation Israel.
To accept the Messiah, because in the end, the nation Israel will look upon Christ and recognize him to be their brother. and their messiah. Paul says in Romans, so in the end, all Israel. The nation Israel that is in existence during that time will be saved.
So, what you have then is Jesus Christ coming first of all to rapture his people, then you have the period of great tribulation, and then he comes in glory. He said in Matthew 24: As the lightning goes from the east even unto the west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be. It is a glorious, triumphant. Return. And what will have happened at that time?
All the nations of the earth, it says in Zachariah, will be gathered. at Jerusalem. And so you'll have the Eastern Confederacy coming up, of course, from the Eastern countries, from Japan and China, and maybe India. You'll have Europe coming. From the west, and they'll all be gathered there at Jerusalem, and they'll begin that huge battle, that final conflict called Armageddon.
And in the middle of it, Jesus comes. And all the nations of the earth forget their differences and say, we've got a problem that is bigger than our own squabbles. Christ is coming. Let's all train our guns on him and let's unite and fight him. And that's what you have now in the rest of chapter 19.
It says, verse 11, And I saw heaven open, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat upon it is called faithful and true, and in righteousness he judges and wages war. And his eyes are a flame of fire, and upon his head are many diadems, and he has a name written upon himself, which no one knows except himself. And he is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word of God. And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following him on white horses. Stop!
Everybody stop, everybody awake at this juncture. My dear friend, the armies clothed in white linen we just read in the 19th chapter of the saints. We're going to be with Jesus Christ at that moment. Those of you who didn't come with us to Jerusalem this summer. Say, I want to go to Jerusalem someday.
Fine. You're going to be here if you're a believer. you're going to take the final tour. probably even better than Luther's tour to Jerusalem. We're going to be with Jesus Christ, my friend, as he comes.
And notice it says. Verse 15, and from his mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it he may smite the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, and he treads the winepress of the fierce wrath of God the Almighty. And on his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of Kings and Lord. of lords. Who wins?
Who wins? Oh, throughout the ages it has always looked as if Satan was winning. We put all of our money into abortion battles, and abortions still take place. We put our money into the drug war, and drugs still take place. We try to teach our children about righteousness, and then subsequent generations come along, and you have divorce, and you have all that.
And you have pastors who stood up and warned their people about movies, and then we gave up warning people, and so they've imbibed it and they've gotten hooked on various kinds of sensuality. And it looks as if Satan has won another round. And on and on, it goes until it's so weary, I get so tired of it.
Well, my dear friend, we flipped to the back of the book. This is the way it's going to end. Christ is going to come, and when you look at the carnage that takes place here, it is so awesome that to our 20th century sensibilities, we say, you know, this offends me. Because it talks about flesh being all over. It talks about the birds coming to eat the flesh of those who have been.
killed by this war. And you say, Oh, it's so gruesome, it's so ugly. Do you know why it's so ugly to us? It's because sin to us generally is not very ugly at all, and we don't know how bad sin is. See, we don't know how much God hates rebellion.
We know that He hates rebellion, you learn that in Sunday school, but we don't know the extent to which He hates rebellion. What if uh Jonathan Edwards was right. When he said the size of a sin should be gauged by the size of the being. against whom it has been committed. Wow.
What if that's true? Then even the smallest sin deserves harsh, complete judgment. And so Jesus steps on the scene. That's the first cataclysmic event. Christ returns in two stages.
Now, let me give you a second event, and that is Christ sets up rule in Jerusalem and rules on the earth. Oh, I know there are some people who don't believe that Jesus will rule on the earth again. And I just feel sorry for them because they're going to have to revise their understanding of prophecy. After it happens, they'll say, yeah. You guys were right.
He's ruling on the earth. I have some very dear friends who say, How can Jesus in his glorified body still rule on this planet?
Well, Jesus with his glorified body interacted with the disciples.
Well, chapter 20. This is where the rule is specified. And I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand, and he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. I need to add a parenthesis here. There are some people who believe that there will be no millennial kingdom on earth.
And so they think that this is the age of the kingdom, this is the age of the millennium, and therefore they also conclude that this is the age in which Satan is bound. And there's a very well-known counselor whom I have met, and we've had some interesting discussions, who has written books on the fact that when people come to you today for counsel, you can know in advance that their problem is never demonic because this is the age of the kingdom, and Satan is bound.
Well my word. That's an interesting theory of counseling. I guess Satan, if he's bound, has a mighty long chain. Mighty long chain. Because there is a great chain in his hand, and it must be long enough to get all the way to Chicago.
and all the way to the west coast. Not to mention the East, we wouldn't want to leave them out. And what can we say about California? You Californians, you know right well we love you. We wouldn't talk like this if we didn't.
And you'll notice they threw him into the abyss and shut it and sealed it over him so that he should not deceive the nations any longer until the thousand years were completed. During the millennial kingdom, Satan will be bound. And after these things, he's got to be released just for a short time. And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of the testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God.
And those who had not worshipped the beast or his image, and had not received the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand, and they came to life and they reigned with Christ for a thousand years. That is, those who were beheaded during the tribulation period who came to believe on Christ even though the church had already been raptured. But I want you to notice it says that they came and they reigned with Jesus Christ. You say, well, Pastor Lutzer, what are we going to be doing? You're going to have a glorified body, and if you're a believer, you will be reigning with Christ too.
You say, on the earth? I thought maybe, you know, somewhere in heaven.
Well, maybe somewhere in heaven eventually, but on the earth, yes. What does it say in Revelation 5.10? You need not turn to it, but you must listen carefully. I'll even read verse 9 to give you the context. Worthy art thou to take the book and to break its seals, for thou wast slain and didst purchase for God with thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.
Are you included in that?
Now notice. And has made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign. upon the earth. Yeah. Um Well, my friend, this is Pastor Lutzer.
You can either take it or not take it, but there it is in God's holy word. In the midst of all of our brokenness, all of our failures, Despite all of the setbacks of life, let's remember that believers will reign. on the earth. I can't explain it. I can visualize it.
But of course only God knows what it's going to be like, and the reason that I wrote a booklet entitled God's Hidden Agenda, Uncovering His Good Plan in an Evil World, is so that we might see that redemption was a part of God's scheme right from eternity past. And of course we shall enjoy it. into eternity future. It's hard to get your mind around, but thank God. that we don't have to in order to rejoice in our future.
Well very quickly, here's how you can connect with us. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com or you can pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-1. 218-9337. Remember the title of the book, God's Hidden Agenda.
and that agenda, of course, is revealed to us In the scriptures, even as we are reminded of the sovereignty of God and His love for us, in the midst of chaos. Here's what you can do once again. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com. Or you can pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337.
My friend, no matter how bad it is, It's going to end. Very well. You can write to us at RunningTowin 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Running to Win comes to you from the Moody Church in Chicago to help you understand God's roadmap for your race of life. Life as we know it will be over in a final battle at the end of the age.
Next time, the destiny for Satan, the enemy of mankind. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
