Understanding the Times, Part 1

Greetings, friends and new listeners. Welcome to The Sound of Faith. I'm Sharon Knotts thanking you for joining us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. I'm very zealous to bring you today's message, Understanding the Times.

On the surface, there are many things transpiring in our world today that seem to defy human decency, logic, and even sensibility. And at the same time, many Christians are witnessing the rapid fulfillment of Bible prophecy, while others appear to be uninformed or apathetic. In this detailed teaching, we will travel from the time of Noah to Daniel and the first coming of Jesus the Messiah, 4,000 years of human history, to this season of the rapidly approaching second coming of our Lord, and the signs we are to look for in Understanding the Times. If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to Daniel, the 12th chapter, and we will read four verses, and then we'll skip again. And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people.

This is Gabriel giving a message to Daniel. Daniel is in captivity in Babylon with thousands and thousands of other Jewish people. So when he says thy people, he's talking about the Israelites.

He's talking about the Jews. And there shall be a time of trouble such as never was, since there was a nation even to that same time. And at that time, thy people shall be delivered, everyone that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Here we have in the Old Testament a clear reference to the resurrection, and clear that some are going to have life and others are going to have damnation. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament. That's another word for the heavens and the planets like the sun and the moon. And they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever. So if you're wise and you're a soul winner, you are going to shine like the sun and the moon and the stars. But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book. Even to the time of the end, many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall be increased.

Let's stop here for a moment. So this is a great prophecy and filled with predictions that God gave to Daniel. Daniel had sought the Lord. He only asked about, isn't it time for the children of Israel to leave Babylon and go home? Because previously, Jeremiah the prophet had prophesied they would go into captivity for 70 years and now it's 70 years and Daniel's thinking it's time for us to go, Lord. So he fasted and prayed and asked God please show us what's going to go with this. God loved Daniel so much. He not only answered his question, yeah, you're going to leave Babylon, but he told him all the way to future events that even now have yet to happen. The time of the end.

And he gave him some clues. Knowledge shall be increased. And saints of God, we are truly living in that time now. Do you know that from the beginning of recorded history of mankind up to the year 1800, that all the knowledge that was accumulated up to that point from 1800 to 1900 in just 100 years, that doubled. The knowledge of thousands of years doubled in 100 years. In fact, in the last 100 years, or we'll say 114 years, we'll take this up to date, technological advances have increased 99%. Now, I preached this message back in 2001. And at that time I looked it up and it said that at that point knowledge was increasing every 24 months. But today it's now increasing every 12 months.

Think about it. At the turn of the 20th century in 1900, men were still riding on horses. But by 1970, I'll back up 1969 to be accurate, man was walking on the moon.

Going from riding horses at the turn of the century of 1900 to 69 years later and they landed on the moon. That shows you how exponentially that knowledge is increasing. I mean, when God said that knowledge shall increase, only he knew exactly what he meant. And I read this. Now, look, I don't know if it's true or not. Some people are saying that if we continue like we're going, if they continue to build greater and smarter computers that the time will come when knowledge will double every 12 hours. And it will be to the point that most people will not even be able to keep up with it.

Amen. Now, listen, you've got to realize there are a lot of variables in this. Technological knowledge is increasing greater than maybe knowledge about botany, you know, about flowers or planning.

You understand what I'm saying? There are certain when you, that's why I use the word technology. You can see with the advent of the computer. When I was working at a job that I had back in the late 70s, early 80s, I was using an adding machine to do the billing and think about it.

I remember when I first got my first calculator, I was like whoa, you know, about computers. And so knowledge has increased and continues to increase at a really exponential pace. Many shall run to and fro. And you know that is an idiom. It's a figure of speech meaning there's a whole lot of movement and travel.

And I tell you, you can't go to and fro any faster than if you get on a jet airplane. You can have breakfast in Paris. Amen.

And you can have a lunch in London and you can have a late dinner in the United States because travel has increased. Knowledge has increased. All of these things are happening. So Daniel could not have begin to understand what God was talking about. And God said, seal up the book. Seal it up, Daniel, because it's for the time of the end. Now we can understand it.

Now we get it. It makes sense to us because we are in the fulfillment of it. Let's drop to verse 8. And I heard but I understood not. Then I said, oh, Lord, what shall be the end of all these things? And he said, go your way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the end of the time. Listen to this verse. Many shall be purified and made white and tried.

Purified, made white and tried. But the wicked shall do wickedly and none of the wicked shall understand. But the wise shall understand. You know, you can go on social media and some of the stuff that's on there, the people will try to talk about God and the end times. And you're like, where are these people coming from? It makes no sense at all. People make up their own theories. People make up their own things. And because they believe it, then that's good enough for me. Because they don't have a leg to stand on.

It's just what they think. Amen. And so he said, the wicked shall not understand. So don't be surprised when you try to share the scriptures with people and they don't understand. He said, the wicked shall do wickedly because they're of their father, the devil, Jesus said in John eight forty four. And because he said in Revelations twenty to eleven, he said, let the filthy be filthy, but let the righteous be righteous and the wise will be purified and they will be made white and we will be tried. We will go through trials and and testings.

All of these things are going to try us. But if we will go through them, then like Job said, though the Lord try me and slay me, yet I will come forth as pure gold. But don't expect evil men to understand.

I'll just read something to you. Proverbs twenty eight five. Evil men understand not judgment, but they that seek the Lord shall understand all things.

Hosea fourteen nine. Who is wise and who shall understand these things? Who is prudent and shall know them? For the ways of the Lord are right and the righteous shall walk in them, but the transgressors shall fall therein. Things like this always fascinate me. This word, this word, this truth that we were reading for the wise, they're going to walk in it and progress in it. But for the wicked, it's going to cause them to fall. They're going to stumble at the same word of God that gives us wisdom and understanding. They're going to fall over it.

It becomes a huge stumbling block. Ecclesiastes eight five. A wise man's heart discerneth both.

Somebody say both time and judgment. So a wise man, a wise woman of God understands time and judgment, understands what God is doing and when God is doing it and why. And let me tell you saints in every age, God has always had those people though they were sometimes but a remnant and sometimes only one. God has always had those who understood and knew the times.

Let's turn in, you keep a marker in Daniel because we might come back, but let's turn in Genesis five and start with verse 21. One of the first men that we meet in the scriptures who understood the times is the man Enoch and he was the seventh generation from Adam and Eve. So we read in verse 21 and Enoch lived sixty and five years and begat Methuselah and Enoch walked with God after, somebody say after, after he begat Methuselah three hundred years and he begat sons and daughters and all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty five years and Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him.

He is a very fascinating person because let me just say this right off the top, he represents the rapture of the church. How many understand Enoch has not died yet? See one day he went out for his daily walks because he walked with God and that's not just a one time action of the past but it means a continual thing. So just like God used to come down every day in the garden and, and have fellowship with Adam and Eve, I know God's heart. He was just so thrilled that now he had Enoch that every day God would come down and walk with him and one day Enoch didn't come home. Amen. But here's the thing about it that is fascinating. He didn't start walking with God till he was sixty five years old.

You see that? And so it says and after that he walked with God. After what? After he had Methuselah. Or I should say probably before he had Methuselah because something happened. Something happened that revolutionized Enoch and opened up his understanding.

Amen. And God showed him at least two things. First of all, God showed him the flood of Noah that was soon to come.

And you say well how do you know that? We know that because he named his son Methuselah. Somebody say Methuselah. And the name Methuselah in the Hebrew means when he dies, it shall come. When Methuselah dies, the great flood, the great deluge shall come.

So by, we see by this that he understood that there was going to come a great destructive flood. And so as to warn people, he literally named his kid Methuselah. So every time somebody said hey Methuselah, come here. Hey Methuselah, can you get this for me?

Hey Methuselah, would you go to the store for me? Every time they said Methuselah, they were saying when he dies, it shall come. When he dies, the judgment, the flood shall come.

It would be like today if somebody named their kid Maranatha. Because Maranatha says our Lord comes. It means our Lord comes. So if somebody's name was Maranatha and every time you said oh Maranatha, come help me in the kitchen, you were saying our Lord is on his way. Our Lord is coming.

Amen? And so the other thing that we know that God showed him was the second coming of Christ. And how do we know that? By a tiny little verse in a tiny little book of Jude that's only one chapter but verse 14 says that Enoch prophesied and our Lord shall come with 10,000 of his saints. So obviously God showed him the second coming. We know it's the second coming and not the rapture because the Lord is coming with the saints. So the rapture's already taken place when he came for the saints and they went up and now they're coming back with him at the second coming.

Amen? So God allowed Methuselah, I didn't read it but if you would have went on, you would have found out that God allowed Methuselah to live longer than any human person on record. He lived to be 969 years old. Think about that, 969 years old and when he was 369 years old, Methuselah, his grandson Noah was born and Noah lived 600 more years.

So for 300 years Enoch walked with God and then one day he was not. What God showed him revolutionized his life, changed his whole life and so that he literally never died and we know that it's a pointing unto every man wants to die but he will die during the tribulation. He will be one of those witnesses I believe that will come back and preach in Israel and when he does the antichrist is going to kill him and Elijah and their bodies will lie in the street for three and a half days and CNN and all the other cable channels will show the whole thing. You will see it on TV, well I won't because I won't be here.

I don't know, maybe some of you will but I'll watch from up there. Amen? So why did God wait 969 years? Because God got down to one person, one righteous person. The Bible says Noah, only Noah found grace in God's sight but here's the thing about it. We don't know why but if you read on, Noah did not have his first child until he was 600 years old.

Now you've got to realize they lived almost a thousand years back then. Now I don't know if that meant that Noah never got married till then when there's nothing said about them having problems with being barren like and that's a big, big subject in the Bible. Maybe he didn't get married till then, I don't know but for whatever reason he didn't have his first child until he was 600 years old and then he had three sons like this, Shem, Ham and Japheth and so God had to wait for those three boys to grow up, to be old enough because he was going to be dependent on them to repopulate the earth and therefore they had to be men who got married and have wives because they weren't going to be able to do it by themselves. So God waited until Noah had three sons and if you read on you'll find out that when they came out of the ark after the flood was over that we found out that his son Shem was 100 years old. So God had to wait until he had Noah and his sons but the earth was so corrupt that it was filled with violence, amen. So Methuselah was still alive when his first, when Noah's first son Shem was born.

Methuselah was 896 years old when Shem was born. So he was there to be a patriarch, he was there to, you know, be wise and give advice to his grandson Noah and his other, and then his great-grandsons and so God waited and then came the great flood, amen. So the question is are you like Enoch today, amen. God is looking for men and women like Enoch that he can reveal his truths to.

Now we said that in every generation God always has someone. Let's fast forward and let us go to the time of the kings and let's look at King David. Very quickly let's look at the fact that when he became king he had a whole lot of very faithful, loyal, tight men and buddies who hung with David and all during those years when King Saul who was so jealous of David attempted 21 times to kill him and David fled from one place to another and one cave to another, the Bible says that he had 600 men who followed him and were there with him. And then when it came time for David to become king he had those who first took him by his side and first he was anointed only to be king in Hebron, only over Judah and Benjamin and then later he became king over all of Israel. But we find out if we were to read in the book of 1 Chronicles where there's a whole lot of begets and there's a whole lot of information about the different ones but I just want to read two little verses in 1 Chronicles 12 and it says in verse 1, Now these are they that came to David to Ziklag while he yet kept himself close because of Saul the son of Kish.

Here's the thing I want you to see. And they were among the mighty men helpers of the war. Now this is when Saul was still trying to kill David and David was still fleeing for his life and he had all these men that were there with him.

We just read one very important fact. They were what? Mighty men of war. They were mighty men militarily speaking but if we go to verse 32 we see something very important. And of the children of Issachar which were men that had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do and the heads of them were 200 and all their brethren were at their commandment. Here's the thing I want you to see that the sons of Issachar these were men that had understanding of the times and knew what Israel ought to do.

It's great to have people that have great military prowess and we need generals that know how to lead men in war and we need to know people that can be admirals of the great warships and those who can be captains of all the airplanes and the bombers and all of that. Those are people that we need to keep us protected and safe but we need men like men of Issachar that knows what America ought to do. We need men who have the spirit of Issachar. We need a president and his cabinet and the senate and the congressman and our governors and our mayors and oh Lord our judges to have the spirit of Issachar to know what America ought to do. And that's why Paul told Timothy said I'm exhorting you that supplications and prayers and intercession would be given for all men but especially for kings and all that are in authority that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. We need the judges that sit on the benches across America from the nine Supreme Court justices all the way through all the federal judges. We need men who understand godliness but today in America they want to get rid of everything that's godly. They throw everything that's godly out.

Amen. And so we need we need men in these high places that have an understanding of what America should do and I'm just going to say this I'm just going to throw it out there we need people that understand Islam. We're never going to win the war with the terrorist groups if we don't understand their theology. I am sorry but if you don't understand the root of Islam and you don't understand that it's not it is not a religion of peace. It is a religion that was forged out of war and conquering and killing those who did not subjugate themselves going back to when Muhammad started the whole thing in Mecca and Medina.

If he couldn't persuade them to become what he was putting out then he killed them. And that's exactly what the basic philosophy is that it's not a religion of peace and some people think Islam means peace because they think it sounds like shalom or salaam. Now salaam means peace but Islam means submission. Submit to me. Like I preached Wednesday night that Nimrod means I said get down.

I said submit to me and that's exactly what Islam means. We need men who understand what we ought to do. Amen. We need men that understand the coming of the Lord and so we need to pray that God will raise up such men. Now let's turn to Matthew the 16th chapter and look at verses one through three. The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came and tempting desired him that he would show them a sign from heaven.

That would be Jesus. He answered Jesus answered and said unto them when it is evening you say it'll be fair weather for the sky is red and in the morning it'll be foul weather today for the sky is red and lowering. If you're wondering what that word lowering means it means to have an angry scowl on your face. So picture that an angry scowl on the face of the sky means what?

A bad storm. Oh you hypocrites you can discern the face of the sky but you cannot discern the signs of the times. Amen. So Jesus rebuked them. They came and asked him for a sign and that was not something that was extraordinary and it wasn't even wrong. You have to understand if you read in in I think it's in first Corinthians it says in chapter one around verse 22 the Jews require a sign. The Gentiles look for wisdom. The Jews require a sign.

Why? Because they're a covenant people and in order to have a covenant you have to have a sign to seal it. When when Noah and his family came out of the ark God swore that he would never send a flood again to destroy the earth. Never again and he said here's my sign. He put a rainbow in the sky. He says this is my promise.

You may see floods in certain places on on the earth and they can be very bad floods but never will the entire planet be engulfed in a flood. The sign was the rainbow and there are many other signs. The Jews require a sign because they're a covenant people and every covenant when God made a covenant with with Abraham what was the sign?

He said your men shall be circumcised on the eighth day. So coming and asking Jesus for a sign was not that wasn't why Jesus was angry. The Jews require a sign but he was saying if you read on you're a wicked and adulterous generation.

You can you can ask God for a sign but if you're wicked and you're an adulterous person don't ask God for a sign because he said you're not going to get one. Amen and so that's what Jesus meant and he said you are hypocrites because you can look at the sky and you can tell if it's going to be a fair weather day or a foul weather day and how much more today we got Doppler radar. They can tell you what storms going to get here while it's still out there somewhere in Kansas. They'll say it's going to track here and they'll say at three o'clock it'll be here and at six o'clock it'll be here and eight o'clock it'll be knocking on your door.

Amen. How much more today that we can tell the weather and what's going to happen. He said you can discern the face of the sky and the signs of what weather's coming but you cannot discern the signs of the time.

Why did he say that? Because these were people that had the Old Testament prophets and all the many prophecies that proclaimed the coming the first coming of Jesus the Messiah. Over 300 prophecies Jesus fulfilled and someone once did a mathematical equation to say what would be the odds of one man filling fulfilling all those prophecies.

I don't remember what the outcome was but the answer was beyond your comprehension. It was so many zeros after it you wouldn't even know how to relate to it and so he fulfilled all these prophecies and these were men that knew the prophecies. They knew the Word of God inside out and he says you you missed it. You missed all those signs.

Here I am. You missed all those signs and you're going to ask me to give you another sign? You want me to give you a sign when here I am Messiah the Son of God and you missed it amen and saints of God that's exactly how it's going to be in this day that we're in and sometimes you shake your head and say I don't know what these people can't they see what's going on? Don't they know that the Bible says and you look in Daniel and you look in Revelation and you look in Matthew 24 and you look in Mark 13 and you look in Luke 21 and all the signs are just shouting at you but they have no idea.

It's like a sealed book to them. Amen. They cannot see it but we are not like unto them. We are like unto the sons of Issachar that had an understanding of the times.

Amen. Amen what a revelatory overview of the biblically significant day we are in when understanding the times is of paramount concern for Christians who desire to be informed and relevant in these prophetic end times. Jesus rebuked the religious leaders of his day saying you can discern the face of the sky and even predict the weather but you cannot discern the signs of the times. Because of this they missed his coming their long awaited Messiah although he had fulfilled over 300 prophecies that foretold his coming. Scripture declares when the fullness of time had come God sent his son. That entailed 4,000 years of human history and the very calendar was changed to AD in the year of our Lord. Scripture further tells us that the heavens will not release Jesus to return until the times of restitution of all things. Now this began on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out and it is rapidly approaching the climax when Jesus will return for his people.

It will come suddenly and without notice as a thief in the night. But while we do not know the day nor the hour Apostle Paul said that we are not ignorant of the season. God gave the prophet Daniel a panoramic view of human time from his day to the future tribulation and reign of the Antichrist. He was told to seal up the book until the time of the end when knowledge shall increase and many shall be purified and made white and tried but the wicked shall do wickedly. But the wise shall understand.

They will be like the tribe of Issachar who understood the times and knew what Israel ought to do. Saints if we ever needed those who understand the times and know what the church ought to do and this nation it is now. This teaching Understanding the Times can be ordered on CD for a love gift of at least ten dollars for the radio ministry. Request SK115 that's SK115. Mail to Sound of Faith PO Box 1744 Baltimore Maryland 21203 or go online to soundoffaith.org where you can also order on MP3. But to order on CD send a minimum love gift of ten dollars.

Request offer SK115 to PO Box 1744 Baltimore Maryland 21203. Till next time this is Sharon not saying Maranatha.