Doomsday!

The trouble is mankind has adopted in their defiance against God an attitude of sovereignty that we must save this planet, not recognizing the reality that this planet is not ours.

It's His. Read your Bible. And let me tell you, when doomsday arrives, that'll be the end of Earth Day. Nobody's going to be singing about the earth. Nobody's going to want anybody to fall in love with the earth. Doomsday is coming.

Jesus Olivet Discourse is one of the most remarkable prophecies in all the Bible. Our culture is obsessed with doomsday scenarios, apocalyptic fiction, and concern about the state of our planet. As Christians, we take the environment seriously, because we should be good stewards of God's creation. However, Jesus tells us that nothing humans can do will destroy this earth before God's ordained time. And no human effort will save this earth once God devotes it to destruction.

This is wisdom for the heart. Stephen Davey has a message for you that he simply called doomsday. When my three year old granddaughter came into my study and noticed a little calculator there sitting on my desk and she asked if she could play with it. I said, sure.

The sermon can wait. So I showed her how to tap the numbers in and then how to look at them on the little digital screen. She punched in some numbers and then very quickly ran off. A little later I looked over and she punched in 666. Now that was a sign, evidently. I don't know of what, but it was a sign.

The truth isn't the laughing matter, really. The human race and planet earth are on the verge of a real doomsday. Now you might be thinking I've been watching too many doomsday movies lately. Actually I've just been studying Luke chapter 21 with you for some time.

Let's go back there. Would you turn to your copy of the Lord's predictions. In fact, doomsday struck me this week. Happens to be the theme of the Lord's sermon on the Mount of Olives. Now we arrive today at verse 25 and Jesus now looks well down the road. He's just predicted the near future of the destruction of Jerusalem and all that came true. Now he looks further down the road into what will be happening during the tribulation period following the rapture.

Jesus effectively answers this question. What will happen when doomsday arrives? What happens when that clock strikes midnight and the judgment of God's wrath begins to fall?

Let me just sort of tell you ahead of time. The global catastrophe is that Jesus is about to describe have nothing to do with global warming, polar melting, nuclear bombing, earth polluting mankind. It doesn't come from mankind. It comes from God and his miraculous orchestration of terrifying judgment.

Mankind, by the way, will know very quickly that it's coming from the hand of God and I'll show you that in a moment. Now I want to divide our study this morning. All that's introduction. Now let's get to it, okay?

Let me give it to you in three sections. We'll call the first section cosmic fallout. Notice here Jesus says in verse 25, and there will be signs in sun and moon and stars and on the earth. Further on in verse 25, the roaring of the sea and the waves. Look down at the last part of verse 26, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. You could call this cosmic chaos.

It's going to be like nothing ever seen before. Jesus says here in verse 25, there will be signs in sun and moon and stars. Now all kinds of opinions, theories, interpretations are read in that phrase that somehow the alignment of stars will deliver some kind of message. Even well-meaning Christians go to Genesis chapter one and verse 14 when we're told that God created the stars as signs or for signs. Signs doesn't refer to sources of direction. It doesn't refer to some kind of message of wisdom.

Certainly not any kind of influence over somebody's life or their destiny or their fate. A sign, this word means that stars are simply pointing to something as it were. They are evidence of the Creator. They're signs that there's a Creator out there. They're signals. They're symbols of His power. The same word, by the way, was used for the plagues of Egypt where Moses told the people of Israel that the plagues were signs from God. Deuteronomy 29 verse 3. In other words, they signaled, as it were, the judgment of God.

That's what's going to happen. The sun and the moon and the stars are going to signal the judgment of God has arrived. Astronomy, by the way, is a wonderful science dedicated to discovering the far reaches of the universe. I don't know about you, but I love to open up that website and look at the latest photographs of the universe that come back from that telescope.

Absolutely breathtaking. And they deliver a message as it were to me. Look at the greatness of God. The heavens declare what?

The glory of God. But astrology is very different. Astrology is the belief that stars have power over you, your life. This, of course, goes all the way back to the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, who first developed the zodiac, probably even back to Nimrod.

They divided the starry sky into sections and then gave life-determining or determinative meaning to those sections. I wouldn't be surprised if you knew, as I do, the sign that I was born in, what that month is. I read just this past week an article online that said the sign of the zodiac ought to marry a certain sign of the zodiac and if the wrong sign of the zodiac marries the wrong sign of the zodiac, you're in trouble. Now don't go and find out today what your spouse's sign is.

Doesn't matter. But you know, one out of three Americans today believe to some degree that stars influence their lives. That they somehow give guidance for somebody's decisions in life. Americans today are spending over $2 billion a year on what's called mystical services, horoscope readings, tarot card readings, palm readings. If you think, well, you know, it just shows you how far our country's gone, well, you ought to know that it was in 1930 when the first newspaper astrology column was commissioned. It followed the stock market crash and everybody wanted to know what in the world is going on. And again, there was another uptick after the financial collapse of 2008. There was a surge in mystical services. In fact, I read one article recently where an astrologist said that they were receiving phone calls from Wall Street bankers.

Your financial planner was calling, maybe not. But one astrologer said this, listen, everything people relied on was falling apart and people wanted to have direction. They wanted to know what's going on.

Nothing makes sense. They would rather look to the stars, some psychic, rather than to the Scriptures. Well, let me tell you what I just read. If I could apply it in real terms, what we've just seen the Lord predict is the end of astrology. A day when the sun and moon and stars effectively turn against mankind, as it were.

Cosmic patterns are disturbed and chaotic. God is going to take their idols and turn them against the human race. Horoscopes will be meaningless as the light of stars is diminished. In fact, the prophet Joel describes these days, he writes that the sun and moon will grow dark and the stars will lose their brightness. It's as if God is going to just turn out the lights. You're looking to them for direction?

Well, no more light. Mankind has searched and is searching today every avenue within nature for wisdom, direction. Mankind has deified mother nature and the cosmos. The universe is now supposedly able to hear you, so make sure you deliver positive messages.

That law of attraction will return to your life a positive reality. I've heard preachers deliver in their pulpits that you have the power in your words to create your own reality. There's an Hebrew word for that.

It's pronounced baloney. The real issue here is that mankind wants to look everywhere but to their Creator. I looked down on my desk calendar the other day and as I was preparing this message and I saw in print, the little things on your calendar that this is a certain day for this and this is the national day for popsicles or this is the national day for donuts.

I love that one. At any rate, I looked at it and it said that today was Earth Sunday and tomorrow is National Earth Day. All around the world today, as I googled on and started reading, tens of millions of people are holding ceremonies, religious services, the religions of the world have actually united in this observance. There are even sermon starters for pastors. I looked at some of them.

They didn't fit Luke 21 so I decided not to use them. There's even a pulpit pledge for pastors and priests where they can then lead their congregation to sign a pledge to use less plastic. That's the theme of this year. There are Sunday school materials for children. There's songs written for the congregation to sing. Whether you're a Buddhist or a Baptist, a Muslim or a Methodist, the Presbyterian USA church has resources for this day that will, and I quote, spark meaningful discussions in your church and give you action steps to address the plastic crisis in your life. What about the sin crisis in our world today?

The lyrics of one leading composition that I listened to, a woman with a beautiful voice singing, ended and I quote, calling us to fall in love with the earth. I don't misunderstand. I'm not anti-earth and I'm not against using a paper straw when I drink iced tea from Bojangles.

I don't have any problem with that. There's nothing wise, there's nothing right about dumping plastic garbage into the ocean. There's nothing commendable about cruelty to animals. There's nothing right about trashing the environment. The trouble is mankind has adopted in their defiance against God an attitude of sovereignty that we must save this planet, not recognizing the reality that this planet is not ours.

It's His. And He's going to destroy it. Read your Bible. And He's going to create a new one, a new universe, sinless, for us to enjoy and explore forever in ways we cannot imagine. But for now mankind is turned away from God, their Creator, and in their idolatry they have elevated and exalted nature and the cosmos and the stars, given them knowledge and power, worshipping as Romans 1 says, the creature rather than the Creator. And Jesus is predicting here that one day God is going to turn those idols of nature against, as it were, human kind with horrifying effects. And let me tell you, when doomsday arrives, that'll be the end of Earth Day. Nobody's going to be singing about the earth.

Nobody's going to want anybody to fall in love with the earth. The idols of nature are going to crumble under the judgment of God. This is a warning.

There is no joy in this. This is our warning to our world. Doomsday is coming. The clock is in the hand of God. And He knows the time when the church will be completed and the wrath begin to pour. Let me call this second section of the Lord's sermon then global panic.

It doesn't get any better. Go back to the middle part of verse 25 again where Jesus says, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea or the ocean and the waves. Evidently God brings about these changes that then bring about, because of the changes in the sun and the moon and the stars, seismic changes in the tides. He refers specifically here to the waves.

He says they are roaring. They're going to be massive along with that mega earthquake that we talked about in a previous study that Jesus predicted back in verse 11. No doubt it's going to create one tsunami after another around the planet. This could be the Lord's reference to these roaring waves that arrive. If you put the clues of scripture together and what is given to us in the book of Revelation as it describes these days, we can't imagine the combination of these events.

You've got astral debris from falling stars literally on fire from entering the atmosphere pummeling planet earth with the powers of nuclear bombs. One tsunami after another. We're told in Revelation 8 one third of all the ships will be destroyed and with that the food systems and distribution now destroyed. Famine and disease quickly spreading all within a matter of months.

Now in the parallel description in Revelation chapter 6, John the apostle gives more details. He writes there was a great earthquake. The sun became black as sackcloth. The full moon became like blood. The stars of the sky fell to the earth. The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up and every mountain and island was removed from its place.

In other words, the topography of the planet changes. Can't imagine that. Then the kings of the earth, the great ones, important ones, the generals, the rich and powerful and everyone slave and free, what they do. This is a reference to the unbelieving population. They hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains calling to the mountains and rocks, here they're praying fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb. For the great day of their wrath has come. Doomsday has essentially arrived and did you notice the human race realizes this is the wrath of God. The tense of the verb translated their wrath has come indicates they understand that everything that has happened up to that point is the wrath of God.

But still what do they do? They're not going to repent. They run and try to hide. They'd rather hide in a cave than surrender to Christ. They're not going to bend their knee to the lamb.

They'd rather pray to these rocks than run to the rock of ages. But God in his mercy still gives defiant mankind just a few more hours as it were to believe. But that leads to the third and final section of this part of the Lord's sermon at least for today following seven years of cosmic fallout and global fear. We'll call it divine fulfillment.

Verse 27, here's what happens. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads because your redemption is drawing near. Now is this redemption a reference to the rapture? It says that Jesus is coming on a cloud here.

The Son of Man is a prophetic title for the Messiah. So what is this redemption that is drawing near? Well you could circle those words drawing near and then draw a line down to verse 31 where Jesus says, so also when you see these things taking place, the things he's just described, you know that the kingdom of God is near. That is the millennial kingdom of Christ on earth is near.

It's just around the corner. This is going to be wonderfully encouraging by the way for those believers who've come to faith during the tribulation. They're wondering how long this is going to last and here's a wonderful time stamp as it were that doomsday isn't going to last forever. The tribulation isn't going to last forever. And Jesus says to these people, and by the way this will be one of the most studied chapters during the tribulation, Luke 21, and for them the Lord gives encouragement. Specifically he says, your redemption, the coming kingdom is near.

So when you see this cosmic fallout, when you're surrounded by global panic, it won't be long. Jesus is essentially saying that if you put everything together, when I return to earth, defeat the defiant nations, throw Satan into the abyss and set up my kingdom. Now I want you to also notice the fact here that the entire world will see this coming in a cloud, not just believers. Like one of the evidences that the rapture will occur before the tribulation is that the rapture is described for us as happening in the twinkling of an eye, the blinking of an eye. Blink, that's how fast it happened, 1 Corinthians 15, when we're taken up to meet the Lord in the year. But this arrival of the Lord here in Luke 21, this isn't sudden. The world of believers and unbelievers see him coming. He describes his coming here in verse 27 as with power and great glory.

You have this slow descent, so to speak. This cloud, specific reference to this cloud, I believe is a reference to that great pillar of cloud that led Israel, that signified the presence of God to the nation. Jesus is not coming here for the church. He's descending with the church to defeat the nations, regather Israel, and set up his earthly kingdom. Now, Jesus delivers a short parable.

Let me cover this quickly. Verse 29, and he told them a parable, look at the fig tree and all the trees. As soon as they come out in leaf, you see for yourselves and know that pollen season is here.

That's my translation of that. You know that the summer is already near. The summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, what? All those doomsday events. You know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all has taken place.

What generation? The generation who sees and experiences all these events, these tribulation doomsday events. They're going to see the return of the king. By the way, don't miss this implicit promise to the Jewish people. They're going to be Jewish people from every tribe saved in the tribulation period. This will be tremendously encouraging to them. They're not going to be destroyed.

Satan will fail again, and his antichrist, his great hope, will fail. They will not wipe the Jews off the face of the earth. A remnant of Israel representing all 12 tribes. There are no lost tribes. They didn't become Indians.

No lost tribes. They're going to survive. They're going to believe in Christ, and the promises of God to the nation of Israel will be literally fulfilled. Now verse 33. This makes a wonderful conclusion to our study today. Jesus says, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

Isn't that great? Every word Jesus says comes true. Jesus, by the way, in that statement is that alone would bring him to be crucified by the nation. He is making his words equal to the Old Testament. My words, Jesus says, everything I say and predict will come true. Now what does this mean to us? God will judge the world one day, and safety will only be found in him. Let me tell you, now's a great time to warn your world that wisdom is not found in a star.

It doesn't have any bearing on anybody's life. Wisdom is found in the Savior, and the only place to hide from the judgment of God, well that old hymn said it well, rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. Saved from the wrath of God that we've studied here, and forever forgiven, you who believe are safe from the judgment and the wrath of God forever. So the question is, are you safe today?

That was Stephen Davey and this is Wisdom for the Heart. Before we leave you today, do you have a need or concern in your life and you'd like someone to pray for you? We have a team of people who pray by name for every request that comes into our ministry. We'd be honored to pray for you. We have a special place on our website where you can send us your request and it'll go directly to our prayer team. If you navigate to wisdomonline.org forward slash prayer you'll find a form. Simply fill out the information and send us your request. Please join us next time here on Wisdom for the Heart. Thank you.