GOLDENBIBLE HAS MOVED!

I’ve moved to blogger, as has my entire family. Blogging will now be a family thing, with all of us taking turns to submit a post. This will result in the posts coming on an almost daily basis, and will let you hear not just from me, but from all my siblings, and my dad (and possibly mom) as well. We will now be located here:

http://www.gospel-insights.com – Anyway, hope you enjoy our new site! We’ll post a couple old posts just to get things moving along, then everything from there will be original content.

 

The Truth About the End Times

Today God has given me something in Revelation 6, verses 15 to 17, which say:

Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, “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, and who can stand?” (Revelation 6:15-17)

This is directly following the lamb opening six of the seven seals on the scroll (see Revelation 6:1 to 6:14 for more context). Each one of the seals brought about a new destructive force, and now, after the sixth seal, we see everyone begging for rocks to fall on them in order to try to escape the wrath of the Lamb. These people were terrified of something. And that something, is the knowledge that they were about to be judged. Moreover, they knew their own sinfulness, and so they knew that the verdict was undeniably going to be guilty, and deserving of Hell.

So what is their solution? What brilliance does the human race come up with to combat this impending doom? They cry for rocks to fall on them. Our whole species in danger of being condemned to Hell and the best we can come up with is attempted suicide. Death doesn’t even solve their problem, though, it only hastens their meeting with God.

Now, the real question is, why are we better than them? What makes us so much better that, should this ever happen in our life time, we too won’t be judged and found guilty? Kings (okay, “presidents” if you want to modernize it) will run in terror at the thought of God’s wrath, and the smartest minds of the age will be unable to come up with any possible solution. So why should we, who are quite ordinary (I’m assuming you’re fairly ordinary), possibly feel safe when so many who are superior in the World’s eyes that are terrified? Paul gives us a wonderfully concise answer:

34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. (Romans 8:34)

Christians are not superior to anyone. Most of us aren’t any braver than the average person, or smarter than the average person. But we do have one thing going for us, and that’s Jesus. We no longer fear death, not because we are incredibly brave, but because Jesus lives in us, and His bravery becomes our bravery. God now looks us on us, and doesn’t see someone crying out for rocks to fall and kill him (or her), but rather He sees His own son, bloody and crucified that we might be saved.

See, there’s only one thing any of us needs to know about the end times. We don’t need to know when it will happen, or where it will start. We don’t need to see every war or calamity as a sign of the end of the World, or sell everything we have in order to try to get the message out that Jesus is going to return on some specific date. We only need to know that the one person who can condemn us, Jesus, is the same person who died for us, and who now intercedes on our behalf before God. That is the truth about the end times, nothing more and nothing less.