Jesus' SITREP on the Last Days Part 1 - Mark: The Messy Gospel

Listen, we are in the messy gospel right now.

We're in the gospel of Mark.

We've done over 50 messages in Mark, verse by verse.

We're in the final week of Jesus' life.

We're in Mark chapter 13, where Jesus gives us, I'm going to call it a sit rep, a briefing.

Mark 13 · chapter mention

Commanders in the military call it a sit rep or a commander's situation report about the last days.

Jesus is giving us divine intelligence about how we can know the second coming of Christ.

You realize, don't you, that as we get closer to the last days, demonic powers, satanic powers are going to increase, you guys.

They're going to increase.

And simultaneously, God's power is going to increase, and he does not want his church to be unaware.

He doesn't want us to be caught off guard.

And so he, on the Mount of Olives, here on this last week, probably Wednesday afternoon, he's on this high point at the Mount of Olives, which is higher than Jerusalem, looking out over the second temple called Herod's Temple, and he begins this conversation that these four intimate disciples never expected.

And you'll see as we begin to read this that they are caught off guard by what Jesus says to them.

We're getting a briefing that is almost exactly, except for a few verse changes, to Matthew chapter 24.

Matthew 24 · chapter mention

And it's the longest discourse Jesus gives of the last days.

And church, as we look at the final week of Jesus and the importance of each of those messages, there's something here for us.

As we see what's happening in the Middle East right now, as we see what's happening all around us in the news, as we even see what's happening in the church, even in our city.

Today, on my prayer walk, I went up to one of the highest points of Black Forest.

It's a place I hike to almost every day.

Sometimes I don't go all the way.

I cut back according to some things that I'm praying about.

But today I decided to go all the way to the top of Black Forest Regional Park.

And when I'm up at the top up there, I can see the tops of Black Forest.

I can see the front range.

I can see way down south.

I can see pretty far north.

And I found myself praying for fire upon our city.

Two years ago we had Waldo Canyon fire.

Last summer we had the Black Forest fire.

It seems like the timing is right for a spiritual fire.

Folks, if we don't have a spiritual fire in our nation, soon we are lost.

Like a woman in labor, Jesus speaks of the signs of the times.

We've had seven kids.

And so we are experts.

I guess gynecologists and midwife are experts, but we're really close by.

We see the signs of the times, and it's actually the metaphor, the allegory that Jesus uses.

It's like labor pains upon the earth.

There is labor pains upon the earth right now, church.

And some of you fought in Afghanistan, some of you have fought in Iraq, some of you have been around the world in the military, some of you with agencies that we can't name.

The agency.

And you that are sons and daughters and wives know how special it is when you get that report from your husband.

And of course it could be the wife, but most of the time it's the husband saying, This is when I'm coming back.

And we see on the news, don't we, almost weekly, if not monthly, another return of another battalion, another unit coming back to Fort Carson, and we and the reporters are there, and we see that that husband just with a beam on his face as he has his bags, and there's the wife.

I cry every time.

And I've never even been in that situation.

But my heart goes out as they're so excited about the return of their husband, the return of their spouse.

And Jesus is saying, You're gonna know some signs of my return.

I'm giving you information that you need to know that's gonna help you know the signs of the time.

As we're looking at Mark 13, first jump to verses 28 and 29.

I want to start there, and then we're gonna go back and start at the beginning of the chapter.

By the way, it's gonna be two parts.

Way too much information.

Um I've got so much information even tonight to cover.

I'm gonna move really fast, and then we're gonna do part two right after Easter.

But it says, now learn this parable from the fig tree.

When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near.

So you also, when you see these things happening, know that it is near at the doors.

So I'm giving you a preview here of what he's gonna say in verses 1 through 27, but he's saying in 28, he says, look, you guys, you have fig trees all over Palestine.

And you know when those leaves are forming and when the figs are forming, the the branches become tender.

So I wanted to do an illustration tonight, and I couldn't do it because I went out to my apricot trees, and then I went to my apple trees on my property, and none of the branches are tender.

It's like we never really have a spring in Colorado.

We go, we go winter, winter, winter, sp winter, winter, summer.

So I didn't have one.

I wanted to show some of the leaves.

But if you can imagine with me, in the next month or two, we're actually gonna see some leaves on some of the trees as they start to form.

And you, if you were to touch the branches, they become tender.

Because something's about to happen.

Jesus is saying, something's good.

You're going to see what I've presented to you, and that's to let you know the limbs are tender.

I'm about to move.

And I want my saints to know that.

And so it prophecy in Scripture is sort of like a telescope.

Some of you have high-powered telescopes.

I always had the cheap kind.

When I was doing some research on this, I went and looked up and I saw prices on telescopes.

And it had the cheapest of the cheap, was one of the categories.

That's what we had.

So I can't explain this from experience, but I've been around large telescopes that other people own.

And you see one star, you'll see Venus, you'll see that planet out there, and then you begin to focus, and what happens?

You start to see more than just Venus, don't you?

You see more than just that planet.

That's the way New Testament and even Old Testament prophecy works, in that the prophetic word seems to be this one thing, but actually God is telescoping into the future things that are near present, near future, and then future future.

And so what we're gonna see in our passage is that the Lord is going to give us this picture of the destruction of Jerusalem and the fall of the temple, which will happen 37 years later, with Titus and the Romans coming into Israel.

But it's also prophetic of something that is also going to happen like that in the latter days.

He makes it very clear something's about to happen, but it's a picture or it's a type of something that's going to happen in the latter days.

So Jesus is speaking of four things.

Let me give you four things as an overarching rubric that we're working from tonight.

Number one, the destruction of the second temple.

This is Herod's temple.

It will be destroyed in 70 AD.

I'll go into more detail in a moment.

Secondly, he talks about the abomination of desolation.

So first he talks about the destruction of the temple, but then secondly, he's going to speak of the abomination of desolation, which is something that Daniel spoke of that actually happened in 168 BC.

So he's going to speak of that, that's already happened as a type of something that's going to happen in the future.

We're not going to cover the abomination of desolation or what I would consider to be the Antichrist tonight.

That'll come later.

Thirdly, we're going to look at seven signs of the coming of Christ.

Seven very clear, articulate signs of the coming of Christ.

We'll cover, I think, the first three or four tonight.

We'll see how time goes.

That Jesus in this sitret, this situation that he's giving, this briefing before his disciples, so they will not be surprised.

And then fourthly, it's divine intelligence, divine intelligence given to us the church, so that we will not be deceived.

Church, you can be deceived.

You've been deceived before.

I've been deceived before, haven't you?

I mean, you thought you trusted someone, and they and they've deceived you.

That happens in all of our lives.

And Jesus is saying to the church at large and to the disciples in particular, don't be deceived.

He's going to say, watch and take heed many times in Mark chapter 13.

Mark 13 · chapter mention

Watch.

Pray.

Take heed.

Know these things.

When they start to happen, something's on the move.

The Lord is on the move.

So let's look at verse 1.

Mark chapter 13.

Mark 13 · chapter mention

Jesus sit rap, Jesus briefing.

Then as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, Teacher, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here.

Now, great pride, I think, with these disciples, they're on the Mount of Olives.

It's stunning.

This temple, called the Second Temple or the Temple of Herod, had begun a construction in 20 AD.

It's been 50 years of construction to make this gorgeous, beautiful temple.

It is one of the wonders of the world.

Herod wanted the second temple to be greater than the pyramids of Egypt.

The stones, hundreds of thousands of pounds, are neatly and perfectly placed together with gold lacing between the stones.

You can go today to Jerusalem and see those stones after what Titus did in 70 AD.

You can still see that the Jews have left those stones there.

Some say there's going to be a third temple, a temple built by Israel in the latter days again.

So it's now 50 years.

It's the most beautiful thing in all of Israel.

It's one of the most beautiful structures in all of the world.

They say that the gold was so pure that when the sun hit the gold, you could see the gold from 50 miles away.

Can you imagine that?

50 miles away, the gold.

The height at the highest point, which is the pinnacle of the temple, which is where Satan took Jesus in his temptation, is 230 feet high.

21 stories.

It's stunning.

And so the disciples are just making conversation.

Wow, look at the temple, Jesus.

We're not expecting what he says next.

And Jesus answered and said to him, Do you see these great buildings?

Not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down.

Jesus can see something.

Church, when when Jesus sees something, we take note.

There are people in this church that are prophetically gifted.

We don't use the word prophet.

We say prophet, and suddenly, next thing you know, they've got an index card and they're a card-carrying prophet.

I'm prophet Larry.

Okay?

If any of you are prophet Larry's or Prophet Jane's, hold it to yourself.

We don't dig that around here.

Just give me the word.

Okay?

So there's prophetically gifted people.

And when Jesus sees something, there's something powerful there.

When someone who's prophetically gifted sees something and they speak it into your life and it's of the Lord, listen.

God's speaking to you.

Sometimes he's waking us up.

And so Jesus sees the destruction of the temple.

And so their natural response is, when?

How?

Can you imagine this?

Being at being in the plaza in Washington, D.C., and someone says, I see the destruction of the White House.

I see the destruction of the Washington Monument.

I see all of the marble and the beauty of the Lincoln Memorial destroyed.

It's shocking.

And it's shocking to these guys.

He sees the siege of Titus.

The siege of Titus happened in 70 AD, church.

One million Jews were slaughtered.

They said, Josephus, a great Jewish historian, said, the blood flowed through the streets to the extent that it ran into the homes and put out the fires.

Blood just ran down the walls.

And Titus, and it's hard to say, there's different opinions about, because Josephus actually kind of became a spokesperson for the Romans.

So we don't know how much he embellished the history to make the Romans look better, but it appears that Titus didn't want to destroy the temple.

He wanted to make it available to the pantheon of the Roman gods.

But a soldier took a torch and he threw it into the temple and he burned it out.

And so it was destroyed.

And literally the stones were pulled down.

And the gold that ran between the stones was stolen and taken out by the Roman soldiers.

The beauty of this temple is going to be destroyed.

Now, as he sat on the Mount of Olives, opposite the temple, and this is why we call this classically the Olivet, the dispensation of Olivet, or the Olivet discourse, Peter, James, and John asked him privately, tell us, when will these things be?

I don't think they said it like that.

I think it was more like, what?

Tell us! When are these things going to be?

When is this going to happen?

How are we going to know?

What will be the signs when all these things will be fulfilled?

And Jesus answering them began to say, Take heed that no one deceives you.

So this is a private inside briefing with four disciples Peter, James, John, and Andrew.

And he's going to give them the signs of the destruction.

Folks, do you realize how important it is the timing of our life right now and the timing of us being this generation?

Never since 70 AD has Israel been back in Palestine, in the promised land, and be and a nation.

That's a fulfillment of prophecy that many would believe, and I tend to be of this stripe, that when it speaks of the tender branches of the leaves of the fig tree, he's actually speaking of Israel.

That the coming of the nation of Israel.

Never have we had a time where the entire globe could be destroyed through a couple button pushes.

Nuclear proliferation.

But the whole world was not going to be destroyed in musket fire.

The whole world was not going to be destroyed in cannon fire.

But literally, today, nuclear weapons in the wrong hands could destroy the earth.

Israel, a nation.

Nuclear, proliferation.

And right now, the Middle East is a cauldron.

The Middle East is out of control.

Not in my years of looking at, studying, being in the Middle East, have I ever seen such a cauldron of confusion?

I don't know who's who.

I don't know which side we're on.

We're fighting with, we're fighting against Iran in one country and with Iran.

We're their Air Force in another war.

Can you believe that?

We are so completely confused.

So here's the seven signs.

Let's look at the seven signs of his coming.

Jesus gives us seven signs, seven signs of labor, seven Braxton hicks for the coming of the Lord.

Verse 6 for many will come in my name, saying, I am he, and will deceive many.

And then also look at verse 21.

Then if anyone says to you, look, here is the Christ, or look, he is there, do not believe it.

For false Christs and false prophets will rise and show signs and wonders to deceive.

So these are false signs and wonders.

If possible, deceiving even the elect, if possible.

I actually don't think it's possible, but it must be so deceptive in those latter days that if possible, even the elect would be deceived.

But take heed.

Here we go again.

See, I have told you all these things beforehand.

My intelligence report is get ready.

So here's the first sign: religious deception.

First sign, religious deception.

Folks, we are going to see, we're already seeing it really since the 1960s, but we are going to continue to see the rise of false religions, false forms of Christianity, works within the church that are not biblical and not of the Lord.

Just last night, excuse me, two nights ago, Fox News did a special on Scientology and the allegations being brought against Scientology.

Scientology is constantly under the scrutiny of the law with some of the stuff they've done.

This cult is very, very dangerous.

Coming up, you're interested in that, there's a special on Sunday night on Scientology.

And so we see these prevailing conditions, and what's going to happen is an increasing work of satanic and demonic powers in religious deception.

And when I read Jesus saying, if possible, even the elect, then that makes me believe even within Christianity, there's going to be major deceptions.

Because the elect would immediately, well, that's not a Christian religion.

Well, you know, we don't, uh we obviously don't believe in that.

That's that's of the enemy.

But if it is even possible, possible, even for the elect through signs and wonders to be deceived, then I believe the deception may come through, largely through, and maybe exclusively through Christianity in some ways.

And so I even see it today, you know, I'm having been a pastor for a number of years, being both in Asia and then being back in the United States, doing different conferences and stuff that I do, I see leading, I would consider leading, leading evangelical pastors acquiescing to all kinds of new religious persuasions and cultural inundations that are very, very dangerous.

Very dangerous.

And so books are being written right now.

Right now, authors are authoring books that are seemingly of the evangelical persuasion.

Zondervan and some of the major publishers have published them.

Clearly, clearly heretical, some of the material that's out there.

Now we applaud someone who's on the New York Times bestseller list, and just a hundred years ago, we might have considered burning them at the stake.

And so there is a continual shift within Christianity and within the church toward a unbiblical, I would call it a culture-driven form of Christianity.

And we start getting our tabs, we start getting our walking orders from the culture rather than God's Word.

That's dangerous ground, folks.

I'm telling you, it's really dangerous.

I mean, do we want to be culturally relevant?

I really don't want to be.

As a matter of fact, I believe that the stronger we move closer to the last days, we will increasingly have to swim against the stream of culture.

And I'm not talking about hair and dress.

Heaven forbid.

I mean, I'm a heretic in many churches with the way I dress.

I don't even tuck in my shirt tail.

Until my mom got Alzheimer's, she had a real problem with that.

Now she thinks I'm awesome.

Honey, can't you just tuck in your shirt tail a little bit?

No, mom, I don't want to.

It'll show my gut.

Truth be known.

Second sign.

Second sign.

Wars and rumors.

Wars and rumors.

Look at verse 7.

But when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be troubled.

That's good news.

Because there's about 30 wars happening in the world right now, just so everybody knows.

Don't be that's no problem.

He says, don't be troubled, for such things must happen, but the end is not yet.

For nation will rise against nation, that's ethne against ethne, and kingdom against kingdom.

So same list in Matthew, Luke, and Revelation chapter 6.

Revelation 6 · chapter mention

Same list.

Roars and rumors of wars.

So guys, don't be troubled.

I mean, there's always been wars.

I'm reading the third volume of the William Manchester work on Winston Churchill.

So I'm in the Battle of Britain right now.

That is fascinating to me.

It's fascinating to me to see the isolationist, isolationism of the American government and even the people of America, because of the history we had of what had happened at World War I, that we came, we basically gave very, very little aid to Britain as they were getting bombed almost into the Stone Age by Hitler in the Battle of Britain in the last part of 1940 and into 1941.

So there's always been wars and rumors of wars.

I'm sure when they were reading this, Matthew 24 and Mark 13, in 1942, they would say Hitler must be the Antichrist.

So he's saying when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, don't be troubled about it.

Don't be worried.

It's just the beginning of something.

It's the beginning of sorrows.

It's Braxton Hicks.

You know, when you have your first baby and the Braxton Hicks come, everybody in the whole family flips out.

Oh, that's like 12 weeks early.

And then he goes, and then it finally dawned that, you know, they're like every day.

They're happening all.

And so throughout time there's been wars and rumors of war, but it's different now.

And I think it's interesting that it says nation will rise against nation, and in the Hebrew it's the word ethne, and ethne is where we get the word ethnic, and ethnic, ethnic means groupings of people based on blood considerations, religion, or politics.

So the ethnicity is not based on countries or boundaries, right?

Does that make sense?

And so let's just take some groupings that we know of right now that would be ethne or ethnic within Islam.

Salafi, Shia, Sunni, Muslim Brotherhood, which is political, Kurds, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and ISIS.

I mean, and I could go and I went and looked it up, and I mean, there's hundreds of these.

Ethnic groupings just under the rubric of Islam.

And look what's happening.

We couldn't have even had any insight into this particular passage just 15 years ago.

I mean, those that are in Muslim studies, those that are in my, but I think generally speaking, we understand this on a whole new level now.

And so right now, what's happening is that Muslims are slaughtering Muslims because it's nation against nation.

That's exactly what he says.

And the times that we're living in, nations against nations, is only the beginning of something.

You see, in World War II, there were 82 million casualties.

We now have within one nuclear sub 40 times the kill power of all the weapons of World War II in one nuclear sub.

We actually have a we have the potential of a one-button war.

Do you guys understand what I'm saying?

So there's nothing like what we're living in today.

And even the Muslims believe this.

You may be familiar, you may not be familiar.

I'm not going to go into big detail because of time, but the idea of the 12th Imam with the Muslims.

A majority of Shiite Muslims traditionally believe that the 12th Imam or the great Islamic religious leader was born in 868 BC, excuse me, 868 A.D.

placed by God into hiding, known as the occultation, until the day of judgment in the final days.

Southern Baptist author and evangelist Annas Sharosh explained that many Shiites also refer to the 12th Imam as the Mahdi, an Arabic word that generally references a Messiah or a guide.

Quote, this man will come to show them the way, because the prayer of every Muslim five times a day ends with, show us the right path, not the path of those who have incurred your anger or those who are lost, but those upon whom grace has come, Sharash said.

When you study about the 12th Imam, it is the belief in Islam that the 12th Imam will come forth in a time of world catastrophe, of world chaos.

So the greater the world chaos, the greater the setting of the environment for the coming of the Mahdi or the 12th Imam.

So chaos is good.

Iran is currently pursuing nuclear weapons.

Oh no, they're not.

They just want to have big dams where they can get a lot of water because their history tells us that they're just a law-abiding, conscientious group of people.

Let me just say this about that.

It's really important to me, it's real important to us at the road that we understand that we're not in any way at war with the Iranian people.

Or with any Muslim.

God loves them.

And I believe it's, you know, I'm a missiologist.

That's my that's my degree.

So I look at culture, I look at mission, I look at, I love to study ethnic groupings.

And the great frontier before us are the are the Muslims.

It may be the last great frontier before the coming of the Lord.

God is moving guys in Iran.

It's unbelievable what's happening.

I mean, they they are now um it's almost the the the people so hate the government that when the government tells them to do something, they say they do exactly the opposite.

And so even in satellite dishes, we're there's guys beaming in evangelistic messages right now into Iran, and the law of the land is you can't have satellite dishes and they can't sell them fast enough to the people.

And they are, and there's a there's churches getting planted.

The reason Saeed is still in prison in Iran is because they fear what Saeed is all about, because it's happening all around them.

So pray for Iran.

So I'm talking about the government of Iran.

I'm not talking about the people of Iran.

And there will be earthquakes in various places, and there will be famines and troubles.

These are the beginnings of sorrow.

So this is the beginning of the labor of the coming of the Lord.

So third sign: natural disasters.

Natural disasters.

There will be all kinds of natural disasters.

Encourage you to read Revelation chapter 6 for more information on this.

Revelation 6 · chapter mention

The seven seals open in the tribulation period, the seven trumpets and the seven bowls of wrath, the 70th week in the book of Daniel.

When we go into Revelation, we'll study more about this.

God's wrath being poured out during this time.

A quarter, a quarter of the earth's population will be destroyed with famine, carnage, pestilence.

Church, the Holy Spirit right now is holding back the coming of the Lord.

The Holy Spirit is holding back the carnage.

The Holy Spirit is holding back the famines and the earthquakes.

If you just do the math, if you go in, do it this week, put in earthquakes, 20th century, and look at the information we have.

The increase is exponential in the 20th century.

Ten major world record earthquakes just in the 20th century.

There were hardly any before that.

The whole earth, it's like the whole earth is in labor for the coming of the Lord.

It's like creation itself is crying out, come, Lord, come.

Because we can't take Al Gore anymore.

Please come, Lord.

A population explosion that literally, church, cannot be sustained.

From the beginning of the world till 1850 was how long it took to have the first billion people on this planet.

From 1850 to 1931, 2 billion.

From 1931 to 1963, 3 billion.

From 1963 to today, over 6 billion.

They're saying that we will double the 6 billion in 2020.

We can't sustain that.

Worldwide famines.

I just decided to go in and look up Monsanto, who's the largest seed company in the United States.

This is straight from their website.

Everybody listen.

I didn't make this up.

This is straight from their website three days ago.

Quote: When farmers purchase a patented a patented seed variety from Monsanto, they sign an agreement that they will not save and replant seeds produced from the seed they buy from us.

More than 325,000 farmers a year buy seed under this agreement in the United States.

Now I'm from Georgia, I'm not real smart, but I figured that one out.

If you had Monsanto suddenly not give you any seeds, we got a real issue, folks.

That's called a famine.

If you can't reproduce the seeds the way we always did it and where we've always done it in the past, because man Monsanto says we can't.

Ebola, AIDS, Avian, influenza.

I went to a website, which I've, this is this was a title.

You can look it up yourself if you want, called Under Five Pandemics That Could Wipe Out the World Tomorrow.

Here's the top two.

I could have given you all five, but man, I'm already running out of time.

Number one, the return of the Spanish influenza.

The return of the Spanish influenza was their first one.

Listen to this, guys.

29% chance of the return of the Spanish influenza, according to experts.

That's a little high for me.

How about you?

Because here's what it is.

Remember swine flu from a few years back and bird flu in the mid-2000s?

Those are all distant relatives of the Spanish flu.

50 to 100 million died in the Spanish influenza 1918 to 1919 pandemic.

10% to 20% of those who were infected died, with about a third of the world population infected.

This case fatality ratio means 3 to 6% of the entire global population died.

Influenza may have killed as many as 25 million people in the first 25 weeks.

Older estimates say it killed 40 to 50 million people, while current estimates say 50 to 100 million people worldwide were killed.

This pandemic has been described as the greatest medical holocaust in history and may have killed more people than the Black Death.

It is said that this flu killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years.

More in a year than the Black Death killed in a century.

From ABC News, this is what they wrote.

Health experts are concerned that the Spanish flu that ravaged the world has many similarities to the avian flu now found throughout Southeast Asia.

The 1918 flu strain itself originated as an avian flu that mutated into a form that could jump between humans.

And the 1918 strain, according to research published this week in the scientific journals Nature and Science, has several of the same genetic mutations as the current avion flu strain.

Could a deadly pandemic happen again?

Some doctors say yes, and the rate in their particular evaluation on the website is 29%.

Number two, drug-resistant bacteria, drug-resistant bacteria, a superbug resistant to antibiotics.

A dose of antibiotics in sick humans, livestock, or other animals wipes out harmful bacteria causing the illness.

But a small number of bacteria survive because of some quirk in their genetics.

Those bacteria reproduce and can spread to other hosts, living as long as a stronger antibiotic is not able to kill them.

And this was the last part of the website.

When antibiotics are overused, you wind up with stronger bacteria.

And PBS ran a program on it about a year ago.

So you have to be an idiot not to hear some of this and understand that there are some Braxton Hicks happening on our earth, and we should be aware.

Church, listen to me.

If you don't know Christ, if you don't have a personal growing relationship with Jesus Christ, if you're not assured that you'd go to heaven if you died tonight, make it right.

Watch and pray.

Give your heart to Christ tonight.

Give yourself to Him.

Become a Jesus follower.

Become a Jesus disciple.

Christ is warning us.

Christ is giving us signs of the times.

Verse 9.

And I'll end with this.

But watch out for yourselves, for they will deliver you up to counsels, and you will be beaten in the synagogues.

You'll be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony to them.

And the gospel must first be preached to all the nations.

Remember the ethne nations.

But when they arrest you and deliver you up, do not worry before him or premeditate what you will speak.

But whatever is given you in that hour, speak that, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.

Now brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name's sake, but he who endures to the end shall be saved.

Four sign, hatred and persecution.

Hatred and persecution.

Folks, we should not be surprised that at work, in our jobs, in our schools, in some cases, even in our churches, that we'll be hated because we believe in Christ, because we believe that this book is true, that we believe in the power of the Holy Spirit, that we believe in demons, that we believe in angels, that we believe that God's coming back, that we believe that he can heal the sick and he can set the captives free, that we believe that all things are possible through Christ who loves us, that we believe in miracles, that we believe in signs and wonders, that we believe that Christ is alive and he's not dead and he's here and he's coming back and we can know that and we can experience that on a daily basis.

Don't be surprised if you're not believed.

Don't be surprised if people laugh at you.

Don't be surprised if you lose a job.

Don't be surprised if people make fun of you.

Don't be surprised by that because that's a good sign.

That means you're you're moving out with Christ, and as he comes back and as he prepares the way, he's preparing you as his saint and his disciples to live for him and to be led by him and to be empowered by him and to walk in all the fullness and the joy of the Holy Spirit.

It's a good time to be alive, it's an exciting time to be alive.

Don't be worried, be happy, be joyful.

The coming of the Lord is upon us, and we get to be that generation that may see the coming of the Lord.

Some of you may never see the rapture.

And I haven't even covered any of that.

And there's all kinds of different views on the rapture.

And you know it's a secondary doctrine.

You can have a different eschatological view than me.

I say, pray for the rapture, prepare for persecution, and walk in the power of the Holy Spirit.

That's a good way to go.

I'll tell you what, if the rapture comes, you'll be super happy, even if you didn't believe in it.

So it doesn't matter anyway.

But here's what I do know there'll be many believers that were not prepared.

They're gonna be shocked by the events that are occurring.

Don't be surprised.

Let's not let's be a church that's not surprised.

Let's be a church that's prepared.

Let's be a church that is praying for fire to fall on Colorado Springs, the fire of God to come.

Some of you need to get fired up today.

You're dead in your faith.

You're dead in the water.

You once were fired up, you once were excited about the Lord.

You once you couldn't wait to come and worship, and you couldn't wait to get to church, and you couldn't wait for your Bible study.

And now it's just, hey, you know, I uh that stupid church still meets on Saturday night.

Let's ask God for a fresh empowering.

Let's ask God for a fresh work of his spirit.

You remember those days, don't you?

Some of you are in those days.

You're living it.

I see it.

Some of you guys come early.

You're just here.

Why?

I just want to help.

Because you're there's something happening in your life.

Some of you are fired up.

That's exciting.

We need your anointing on us that are tired and frustrated sometimes.

And don't you?

I mean, we all do that, right?

We have ebbs and flows, and we get tired.

I'm tired these days.

And I'm your pastor.

I'm not supposed to be tired.

I'm supposed to always be fired up.

I'm not always fired up.

But today I went up on that hill up there in Black Forest Regional.

I went up there and I said, Good night and fire me afresh.

Fill me afresh.

God, bring fire upon the road.

Start a fire at the road.

I want a road fire.

I don't want a black forest fire.

I don't want a Waldo Canyon.

I want a road fire.

And I want a road fire that that fire just runs down the road into the highways and the byways and the alleyways of Colorado Springs.

And I prayed for New Life and I prayed for Woodman Valley and I prayed for Rocky Mountain Calvary.

And I prayed for Calvary Worship Center.

And I prayed for Mountain Springs.

And I prayed for Grace Fellowship.

And I prayed for this church and that church and that Lutheran church and that Episcopal church and that Catholic church.

God, bring fire.

There's people who love you in every one of those churches.

And every one of those people in those churches, they want to be fired up.

They do.

And I just pray for that.

I pray for our government.

I pray for our president.

I pray for our governor.

Oh, God, we need renewal.

Oh, God, we need a fresh impartation of your spirit on our land.

Because you're telling us, you're giving us a sit rep, you're giving us a briefing.

This is going to happen, folks.

This is going to happen.

And it may be happening right now.

We may not have a lot more time.

So may our lives count.

May God use you in your business.

May God use you in your family.

May God use you in your school.

May God use you in the relationships in your neighborhood.

Ask God to use you.

Take that card.

Invite people to Easter.

Invite them to Good Friday.

Say, come with me.

Come with me.

And celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Well, I'm not a believer in Christ.

Well, come anyway.

Because God loves you.

And so do we.

Let's stand.

Some of you tonight.

It's time to come to know the Lord.

It's time to quit playing religious games.

It's time to quit acting religious or even leaning on your parents' religion or your past history where you once were fired up.

And it's time to come and be whole-hearted disciples of Christ.

Not half-hearted, whole-hearted.

And when we go into worship, when Anna leads us out in worship, maybe God would have you do something really, really radical, and that's like raise your hands.

And you know, instead of worshiping like this, which is okay because God's more concerned about the attitude of our heart than the position of our body.

So if you're one of these, that's fine.

That's cool.

That's you know, that's that's uh that's a bus stop.

That's bus stop worship.

I mean, that's what you do at the bus stop.

And you know, and for some of us, it's uh it's uh pre-class worship.

So ditch this for the next 20 minutes.

There's superman worship.

Superman worship, there's waiter worship.

You know, like the restaurant, you know, the waiter, he's got how about wholehearted worship?

This is wholehearted worship.

Just give your heart now to the Lord.

Give yourself to him.

Give yourself to him fully.

So, Father, in the name of Jesus, God, bring Holy Spirit fire upon your people.

God, we are we we're called to be whole-hearted disciples.

We look at we look at David as a type of the whole-hearted disciple who you said was a man after your own heart.

We want to be a people, we want to be men and women after your own heart.

So, God, anoint Anna, Melody, Mark, to lead us and then Holy Spirit, come right now and help us just wipe out all these worries on our minds right now, all these things that we're thinking about, and just for the next few minutes to zero in on your heart as we lift you up in our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Let's worship together.