Grace Emmanuel Church

Pastor Sam Chess

Prophetic Steps From Here To Eternity 1

(Signs of Jesus Coming and the End of Time)

1) One inspired Bible divided into 2 Covenants

2) 66 books with a total of 31,124 verses

3) 8352 verses are prophetic…27% of the Bible is predicting the future

4) Total of 737 different predictions

5) 6312 verses/ 522 predictions have already happened!

6) 2040 verses/ 215 predictions are still going to happen

I. God says fulfilled prophesy authenticates His Word..

A) Prophesy tests who God is…Only God knows the future!

B) Prophesy proves God is real!

Isaiah 42:8 “I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not give my glory to anyone else, nor share my praise with carved idols. 9 Everything I prophesied has come true, and now I will prophesy again. I will tell you the future before it happens.” (NLT)

This is a big deal to God. God says if any honestly, curious observer wants to verify that He exists and that He, and He alone is God… you have only to look at God’s track record.

The TV series “Alias” often refers to this fictional guy named Rembaldi, who 600 years ago designed highly technical inventions and predicted what would be coming in the future 600 years later… and all the characters on that show are caught up in the unfolding of his predictions.

The point is…that is fiction! There is no where in all of history where you can find a compilation of prophesies, all predicted hundreds of years before they will happens and then a historical listing of their fulfillment provable to anyone who wants to look by modern day history books and archeology.

Every once in a while you see this guy Nostradamus on the cover of Tabloids… Some of Nostradamus' predictions that have supposedly come to pass, include details of the French Revolution , the rise of Napoléon, the Great Fire of London in the 17th century, the work of Louis Pasteur, Hitler and World War II…

If you read his writings (I did, some, this week), you will see that they tend to be very vague. After a world event occurs his “groupies” try to make something Nostradamus said apply to that event. Right now many are saying he predicted 911, Hurricane Katrina, the London bombings, last year's tsunami…

God is purposely not vague. Over a five thousand year period He predicted the fall of civilizations, the destruction of cities, the fact that a Savior would be born of a virgin woman in Bethlehem… and we can now prove that 522 predictions have happened exactly like God said.

C) Prophesy proves God is reliable!

Isaiah 46:9-10 Remember the things I have done in the past. For I alone am God! I am God, and there is none like me. 10 Only I can tell you the future before it even happens. Everything I plan will come to pass, for I do whatever I wish. (NLT)

D) We can trust the God who fulfills his prophesies!

II. What about all the yet-to-befulfilled predictions?

There are still 215 predictions remaining and many of those are world shaking event that take us right up to:

The End of the World!

God has been “dead on” with every prophesy, up to this point, and He is not going to break His winning streak now. As you see world events begin to line up with what God said is going to happen… and you know that much of what God predicted from this point on is world shaking, cataclysmic… we would have to be pretty foolish people to simply ignore what God says is coming….. when he has never been wrong in the past. Jesus himself warned us:

Luke 21:34 “Watch out! Don’t let your hearts be dulled by carousing and drunkenness, and by the worries of this life. Don’t let that day catch you unaware, 35 like a trap. For that day will come upon everyone living on the earth. 36 Keep alert at all times. And pray that you might be strong enough to escape these coming horrors and stand before the Son of Man.”

Let me give you an example….. God stated with absolute accuracy events like the destruction of Babylon, the destruction of Ephesus… to this day you can go see the ruins of those two cities.

We looked Wednesday evening at two prophesies about the city of Damascus

which is today the capital of Syria ( a country we have listed as the axis of evil)

Two million people live in this city and their hatred is directed ______ miles south at the country of Israel.

Isaiah 17:1 This message came to me concerning Damascus:    “Look, the city of Damascus will disappear! It will become a heap of ruins. 14 In the evening Israel waits in terror, but by dawn its enemies are dead. This is the just reward of those who plunder us, a fitting end for those who destroy us. (Jews ) (NLT)

Jeremiah 49:24-27 Damascus has become feeble, she has turned to flee and panic has gripped her; anguish and pain have seized her, pain like that of a woman in labor…. 26 Surely, her young men will fall in the streets; all her soldiers will be silenced in that day," declares the LORD Almighty. 27 "I will set fire to the walls of Damascus…." (NIV)

This event has not happened yet. Since the time Isaiah, first, wrote his prophesy until today, Damascus has been a thriving city. At some point Damascus is going to be blown off the face of the earth. According to the article we read on Wednesday evening…on February 22, 2001; Israel came within a few hours of sending nuclear missiles into Damascus… According to Isaiah and Jeremiah… at some point, possibly in the near future, Damascus with two million people inside, will be vaporized. Should that be of concern to any of us here?

I can assure you that whenever that happens…whoever pushes the button won’t be able to say… Opps, I didn’t mean for that to happen. Sorry… I promise not to do that again. The vaporizing of a city…probably part of a military offensive bigger than, just, that… will have global implications that will affect your life from that day…. forward.

How do we know that all this will really happen? Because God prophesied that it would and God’s Word is never wrong!

This is where all this can get a little scary: The world is moving toward a point, according to the Bible, when life will, never again, just go on as usual. Should you be, at least, aware of that fact???? I’m going to go with a big…. Yes!

For instance: God’s word says that during a coming time called the Great Tribulation… ½ of the world’s population will die in a 3 ½ year period. Last year a large earthquake with the force of one million atomic bombs moved the island of Sumatra 100 feet. Tsunamis moved in every direction at 500 miles an hour. We watched horrified as 150,000 people went to meet God in a few minutes time. The world has perhaps never seen that many people die that fast…. Is that what it will be like in the last half of this coming Tribulation period?

There is disagreement over whether you, as a Christian, will raptured before the Tribulation… or be taken just before the last horrific half starts.. or whether each of us will have to live through it…. I hope for all of our sakes that we are not here..

There are 6,569,203,795 on the earth now, doubling every 39 ½ years. If the prophesied Tribulation period were to start today….

This world would lose as many people as died in the tsunami every 3.5 minutes…. Hour after hour day after day for 3.5 years

A number equal to the entire population of Florida would die every

29 hours… A number equal to the entire population of the United States will die every 45 days.

In addition ½ the world vegetation will be burned up… The sun and moon will be darkened… the gates of hell will be opened and “locusts’ will sting mankind for 5 months, There will be a worldwide famine…There will be a war in the valley of Jezreel so severe that blood will flow like a lake 4 feet deep…. That’s the Battle of Armageddon.

How do we know that all this will really happen? Because God prophesied that it would and God’s Word is never wrong!

III. How will we know when the end of time is approaching?

God does not tell us when all of this is going to happen… but inside the Bible, on your lap, are 2040 remaining clues that can give us a “heads up”. That’s why I’m preaching this sermon right now. What I saw, when I studied this subject 30 years ago in Bible College, or even 12 years ago in graduate school….. didn’t seem like something out of the pages of tomorrow’s paper… now it does!

A) Signs of Jesus Coming and the End of Time:

If you’ve been around church long you know that one of the big hindrances to Jesus returning in the early 1900's was the fact that there was no Israel..no Jewish land, no Jewish nation, no fulfillment of what had been clearly prophesied. That all changed just before I was born…

1) The sign of the return of wandering Jews (Jeremiah 37:7-10) There was no nation of Israel for 2,520 years… from the Assyrians till 1948.

2) The sign of global telecommunications When I was a kid we used to wonder how the following could possibly happen… not any more…

Revelation 11:9-10 And for three and a half days, all peoples, tribes, languages, and nations will stare at their bodies. No one will be allowed to bury them. 10 All the people who belong to this world will gloat over them and give presents to each other to celebrate the death of the two prophets who had tormented them. (NLT)

There are a lot more predictions that have come to center stage in the last few years.. even the last few months…

3) The sign of global disease.. (aids/sars or biological WMD)

4) The sign of weapons of mass destruction

5) The sign of global tracking and positioning

6) The sign of global evangelism

7) The sign of global weather gone wild

We’ll talk more about these categories, and others, on Wednesday evening and I will show you the Scriptural prophesy for them..

I want to focus on these last two that may seem the least significant…yet are among the most significant.

9) The sign of global travel

10) The sign of a global expansion of knowledge

The books of Daniel and Revelation contain most of the 215 remaining unfulfilled prophesies. There is a sentence in the last chapter of Daniel that seems to be almost thoughtlessly thrown in that we need to look at. God, through Daniel is graphically depicting "the end" with these words:

Daniel 12:1 “…Then there will be a time of anguish greater than any since nations first came into existence. But at that time every one of your people whose name is written in the book will be rescued. 2 Many of those whose bodies lie dead and buried will rise up, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting disgrace. 3 Those who are wise will shine as bright as the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever. 4 But you, Daniel, keep this prophecy a secret; seal up the book until the time of the end,

Comma….what is coming to end this sentence is one of those clues you look for in Bible prophesy….whatever God adds here will give us insight into when the "time of the end has arrived.

Here is the last part of verse 4, as it shows up in the NLT:

Daniel 12:4b when many will rush here and there, and knowledge will increase.” (NLT)

…many will go back and forth, and knowledge will increase." (NASB)

… many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase (NKJV)

What an odd little sentence to alert us to when the end times are upon us! What does that mean people rushing here and there… running to and fro? If you are 30 or younger you probably take for granted what is happening in the world around you. If you are 75 years old you see a very different picture.

Several of us have eaten our evening meal here is South Florida, Breakfast time found us running through the airport in London England, Lunch was over Spain, and our next evening meal was in central west Africa.

Can you imagine Daniel looking into the future trying to put into words what he was seeing when the fastest he ever rode was "warp donkey speed". My grandmother is 101. When she was young, the farthest on could go in a day was however far a horse and buggy could get you.

In all of history… it's only been the last 80 years that could fit into the prophesy:

Daniel 12:4b when many will rush here and there…

That's the whole point… and you younger people need to jump to attention. You may see the recent past as a time when old fashioned people didn't have SUV's. Daniel looking forward 2500 years… saw people moving in a blur…. and stated that when mankind was moving fast from here to there…. It was a sign that the end of time was approaching.

Now the last half of that phrase, knowledge shall increase. That is almost an understatement when you think about life today. Today, we sit on top a database containing the sum total of the world’s accumulated knowledge every time we sit down to browse the internet.

From wooden boats with sails to MP3’s and DVD’s that I can watch or create on the personal computer that can also be my phone, television, radio, stereo, workstation, word processor, electronic document file, movie studio, sound studio, telephone answering service, fax machine, copy machine and printer…..

It has been said that the sum of human knowledge from the Flood to 1850 doubled once. It doubled again following World War II. The doubling of human knowledge is now multiplying in increasingly shorter cycles.

In Daniel 10…when Daniel saw the end it was so overwhelming and incomprehensible, it made him sick. Up to this point in the vision, those things that Daniel saw were relatively familiar, cities, events, people in a context that were not too far removed from his concept of reality. But then he was shown the things to come in the last days.

Daniel 10: 8 So I was left there all alone to see this amazing vision. My strength left me, my face grew deathly pale, and I felt very weak.. Then the one who looked like a man touched my lips, and I opened my mouth and began to speak. I said to the one standing in front of me, “I am filled with anguish because of the vision I have seen, my lord, and I am very weak. 17 How can someone like me, your servant, talk to you, my lord? My strength is gone, and I can hardly breathe.” 18 Then the one who looked like a man touched me again, and I felt my strength returning. 19 “Don’t be afraid,” he said, “for you are very precious to God. Peace! Be encouraged! Be strong!”

Daniel tried to describe those things he saw using terminology that made sense to him, but it comes to us as a series of baffling symbols, images and beasts. The things he saw terrified him. Because the visions were so completely removed from his understanding of reality, he was unable to describe them in terms that even he was able to comprehend. And so it remained, for thousands of years.