End Times Explosion Series

End Times Explosion

Matthew 24:32-44

http://gbcdecatur.org/sermons/Explosion.html

This week an errant spy satellite, usually capable of reading a newspaper on earth from space, was shot down in low earth orbit with a missile precise to the square foot where the actual fuel tank was located, and we were able to see it happen on video from the ground. Amazing indeed is all that “I can spy with my little eye” today!

Is it possible that Jesus will return in our lifetime? It’s not just possible...but probable. I’m not a date setter, and I’m not trying to make a prediction. But we need to recognize the signs of the times, and I’d like to share with you some more compelling evidence that at any time now Christ could explode onto the scene, rupturing the sky and rapturing the saints!

End times events that precede the rapture are being played out before our very eyes. The panorama for the second coming is spread out like a table for Sunday dinner. The stage is set, the key players have taken position, the cameras are rolling and the lights are beginning to dim. A hush is falling across the audience in heaven and all we need is for the Director to cry out, “Action!”

And if I die before the rapture, I want to give advanced instruction to put on my tombstone, “He died surprised”.

Joke—a hypochondriac always complained about the illnesses he felt that he had...but it was all imaginary. But he grew old and eventually died. He had instructed the engraver to put on his headstone, “I told you I was sick!”

Some say that every generation has believed Christ would return in their lifetime...that simply isn’t true. Every generation has hoped to see His return, but not all have expected it in their lifetime.

Ill.—Sir Isaac Newton was not only a great scientist, but also a theologian, especially late in his life. He concluded that his generation would not see the return of Christ. He did not see the signs of the end times coming just yet. He said, “About the time of the end, a body of men will be raised up who will turn their attention to the prophecies and insist upon their literal interpretation in the midst of much clamor and opposition.”

Ill.—C. H. Spurgeon, one of the greatest preachers of the 19th Century, asked, “Will Jesus appear in 1866 or 1867? I am inclined to think that He will not come at any such time. It seems to me that there are a great many prophecies which much be fulfilled before the coming of Christ. We shall go on many a day yet. We may have to wait for another century.”

Another century has come and gone, but my what has changed in that century. This leads to a powerful discussion of the fulfillment of one of the lesser known prophecies of the Old Testament.

Daniel 12:4

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.

This verse makes us think of the transportation age, and the knowledge explosion of this past century. Think about it...

From the time God created Adam to this day, about 6,000 years have passed, and for all but the last 100 of those years man either walked, sailed, or rode horses. The 20th Century saw man come up with automobiles, planes, jets, and spacecraft.

For centuries Bible scholars interpreted ‘run to and fro’ as a coming increase in travel and in the speed of travel. It was in the 17th century that Isaac Newton said, “A new mode of travel shall be invented in the last days. Knowledge will be so increased that man will be able to travel at a rate of [and then he went out on a limb] 50 miles an hour.” He was highly criticized for making such a statement. The atheist Voltaire said, “Newton thinks that someday men will travel at 50 miles an hour, the poor dotard.” I wish he could see the space shuttle today traveling at 20,000 mph!

And global communication today has man traveling at the speed of light. The information age has placed anything you want to know just a click away, and what used to take years to research is available in seconds to virtually anyone! As a popular search engine touts in commercials, “No one wants to look dumb.”

It took men 160 years to produce a steam engine that worked, from concept to completion a couple of centuries ago. But the nuclear bomb was built in just 6 years a few decades ago, and today’s tech inventions flow from paper to prototype in days, and mass production in weeks!