Living In The Last Days In The Power Of God’s Transformation – Part 1 Series

LIVING IN THE LAST DAYS IN THE POWER OF GOD’S TRANSFORMATION – PART 1

This is a night message presented in Boston, England, a longer one. However for the purposes of length on SermonCentral, I have split the message into two parts. This is PART 1.

[A]. THE WORLD’S WAY, BUT NOT OUR LIFE

We know the case of farmers in my nation, and I think all over the greedy world, very much drought affected, with no ability to pull through until rain, and now they have mortgages so huge they are crippled. The big banks won’t rewrite their mortgages, or demonstrate any will to help. They have taken the station/ranch property’s animals at very reduced prices; won’t help with sustainability; taken the farm’s machinery until all that is left is drought, and unproductive farms, because the banks have taken away the ability to exist. Lastly they take away the property itself, saying that the land is worthless without rain and cattle, and the owners are forced off, and THEIR land is taken for next to nothing. The banks value the land so low, then end up owning it and hold it until times improve. This is immoral. It is reprehensible. The same happens with businesses. It is one total disgrace on humanity.

I have a cousin who stayed with us recently who claims all religion in man-made. Man made his own gods to make him feel better, and which religion uses to control others. He is a great intellectual. I think men strain at excuses so that they don’t have to face the probability of a God, but they do so with great delusion, because the god of this world has blinded the eyes of those who do not believe lest they come to a knowledge of the truth.

Then you have a world with a dark side, a very dark history. One might well ask, “Where is justice in this world?” Not too many in the western world really care, because they are not too badly affected, and are somewhat isolated from the stark reality of the suffering of others in much worse conditions. Hundreds of millions are starving and mal-nourished and have diseases, and are dying in wars often not of their own making, but where is the justice for these people? In the scheme of things, man has no justice, for man is morally bankrupt

The greatest criminals of the world are the mass murderers and the worst of them lived in a period of 50 years in the 20th century. Adolph Hitler’s estimated victims number 30 million; Starlin’s ranks 40 million; and the greatest is Mao Zedong at 60 million. The last two centuries are stained with the blood of hundreds of millions because of vile, hellish men. The sad thing is that millions followed these men, and did their commands. Today in China, the world’s vilest criminal is honoured and revered constantly, the great Chairman Mao.

The average man and woman must wonder sometimes when and how the wrongs are going to be righted. We live in times when these evils are evident among us. The faces have changed. We see Islamic fanaticism on the rise; Islamic terrorism, and more riots associated with race. The Old Testament prophets also saw these evils, and decried their times and spoke of the coming judgement and the overthrow of Israel by the Assyrians, and of Judah by the Babylonians. Israel was crushed at the hands of their enemies, but they had played into the enemy’s hands by their foul sin and idolatry against God. We are living on the brink of judgement and it will most certainly come, and the crimes and stored up evil will meet headlong, with the stored up judgement of God.

We know all that will happen as part of the Day of the Lord we considered briefly earlier today, but I want to move on from that and into an area that is so important for everyone of us, and that will be the focus of the message tonight. This is an important scripture from Peter -

{{2 Peter 3:10-14 “but the DAY OF THE LORD will come like a thief in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, WHAT SORT OF PEOPLE OUGHT YOU TO BE IN HOLY CONDUCT AND GODLINESS . . . but according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to BE FOUND BY HIM IN PEACE, SPOTLESS AND BLAMELESS,”}}

There is a serious and high calling on us in these verses. We read “holy conduct and godliness” and “peace, spotless, and blameless”. I have shared with you the word of God with its application to the last days of this Church age, but unless we can be changed by the word, then what have we accomplished? Let us move to two well-known verses from Romans -