Luke 21:34 “But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly. 35 For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. 36 Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.” 37 And in the daytime He was teaching in the temple, but at night He went out and stayed on the mountain called Olivet. 38 Then early in the morning all the people came to Him in the temple to hear Him.
1. Recognize the signs, rather than being caught in the Worldview of the day.
2. Pray Always, rather than allowing addictions to dominate your consciousness.
3. Stand before the Son of Man, rather than falling into the traps of the devil.
(Watch, Pray always, Stand)
In 79 AD Mount Vesuvius erupted.
Mount Vesuvius spawned a deadly cloud of volcanic gas, stones, ash and fumes to a height of 33 km (20.5 miles), spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima bombing. The towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum were obliterated and buried underneath massive pyroclastic flows and lava. An estimated 16,000 people died from the eruption. Wiki- Eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79
Giuseppe Fiorelli took charge of the excavations in 1863. During early excavations of the site, occasional voids in the ash layer had been found that contained human remains. It was Fiorelli who realized these were spaces left by the decomposed bodies and so devised the technique of injecting plaster into them to recreate the forms of Vesuvius's victims. This technique is still in use today, with a clear resin now used instead of plaster because it is more durable, and does not destroy the bones, allowing further analysis. Wiki-Pompeii
Bodies were preserved in precisely the form they were in when the destruction occurred. [SLIDES] People and animals were preserved in exactly the state they were in when the cataclysm occurred.
THE SIGNS
The Romans grew accustomed to minor earth tremors in the region; the writer Pliny the Younger wrote that they "were not particularly alarming because they are frequent in Campania". Small earthquakes started taking place [four days before the eruption], becoming more frequent over the next four days, but the warnings were not recognized. Wiki-Eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79
1. Recognize the signs, rather than being caught in the Worldview of the day.
2. Pray Always, rather than allowing busyness to dominate your consciousness.
PRAY ALWAYS
16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. Ephesians 5:13-18
ESCAPE
The first time the word escape is found in the Bible is, as you might guess, in the book of Genesis-it is repeatedly stated concerning Lot and his family. A servant escaped the kings that had taken Lot and his family captive along with all of Sodom & Gammorah, in Genesis 14. He runs to tell Abram about it, and Abram takes his trained mini-army and rescues all of Sodom & Gammorah. Angels warned Lot concerning the imminent destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah about to take place. They told him to escape to the mountains, but he begged to escape instead to Zoar.
Surely we can see some similarities here. Lot is called a righteous man in the New Testament. Yet he pitched his tent toward Sodom and was at the gate of the city, along with other prominent men-this was a place for a judge or village chief to spend his time. Lot lost his family to the sin of Sodom because he failed to recognize the essential nature of holiness-of sanctification. He was counted worthy to escape, but he lost his wife and married children to the destruction brought by God’s judgment. I don’t know if God would have called Lot to stay out of Sodom completely, if Lot had listened. But surely God would have had Lot be “in the world but not of it”. Lot had become addicted to Sodom’s culture and lifestyle. He lost his devotion to the Divine. In the process he lost his family and his peace. Jesus calls us to keep praying always, no matter how debase our surrounding culture becomes.
As we keep in conscious contact with the eternal dimension of life we receive light to guide us, power to move us, and love to enrich us. As we live in the meantime, in the “waiting” room, we keep God’s dream for us in our minds and it sheds light on what is important, worth pursuing, and what is pointless and a “dead end” rather than a living one. Prayer gives us perspective on our lives. Then we are more than willing to wait, to trust, to hope, and to move toward the goal. The cost, though there, is well worth the end result. This kind of prayer requires discipline. We don’t do it only in a crisis, when we feel like it, or the “spirit” moves us. We do it constantly until it becomes “Second Nature.” Then we understand “Second Coming” better. Jerry Morrissey
1. Recognize the signs, rather than being caught in the Worldview of the day.
2. Pray Always, rather than allowing busyness to dominate your consciousness.
3. Stand before the Son of Man, rather than falling into the trap of the devil.
STAND
Eph. 5 “And having done all, to stand”
Philippians 2 “Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”, it seems we will all bow, but others will bow, then be sent to their eternal situation. The Faithful, however, will bow, and then stand before their Creator, ready to do His will in heaven, just as they developed the habit of obeying on Earth.
PURIM
God had commanded Saul to wipe out all of the descendants of the Amalekites. Saul was disobedient. It was an Amalekite that eventually took credit for killing Saul, and, later, an Amalekite who threatened to wipe out the entire Jewish community. Amalekites, therefore, serve as a type of the Flesh-the life lived as Jesus described as “carousing, drunkenness, and the cares of this life”.
Yesterday and today, the Jewish community around the world celebrates Purim-the story of how God used Esther to thwart the conspiracy of Haman to commit mass-genocide against all of the Jews throughout the Babylonian Empire. Haman was a descendant of Agag-king of the Amalekites. He cast lots to decide the date of the massacre. “Purim” means “casting lots”.
What gave Amalek the confidence to attack the Jews? It was their cynicism. They saw the plagues and the miracles and it meant nothing to them. Their worldview was based on a philosophy of randomness, that life is meaningless and makes no difference and that things just "happen." Haman's method of casting lots for a date for the genocide stemmed from Amalek's worldview. The word Purim represents the philosophy against which the Jewish people were fighting at the time --- the philosophy of Amalek, the worldview that life is empty and random. . . . The whole (Bible) is based on the fact that what we do, each and every single day, is important; whether we avoid gossiping, whether we give charity, whether we eat (healthy) --- whatever it is, it is actually important to G-d. Everything we do on a daily basis has significance in His eyes; it is neither random nor meaningless. Warren Goldstein
Esther was able to stand before the king and thereby save an entire nation. We are called to stand before the Son of Man and, thereby, save ourselves and our generation. God has a purpose for us-for good and not for evil.
So, how do we escape the destruction to come?
1. Recognize the signs, rather than being caught in the Worldview of the day.
2. Live a life of Righteousness-rather than trying to escape through addictions.
3. Stand before the Son of Man, rather than falling into the trap of the devil.
If we do this we will be able to take our stand against the devil, and, in the Day of Judgment stand before Him with Whom we have to do.
