On my national talk radio show, on social media, and in person, I encounter more and more people who feel like something bad is coming. People seem convinced of it. The better off among us are more dismissive, but even some of them are fretful. The Christians refer to the “birth pangs” from an old reading of the Gospels, better known as either birth pains or labor contractions.
Eric - Thank you so much for this. These are hard times. Christians need to take a look at their own life to see who's on the throne - Jesus or some political personality. It's very sad to see Christians who appear to believe that some elected official (or any person) is going to save us from calamity. My husband likes to remind me that Jesus told his disciples to share the Good News "as they were going...". We stopped going - we need to reach out to those in our own communities (and around the world) - keep doing what Jesus told us to do cause it's going to get bad, and the end is going to come, and Jesus is still in control regardless .... I'm going to vote, be involved in issues affecting my community, feed the poor and visit the sick ... and pray for His return to come quickly. Blessings on you. (P.S. I'm 70 and on a fixed income ... and He's still in control.)
Barbara Tuchman's history of the 14th century - "A Distant Mirror" - will leave the reader wondering why on earth that was not the end. These are troubling times, but not the first.
I will be the naysayer here. While I know that God is sovereign and all is according to His plan, His plan may very well include destruction and chaos. Maybe because I am here right outside the nation’s capital, it appears to me that God is giving us over to what we - in a collective sense - want. We want infanticide; we want homosexuality; we want transgenderism, we want racial strife, we want political upheaval - and unless He intervenes- that is what is coming.
The nation is splitting into two camps with each camp seeing the other as an existential threat. Trump will be the Republican nominee and Biden, if he makes it to the election, will be the Democrat nominee. Biden (or his replacement) will win and Trump will again claim it is stolen. The right will lash out in some way. If somehow Trump wins the Left will go crazy with rioting.
While most people are not on the fringes, unfortunately the fringes are the ones that drive what happens. Here, right outside the beltway, I live in a very liberal area and am heavily involved in my PCA church as an elder, in my community as a member of our HOA board, neighborhood watch as well as board member of a pregnancy center. So I have been doing the things Erich has preached about, but I am trying to understand the signs of the times. I lived through the turbulent 60s and 70s and I would submit that now is different. I pray that it is different, but from what I see there is real trouble coming.
For over 30 years now, the Left has been telling kids that the deck is permanently stacked against them, they have no chance at a decent life, and that they'll have no future because we're all going to die from climate change in a few years anyhow. Left-wing adults tell kids that, and they believe it. They're just kids, after all. So is it any surprise that the under-40 crowd acts the way they do? It is any wonder why Gen-Z is mired in hopelessness, anguish and bed-rot culture?
I deeply appreciate your words here Erick. I can hear things in your words quite clearly since I know more about you--your frustrations, your personal struggles in your family with the health of your wife, the joys you share about your kids, and even the enjoyments you share in your life--it all is reflected here as a sense of responsibility to speak (which you do have from the Lord) and your personal knowledge there is more than what we see and hope exists. Not the feeling of hope. Not a slogan of hope, But in the Person of hope Jesus Christ! I always pray for you, your family, and the success of your company! Jim
Irrefutable fact (if you're a Bible-believing Christian) is that we are closer now to Jesus' return than we have ever been. In my own experience (77 years, raised in pre-integration South, Vietnam vet, career Navy officer, current rural farmer), things ARE worse now than ever before. Where we are exactly in the sequence of birth-pangs leading to Tribulation, no-one knows. Best counsel for all is to live expectantly for Christ's return while doing our best to follow His example. (imho)
Agree. Preach the gospel, disciple new believers, encourage one another, let God control the timeline without my anxious desire to wait on a hillside like the Thessalonians.
Each person drawn to Christ is one more compatriot in heaven. Let's join Christ on That Day with a bunch of new compatriots, shall we?
One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was right after Obama was reelected in 2012. I was despondent, but a very close friend of ours reminded me that God is our provider and protector, not government. It was a reset I desperately needed. I immediately withdrew from the 24-hour news cycle, and I've been much happier ever since. I'm still in tune with what's going on but knowing that God has this allows me to recognize - and ACCEPT - my limitations in changing any of it.
A few days before the 2016 election, I stopped listening to the news and political podcasts. I started listening just to religious podcasts. Life has been better.
"I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus...preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths (2 Timothy 4:2-4).
...These things I (Jesus) have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world." ( John 16:33)
Those of us who remember America during 1968, for example, know that we’ve had and survived as a society worse unrest, doubt, adversity, and mayhem. The only difference now is that everyone instantly knows the slightest sort of problem that occurs almost anywhere on Earth. Which to the non-thinking person seems that everything is falling apart. To thinking people, however, traditional values and our faith provide the security and purpose that we need to remain calm.
Exactly. Living in a metropolitan area of millions, my daily news is filled with “one in a million” incidents of triumph or tragedy. My great grandfather never heard about anything outside his limited neighborhood or what was in the newspaper, weeks later frequently.
This is a good point. I find it hard to believe that things are worse now than, say, during the Dark Ages when the Black Death killed 1 of every 6 people. Or more recently, the Civil War where roughly 650,000 Americans - more than all other wars combined - died horribly in battle. Or in the trenches of WWI, or the holocaust camps of WWII, or even Vietnam where soldiers returned home to be spat upon. IMO, we're just fat, bored, and have a smart phone in our hands, so we manufacture stupid *&^%@ to be offended or outraged about.
“… feel good motivational institutions ..” couldn’t agree more. Add to that ones that virtue signal by going against their faith and saying the alphabet lifestyle is perfectly normal and within scripture. These are the ones that try to make Jesus a gay icon.
People are going to church and often some are coming back to church. But it’s to the wrong ones. The Bible speaks of that too.
Truth spoken as valid today as through the ages. Founding Father John Adams spoke that the Republic could only be maintained by a religious and moral people. Let it be so. More law of the Spirit of Life and less button pushing and news alerts.
Eric - Thank you so much for this. These are hard times. Christians need to take a look at their own life to see who's on the throne - Jesus or some political personality. It's very sad to see Christians who appear to believe that some elected official (or any person) is going to save us from calamity. My husband likes to remind me that Jesus told his disciples to share the Good News "as they were going...". We stopped going - we need to reach out to those in our own communities (and around the world) - keep doing what Jesus told us to do cause it's going to get bad, and the end is going to come, and Jesus is still in control regardless .... I'm going to vote, be involved in issues affecting my community, feed the poor and visit the sick ... and pray for His return to come quickly. Blessings on you. (P.S. I'm 70 and on a fixed income ... and He's still in control.)
Read about the year 536 AD, known as the “worst year to be alive.”
https://www.science.org/content/article/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive
Barbara Tuchman's history of the 14th century - "A Distant Mirror" - will leave the reader wondering why on earth that was not the end. These are troubling times, but not the first.
I will be the naysayer here. While I know that God is sovereign and all is according to His plan, His plan may very well include destruction and chaos. Maybe because I am here right outside the nation’s capital, it appears to me that God is giving us over to what we - in a collective sense - want. We want infanticide; we want homosexuality; we want transgenderism, we want racial strife, we want political upheaval - and unless He intervenes- that is what is coming.
The nation is splitting into two camps with each camp seeing the other as an existential threat. Trump will be the Republican nominee and Biden, if he makes it to the election, will be the Democrat nominee. Biden (or his replacement) will win and Trump will again claim it is stolen. The right will lash out in some way. If somehow Trump wins the Left will go crazy with rioting.
While most people are not on the fringes, unfortunately the fringes are the ones that drive what happens. Here, right outside the beltway, I live in a very liberal area and am heavily involved in my PCA church as an elder, in my community as a member of our HOA board, neighborhood watch as well as board member of a pregnancy center. So I have been doing the things Erich has preached about, but I am trying to understand the signs of the times. I lived through the turbulent 60s and 70s and I would submit that now is different. I pray that it is different, but from what I see there is real trouble coming.
For over 30 years now, the Left has been telling kids that the deck is permanently stacked against them, they have no chance at a decent life, and that they'll have no future because we're all going to die from climate change in a few years anyhow. Left-wing adults tell kids that, and they believe it. They're just kids, after all. So is it any surprise that the under-40 crowd acts the way they do? It is any wonder why Gen-Z is mired in hopelessness, anguish and bed-rot culture?
Great sermonette!!! (the diminutive being used to describe its length and not its social force.)
I deeply appreciate your words here Erick. I can hear things in your words quite clearly since I know more about you--your frustrations, your personal struggles in your family with the health of your wife, the joys you share about your kids, and even the enjoyments you share in your life--it all is reflected here as a sense of responsibility to speak (which you do have from the Lord) and your personal knowledge there is more than what we see and hope exists. Not the feeling of hope. Not a slogan of hope, But in the Person of hope Jesus Christ! I always pray for you, your family, and the success of your company! Jim
Irrefutable fact (if you're a Bible-believing Christian) is that we are closer now to Jesus' return than we have ever been. In my own experience (77 years, raised in pre-integration South, Vietnam vet, career Navy officer, current rural farmer), things ARE worse now than ever before. Where we are exactly in the sequence of birth-pangs leading to Tribulation, no-one knows. Best counsel for all is to live expectantly for Christ's return while doing our best to follow His example. (imho)
Agree. Preach the gospel, disciple new believers, encourage one another, let God control the timeline without my anxious desire to wait on a hillside like the Thessalonians.
Each person drawn to Christ is one more compatriot in heaven. Let's join Christ on That Day with a bunch of new compatriots, shall we?
22 days to the Gathering where we get to rub elbows with the leading Republican candidates.
Cheers
One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was right after Obama was reelected in 2012. I was despondent, but a very close friend of ours reminded me that God is our provider and protector, not government. It was a reset I desperately needed. I immediately withdrew from the 24-hour news cycle, and I've been much happier ever since. I'm still in tune with what's going on but knowing that God has this allows me to recognize - and ACCEPT - my limitations in changing any of it.
A few days before the 2016 election, I stopped listening to the news and political podcasts. I started listening just to religious podcasts. Life has been better.
This is how the left uses god words against him. They take “love your neighbor and your enemy” and twist it to mean we should allow and agree.
Jesus spoke of repentance. He never joined in their sin.
I can love my enemy. But if they take up arms against me or try to outlaw my way of life what am I to do?
Rollover and let it happen. Let them take away my children, my family, my life?
No.
I will not be violent but I will not be silent either.
"I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus...preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths (2 Timothy 4:2-4).
...These things I (Jesus) have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world." ( John 16:33)
Those of us who remember America during 1968, for example, know that we’ve had and survived as a society worse unrest, doubt, adversity, and mayhem. The only difference now is that everyone instantly knows the slightest sort of problem that occurs almost anywhere on Earth. Which to the non-thinking person seems that everything is falling apart. To thinking people, however, traditional values and our faith provide the security and purpose that we need to remain calm.
Exactly. Living in a metropolitan area of millions, my daily news is filled with “one in a million” incidents of triumph or tragedy. My great grandfather never heard about anything outside his limited neighborhood or what was in the newspaper, weeks later frequently.
This is a good point. I find it hard to believe that things are worse now than, say, during the Dark Ages when the Black Death killed 1 of every 6 people. Or more recently, the Civil War where roughly 650,000 Americans - more than all other wars combined - died horribly in battle. Or in the trenches of WWI, or the holocaust camps of WWII, or even Vietnam where soldiers returned home to be spat upon. IMO, we're just fat, bored, and have a smart phone in our hands, so we manufacture stupid *&^%@ to be offended or outraged about.
It is so hard but, be kind.
“… feel good motivational institutions ..” couldn’t agree more. Add to that ones that virtue signal by going against their faith and saying the alphabet lifestyle is perfectly normal and within scripture. These are the ones that try to make Jesus a gay icon.
People are going to church and often some are coming back to church. But it’s to the wrong ones. The Bible speaks of that too.
Truth spoken as valid today as through the ages. Founding Father John Adams spoke that the Republic could only be maintained by a religious and moral people. Let it be so. More law of the Spirit of Life and less button pushing and news alerts.