The Daily Word of Righteousness

Sodom; Egypt; Jerusalem, #6

And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. (Matthew 24:14)

First, the Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached "in all the world for a witness unto all nations." Then there will be a period of spiritual carelessness. Sin will increase rapidly and the majority of believers will grow cold. God will give Antichrist authority over the nations of the earth. Finally, the Lord will return and set up His Kingdom on the earth.

Paul mentions the great "falling away," which is the defection caused by the period of lawlessness following the latter-rain revival. Worldwide sin will follow the latter-rain revival because many people will profess Christ, producing the childish, silly, adulterous, spiritually ignorant environment often seen today in churches and other Christian institutions.

There is a gap of lawlessness into which many people fall when they become Christians. They tend to lose their adamic strength of character, their normal sense of right and wrong probably because grace is overemphasized in today's preaching. It may be many years (if indeed it ever happens) before some of them come under the discipline of the Holy Spirit. They live in a gap of lawlessness, married neither to Moses nor Christ, trusting that God is overlooking their foolishness and sin. This undisciplined environment abounds in Charismatic and other Christian churches.

People are put off guard when they experience the forgiveness of their sins. This defenselessness of character will prevail throughout the world, as we understand it, as a direct result of the enormous power and effectiveness of the latter-rain revival. The widespread "Christian" environment will provide the fertile soil in which the blend of Christianity and democracy can come to maturity.

The result of the blend of Christianity and democracy will be a man who perceives his destiny to be the bringing of peace to the world. If he is careful how he expresses himself, and assists the churches, he will be able to deceive the believers quite easily especially at first.

The same outpouring of heavenly "rain" that brings the wheat, the Body of Christ, to maturity will also bring the tares to maturity.

Receiving Christ without proper grounding in the Word and admonition of the Lord sometimes tends to destroy character rather than build character. The individual discards his natural sense of right and wrong. His conscience is overwhelmed by his new "religion."

He is saved by grace, according to his teachers, and the concept is conveyed to him that God automatically and perpetually is forgiving his misconduct. Such an individual can be drawn into satanic behavior, into lust and self-centered spiritual pride in which he imagines himself to be above the limitations imposed by conscience, the laws of his country, and the laws and wisdom of the Scriptures.

The kingdom of Antichrist is not a Communist prison, it is people in a manmade paradise attempting to use the name of Jesus apart from union with Jesus.

Jesus Himself mentioned that the love of the majority will grow cold before He returns (Matthew 24:12). This will happen because "iniquity (wickedness) shall abound" and people who were at one time hot or warm in their love for Jesus will lose their desire to walk with God.

To be continued.