By Elizabeth Prata
I am 60 years old. I have 57 years of memories of life on this earth. However, it’s clear that everything I know and all I knew all my life is gone. Nothing is like it was and it’s not going to be again.
We got some news in our county the other day that was hard to deal with. By now I’ve dealt with it. Maybe you’ve received some news too that you find difficult to grapple with. There’s a lot of that going around.
I’ve lived long enough to have gone through the 1960s. The 1960s was a terrible time. The images flashing by on the news were gruesome or incomprehensible to my young mind, and scary. Nothing made sense and it felt like the world was turning upside down. Now I know it was a major step in God’s judgment in Romans 1, God giving a sinful nation over to its desired sins- feminism, homosexuality, sexual licentiousness, and general rebellion against authority.
Though we cannot always see how God is working, the 1960s were an obviously visible lurch forward in God’s plan. His plan has been continuing before that and after that in equally devastating ways. The 1980s saw feminism settle in, and ‘greed was good’ in the booming decade.
If we consistently pursue sin, eventually He sends the wrath of abandonment upon us and gives us over to our desires. (Romans 1:18-32). Certainly it’s more than obvious the last year and a half of race riots, looting, covid, lockdowns, and totalitarian measures with the flu shot, ‘passports’, and insane mandates has brought us even close to the end in a huge lurch forward on the prophetic timeline.
As John MacArthur noted last week,
“We are under judgment at a severe level, the most severe level revealed in scripture short of final global judgment yet to come in the end of the age and eternal judgment in hell.”
As Christians, we look forward to heaven. But in so doing, we have to remember to let go of earth. We cannot cling so tightly to earth and its ways that we forget to let go of comfort, reliability, trust in government, normalcy, civility, or anything else that we have enjoyed for many years here in our once-great country. It’s over.
I particularly have a hard time letting go. I have a logical mind, and illogic drives me crazy. Contradictory statements, ‘science’ that obviously isn’t science, bewildering directions, Authorities swatting flies with sledgehammers…You can imagine what the past 17 months has done to me. If not, here’s what it did: frustrate me endlessly. At some points, enraged me. But that’s sinful state for a Christian, so every time I felt that sense of anger or frustration arise, I dampen it with scripture, a good sermon, or, lol, a nap. I have to work at being peaceful. But exude peace, we must.
This is where I get to preaching, to myself as much to anyone else: We have been privileged to live in a country where for so long we were strong, comfortable, prosperous, and free.
We are now privileged to live in a time when the cause of Christ, His Gospel, and our ministry is more important than ever in this rapidly darkening world.
It is going to take me a while to adjust from loving one kind of privilege to loving the other kind of privilege, but adjust we must. I know it doesn’t feel like a privilege to be living in a time when it seems like we are sliding down fast into a nonsensical totalitarian state, but it is. As the persecution increases, the Lord’s glory abounds-
Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials, (James 1:2)
Being angry or frustrated is sinful because it betrays pride. The lost are angry. We all can’t be angry! I cannot control what is happening. I cannot do anything to get things back the way they were. I cannot change anything by being upset. We always say “God is in control” but when things collapse, or don’t go our way, we tend to rail at circumstances. It’s because we thought we had some control in how things go.
We don’t. It’s times like these that explicitly demonstrate that we don’t.
Below, John MacArthur, the best expositor alive today, explains the reprobate mind, “a kind of insanity where nothing makes sense, a mind that does not function and out of which comes every imaginable evil”. What is happening in our country – the chaos, the insanity, the nonsense, the things that you can’t, figure out, the confusion, the disorder, the disruption, is all part of divine judgment.“
And what are we to do about it? “This is the time for the church to concentrate on lifting up Christ. We are to be the eye of the hurricane, the calm in the storm.”
The quotes above were taken from a video that has been removed from Youtube, on every channel in which it appears. This also is evidence of a slide downward. “Fact-checkers” hate the truth of the facts in the Christian video so they do their best to remove and ban it. The transcript from that banned video, if you want to read it, will be posted tomorrow. Just below is a similar video in which MacArthur explains from a biblical perspective what is happening in the world, and what to do about it.
Today’s main takeaway is this: Though we are all upset. It’s OK to be upset, sad, angry etc, but take it to the Lord and repent of it. Then promote the Gospel endlessly. Is the time drawing near as prophecy says? It feels like it is. I need to face the new normal with peace and joy in Christ and do His will on earth, which is to make Him known.
Even if the Day is further off, the helpless and hopeless people who are lost and wandering in the dark need the Gospel. Prophecy should stir us to action. Lifting up Christ is the best action for us to take.
the-end-time.org 
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