Matthew-049

 

The reality of this “better country” is linked with the reality of God

Our camp theme is about “Looking for a Better Country,” and the first question I ask is: How do you know that this better country even exists? Maybe this “better country” is just a figment of our imagination. Most people know that Australia exists, and many long for it in spite of its terrible deficits. At least Australia exists, or else longing for it would not do much good for anyone. But how do you know if this “better country” is a spiritual country? And how do you know if it even exists?

Now I have been asked to talk about: What happens before we get to the better country? So I would take this together, and see if through this study, we can establish the reality of this better country.

As Christians, we must be very careful that we are not pursuing some fantasy which doesn’t even exist. We should never be afraid of pur­suing the truth. If this better country is a mere fantasy, and human beings often have quite good imagination, then we should not be pursuing something that has no reality to it. Many Christians find it very difficult to answer my question as to how they know that there is such a “better country.”

Clearly, it is also linked with the question of the reality of God because we saw in the passages in Hebrews, that Abraham looked for a city which is the capital of that country, if you like to say it in that way, and that city is built by God. In other words, since it is said that God builds the city, if God is not there, then the city doesn’t exist.

I want to stress the fact that as Christians, we must never run away from the truth. There is a kind of “Christianity” today, which is frankly, escapism – an escape from reality. That is not Bible Chris­tianity. This kind of “Christianity” is what our enemies have attacked us with, all the way back to Marx, who declared that religion is the opium of the people, and he is often right on this point. Many people treat religion, and Christianity in particular, as opium that gives you a high in this dreary world. When we go around in the desert, we really hope for a better country, so we just invent a better country. It is like someone who gets a shot of a hallucinogen like LSD, a sub­stance which produces psychological effects such as hallucina­tions, and you see things that may not even exist. Being a Christian is not practicing the art of self-deception; it is learning to pursue the truth wherever that truth takes us. Let us never forget that the New Testament describes the church as the pillar of the truth. (1 Tim. 3:15)

 

Matthew 16:1-4

How do we proceed to answer this question? Clearly, we cannot answer all questions on the reality of God, the reality of this better country and this heavenly city created by him in a one-hour session, but we will make a start. Let me start at Matthew 16:1-4.

 

Spiritual blindness prevents seeing “the signs of the times” facing us

And I like those words in verse 4, “he left them and departed.” This is the art of being brief and getting to the point. The Pharisees and Sadducees asked the Lord Jesus a question, and he answered briefly, and walked away. He did not say, “Sit down, and with my three inches of incorruptible tongue, I’m going to talk you into believing me.” He was also not very kind, to say, “You hypocrites” was he?

He said, “You know how to look at the sky. You see it’s red in the morning, and what do you say? You say, “The sky is threatening; it’s going to be bad weather.’ And if it’s red in the evening, what do you say? ‘Ah! Tomorrow will be good weather!’” He said to them, “When you see the red sky in the morning or in the evening, you understand the meaning of the signs in the heavens. Why don’t you understand the signs of the times?” Why does he call them hypocrites? What is hypocritical about reading the sky? It is because he looked into their hearts, and saw their spiritual blindness that prevented them from seeing the signs of the times right in front of them.

Can you see the signs of the times? If not, don’t be surprised if the Lord Jesus says to you, “You hypocrites!” Why? Because when we are one thing on the outside and something else on the inside, when we are not committed to the truth, we become hypocrites. Then we don’t have discernment to see spiritual reality, to understand spiri­tual truth, and we cannot see the signs that God gives us, whether they are in the sky or on the earth. By definition, signs are things which we can see, but we cannot see spiritual things. Today, I’m going to talk about the signs which point us to the fact that we are not far from the Lord Jesus’ Coming and the heavenly country.

 

Spiritual reality, like time and air, cannot be discerned by physical senses

How do we deal with spiritual reality? Spiritual reality is by definition something that cannot be measured as to its height or its weight. How do you know if it is real? Just as with spiritual reality, you cannot taste God with your tongue, cannot see him with your eyes, cannot touch him with your hands, cannot smell him, or hear him unless he talks to you, which isn’t very often, is it? You kneel every morning and say, “Lord, my knees are getting sore. Just say hello or something nice to me this morning. Don’t say, “Hypocrite!” Say anything. Oh, I give up.” How do you know whether God is real?

Although time is something you cannot see, smell, touch or taste, you know time is real because you can measure it. What is time? If you study philosophy a little bit, as I have done, you will notice that time is a very curious thing. Did we invent time by inventing a watch? Doesn’t time exist if there is no watch? Would it mean that if you don’t have a watch, you will never get old? That would be great! You have solved the problem of old age by throwing away the watch. Without time, I will never grow old. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. Time goes on whether you have a watch or not. So what is time?

Einstein introduced us to even more fascinating concepts with his Principle of Relativity, E = mc². This equation states that energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared. Since speed can be measured in terms of distance and time, this equation reveals that energy can be expressed as a product of mass and a form of time. How can matter, which can be felt and touched, become intertwined with time, an intangible entity that cannot be touched, tasted, seen, or smelled? Modern physics is a very strange thing, isn’t it? It seems to mix matter and non-matter together. Is energy considered matter, or is it something entirely different? How fascinating! Isn’t modern physics a very peculiar subject!

When we talk about the heavenly kingdom, we are talking about something spiritual, and it has something to do with time. With time? Yes, the signs of the times. Why is the heavenly kingdom not here? It hasn’t arrived yet. Why aren’t we there? We haven’t arrived yet. It has something to do with time. What are the signs of the times? If time is real, then we see that perhaps spiritual things are also real. Things are not unreal because you cannot touch, taste, smell, or see them.

Take for example, the air. If we stop breathing in air for say, two minutes, I think you will need a doctor to pump the air back into your chest. Hopefully, you can breathe it in. But can you feel air? When you listen carefully, can you hear air? You don’t hear anything. Look very carefully, even if you have 20-20 vision, you don’t see air. If you stick out your tongue to taste it, do you taste air? No. And yet, we know that without air, we cannot even live for one minute. Strange, isn’t it? The only way you can feel air is when it is in motion. When it’s in motion, it can become very, very powerful. But if it doesn’t move, you can’t feel anything.

It is like God, if he moves, you will see something happening. If he doesn’t move, you search but cannot find. If you take a microscope to magnify air, you don’t see any air. When God begins to move, you will feel it.

Air is so powerful that it can literally lift you up and carry you down the road. In Shanghai, where I come from, there are often typhoons, and they are very powerful. My mother once told me that one of the typhoons that swept through Shanghai was so powerful that she saw a person really flying down the road with arms spread out! The powerful wind just picked the person up, and we dare not think what happened to that person. Hopefully, he landed in water and he could swim. But if he got smashed against the wall, then that would be tragic.

Many of you came here in an airplane. Have you looked at a jumbo jet? It’s huge. Can you imagine how many tons it weighs? Yet, that enormous airplane just flies in the air, and you virtually cannot see anything holding it up. And all 400 people sitting in it, drinking their orange juice, don’t notice that there’s nothing but air down below. It boggles the mind! Is air so solid that it can hold this huge steel aircraft in the sky? It’s amazing!

 

12 signs tell the better country is very near, coming from heaven on earth!

Let me just come back to the “signs of the times.” I want to talk about the “signs of the times” to show you that only one of the many, many evidences of the reality of this better country is tied to the reality of time. Time is an absolute reality.

According to Einstein, if we accelerated to the speed of light, maybe time will stop still. The only problem is it will take incredible power to accelerate even one particle to the speed of light. What is power? Power again, is not a material thing, and yet, it’s a very real thing. We suddenly begin to realize that all the really important things like power, time, wisdom, love are not material, yet these are the absolute realities of life. You may not realize that by removing these leaves you with nothing in terms of life. In other words, if you take God out of a person’s life, he has nothing left to live for.

So I would like to leave with you only this one thought: The reality of time and the need to know and understand the signs of the times.

Look at your watch. How many markers are on it? Twelve, at least my watch has twelve. And today, I want to mention very, very briefly twelve markers of time of our present age. Every one of them is exceedingly important because it tells us how near we are to that better country. Whether you have a part in that better country or not, depends on you because the last two chapters in the Bible really boggles the mind! What does it tell us? Revelation chapter 21 in particular, tells us that the New Jerusalem, that is, the city of God is going to descend from the heavens onto the earth! You can be glad that you don’t have to shoot yourself up to that better country with a rocket. That is going to be pretty hard to do. God is going to bring his heavenly city and his better country right down on earth. Read it for yourself in Revelation.

Immediately, the question is: If God’s heavenly city, God’s better country is going to come down on this earth, when will this happen? This becomes crucial. We are living here on the earth. Will you and I be here when the heavenly country comes down? That will be an answer to the Lord Jesus’ prayer. He taught his disciples to pray like this: “Your kingdom come.” He said “come”; he did not say, “I go to your kingdom.” When will “Your kingdom come”? “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” When God’s kingdom comes, God’s will is going to be done on earth in the same way as his will is done in heaven now. When will this be? Every moment as we talk, time is ticking away. In a way, we are getting closer to that day when that heavenly city, the city of God that Abraham looked for will come down on earth.

I will give you the twelve signs very briefly. In fact, each one could be developed into a message of its own. Let us turn to Matthew 24:3 for the first point. “The signs of the times at the end of the age” is the heading above this passage in my Bible.

The disciples asked for a sign: How do we know? And his first reply was, “Don’t let anyone deceive you.” Did you notice how I started this message? We don’t want to be deceived with going after some country that doesn’t exist, even if it is a heavenly country. If it doesn’t exist, we are deceived. I told you that the Lord Jesus is concerned about truth. That is our primary concern as a true Christian.

If you study church history, you will find that time and again, a very tragic thing happens: When the majority accepts a wrong teaching that comes into the church, it becomes orthodox teaching. The true teaching suddenly becomes false teaching, and the false teaching is seen as true. Everyone becomes confused. Most of you are not theologically or Biblically trained, so you can’t truly discern what is true from what is false.

So when the Lord Jesus says, “Be careful that you are not deceived,” what means do you have to tell which is the truth? Thanks be to God, the Lord Jesus tells us later on, that when we are fully yielded to God in our hearts, living under the control of God, his Holy Spirit of truth will protect us and give us discernment. But I don’t have time to expound on this, I must get on to the twelve signs.

 

1. Israel, the fig tree come back to life

I will have to skip a lot of Matthew Chapter 24 and come to verse 32 for one of the important signs:

It’s right at your door now. What is the sign? What does the fig tree represent in the Bible? It represents the nation of Israel. Here, the Lord Jesus gave us a very important sign. Before the end, when our time is going to run out, and the time of the heavenly country is arriving, we look for the signs. We are not to be like these Pharisees and Sadducees, the “hypocrites,” as the Lord Jesus called them, who looked and did not see the sign.

The Lord Jesus was the most important sign standing right in front of them. They looked at Jesus and they were asking him for a sign! They have eyes but they cannot see. Jesus is standing in front of them. Do you want a sign? Look at him. But they looked at him and they did not see anything. That is the problem with hypocrites. They hear the truth, yet they cannot recognize it as such. They hear falsehood and they think it is the truth. It’s pitiful!

Israel is that fig tree in Matthew 24:32. When we talk about the signs, we are also talking about prophecy. Prophecy is a miracle because no one can foretell the future. You can guess, but you cannot tell it with accuracy. Yet, the Lord Jesus told us 2,000 years ago, that the fig tree is going to go through the winter. It loses all its leaves, its fruit, it is as though dead. Then as time goes on, and summer arrives, the dead tree comes to life. You see that every year, not just for fig trees. But the Lord Jesus mentioned the fig tree because he is referring to Israel. Israel is the important sign if you are going to watch what is happening in God’s plan. It is incredible that the Lord Jesus could tell us almost 2,000 years beforehand, that Israel would die, and be brought back again as a nation, because Israel was doing just fine in his life time. It would be another 40 years before Israel was wiped out as a nation. He warned them of that in verse 2, after the disciples said to him, “Look at this glorious temple! It is so beautiful!” And he said, “Do you see this temple? Not one stone is going to be left on top of another.” They were amazed! How can that be? When will this take place? If there is no God, true prophecy would not exist because only God can know what will happen in the future. There is no way man can do it. He foretold through Christ, “A lot of bad things will have to come first, then the glorious kingdom will come.” That is another evidence of the reality of God and of his heavenly country.

I have traveled in Israel quite a number of times, and one of the things I find most memorable about Israel is traveling into the desert where the Israelites wandered for a long time. The desert is a terri­ble place. All you see is rocks and sand, and it is dry and not a plant can grow. I went there, sometimes with the co-workers, driving on the highway that traverses the desert. Eventually, the highway veered onto a small road, passing through this harsh desert where no one could survive for very long. We then entered a small valley, a narrow cleft in the rock. After passing through that rocky corridor, you suddenly see a waterfall, with water cascading down right in the middle of the desert! Next to this water, there lies a large, beautiful oasis nestled in the heart of the desert, adorned with trees, plants, birds, and animals.

In order to find that place, we have to look for signs because the desert often looks pretty similar – a mix of bleached, brown, yellow, and reddish hues everywhere. And finally, right through the rock, into that small valley, you see the waterfall with water gushing out! It’s like another world, indeed a better country! It’s rather like this. We need to keep these signs in view as we observe and follow, until we come to the time when that better country will be revealed to us.

So Israel is that first sign. Here something amazing has happened in your life-time in 1948. Israel is a reality in your life-time. Israel did not exist before 1948; there was no such country for 2,000 years. It’s a miracle! A once extinct nation reemerges and returns to the world map. That is one sign. Israel is such a small nation, but it’s amazing that it’s always the center of attention. Everything goes around this little country, Israel, with a population of a few million. In many places, you can drive from east to west in about half an hour. It’s as tiny as that. And yet, this little strip of land can have explosive effects upon the whole world.

 

2. Ecological destruction and contamination

I am talking about the signs that God gives us in your life-time and mine, and what is happening right in front of our eyes, not signs 100, 200, 500 years ago. The second sign is Chernobyl, and the disastrous effects that are involved in industrialization. The reason I refer to Chernobyl is not that it itself is an all-important sign, but it is a sign of things to come. You know that earthquakes are going to become more and more frequent. It is enough to get a lot of people worried to know what is going to happen to many nuclear reactors when powerful earthquakes hit them. Even with all the safety measures built into them, the question is, will these measures survive? The Russians thought that Chernobyl was deemed safe according to their standards, but we know it is not safe.

The interesting thing is that the word, “chernobyl” means “wormwood.” Wormwood is bitter, and Revelation 8:11 speaks about a star, Wormwood, that pollutes a third of the waters, and multitudes of people die because of it. Was it a coincidence that the nuclear reactor was at Chernobyl, which means wormwood, exactly the name that we find in Revelation? We also know that the Soviet authorities tried to cover up as much as possible, the amount of damage that Chernobyl did. As of October 1991, it was estimated that 10,000 people have died as a result of Chernobyl, and still more are dying because of the radiation effects, and you all know that radiation takes time to work. More and more will die because they have been affected by the radiation. The contamination of Chernobyl went right across Europe, as far as Britain, contaminating even the milk in Britain, as you will recall.

 

3. Deadly plagues, namely AIDS

The third sign. The book of Revelation speaks about terrible plagues that will be poured upon the earth. How could the writer of Revelation know about plagues that would go over the earth killing enormous numbers of people? In 1981, a new disease was disco­vered, called AIDS. It is the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. We never discovered this disease before. We believed we were medically advanced because we had eradicated cholera, smallpox, and other kinds of plagues, and now suddenly, just over ten years ago, they discovered AIDS. I was listening to a report on AIDS and it says that as of 1991, there have been 120,000 deaths in North America. That is an estimate because not all cases are recorded. Even more alarming, by 1991, it was estimated that 1 million people in North America alone had been affected by AIDS. Although AIDS is very widespread in Africa and other countries, this phenomenal figure of 1 million is not a world-wide figure. You would need to understand, that anyone who gets AIDS, faces an absolute certainty of death. No cure has been discovered for AIDS. The tragedy is, that some innocent people get it through blood transfusions. One woman got infected by her dentist in Florida, and she has already died. It is a deadly disease, and there is absolutely no way that any infected person will escape death.

We find in Revelation, that in these last times, one of the signs will be deadly plagues for which there is no cure and no hope, none whatever (cf. Rev. 16:8,11). As you know, many people are working very hard on research to find some remedy for AIDS, and if they ever do succeed, and we hope they do, then do you know what will hap­pen? There will suddenly come out of nowhere another new disease that is going to plague mankind, and kill multitudes of people, and each one will be harder to deal with than the one before. I am talking about signs of the present times, which the Bible already hinted to warn us of what is coming.

 

4. The depletion of the ozone layer

Let us go on to the fourth one: the depletion of the ozone layer. I am sure you are familiar with this one. What is striking is that with all the pollution in the environment, the ozone layer, which once shielded us from radiation has been damaged, resulting in holes in the sky. So radiation from outer space and the sun is coming through these holes, and all kinds of cancer, especially skin cancer increases at an alarming rate.

Last year, it was discovered that there is now a big hole right over North America, and especially over Canada, and that hole is growing bigger. Let us listen to the statistics of a report made in October 1991. In Canada, back in 1960, just thirty years ago, which isn’t that distant in the past, 1 person out of 2,300 people got skin cancer, that means, the chance was only 1 out of 2,300. But now, 1 person out of 100 in Canada, will get skin cancer. In 30 years, the increase in skin cancer is simply mind-boggling – from 1 out of 2,300 people to 1 out of 100! Now, every 1 out of 100 people is likely to get skin cancer. We are not even talking about other kinds of cancer. What is more, no one can evaluate the damage that radiation will do to the immune system of the body. If the immune system is damaged, the body has no defense against illness. What is happening is frightening! Do you read your newspaper? Can you see the signs of the times? Look again at Revelation, and it begins to look more and more like you are read­ing the modern newspaper, if you understand the picture language.

 

5. Spiritistic activity

We continue with the fifth sign, and we are going very fast because I just give you seed points to think about. There is a strange new movement going on throughout the world today, called the New Age Movement. Have you heard of it? Maybe some of you have not even heard of it. This New Age Movement takes several forms and confuses everyone. The rainbow is the symbol of the New Age Movement. It takes something very beautiful and makes it its own. When you see a rainbow symbol, don’t get so excited and say, “Oh, it’s cute, it’s beautiful!” You might just get involved with the spiritistic movement of the New Age. The New Age Movement delves into a wide range of activities such as out-of-body experiences. They will teach you how to sit and meditate until you feel your spirit leaves your body, and is floating up at the ceiling; and you can see your own body sitting down below. They will teach you to use drugs, especially hallucinogenic drugs that cause you to hallucinate; to go into space travel in your fantasies and see “better countries” and marvelous places out there among the stars. That is the New Age Movement. They offer you something more exciting than the dull, dreary business of everyday living. This is escapism, without apology and without shame.

There are movements similar to the New Age Movement happening, and they subtly infiltrate your life in the most unexpected ways. For example, it might try to influence you through health foods. Now I like health foods, vitamins and natural supplements, but many people don’t realize that often, these movements start to influence you through health foods and fads. They ask you to attend this and that meeting which has to do with health foods, and the next thing you know is, they are suggesting that maybe you should be practicing some yoga. There is nothing wrong with yoga. It relaxes the mind. You come home from work every day, under severe stress, feeling very tired and nervous, so you must do some deep breathing techniques of qigong, which is very relaxing and comfortable. But what you don’t realize is that behind this is the New Age Movement of spiritism, where all kinds of strange things happen. You have witches, wizards and spirit mediums. Did you know they exist? Before you know it, you have long gone past yoga into very strange spiritistic things. You should also know it is quite harmless at the lower levels of qigong. Often, it’s just telling you how to breathe deeper, which is very good. But they use what is good to draw you deeper and deeper into the higher levels of qigong, which is involved in spiritism. So the higher you go into qigong, the more advanced the spiritism. Be careful.

It is very hard to detect the New Age Movement, because they hardly ever tell you upfront that they are New Age. You don’t know they are the New Age until you are already deeply involved, and you suddenly realize: “Hey, this is something different!” And suddenly, they let you know this is the New Age Movement. Welcome! By that time, it’s already a bit late if you want to leave because they already have a grip on you. Be very careful. These are the signs of the times.

Go into any bookshop and look under the shelf headings, and you will see that the New Age books are there. Sometimes, it is put under “Religion,” sometimes, under the “Occult,” sometimes, simply under “New Age.” Many people who don’t know anything about New Age, pick up a book which looks very interesting, because it tells you how to interpret your dreams, for example. Who doesn’t like that? You dream all kinds of dreams and you like to know what they all mean. Before you know it, you’ve become part of the New Age Movement. I went to the shops for a walk the other day, and there was a book­shop with many New Age books. Sometimes, they have the rainbow mark on them, and sometimes not. Keep your eyes open for the fifth sign.

Spiritistic activity is going on and is very, very powerful. Time doesn’t allow me to tell you of these spirit agents with incredible power, working right in Australia, South America, and everywhere today. Knowing some of the things they do is enough to make your hair stand on end! You would not even believe the kind of things that they are able to do. Unfortunately for them, I am fighting the battle with these people on the other side. We have gone through some very intense battles, especially in Malaysia in the last few months, fighting against demonism, Satanism, spiritism of very high-ranking powers. When I told some people about this, they said, “Wow! This sounds like fairy tales.” I said, “Yes, it sounds like fairy tales, but it’s absolutely true.” Today, I want to give you a kind of a general survey of the signs of things happening in front of us, if you have eyes to see.

 

6. Abortion

The sixth sign. What is something that is peculiar to this age in a terrible way? Abortion! The scale of abortion boggles the mind! If you ever bother to find out the statistics of abortion, it will make you sweat! Abortion is going on in China today, at a rate that is absolutely horrifying, because as you know, the Chinese people are limited by their government to having one child per family. Every child after the first one must be killed by abortion, if not at the fetal stage, then even at the almost ready-to-be-born stage. Why have we decided that we have the right to kill? The slaughter of the infants goes on even in North America, on a scale that is beyond belief. The deaths of fetuses and infants go into countless millions! It’s hard to evaluate this figure because so many of these dangerous abortion operations are performed secretly at illegal clinics. Even then, the known figures are horrifying in their scale. You are relatively familiar with this sign, so I won’t stay with this point for very long.

 

7. Islam

Let us go to the seventh sign of the times, and that is Islam. Islam covers at least one third of the world, geographically and popula­tion-wise, and it is making excellent headway, especially in the West, because of the weakness of the churches. The churches are corrupt, they are feeble, they are simply not worth bothering with, and the people need strong teaching. Islam tries to fill the gap, and does so with considerable success.

 

8. Rise of false teachers

Let us go on to the eighth sign before our eyes. What is that something Paul had already warned us that will come in the last days? This eighth sign which is now before us, is a prophecy that Paul made 2,000 years ago, that the church of the last days will be corrupted, when false doctrine is said to be true, and true doctrine is thrown out as false. What is going on here, when black becomes white and white becomes black? We remember that’s what the prophet Isaiah said, “You call evil good and good evil” (cf. Isa. 5:20). That’s what the church is beginning to do now. That is why Paul said that people in the church will turn away from their faith. You can see for yourself in 1 Timothy 4:1-2; 2 Timothy 3:1-8. I have spoken against the corruption and rottenness of the church time and again, and it is a sign of the times in which we live. It is telling us that God is going to intervene soon. He must bring this to a stop because the church uses the name of Christ. Notice Matthew 24:5 that we were reading earlier:

They claim to be the Christ, and they claim to speak under his authority, and they will deceive many. That is the sign of the times. Can you see it?

We as a church, and I myself, have been constantly attacked and slandered. I ask you to discern. I don’t slander another pastor. I don’t take his name and say, “This guy is false, or that church is false.” But they attack me by name, or attack our church by name. I ask them to present the evidence, but there is none, and they don’t care that there is no evidence. For some reason that I don’t know, they just don’t like us. I don’t even know who these people are. When did I step on their toes? It must have been in a crowded train in Hong Kong. I didn’t even know this. And now they are attacking me. I don’t even know who these people are, and the strangest thing I find is that they claim to know me. They know me but I don’t know their names. It’s convenient for them, but quite inconvenient for me. Here we are in the church today, where one can slander people by name without a shred of evidence. If they have evidence, bring it out in the open, let’s look at it. We have nothing to hide.

 

A false doctrine denies the need for holiness

The church in these last days is turning away from righteousness and holiness, and false teaching is creeping up everywhere. Let me read to you Revelation 2:14-15, where the Lord Jesus is speaking to the church in Pergamum:

False doctrines are creeping into the church to stumble the people of God. The amazing thing is that it was prophesied in the First Century, at a time when there was hardly any false doctrine in the church at all. Christ already warned the churches of God that false doctrine was creeping in and beginning to affect some.

How do you discern true from false doctrine? One key to discern it is that every false doctrine will deny holiness and the need for holiness. Or they may pay lip service to holiness but in fact, reject it in practice.

Regretfully, I have to mention a particular denomination namely, the Charismatics (靈恩派), whom I like very much generally. The Charis­matics stress holiness in doctrine sometimes, but all too often, they don’t practice it. So whether a church is true or false, is to be seen in whether God’s holiness can be found in it. If God’s holiness is not found in your life or in mine, it is not found in this church, then we are the false church. That is the Biblical measure of truth and falsity.

It’s not about how clever I can argue to defend or dissect a doctrine. I do acknowledge that I am skilled at defending through argumenta­tion. Not too many people might be able to win a doctrinal debate with me. That is why my enemies have never tried to take me on in public debate. I have offered to debate them in public but no one has taken the offer. But I want to say that even if I could beat them in debate, it doesn’t mean that I am true. It just means that I am very good at debating. Truth and falsity is not determined by the skill of debate. What determines it is God’s true holiness in our lives. That is what we must look for.

When I am speaking of false doctrines, I am speaking of false doctrines within the true church. There is also the multiplication of too many cults that are extremely dangerous. Perhaps in due time, we will try to implement some teaching in our churches for you to know how to deal with cults such as, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists and so on. I have engaged in public debate with some of these cults, but you must know how to discern them. For me right now, false doctrine is the enemy that is already within the church, and even claims to represent the true church. That is the most dangerous. You can identify those cults quite easily, but false doctrine in the church is very hard to identify if you are not trained in the Word of God. But I have given you a key: you must look for holiness in their teaching and in their lives. We have been called to holiness, so Paul said, “For this is the will of God: your sancti­fication.” (cf. 1 Thess. 4:3a) This kind of teaching is nearly unheard of these days, isn’t it? It’s completely discarded!

In fact, one reason why so many churches oppose me is precisely because I teach holiness. Can you believe it? The opposition came to the forefront in 1977, when I based my teaching on an important verse on Hebrews 12:14 that, “without holiness, no man shall see God.” That’s God’s Word, not mine. From thereon, they attacked me with full force. It is hard to understand, isn’t it? I preach the Word of God and they attack me with full force, claiming that because I emphasize holiness, it’s a teaching of salvation by works. It is incredible! If someone untrained in the Bible and in theology made this kind of statement, you can forgive them. But it is unbelievable that these people claim to have been in some seminary or other, and can make this kind of statement! No one here is so foolish as to think that we can make ourselves holy. Holiness is something that God does in us by his Holy Spirit. So how can salvation be by works? It’s impossible! Holiness cannot come by works. Holiness produces works, but works don’t produce holiness. So I stress this point. You will be surprised that the day you talk about holiness, the church, not the cults, will attack you. This is the sign of the times in which we live.

If you don’t like holiness, you have come to the wrong church. I put my cards right on the table. I don’t do things like the New Age people, who tell you suddenly, when you have been with them for two or more years, “Do you know that we are New Age?” If you are here for the first time, I tell you that this church stresses the holiness of God in our lives. Our sins are cleansed, and we are made pure through the blood of the cross. We are given the power by God’s Holy Spirit to live the kind of life that shows forth the fruit of holiness. That is the Word of God. That is the teaching of the Early Church, and today, the churches reject that teaching. Little wonder they don’t want to debate me. It’s not me who has anything to fear; they have some­thing to fear, for reasons that I don’t understand.

So if you hear people attacking me, I have told you why. Check it out to see whether what I have said is true, whether there is even one little part that I have said that is untrue, as God is my witness. I can think of absolutely no other reason for why I have been attacked since 1977. What happened before 1977? I was one of the well-known leaders of the Chinese church in Canada. But since 1977, when I gave my message on holiness at a big conference of nearly 1,000 people, for some mysterious reason, the leaders of the Chinese church turned against me. I have never retracted anything I have said or stand for. I will stand for the righteousness and the holiness of God until the day I die, when God so calls me.

 

9. Teaching of a lie, such as evolution

Let us move on to the 9^th sign of the present time. And you will notice, I am not following any particular order. There is a little bit of order in this progression of points, but I’m not adhering to any strict pattern. The 9^th sign, which is again characteristic of this age in which we live, is the kind of lies that are taught in every school in the world. And I refer to the Doctrine of Evolution, often regarded as a competing concept to the Doctrine of Creation.

I grew up in China, and was educated in China up to the age of 21. I lived under “the liberation” in the last seven years of my stay in China, and I was stuffed with this Doctrine of Evolution. Now I was not a Christian when I first listened to this teaching on evolution, so I was free to think it through for myself. The first thing I noticed was that even if life could be said to be developed from some single cell, like an amoeba, and it continued to develop, it really does not answer the question about the origin of life. And soon, they had to come in with ideas about lightning striking and produced life by accident, and things like this. Neither I nor many of the students in school could swallow this.

I don’t want to go into much of evolution. I think you are very familiar with it. This is the great 20^th Century lie. The problem is, it is a lie with partial truth in it. I have often said that a full lie will be easy to deal with, whereas a lie that is mixed in with some truth—partial truth—is very hard to handle. And there is truth in evolution, but it’s not the truth.

We all know that life evolves for example. When a person first conceives a child in the womb, there is only one cell, then two cells, and then it multiplies, it evolves. Gradually, a fetus begins to take shape in the womb. Then it continues to develop, and after nine months, a baby, perfect in every human feature is born. And then it keeps on evolving, growing from a baby to a one-year old, then a two-year old. Notice with time, it grows on and on until it becomes a mature person. So of course, there is evolution. We do evolve from one stage to another. But the Doctrine of Evolution turns this into an argument that we evolved from single cells into some form of monkey, ape, or gorilla. I think a gorilla would be more “macho,” as the North Americans say, with its pronounced jaw, and a really muscular, appealing figure.

 

With repetition and time, people will believe a lie

The reason I bring this up is that in 2 Thessalonians 3:1-2, it says that time will come when people will believe the lie! People don’t believe a lie today, do they? You and I congratulate ourselves and think that at least, we can think quite clearly, right? Wrong! I take evolution as an example, not as the most important lie, but as a fact that you can cause the whole world to believe something which has no solid evidence.

Notice I asked: How do you know that the heavenly kingdom is a reality? Let me turn it around and ask: How do you know that evolution is a reality? Once you delve into the genetics and other aspects of evolutionary theory, you will see that the evidence for it is so bad, and you will wonder why most people believe it to some extent. In other words, I just want to use this point on evolution to demonstrate the point in 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12 and 3:1-2, about when the Antichrist comes, people will believe the lie. It’s so easy to make people believe the lie that it is terrifying! When the Lord Jesus began his teaching in Matthew 24:4, he said immediately, “Be careful that you are not deceived.” Human beings are so easily deceived that it is terrifying!

I am sure that many of you, if not most of you, do believe in evolution to some extent. Be honest. We would be hypocrites if we said no. Even I believed it to some extent. Why? It’s very hard not to believe in evolution when you have learned it all the way in school. In China, we have been taken to see monkeys and were taught, “Do you see this and that monkey? They continued to develop, and it became you!” Congratulations! How comforting to know my ancestors! When something is repeated over and over, you start to believe it.

Hitler used to instruct his Propaganda Minister called Goering, “Just keep repeating a lie over and over again, and people will believe it.” It’s just a matter of repetition and time. Time will make you believe every lie. Just keep repeating it enough over a long period of time, then everyone believes it. No matter how bad the arguments are, no matter how poor the evidence is—not to mention non-existent evidence—people will believe.

And yet, when you talk about God and about the heavenly country, no matter how strong the evidence is, people will not believe it. That is the mystery.

 

10. UFOs

The tenth point has to do with another sign of our times which is very strange, and quite exciting, too! It is called UFOs: Unidentified Flying Objects. Have you heard of it? Of course, you have! If you had gone back 40, 50 years, hardly anyone knew what is a UFO, but today, everyone knows what is a UFO. It’s something like a saucer, or a cigar flying in the sky. All of a sudden, a lot of UFOs have appeared. We have books in the bookshops about people who testify under oath that they have actually seen these little green guys from Mars with their own eyes. They even got into one of these flying saucers. Initially, I felt very skeptical about this. I thought these are a bunch of nutcases! They are really ridiculous! But the problem is that as the evidence mounts up, one has to say, “Maybe it’s true.” Are we are falling for the lie, or is it really true? I leave you to decide.

I have read quite a lot of material on UFOs because today, in 1992, a UFO is no longer a joke, it’s a real thing. The evidence is quite solid and piling up, that after all there may be Unidentified Flying Objects from outer space. Even recently, in a documentary film shown in Canada, there was a full length report documenting facts concerning UFOs. I have looked at Christian writers who have researched UFOs, and they agree that the existence of UFO’s cannot be denied.

It is a sign of the times. If you go back 30 or 40 years, and most people never heard of UFO’s. There were very few citations, but today, the evidence on it is massive. It goes into piles and piles of reports and documentary films, where thousands and thousands of people testify that they have seen UFO’s. I am not talking about 2 or 3 people.

What do you make of it? Does it have something to do with what Revelation 6:13 is saying about fallen stars, “the stars of the sky fell to the earth”? In the Bible, the term “stars” often describes enigmatic heavenly bodies that come from outer space. Check our facts in Revelation to see whether this hasn’t also been already prophesied. I could go on and give a whole message about each sign, and they all have to do with only our particular century. It’s exciting, isn’t it?

 

11. Population explosion

Let us go on to the 11^th sign of the times, and it has to do with population explosion. I wonder if you are at all aware of the seriousness of this problem. Most people are very poorly informed on this point. Do you know that one year from today, there will be 96 million people more on the face of this earth? How many people live in Australia? Only 17 million? In one year’s time, there may be an increase of 5 times the population of Australia in the world population. This is amazing!

As I study the figures, I am told that since 1950, only 40 years ago, the population in this world has doubled from about 2 ¾ billion people to 5 ½ billion people! The population of this world doubled in 40 years. In this same period of 40 years, since 1951, the popula­tion in India alone, has increased by 500 million! Now you will begin to understand what kind of problem we are talking about. The world is only this big, but the population is exploding on us! Most of the increase of population, as you can understand, is in the poorer and under-developed nations. The result is the poorer nations become ever poorer because they have more and more mouths to feed. This is the reason why China, in absolute desperation to halt the population explosion, reverts to killing, to abortion. There should only be one child per family and no more.

If you look at this situation, you can see its effect on the food supply. More and more people have less and less food to eat because of the industrial pollution and all kinds of problems. We are told in Canada, which is one of the richest countries in the world, and exports wheat all over the world, that now, the soil has become so impoverished because of the high speed of production, that the nutritive value of the grain becomes poorer and poorer. So more and more people have to eat poorer and poorer quality food. Just try to understand the problem here.

The result is that in Brazil, people are burning the forest in order to plant food. But by burning the forest, they destroy the ozone layer. The problem gets more and more complex to handle.

So let us consider, where is this whole problem going to lead us? If in 40 years the population of this earth has doubled, if by next year it is estimated that there will be nearly 100 million more people on this earth, try to imagine what will happen by the year 2000 as the population increases. From now to next year, it will be 96 million; perhaps the year after, it will be 120 million; and the year after that, 150 or 180 million per year. The population increase is out of control! Everyone can’t think of a solution.

 

God’s kingdom has to come – the world situation is becoming impossible

There are many points I could mention: the astonishing political situations for example, that last Christmas, all of a sudden, the whole Soviet Union disappeared at one go, and Russia appeared! It’s mind-boggling! There once was an iron curtain, but it no longer exists. Formerly, there were satellite states, but now the entire Soviet Union consists of independent states. What an amazing situation! I have no time to go into what the significance of all that is. In other words, everything is moving faster and faster towards the end. It’s like a falling object which gathers momentum as it comes closer to hitting the earth.

One thing they all have in common, as I listen to the reports, there is a constant tendency to say: “What will happen in the year 2000?” The year 2000 seems to be some kind of marker. Everyone is trying to foresee what will happen. What will be the population situation in the year 2000? What will be the food supply situation? What will happen with the ozone layer situation? We are told that the radiation effects will begin to be felt at its worst in the year 2000, and the hole in the ozone layer cannot be repaired, not for centuries to come. That means radiation will keep on getting worse and killing more people if God allows it to continue. You begin to see why God’s kingdom has to come. The situation is becoming impossible.

 

12. Martyrs

In the midst of all this, there is yet one more sign of the greatest importance: it is the sign of the martyrs. If you look at the book of Revelation, you will see something very remarkable. It is talking about those who have laid down their lives for God following Christ. One scholar writing on the book of Revelation said that the only kind of Christian that exists in the book of Revelation is the martyr. This is in keeping with Revelation 2:10 where the Lord Jesus says to the church, “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.” Today, there is the doctrine which says you can have the crown of life without being faithful unto death. That is not Biblical teaching. Here it says, “Be faithful unto death and then I will give you the crown of life.” That is the doctrine of the book of Revelation.

In the terrible things of these last days, there will be increasing earthquakes that I have not talked about. I have only talked about special signs of this century. An earthquake in 1976 killed 1.1 million people in China. In that year alone, nearly 2 million died in earthquakes. More earthquakes are coming. The Lord Jesus warns in Matthew 24 that there will be wars, famines, earthquakes happen­ing. But I look forward to this 12^th sign, and I can see what God is doing: He is going to raise up a faithful church in the midst of all this terrible situation in the world, and the unfaithfulness of the church, which is described as “the harlot” in Revelation. In contrast to the harlot, there is the faithful church.

 

Be faithful unto death, for there is a better country waiting!

I wonder whether you will be part of that faithful church, which will shine as a light in the midst of the darkness. As the darkness gets darker and darker, God is going to put a light into that darkness, so that those who perish will see a light. And you are that light. The Lord Jesus said in Matthew 5:14, “You are the light of the world.” He is not in the world right now; you are in the world. Your responsi­bility is to be the light. Light is holiness. How can you shine as light if there is no holiness in your life? When all this sinfulness is going on, with New Age and all these cults and false doctrines going on, there needs to be light shining in the darkness. My whole hope, and all that I am laboring for, is to have a little part in building this “martyr church.”

Those of you who are going to be baptized, who are going to die with Christ in baptism, are you prepared to die physically for God? Why do we ask a question like that? Firstly, because if anyone says that they are willing to die in baptism but not really die physically, is hardly speaking the truth, isn’t it? Secondly, because in these last days, your chance and my chance of dying physically for God is very, very high. We are going to be part of the “Martyr Church.”

The terrible persecution is going to come upon the face of the earth when the Antichrist comes, and he is going to say, “Do you take my mark on your forehead or not? If not, you will die.” It reminds us of Islam, doesn’t it? I don’t say the Antichrist is from Islam, but Islam has shown that religion can do this kind of thing. The religion of the Antichrist will be very similar in policy to the way Islam functions: Either you accept his religion or you die. That is why I say most of us will have a very good chance of dying. And you’d better know that there is a better country waiting, otherwise, you don’t want to die!

That is why this subject is so important. And that is why I hope that through this evening’s message, I will give you a context to see the importance, both in terms of time and the intensity of evil, as we progress to the day when it becomes necessary for God to stop this intensively corrupted condition of the world, and to bring his kingdom onto the earth. That is the message.

My time is gone and I have to stop here. There is no time for ques­tions but it is better to have time to think, and then ask questions, because often, shallowly contemplated questions lack depth and meaning.