Matthew-050

 

God cares intensely about this world, so the Lord Jesus is coming again

Let me begin straight away with the question. As you know, today’s workshop is about the last days, my question is: Why does the Bible talk about the Lord Jesus’ coming again? What do you think? I think if you have been in the church for any length of time, you are quite familiar with the fact that the Bible and Christians talk a great deal about the Lord Jesus’ coming again. But why does the Bible talk about Jesus’ coming again? To help you understand my question, let me put it like this: Why don’t we just be content that we are saved and then one day, we will go to heaven, and we can forget about Jesus’ coming back? If we are going to see him in heaven, what is he coming here for? Why is Jesus coming back? Isn’t that a fair question? When the time comes, you go on to heaven to be with God and Jesus. How do we understand Jesus’ Coming? Why do we need to talk about Jesus’ coming again? Why should there be any last days? Why doesn’t the cycle of people believing, dying, and going to be with God and Christ just keep on going? Why should there be the last days? In the Bible, “the last days” means the time before the Lord Jesus’ coming again. And we say that the Lord Jesus’ coming again is very soon. We are now almost 2,000 years since the time the Lord Jesus was here. We know that this is approximately the end of the present age, but why are we talking about the end of an age? Why can’t God just let the curtains fall to close the age by blowing up the world with a couple of extraordinarily powerful nuclear explosions? What is Jesus coming back to do?

We are told that he comes back to gather the believers. Hopefully, you and I belong to this fortunate group that is going to be gathered up. But why does he have to come and gather us? Why not send a few angels? Angels can go around looking to gather and say, “Ha! I like Lim Tat’s smile. He’s a good man, he comes with me. Come along.” What about Boo? “He is good. He likes to smile. Nice teeth. Come with me.” Hopefully, he doesn’t walk by me. Or I’ll have to say, “Eh, I am here! Don’t overlook me!” So send a few angels. After all, the Lord Jesus does speak about angels who will gather the harvest in the parables. What is Jesus coming back to do? Is he is going to direct the operations of the angels because the angels don’t know what they are supposed to do? Why does Jesus have to come back? I am listening. This is a 64-thousand-dollar question. Nobody is going to win the prize here. I am going to walk back home with my $64,000 in my pocket. Why should he come back to gather us when he can send angels to do that? What is Jesus coming back for? And what is all this talk about the end of the age anyway? It looks like nobody is going to give us the answer to this question.

Let us look at it the other way. If the gospel was simply concerned with believing in God through Jesus, and when we die we go to heaven, then as far as God is concerned, this world is really not important, is it? It doesn’t really matter because he is not interested in this world. He is only interested in those people who believe, and when they believe, they will go to heaven. That is all that matters. If he wants to finish it, he can bring down the curtain by allowing a massive nuclear explosion as it says in 2 Peter 3:10-12, when the heavens will melt away with fervent heat. Why doesn’t God do it that way? That will come eventually, but not yet. Why? We might be surprised that God is interested in this world! God is not so other-worldly that he’s not concerned about what happens in this world. If God is interested, then how should that affect our thinking?

I notice many Christians are so spiritual that they never bother to read a newspaper because newspapers only deal with these worldly, carnal things. So they don’t know what is happening in the world, and they don’t care. Don’t waste your time reading a newspaper. It’s very spiritual to just have your quiet time every day and read your Bible. I think that I can find quite a few Christians who have not read a newspaper probably in one week or one month, or maybe, they have not read for so long that they cannot remember when was the last time they read a newspaper! What about listening to the news? Do you know what is going on? The strange thing is, we have to understand that spirituality in the Bible does not mean other-worldliness in the sense that you don’t care what happens to the world. The fact that Jesus is coming back indicates that God cares about this world very intensely, and so should we.

 

The 12 signs of the end of the age, and what we should do

It’s only when we understand this that we can start talking about the signs of the times that the Bible talks about. The Lord Jesus said to the Pharisees, you know how to read the sky, whether the weather or not will be good tomorrow. You are interested in the weather, but you can’t read the signs of the times? Do you know what time you are living in? Have you got your ear tuned to the sound of things as they are in the world right now? Are you listening carefully to detect if the train is coming? By placing your ear on the railway track, you can accurately judge from the sound how soon the train will arrive.

For this evening, I want to point to some of these things that show God’s concern for what is happening to his creation. And this will divide my message into two sections. The first will be to indicate some of these signs that we should be watching out for, by which we can take the pulse of the world to know what is the condition of the world and how close is the Lord Jesus’ Coming. The second is, given all these, what should we do about it? Is it enough just to know that these things are happening, just to know that the Lord’s Coming is near? The answer is no. We must know what our part is in all this. What does God want you and me to do in the present situation in the world?

A few months ago, at the Easter Camp in Australia, I was also asked to talk about the marks of the end of the age. On that occasion, I gave a brief outline of twelve signs of the end of the age, comparing it to these twelve numbers on your watch, so that we can have an indicator as to roughly where the hands of the clock or the watch are pointing to. I will just give a very brief rundown of those twelve points, then I will go on to a few more points of importance today.

 

1. Restoration of Israel

The first sign I talked about was, the Lord Jesus spoke about the fig tree in Matthew 24:32, and Israel is the fig tree. You and I, we live in an age where the fig tree, that seems to be dead in winter, has come back to life. It is a miracle of unimaginable significance, that a nation dead for 2,000 years came back to life! That was exactly what happened with the restoration of Israel. I’m not going to elaborate in detail, only scanning quickly these 12 points since I have talked on this before. For those of you who want to go into greater detail, you can listen to that particular workshop.

 

2. Ecological destruction and contamination

The second one was the disaster of ecological destruction and contamination. I gave the example of the disaster in Chernobyl, in the Soviet Union at the time. By the time of October 1991, the statis­tics for those who have died directly as a result of the Chernobyl disaster stood at over 10,000. And the effect of the radiation and pollution from the disaster covered the region twice the size of the United Kingdom. That is just the taste of things to come.

Just listen to the news and you will know that we have this kind of ecological disasters almost all the time. For example, lately, you heard of that ship breaking up on the coast of Spain and polluting a large area of the sea. The long-term damage of all these is really hard to establish.

 

3. Depletion of the ozone layer

Related to that is the third point of ozone depletion. The ozone layer up above the sky is very important to protect us from the radiation coming in from outer space that can kill every one of us. It is that potent. It is well known that at lower levels, it can cause cancers of the skin, and other kinds of cancers. That ozone layer is like a shield protecting us from radiation coming in, but that layer of ozone is rapidly being destroyed. And there is now a huge hole right above Canada, which is where I was living. It has begun to worry the Canadian people so much that some parents dare not send their children out to school! They are not much safer inside the building because radiation can come through the walls as well. There was a lot of fear, and that hole in that protective shield of ozone is being enlarged constantly.

 

4. Deadly plagues, namely AIDS

The fourth thing I referred to was the epidemic of AIDS. This is a dreadful and absolutely deadly disease with a 100% fatality. There is absolutely no cure for it, not even a vaccine available up to this date. You don’t even know where you might get AIDS from. Some unfortunate, entirely innocent people, who got it through blood transfusions. It is most tragic where a mother gets AIDS, and then passes this onto her baby all through blood transfusions. It destroys the immune system in your body, leaving you defenseless against diseases, and it wastes the person away. Moreover, it is spreading at an alarming rate. In Hong Kong these days, I keep hearing about more and more AIDS cases being discovered. And a person may be walking around with AIDS for a while before they even know that they have AIDS. It is a frightful specter that hangs over the human race. And yet, this disease came out of a virus that nobody had ever heard of. I was talking to a doctor friend in Hong Kong after AIDS, a totally unknown disease was discovered, just at the time when medical science thought that they had conquered most major dis­eases with the exception of cancer, and this doctor friend said, “We will never escape the judgment of God, will we?” Just when man in his arrogance thought that he has got diseases all under control, and amazingly, out of the blue comes an unidentified virus, never known before, which is now killing hundreds of thousands, and is spreading at a mind-boggling rate.

 

5. The New Age Movement

The fifth one was the New Age Movement. How many of you know what the New Age Movement is, if you can just raise your hands? I can see very few people know what the New Age Movement is. So again, I will have to refer you to that particular workshop for greater detail. New Age Movement is basically a satanic movement dressed up as something very enlightened. It talks about a new age. One of the very attractive symbols of the New Age is something that you surely like: the rainbow. Many people don’t realize it.

Did you know that the New Age creeps in from all sorts of quarters, and just one example is, you can get caught or hooked on to New Age by doing yoga? Yoga is presented to you as a means of relaxation in a very tense modern age. So you learn to do meditation, breathing exercises, various interesting poses, and then you graduate higher on the scale in yoga movements, which get more difficult and are all very fascinating. And you may be in yoga for a long time before you realize that you are in the New Age Movement.

Another example is health food. You would never think it has anything to do with New Age. You would be surprised. The New Age Movement is into health food as well, but don’t get me wrong, not all health food is New Age. You don’t have to worry that much that you might get caught in the New Age Movement when you eat granola bars, but the New Age Movement is big business.

Let’s talk about music. What about hard rock or heavy metal? These people are well into New Age things.

Gradually, it goes on to more advanced things like learning how to do psychic experiments that are very fascinating. Gradually, you will be able to travel without moving your body, and do all kinds of fascinating things that I won’t go into now. For an age where people very bored, and fascinated by spiritual things, what can be better?

If you get into the New Age Movement, the next thing you know, you will find yourself shaking hands with Satan, which is not quite what you expected. Naturally, Satan doesn’t walk around with two long horns, and a tail somewhere coming out through his trouser leg. Oh no, he is probably a very handsome, witty type of person. You would never know who you are shaking hands with once you are in the New Age Movement.

The New Age Movement is so versatile that it will be tailor-made to suit whatever you want. They will ask, what do you like? Just name it, and New Age would oblige because Satan is willing to oblige. As long as he can get your soul, he will oblige you with anything. What about winning the lottery? That sounds good. At one bang, you get $50,000. If 50,000 doesn’t sound enough to you, what about 500,000? If that’s not enough for you, just push the scale higher. Of course, he wants a few favors in return. But don’t worry about the favors, just look at what you get! How about 5 million Singapore dollars? That’s not peanuts, right? You just sign here on the dotted line, and don’t worry about the small print. The big print is the 5 million dollars. The New Age Movement is all over Singapore! Go to the bookshop and look under New Age. If you walk into any book­shop in North America, and I am not talking about a New Age bookshop, you will find a big section of books under the heading, “New Age.” Certainly, you don’t know what it is initially. It’s a very powerful, very dangerous, very subtle and very attractive move­ment. For further details, I have to leave you again to the taped mes­sage mentioned before.

 

6. The slaughter of the unborn - Abortion

Then the sixth sign that we need to look out for is what we can call “the slaughter of the unborn.” You cannot imagine, how many unborn fetuses, or infants—call them what you like—are killed in any single day in this world. You will have to ask a medical person to get better statistics, if that’s available. In China, the slaughter goes on in an absolutely mind-boggling scale, because China has a one-child policy. Therefore, any other pregnancy must be terminated by abortion, either by force or by cash incentive. If you don’t take the cash incentive, then it will be by force. It doesn’t matter if the child is in the seventh month, it will still be killed. It almost turns your stomach, but that’s the way it is.

 

7. The Movement of Islam

The seventh is the remarkable movement of 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, feeble, simply not worth bothering with, and the people need strong teaching. Islam tries to fill the gap, and does so with considerable success.

When I left England some 16 years ago, I knew of one mosque in England. Today, in a matter of 16 years, I hear that there are 35 or 36 mosques, and they are growing. Islam has a very aggressive evangelistic policy in North America, for example. They buy time on television and radio. Today, seeing women wearing the hijab and dressed in conservative clothing as in the Middle East, is becoming more and more frequent in North America of all places. Islam is beginning to become a power to be reckoned with in the Western world, because the churches have failed.

 

8. Rise of false teachers – the collapse of the church

The eighth sign is the rise of false teachers within the church because of the disobedience of the church and its failure to repent. I think any of you who keep up with the news, have become familiar with all these dreadful happenings in North America. For example, TV evangelists have made off with large sums of money as their corruption seems to know no bounds. They have disgraced the name of God and Christ. No wonder Islam advances, not to mention Hindu teaching in the form of Transcendental Meditation, and New Age, which is the rage at the present time. So the eighth sign is the collapse of the church. The church which was supposed to be the pillar of the truth has turned out to be the one that disgraces the truth. If you talk about holiness in the church as I have been doing, and still am, you will be persecuted. However, I’m not about to be silenced. So corrupt is the church now that even the word “holiness” is repulsive to them. That is the state of affairs. The church has departed from the New Testament teaching in almost every area. It has betrayed the Word of God, and the judgment of God is waiting for the church.

 

9. Teaching of a lie, such as evolution

The ninth sign is the teaching of the lie everywhere. In 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12, it says that the day will come when people will believe the lie. What is the lie? We don’t quite know yet, but people are already believing lies with the greatest of ease. And I referred for example, to a doctrine of evolution. The doctrine of evo­lution was supposed to be a hypothesis, and it is still a hypothesis, but it is taught as though it were fact. And those of us who were born and brought up in China, especially under the New China system, were simply taught this as absolutely “Biblical fact” as it were. As long as it is taught as a hypothesis, we can listen to it, evaluate it, and we don’t have to close our ears to anything that might be true. It cannot be taught as though it were fact until it is proven.

In the United States in particular, what do you see on every American coin? “In God we trust.” Well, in that country that declares that they trust in God, you are not allowed to pray in school by law; you cannot have a Bible Study group in school by law; you cannot teach the Bible by law; but you can teach evolution by law. “In God we trust”? One begins to wonder which God do they trust in.

There are Christians who believe in evolution, and believe that God brought life and the creation of man into being through the process of evolution, that this was God’s ordained way of creation. And they have no problem accepting evolution. It doesn’t bother me one way or the other. All I am saying is that when one starts teaching a hypo­thesis as though it were fact, people can simply gobble it up as though it were absolute truth. This shows how quickly we open the way to further lies. In China, you simply have to accept that your an­cestors climbed trees; evolution cannot be questioned whatsoever.

 

10. UFOs

Let us come to the tenth point. I mentioned another curious thing and that is the increasing frequency of reports about UFOs. What are UFOs? Unidentified Flying Objects. At one time, people would have said, “Ridiculous! No such thing!” There have been such a remark­able number of first-hand witnesses who have seen, and have even been on board these UFOs, that few serious-minded people who have ever looked into this matter with diligence will be prepared to deny the reality of UFOs.

What is this strange activity of unknown objects coming from outer space? Why do we have all these strange phenomena at this time? What are these UFOs doing here on earth? Who are these creatures? Whatever they are, they are obviously intelligent and very advanced beings. When I first looked into the subject years ago, I was inclined to regard this as a bad joke, that some people forced it on us with some silly photography. You can play all kinds of tricks with a camera, and then say, “Here is the flying object,” and all you see is a white dot in a black background. It’s very enlightening – I think I could produce one of those anytime myself. But gradually, you real­ized that given their cameras, they could not have taken anything else. There was no way to falsely record this kind of object in the sky. So gradually, as I continued to look into the matter, to read the experience and reports of first-hand witnesses, and I began to realize with others, that this is no joke, that this is really happening. We are talking about extraterrestrial beings.

This is not new in the Bible by the way. The apostle Paul makes reference here and there to the possibility of other beings, and he doesn’t mention angels in that context. For example, in Romans 8:39 [KJV], having mentioned all kinds of possibilities and supernatural phenomena, he lists something called “any other creature,” whatever that is. So the Bible is not ruling out the existence of other created beings that could interfere with life on earth.

 

11. Enormous population increase

Let us come to the eleventh indicator, the enormous problem of population increase. Notice, I am zigzagging from spiritual to earthly, to spiritual, deliberately mixing these signs, so that they are not following a rigid line of progression. I don’t know if you realize that this problem of population is a very serious one, because the world can only produce a certain amount of food to feed the people on the earth. If the population gets out of control, then comes a point where the food available cannot supply the needs of the population of the world. Can you guess how many people are added to the population of this world every year? Would anyone like to suggest a figure? By the end of this year, 1992 (which is within few days’ time), the population of this world in these last 12 months will have increased by 96 million! 96 million more people! The whole of Singapore has 3 million people. How many Singapore populations is that! The population in this world has doubled since 1950, and that is something to think about. If this population continues to increase, it is not only a question of accommodation, education, medical facilities. The camp manager knows the problem of accommodating a hundred some people for 3 or 4 days. Just try to imagine what it’s like to take care of 96 million people for everything they need, not just for a few days, but for a lifetime. It’s mind-boggling! If the population has doubled in 40 years, it’s going to double again in much less than that time, because the larger the population, the quicker it will be doubled.

 

12. Persecution

The twelfth and final sign I want to refer to is the fact that the church is increasingly becoming a persecuted church. Are you aware of that? Things have changed dramatically in Russia lately, so there has been a temporary breathing space, which Russia really needed. For over 70 years, the Russian people could not hear the gospel. God is giving them a chance, and we should be making use of that chance. I have given the matter quite some thought. I don’t know how long the doors will be open for Russia, so we should not procrastinate until this opportunity is past. It is also still risky to be a Christian in China.

As we look at the book of Revelation, we see that the church is a “martyr church.” We are now only in the very early days of this trend, but it will gradually worsen. By the way, when we refer to a persecuted church, we must not think that the persecutors are necessarily the Communists. It could be fellow Christians who will persecute you, and they are the most vicious of all, sad to say. Anyone who is familiar with church history, and has read anything about the Spanish Inquisition for example, the horrors of persecu­tion which Christians carried out on other Christians just boggles the mind! I think it makes the Communists look pretty tame by comparison. We are living in an age in which persecution is a present reality, and I will not document all this now, but simply to get our minds prepared. For those of you going to baptism for example, you’d best think on it carefully, because the price you may have to pay is your life. I often say to our coworkers, “Be prepared” because it may well be for those of us serving full-time, that all of us will have to pay with our lives for this calling. This is a reality that we have to face. We must not deceive ourselves about the nature of the current situation we are living in, in these last days.

This was the survey of the twelve signs we talked about at the camp in Australia. There are some points I did not mention there, that I will come to in today’s talk about these present days.

 

More signs indicating the end of this age

1. “War without borders”

The first point is what the Lord Jesus talked about in Matthew 24:6, “There will be wars and rumors of wars.” Are we into an age of peace? Not yet. Just turn on your television set and you will see it. What happened lately? Bombings in the heart of London. People are get­ting killed just going about their daily business. The Irish Republican Army bombing the British, and they are all killing each other. Or what about Germany? The violence against the immigrants by Neo-Nazis. Although the government is trying to suppress situations, things will be getting worse. Can we call these wars? It is certainly a war in Ireland. It might yet become a war in Germany. Neo-Nazis are famous for being violent. What about the West Bank in Palestine? We were in Israel. Everyone goes through intense security checks and is carefully questioned when going in and out of Israel. Why are they so careful? It’s because there is fighting going on all the time. The Israelis call it a “rebellion,” and 1,000 Palestinians have died. How many more are going to die? The killing goes on. And every day, I see another two or three have died.

We are into a kind of war that the Lord Jesus calls “wars and rumors of war.” It’s a kind of underground type of war, a hard-to-define kind of war, a terrorist type of war that knows no boundaries, no regular armies, no regular uniforms. It’s a very strange situation. You have to bear in mind that we are living in a state of war almost all the time, and you don’t know where that war is going to hit you one of these days. A bomb went off in Bangkok the other day, and quite a number of people got blown up just walking by the street. It seems that nowhere is safe. You don’t know what is going to happen next. This “war without borders” is the mark of the last days.

In the past, wars were fought in regular army patterns. You would draw up your lines, your right flank and left flank; you would have your air force, navy and everything works according to regular formations. Nowadays, formations are unknown. The Americans did not know how to fight in the Vietnam War. They didn’t know where the enemy was because often, the enemy did not wear any uniform. By day time, he was working right next to you. By night time, he would shoot you up. And that is the kind of war we are in. It’s not that war is something new to the world.

The Lord Jesus is not saying that war is a new discovery in the last days. It’s simply that the pattern of war begins to get more and more different. For example, in the old days you would never have heard of the kind of warfare in the WWII. You had a fleet of bombers coming to flatten the entire city. Unarmed civilians who were not engaged in war were all killed together with the soldiers. In fact, the soldiers were not even there because they were at the frontline. The British and American bombers would go over Germany and flatten city after city in retaliation for the Germans sending their rockets into London to destroy a city that was not directly engaged in frontline battle. This kind of warfare was unheard of in history. Wars were not fought like that before. Every type of strange and new warfare is now being seen in this present age. Fighting right next to you may be an extremist. He might be a guerrilla fighting for some cause you have never even heard of. And he might shoot you up, but you did not know what you did wrong. Wars without boundaries is one of the strange phenomena of this age.

 

2. Famines – daily dying from hunger and malnutrition

The second thing that the Lord Jesus refers to as well is famine. Revelation has a lot to say about the specter of famine sweeping the land. Don’t we see it in our news every day? Recently it is Somalia. Previous to that, it was famine caused by war in Bosnia, then Ethiopia. Do you have any idea how many people in this world are affected by famine? Do you think that this is a minor thing that has to do with Somalia? Did you know for example, that 950 million people today are suffering from hunger and malnutrition? Did you know for example, that 40 thousand children die every day from hunger related causes – not every year, not every month, not every week? When you sit at your meal, do you find you have nothing to give thanks for? By the time we have finished this time of talk together, maybe several thousand children have died. It is mind-boggling!

We don’t read the newspapers, maybe because we don’t want to. The tragedy and suffering that goes on in this world boggles the mind, and we don’t know, and we are only interested in our career, our exam, our marriage. What kind of Christians are we? And you might be sitting there saying, “Why are you telling me about famine? I don’t care about famine. I had my supper, but it wasn’t as good as I had hoped for. I paid my camp fee, and this is what I get. This is ridicu­lous! These guys are ripping me off! We will have to question the camp manager. Why does he run a camp like this?” We have so much to complain about.

We think, “What did you say? 40 thousand children die every day? Are you sure you got your figure right?” Yes, I looked at this figure very carefully. And by the way, this figure is not up to date; it is two to three years old. That doesn’t count those dying in Somalia right now; it doesn’t count the dead in Ethiopia last year. We might be talking a lot more than 40 thousand dying right now, day after day. What kind of Christians are we who can live in this world in total disregard of our neighbor? Who is our neighbor? It is the fellow next to me who snored when I was trying to sleep last night. Since when did we think of any of those 40,000 kids as our neighbor? It is none of our business. It’s too bad for them. When the Bible says, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” did it possibly include all these starving people?

In addition, the frustrating thing is we want to help, but we don’t know what to do. Most of the time, it’s useless to send money to Somalia because as you have read from the news, the relief supplies don’t get to the starving. It ends up in the hands of some of these crooks riding around in their jeeps, and shooting at innocent people with their AK47s.

 

3. Frequency and Intensity of Earthquakes is mounting

The Lord Jesus also referred to earthquakes and I’ll be very brief on this. I think you know that earthquakes have been a tremendous killer, and a lot more is coming yet. I will just mention one point and I’ll leave it at that. There has been such an increase in earthquakes in the1970s and 80s, over the 50s and 60s! Can you guess how much is the increase? It’s quite remarkable! The death from earthquakes rose by 11 times, not 11%. The statistical figure listed is 1,148%! In that 20-year period, the death from earthquakes arose by some 11 fold. Does it tell us anything? Earthquakes have always been around, but the point is that the intensity and frequency of these earthquakes are increasing. And some are coming yet which will boggle the mind. In fact, I see that seismologists are predicting some very powerful ones, especially in California, for example. And the amazing thing is that people living in the earthquake area, such as, along the San Andrea Fault, are not taking any precautions. They don’t care. Maybe they don’t believe it will ever come. The last time it came, it killed an awful lot of people but nobody is worrying. The point is, it’s not that any of these things have not happened before, it’s simply that the intensity is mounting up and therefore, it is warning us that the time is at hand.

 

4. Superstition

Let me go on to the fourth phenomenon. Look at the state of superstition in the world today. What is the situation of superstition like in Singapore? In North America, simply open any newspaper, and you will see your horoscope there. A horoscope has to do with what sign of the constellation you were born under. You look under that constellation, and read about what certain things you can or cannot do today and on other days. Some people live by this. To them, their horoscope is their “Bible.”

The other day, we went to buy something at a big department store in Hong Kong, and they gave us a calendar. And what did we find in this calendar? Complete superstition. It tells you the things that are all right or not all right to do for every day. I find that it really remarkable that such a big department store as Wing On, gives out this kind of calendars

I presume it is the same in Singapore. People find out from a manual which day to get married or not, which day is good or not to do business. Of course, almost every day is good to offer sacrifice to the Buddha but not anything else! Who decided this complete nonsense anyway? But many people live by this, and treat that manual as “Scripture.”

You would think in this day and age no one falls for superstition. The point is, it would be interesting to take a survey to see how few people don’t live under superstition. People are so superstitious today, precisely because they are not spiritual. Superstition has covered the earth in a way that is almost unprecedented, with highly educated people getting involved in it!

 

5. Moral decline

a) Teenage “free sex”

The fifth and last point is the moral decline. You should be very familiar with that, and I don’t need to go into too much detail. Let us be very practical and talk about sexual morality. I wonder how many young people in Singapore have passed their say, 15th birthday, without having been involved in some form of sex. In North America, there is hardly any. The number of people who still remain virgins after the age of 15 has become so small that to be a virgin is almost a joke! You are regarded as naive, as not being with it, as being out of touch with life. It’s absolutely tragic! Moral decline has set in like a landslide. The first point under this heading of moral decline is teenage delinquency, “free sex” – a total lack of morality in sex.

b) Collapse of the family - divorce

Secondly, the collapse of the family in terms of marriage. Who knows where the climbing divorce rate is going to stop? Marriage has become a kind of formality which is already destined for divorce. The climb is just terrible. Those who are in pastoral work are very familiar with this problem.

c) Insolvency, living on credit

Thirdly, the decline in financial honesty and solvency. I will cover this very broadly. You know that with the advent of the credit card, which now, even for those going to college, are easily given a credit card in North America. This is surely a quick way to get into debt. So the level of borrowing is ever going out of hand. People live from borrowed money. Everyone is so caught in the grip of debt. I have known people, who even when they have come to God, and want to go into full-time service cannot, because they have to pay so many thousands of dollars worth of debts that it would take them years to pay off! The world has got them by their throat because of this credit problem. You owe money, and the world wants it back, and with a very high rate of interest, so that it is even harder to get out of constant deficit.

d) Worship of mammon

The fourth thing I would refer to in relation to the third, is the attitude of the worship of mammon. I wonder if you heard the news. A couple of days ago, there was a bank robbery in Athens. These criminals dug into the city’s sewage system, got to where the bank was, breached the bank wall to gain entry into the bank vaults, and made off with some 14 million dollars worth of other people’s savings. Do you know what the police had to say about this incident? Their comment is, “Brilliant!” It almost sounded like the police wished they had done the job themselves. They did not say, “This is evil! This is vicious! You have robbed people of their life savings!” Maybe we all got into the wrong profession. Maybe we should have put our intelligence into breaking into banks, and people would applaud and say, “Wow! You’re a brilliant guy to make off with all this money!” How many professionals, who having studied their whole lifetime, can make 14 million dollars at one go?

e) Homosexuality

The fifth thing under this heading of moral decline is this problem of homosexuality, which is also getting out of hand. AIDS first broke out with the homosexual people, and then began to affect other innocent people through blood transfusions and other means. And yet, homosexuality in North America, is not regarded as a crime or a sin. “Gay rights” have to be protected. Recently, the U.S, army tried to expel a soldier who is a homosexual, and the Supreme Court overturned the army’s decision. What notion have we come to? If we must protect the rights of the gay, what about the rights of those who are not gay? A homosexual might corrupt the others.

Today, our country Canada, is so amazingly enlightened (I say “our” because I am a Canadian citizen), that an employer cannot “discriminate” against the homosexual, which means that if a homosexual tells you frankly, “I’m a homosexual, but I want a job in your firm,” you have to employ him! You cannot turn him down because he is a homosexual. This is equal rights. What is worse, if you turn him down, he can always charge you for turning him down because he is a homosexual. Then, the government will give you a hard time, and you will have a hard time proving that you did not do this. Lately, I read a statement which said, “If God does not judge North America, he will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.” Yet today, the climate has so turned that to tolerate the homosexual is described as “being enlightened”! Evil is now being described as good and good as evil. If you are good, that is, if you reject homosexuality, you are bad in the eyes of the law, you discriminate. What a strange state of affairs! We have finally come to what the prophets declared against Israel, “You call good evil and evil good.” (Isa. 5:20)

Do you think the church is making its voice heard in all this? Oh no! The church is taking the lead! It is accepting pastors who are homosexuals. You know that now, homosexuals can be ordained into the ministry. Where is the church going? This is also “the enlighten­ment” of the church! I told you holiness doesn’t exist, and you thought I was not being serious. You can see it for yourself that holiness does not exist. Today, sexual morality counts for nothing, even in the church! No wonder nobody wants to listen to the church. The church is discredited. It speaks with the same voice as the world, so why bother to listen to it?

 

Jesus will return as God’s solution to the problems of this world

Let me conclude by asking, in the light of all this, what should our views be? I asked right at the beginning, why does Jesus have to come again? How are these problems going to be solved? Does God care about these problems or not? If God cares, what is he going to do about it? God’s answer to these problems is not “I don’t care. These people are all going to hell anyway. You come to heaven and these people will perish in hell.” Oh no! What we see in the Bible is, God cares not only in the after-life, but he wants to do something about it now. The Bible says that Yahweh God is going to solve this problem by the Lord Jesus’ return. He is coming back to clean up God’s world. This is Yahweh God’s world, and he has not surrendered his world. It is important to understand that the return of Jesus means that God regards this world as his world. No one is going to mess up his world, without him sorting things out. The famines around the world are caused by wars, bad management of the natural resources, deforestation, and the list goes on. All famines are essentially caused by man. They can be avoided and be dealt with. However, today, you need to take the world’s most advanced army, bristling with guns and heavy equipment, just to bring food to the starving. Can you imagine what kind of situation we are in? People are now asking, what will happen when the Americans pull out? We are back to the old problem again. Even if you disarm these gangsters for now, what prevents them from arming themselves again once the US and United Nation troops leave? Is that a way to solve the problem?

Jesus will come because God intends to solve this problem, to show that he cares for this world. The Bible tells us that Jesus will come and we shall reign with him. If you don’t even know that there is a problem, how are you going to reign with him? I think very few people are well equipped to reign. Do you know how to run a government? Do you know how to run a city? Do you know how to run anything, even your family? We are called to reign with him. We’d better start to run something properly now! How about trying to run one’s own life properly for a start? Then, try to run one’s own household in some decent fashion? Then maybe you can run your company in some decent fashion. Maybe, one day, Yahweh God will entrust to you a city through the Lord Jesus, as we see in the Parable of the Pounds, “You have done well! I will give you ten cities to look after” (cf. Lk. 19:17). Or in verse 19, another one will be given five cities to govern. Could Jesus entrust you with five cities? Could he entrust you with ten? Could you run one city properly? Do you think God is not serious? He is very serious. He will show you how this world should be run. He intends to solve the problems in this world.

That is why I say, the godliness in the Bible is not some other-worldly godliness. God is concerned about every person and his life here on earth. He has let man do what he is doing now, and let this measure of wickedness rise, to show that man cannot keep this world in order, no matter how he tries. And you cannot say he has not tried. Some of the people are trying, as in Somalia. And we give them credit for trying, but we can see that this won’t solve the problem. Up to now, every attempt by man to solve his problems is a failure, and every time, the problem gets worse.

Jesus will come back as God’s solution to the problems of this world. Maybe that is the way of thinking that you have not been used to. That is the Biblical teaching. The Bible is not an other-worldly book, which talks about dying and going to heaven. Strangely enough, the Bible says something about that, but it has a lot more to say about Jesus’ coming to reign. As the song has it, “Jesus shall reign, where’er the sun, does his successive journeys run.” What is more, you and I are called to reign with him!

This workshop is about this: you and I must get ready to live the kind of life that is part of God’s solution for this world. Tomorrow, I shall hammer more deeply at the foundations of this to show why we are not in a position to reign with Christ Jesus at this present time, and what we have to do.

 

Before Jesus returns: love will grow cold; the gospel must reach all nations

Before I close, I want to mention two problems that will happen before the Lord Jesus comes again. Matthew 24:12 tells us that because lawlessness (the moral decline) will increase, the love of many will grow cold. Is your love cold already? Even since you were baptized in Port Dickson three years ago, is your love still at the same level, or has it declined? Have we got a plan to counteract this?

The second problem we have to face is mentioned in Matthew 24:14. The Lord Jesus says that before he returns, the gospel must be preached to every nation. Given the situation in this world, how is this going to be accomplished, especially if our time is running out? We saw that Islam has at least one-third of the world firmly in its control, and Christianity does not make a dent on Islam. In fact, it is the other way around. Islam is making not just a dent, but hitting Christianity with collapsing blows. Christianity can hardly make a scratch on Islam.

I was with some coworkers in Turkey very recently. One reason was because Turkey is an Islamic country. It is more Islamic than Malaysia or Iran, for that matter. It is the only country in the world that is 99.99% Islamic, the rest is 0.01% of non-Islamic. Iran runs at 2% or 3% non-Islamic. At the beginning of this century, there was still a considerable Christian population in Turkey. Today, that population is almost totally wiped out, and I wanted to know why. Also, the seven churches in Revelation are located in Turkey, and we want to think about why they collapsed.

 

“A Call to Total Mobilization” to hasten the Lord Jesus’ return

Given the soon return of the Lord Jesus, what is your role and mine?

2 Peter 3:10-12 reads:

I just want to focus on these words, “to hasten his return.” Is there something you and I can do to hasten his return? (That will be the theme of the Easter Camp in Hong Kong in a few months’ time.) How do we hasten the Coming of the Lord? One of the things we need to do is to ensure that the gospel will be preached to the ends of the earth. And how will this be done? Do you think that a few evangelists will be able to do it? Do you think Billy Graham can do it? Billy Graham’s heath is declining. He is quite old now. His days of evangelism are pretty nearly over. Who is going to carry on the evangelistic work now? Will it be our teammates? Will it be some leaders from other churches? And even if we put everybody toge­ther, our population in the world is increasing by almost 100 million every year, can you preach to a 100 million in one year? If so, by what means? Our task is mind-boggling! That means you and I—not just I, but you—will have to be involved.

So I want to sum up this whole session today by “A call to total mobilization.” I think Singapore people don’t like to hear that word. I’m sorry about that. I cannot think of a better term. Nowadays in Singapore, you might be called up with six hours’ notice, and you’ll drag yourself wearily to some point. Israel uses that method of general mobilization at a few hours’ notice. I am sorry if this doesn’t sound good to you, but it’s something that we have to do.

We cannot expect a few leaders, no matter how gifted, capable, spiritually powerful to bring the gospel to all nations. Billy Graham can preach to a large number of people but he cannot bring the gospel to the whole world. Anyone who knows evangelism knows that the most effective means of evangelism is not through this kind of televised messages, it is person-to-person contact, in other words, through discipleship. But how are we able to do this? Discipleship simply means total mobilization. Every disciple must produce other disciples.

 

Outreach as an assignment

How do we implement this? We have had quite a bit of training in our churches, and what is the point of all this training? Is it just so that you can get more knowledge, and get more puffed up, and more confident of how much you know? Then when you go to another church, you can humiliate those people and demonstrate their ignorance by your knowledge? You certainly could do that, but that is to misuse it. The training was in fact, designed for mobilization, so that every Christian can serve the Lord, at least to that level of training he or she already has.

So what I am proposing to do now is that from henceforth, all Basic Training (BT) in our churches, must also have a practical side. Up to now, it is all too much theoretical knowledge, and next to no practice. The practical side will start in a very humble and yet very important way, and that is, everyone in BT will be assigned to outreach. What do we mean by outreach? Every week, say if a newcomer comes in, then a BT person will have as his or her responsibility to look after the newcomer, not only for that day, but for the coming days, and for the coming weeks, to follow up, phone that person, find out that person’s spiritual needs. This is not meant as a gimmick of evangelism. It is meant as a serious and important means of disciple building. Some people come to church, but they are not ready to pursue after God, so you let them go. Nobody is going to force the gospel down their throat. But somebody must follow up. We often lose a lot of people because no one follows them up. In the past, the leaders are the ones who try to follow up, but they are tired and overloaded, and they should not be the ones having to follow up.

But the requirements for Intermediate Training (IT), will be something much heavier. Up to now, everyone who has had IT, or is about to have IT, are simply checked for their spiritual consistency, and whether they have the spiritual quality of that level. Again, they get a lot of training and it is useless to them because that knowledge is not employed. I find that in order to implement what we have been saying, that each one of us must reach out in discipleship, then from now on, we should implement a program in which somewhere in the middle of their IT program, everyone will go out on an assignment, maybe for one or two months. Each person will either have to quit their job, or take extended leave or unpaid leave if possible. It will be costly. No one is suggesting it will be easy. But after we talk so much about total commitment, let us see what kind of total commitment we really have when it comes down to the brass tacks. When it comes to the commitment in doing something for God, too often, it is nowhere to be seen for most people, although not for everyone.

The leaders of the IT will design an outreach program for each IT person, or two by two because the Lord Jesus sent his disciples out in units of two. Each IT person will carry out an outreach mission between one to two months long, depending on where the person is going, and what financial requirements will be needed for that particular mission. If you don’t want to go on this outreach mission, then don’t apply for IT. If you apply for IT, it’s like applying for spe­cial military assignment. You will be sent off onto a special mission.

This will also be retroactive, that is, for those who have already been in IT, you don’t have to join the outreach program, but it also means that your IT training will be considered incomplete. You have only got the doctrinal part but not the practical part. The practical part is exceedingly important for your own spiritual good, by the way.

Where might you go? There are all kinds of possibilities, depending on yourself in discussion with the leaders. In Singapore, you could take up work in the prison ministry, for example. But that would be a much longer term than one or two months. Or you could take up work in an outreach program say, to Indonesia or the Philippines, where Brother Boo would be very glad to see you. He will conduct you on missions in the Philippines. Or maybe into China or India. Is our mind so small in thinking, that going across the sea a little distance already boggles our minds? In that case, don’t ever think of IT anymore in the future. IT is for those who dare to say, “Lord, here I am, send me.” It’s not just as some kind of theoretical statement, but a willingness to engage in fulfilling what the Lord Jesus said in Matthew. 24:14,

Now Satan needs to do only one thing: prevent you from bringing the gospel to every nation, and the Lord Jesus will never need to come. I think that is the game he is playing. We intend, by the grace of God, to break through that blockade that Satan has set up. There are nations that seem to be impenetrable. Missionaries cannot go there, but lay people can. And that is why we must talk about “total mobilization,” which means lay people are the ones who now carry the flag of battle, to carry the gospel into the heart of enemy’s territory. And I am confident that lay people can do a superb job, given the training that they should get, and the care and supervision that they will need and receive. So this is the basic outline, which I trust will strengthen the churches.

 

Outreach activates love and brings the gospel to all nations

What does it have to do with the two points I mentioned earlier? First, I will tell you why your love is tending to grow cold; it’s because you have not been doing anything for God. There is only one way to go for any Christian who does not function actively for God: Downward. Your love will certainly grow cold. And when the pressure comes on you, your love will just collapse. So this “Missions Project,” whatever we call it, is the practical project for IT. It is designed firstly, to counter this love growing cold; and secondly, to bring the gospel on the discipleship pattern, first to areas around us, and gradually, evangelistic teams of lay people, reaching further and further afield.

John Sung, a great evangelist, put this into practice a long time ago. In the days before WWII when he was preaching in China, he organized teams of evangelists, who were all the lay people, and they did a wonderful work. They went everywhere to preach the gospel. He gave them a very short basic training, and sent them out to preach. When the Japanese came, they squashed this particular work, but he carried on in South East Asia.

What is our excuse for doing next to nothing? We had a Sabbatical Program on a voluntary basis, and a number of people joined the Sabbatical Program with great effect. But many people did not bother to join because it was voluntary. In fact, they don’t know how much those people who joined the Sabbatical Program were blessed themselves as well as bringing blessing to others. We have gained a lot from this Sabbatical Program, and having tested it out, we now know that it will work for the IT. So I emphasize again, in future, IT will require this kind of practical service in outreach otherwise, you cannot benefit fully from the IT program. Those who don’t wish to join just need not apply for IT. In this sense, it is not at all obligatory.

Many people who joined the Sabbatical Program also went on to full-time training. That is not coincidental. It’s because they experienced God in that Sabbatical Program which quite transformed their lives. They got a taste of what full-time is, so one by one, they began to apply for the full-time as well. We are not at all suggesting that all those going to IT should go to full-time training. Rather, it is their quality will be deepened and strengthened by this practical program.

Does anyone have any questions they would like to ask? Maybe I dropped a bombshell on you.

Question: When the Lord Jesus says the gospel must be preached to every nation, does it refer to every individual in that nation?

Answer: The word “nation” does not necessarily include every individual, but of course, one should aim to bring the gospel to every individual. That is for sure. One can say that the gospel has in some sense reached every country already today, but in such a superficial way, that obviously, the Lord Jesus does not accept it. If two or three people, say in an Islamic country heard the gospel, does that constitute fulfilling the requirements of the Lord Jesus’ prophecy? The answer must surely be no. It has to be more than just a handful of people. But then, it also need not mean we have to dig up every last individual hidden in every nook and cranny of that nation.

If you have some other question in your mind, maybe you can write it down, and we shall try to answer it tomorrow.

Let us be quiet before God in prayer.