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Revelation 3:11
I am coming quickly;
hold fast what you have,
so that no one will take your crown.
A sign of Jesus’ return
Jesus Christ, our Lord, is coming back soon!
He comes from heaven in God’s glow of glory.
Malachi 4:1
For behold, the day is coming,
burning like a furnace;
and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff;
and the day that is coming will set them ablaze,
says the Lord of hosts,
so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.
How few realize this,
how few consciously prepare for this second coming of this almighty King, in true repentance and devotion!
Satan is smart and crafty!
He does everything to make the Christians forget about this great event and to let them, if they even think about it, shift this event in their mind to a far and distant future!
Yet this future event is very near!
Much closer than many of us might think!
You may think that it will still take time, that you still have plenty of time to think about these things that are about to happen, but make no mistake! He is coming very soon!
Satan knows how to keep this world of the last days under his spell.
But did you know that this too, is one of the signs mentioned by Jesus in connection with his return? He stated this in clear words.
Luke 17:26-30
²⁶And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: ²⁷they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.
²⁸It was the same as happened in the days of Lot: they were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were building; ²⁹but on the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all.
³⁰It will be just the same on the day that the Son of Man is revealed.
Friends, Satan, the adversary, is smart!
We know that the world that lives according to the will of the adversary is possessed by his will.
Their life is nothing more than eating, drinking, sex, love for money, planting, trading, building houses; in short, everything the world is involved with today. They do all this in an idolatrous sense and measure!
However, we must distinguish ourselves from this.
Are we doing that?
Ephesians 2:1-3
¹And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, ²in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
³Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
In the last days, Satan will bring all these things now considered normal, more and more into the idolatrous sphere.
We now find it very normal that the world goes on and on like this.
And for many, this is not worth mentioning as a sign of Jesus’ return anymore.
But it becomes very different when the Christian is also captivated by these activities;
▪︎ if, just before the second coming of his Lord, he becomes an idolatrous lustful man, a materialist, and a money-loving man,
▪︎ if he thinks all this to be so important that he lets it erode and destroy his Christian life!
Than they have time for everything, except for the true contact with Jesus, for Word study, and for prayer!
One of the signs of the last days is,
▪︎ that Christians have eyes that are only focused on money;
▪︎ that Christians have a heart that is only focused on satisfying earthly and carnal lusts.
Because their “life” is in a horizontal position, because it is directed to the earth, and to the world, it can no longer receive the blessing of the Father!
People pray for blessing and don’t receive it, because they are not truly converted to Him!
They pray for the latter rain and do not receive the Spirit baptism, because their “life guideline” is horizontal, focused on worldly materials.
If they dress their lives in a Christian garb, but just having this as a cover, only resembling something outwardly, it is not enough!
▪︎ A radio can perfectly look like a top quality radio on the outside, if the inside is missing, no music will come out.
▪︎ And even when the internals are also completely fine, the radio will have to be tuned to the correct frequency to hear what you want to hear.
▪︎ And if you want to be able to hear it well and clearly, without annoying noise, it is important that you tune in very precisely to the station.
So it is with Jesus and His blessing.
▪︎ If you just pretend, you will receive nothing!
▪︎ If you are not tuned to Jesus, you will receive nothing!
▪︎ If you are not in tune with Jesus, you will not receive His message clearly.
His blessing will pass you by!
Satan, the adversary, will always do everything in his power to keep your heart from turning to Jesus.
He keeps your heart and mind under his spell
▪︎ by showing you the glitter and glamour of the earth’s riches
▪︎ by infecting your heart with the worldly lusts, and letting them flare up high within you.
He has a lot of arrows on his bow for the person who has an eye for worldly wealth and earthly pleasure:
▪︎ he makes the holiday really enjoyable;
▪︎ he makes sex wild and based on lust,
▪︎ he increases the hunger for all kinds of materials considerably by means of buying on credit and easy payment terms.
▪︎ In the so-called “welfare countries” he drives people “money mad”.
The people, yes also the Christians, look at all this with astonished and eager eyes. They are captivated by it and they dance the “dance of death” around the golden calf, thereby honoring the goddess of lusts!
And … the more one allows oneself to become absorbed in all the earthly things, which are oh so common nowadays, they have less and less time and interest in what is really important, for Jesus.
And satan laughs … Does he laugh at you too?
Don’t get me wrong, as Christians one must have both feet on the ground.
We have yet to live in our bodies here on earth.
That’s why we have to make money to live, and that’s why we have to study, and we have to do many other things. But let us bring all of this into the limits of God’s wisdom.
We may also go on holiday from time to time or seek appropriate entertainment, but let us not be caught by all of this, let us not become slaves to it.
Rather, let our hearts be full of Jesus, of His Kingdom and His righteousness, and prepare us for His soon return!
Let us always make time for Jesus, for the meetings, for the prayer meetings and Bible studies, for personal Word search, and private prayer, and not in the least for our testimony to others!
To be continued
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