The signs of the latter days, as described in Isaiah 3 and other prophetic texts, are clearly visible in contemporary world events, indicating the imminent return of Christ. It details how the rise of incompetent leaders, the disdain for experience, the increasing influence of women in societal and religious roles, and geopolitical shifts in the Middle East all align with biblical prophecy. The message emphasizes that these signs are not random but are part of God's plan to reveal His Son and bring about His judgment and ultimate redemption. The sermon concludes by urging listeners to recognize these signs and prepare for Christ's return by accepting Him as their personal Savior.
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We'll have our large chart up here. We have two. We may use both of them at times. We trust in the meantime you'll be working hard to get people to come out. Wherever I seem to go these days, people are asking, when are we going to speak on the Book of Revelation? So we're going to start board with a next Sunday. And we trust you'll invite your neighbors, pray about these meetings. If you know as much as I know about the Book of Revelation, then... You just sit there with your eyes closed while I'm preaching and pray for those who don't know as much as you. So don't forget to be out next Sunday and try and bring others with you. So we turn this morning to Isaiah chapter three.
Isaiah chapter three. Some verses I have never been impressed with before until the last few months. And how remarkable they are. Verse four of Isaiah three. And I will give children to be their princes, and they shall rule over them. Now, according to Bible exposition, it certainly means this. Here you have some who are incompetent in government. They shall rule over them. Verse five. And the people shall be oppressed. under such circumstances, of course. Every one by another, and every one by his neighbor, the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the baits against the honorable.
Here you have youth disdain for age, the baits against the honorable, the radicals against those who have experience. Then the verse six, when a man shall take hold of his brother, the brother of the house of his father, saying, Thou hast clothing, be thou our ruler, and let this ruin be under thy hand, passing the buck and trying to blame others for the situation. Now notice this verse, especially the first three words. In that day shall he swear, saying, I will not be a healer. or provider, for in my house is neither bread nor clothing.
Make me not a ruler of the people. Verse twelve, as for my people, children, the young, are their oppressors, and women rule over them. I want you to get that. Women rule over them. Oh, my people, they which lead thee, cause thee to err. and destroy the way of thy path. Verse eighteen. In that day, notice that again, the Lord will take away the bravery of their tickling ornaments about their feet and their calls and their round tires like the moon and etc.
I want you to turn over now to Zechariah the second last book in the Old Testament. We'll not refer to scriptures anymore once we get into our subject, but we'll do it now. The second last book in the Old Testament. I want you to notice verse twelve, chapter twelve. Now notice, I'm not going to read all these verses, it will take too much time, but I want you to notice those three words. In that day, in verse three, and in verse four, in that day, Verse six, in that day.
Verse eight, in that day. Verse five, at or in that day. Verse nine, in that day. And I want you to notice this. And it shall come to pass in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. and I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of Jason of supplication, and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
I should have read verse three all through, and I'll do it now of this chapter. In that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone or a problem for all people. All that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it. Now notice verse eleven. In that day, the next chapter, verse one, in that day, verse two, in that day, verse four in that day. And the next chapter, behold the day, and down in verse six in that day, verse thirteen it shall be one day, verse eight in that day, verse nine in that day, verse thirteen in that day, and verse Twenty in that day, and verse twenty-one in that day.
Why am I emphasizing all these remarks about that day, simply because of the importance of that day. Now, we didn't read all that we could have read in Isaiah where you have that day referred to. But it's very significant that God is referring to a certain time And he speaks about in that day or in those days, and in the latter days perilous time shall come. Now God's not singling out one day of twenty-four hours. I suppose you will recall, maybe you read the book by Winston Churchill, their finest hour when the British Air Force fought off the German Luftwaffe.
And today they have two or three mental institutions tasked with the airmen who fought in those days. They flew night and day, often under drugs, if you will, in order to fight the German Luftwaffe. And when they got through their task, they went off, as we say today, off their rocker, off their balance, and no wonder. Their mental cases and will be to the day of their death. And yet Winston Churchill speaks of that day, it wasn't a twenty-four hour day, it was a period of time running into weeks, some possibly months, their finest hour, not sixty minutes.
He speaks of that time as their finest hour. And God uses similar language. In that day it may be weeks, it may be months. It could be a period of years, but he's drawing our attention to a certain period in that day or in the latter days. There comes a time when God intervenes in human history and human events and human affairs. And in a sense, history repeats itself. What occurs here in these verses?
And also in Isaiah chapter three, you have Judah and Jerusalem, and you have a divinely given forecast concerning then that in the latter days, Christendom will also come under the same criticism and the same judgment and be cut off, because Christendom today has walked in the same steps. of Judah and Israel. Because Judah and Israel had sinned against God, the Lord Jesus Christ, you remember, he saw the city, and he wept over it.
O Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered to eat together the hen that gathered her brood under her wings, but ye would not? And God cut. Israel off. You read that in the Levant, the Romans. And he brings in the Gentiles for their time of blessing. And he said that the Gentiles do the same thing. They too will be cut off. And God says, when they are, I'll bring in my earthly people, Israel, into that place of prominence after their repentance. And so christen them today.
is at that point where God is about to cut them off because they walked in the same step as Israel of old. The sad thing, God is equally sordering today over Christendom as he sordered over Israel when Christ ripped over that city. That city that was on the verge of judgment. And thirty-five years later, after Christ made those remarks about Jerusalem, and his sorrow for Jerusalem, Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus and the Roman army.
God is soaring today for the Gentile nation, who have received such light, such understanding. Why how they've had the Bible, The Bible has been translated for them and brought up to date. And there's no excuse for any individual today not knowing the mind of God and reading the signs of the time. The Jews and these nations, the Gentile nations are going to be cut off just like Israel was cut off. And just like the judgment of God fell.
Upon Jerusalem thirty-five years after the Lord Jesus wept over that city and warned that city, God is warning the Gentiles today of their doom, and it's coming and it's coming soon. Make no mistake about that. Very significant when you look at these scriptures in Isaiah, and if you want to turn over to Daniel, you'll find in the last chapter of Daniel, in that day is mentioned five times in the latter chapters of Daniel, and eighteen times in those chapters are read in Zechariah, and they're referring to the latter day.
Zechariah takes up the destruction of Jerusalem, and the various details in connection with the destruction of Jerusalem. And so it plainly teaches that God is taking a hand in world affairs and in world matters. And his hand is seen so plainly and distinctly as you read the papers. I've noted some things this recently that I didn't think of when we took up the book of Revelation eight years ago, and when we first took it up, eighteen years ago, I don't know a thing. that I would retract that I said then.
Views that we expect, eighteen years ago, are only further emphasized today by world events. There may be clearer and other things that come to light that the Scriptures plainly teach and prophesy. I believe one of the reasons that the Book of Revelation wasn't opened up a hundred years ago for very few ever preached on it or expounded on it or wrote books about it. Because the Book of Revelation is more or less understood and opened up by events that take place in the latter days.
You couldn't preach about the Jewish nation being a nation in the land of Palestine a hundred years ago because she wasn't there. She wasn't in the land then. They weren't recognized as a people then. They have their own government now. And there are many things that have opened up this book of the revelation. And it is indeed a revelation. And thus we'll be going into it chapter by chapter. Some of these things will bring up again, but some of them we will not. So we have these turkey things that I'm going to mention this morning.
In fact, there are more. We'll not go into them anymore. But in the latter part of them tonight, God willing. Things that have happened in the past fifty years, or they have intensified. Why should all these turkey things and others converge into one half-century? There's no half century since the Lord was here when all these things were present and visible and had come together. They've all come together to one focus point, that in itself ought to strike home to all our hearts.
The reason the Lord hasn't come yet is because all the furniture or the equipment on the stage is not in its proper place. When you see all these things come to pass, know that it is near, even after the dawn. And I'll tell you this, I don't know one scripture that would prevent the Lord Jesus Christ coming today. He's coming and make no mistake about it. And those things the Bible prophesied and predicted are before your eyes. All you've got to do is read.
Every day I see something significant in the local newspaper and other newspapers. In other words, you couldn't think about all these things that I'm going to mention two hundred years ago, one hundred years ago. Oh, fifty years ago, I noticed somewhat of a sarcastic article that Mr. Gray had in one of his editorials a month or two ago about these people referring to the returning of the Jews to Palestine of that time, or near the end time. And yet that man writes some remarkable articles about the Jewish nation. So he must know something about the Bible, but I don't think he's born again.
If he is, he doesn't have a very good testimony. But anyway, there are a lot of things that have happened in the last ten or fifteen years, along with Israel's return to the land, and we'll be going into all of them. And why have they all come together at such a time as this? Many of the things we'll be mentioning, some will be political, and others will be ecclesiastical or religious. And so we've mentioned that in Isaiah you have these three. The reference, rather, to the latter days and the things that you see associated with the latter days in that property.
I received a letter from John Furrider, who labors in Baruch, Lebanon, a little while ago, and he said this, the news today that certain Western politicians and statesmen have proposed that Israel be included in the Western alliance as an eastern defensive flank of NATO. That's very significant, he said. And indeed it is certainly. Why do we think of that significance? Simply because Jerusalem has got to be lined up with the Western League of Nations.
We understand that the heads of the new Jewry will be a strong and powerful leader, and he'll link up with the head of the Ten Federated Kingdom, they'll make a covenant. And for seven years they will make that covenant, and it will be broken in the middle of that seven-year period. That's when Satan enters into the beast, and you have Satan personified. That's when all hell breaks loose. when devil, the devil's always ramping on that dark and dreadful day known as the Great Tribulation. Think of the rapture.
Is it near? Is the coming of the Lord? Have we any ground per se? It is near. I know we can't set a date. The Lord Jesus Christ himself then, of that day and that hour north, no man. Only my father. Nevertheless, he says in Matthew sixteen, you can read the signs of the weather. You see a red sky in the evening, you say, well, that means a bright day in the morning, or vice versa. And he says you can read the signs of the sky and weather conditions and make predictions.
Why can't you read the signs of the signs? Now the Lord Jesus said that. Why is everything in the turmoil, especially in the Middle East? Soon this affair in South Vietnam will be over, we hope. And I was thinking yesterday while listening to the President how he was trying to lift the hopes of the people, and yet he shied away from coming right out. Certainly because the President hasn't got much to base his hopes on. But then we can base all our hope on facts given us in the Word of God.
And it's a wonderful thing to know those facts. And after that war is over, where do you think the focus on the attention of the world will turn for the Middle East? That's the next question. You know, everything is in a turmoil. Why are all the made nations on the move? What is God aiming at? Just one thing God has in mind, and that is the revelation of his son to the world. God is going to reveal his son to the world. Everything is moving toward the return of the Lord Jesus Christ for his people.
And when the church is caught up, then God, as the pouring of judgment upon the earth, Jesus Christ will come in all his glory and power, and God is going to reveal his Son to this wicked world. For every eye shall see him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail, wring their hands in anguish because of him. You know in Ezekiel thirty-eight, twelve is an unusual verse. And if you read it in the Amplified Bible, it says this, The people gathered out of the nation, who have obtained livestock and goods who dwell at the center of the earth.
Now it's all referring to the Jewish nation. Geographically and spiritually, Palestine is the center of the earth. all bound by the prophecy takes its direction from that. North of Palestine, south of Palestine, east of Palestine, west of Palestine. And so Palestine, as God sees the world geographically, is the center of the earth. Palestine is the center of the earth. Jerusalem is the center of Palestine. The temple is the center of Jerusalem. And the Holy of Holies is the center of the temple.
And the blood-stained ark is the center of the Holy of Holies. And who does the blood-stained ark speak of? Our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the center. Everything revolves around him. The Lord Jesus Christ, the one that God is going to reveal. You have at the front of your... The book of Revelation, most of your Bibles, the revelation of St. John the Divine, that's not right. It's the revelation of Jesus Christ, the unveiling of Jesus Christ. This vision was given to John on the Isle of Patmos, but it's the revelation, the unveiling of Jesus Christ.
That's the truth of the revelation. the unveiling of Jesus Christ. So the reason for this Middle East situation, the crisis in the Middle East, is that God is going to reveal His Son, Jesus Christ, as the center of Paul's Bible talk. And He's going to do that soon, as will be then, in the day. So in getting back to that text in I was there, three. I was very much surprised in reading that. We drew your attention to youth, their disdain of old age, and experience.
Children bade ruling in governmental positions. Do we have that today? Did you see it at the Democratic Convention? Eighteen and nineteen-year-old upstock? replacing old destinies, men of experience. God says children are going to reign over you in the latter days. And the result is oppression. Oppression. And how true that is, as we'll notice, my people in verse twelve divide version, divide version. My people, oh my people, thy tyrants are but glory.
And women now are over then in the place of rule. I've taken a little reaction from the ladies this morning, but that's all right. I don't have the right to trust me as when I get home. But you know, women are on the rise. They're coming to the ascendance. Why the emergence of women, emergence of women politically? and ecclesiasticalist. Do you believe me when I tell you that the head of the Jewish state today, and you know it, is a woman, and that's the first time in twenty-eight hundred years that a woman has been at the head of the Jewish state, and that was Atalaya, and she didn't rule long.
And God says in the letter they, a woman will rule over you. And the first time in twenty-eight hundred years, that a woman had been the head of the Jewish community. Oxtartan, taking over government, knowing more than these men have experienced in the military. And women taking the ascendancy and taking over the place of rule. And isn't it very significant that just last week the heads of the Jewish state and the Pope had a conference together? And that has never happened before. A woman, the head of the Jewish state, meeting the Pope, Duncan Ring of Bell, the Pope in Rome, and there's going to be a covenant between Rome and Jerusalem before the Great Tribulation, when Jesus is going to come.
These things are very significant. least they are for me, I don't know whether they are to you or not. And I'm going to read you something about women in religion. A Presbyterian woman minister, Dr. Letty Russell, variously designated as theologian, professor, and liberalist, is asking that, now get this, and this doesn't shock you, she's asking that The Holy Spirit be called She. Not only so, but the least we can do, she said, is to call God She part of the task, she argued.
This was printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer on April the first of last year, and presented at the Temple University for a two-day symposium for the re-examination of religion and Christian theology. And so they want to call the Spirit of God and the feminine gender. Last Wednesday night at the Mayor's Study on the Holy Spirit, he mentioned the fact how thirteen times over in a few verses the Spirit of God, he, he, in the masculine pronoun. He, the Spirit of God.
And why this emergence of women now? And that grand denomination that had such a glorious past and period has gone so far from God that now they ordain women and give them high position. All those old men would have died with a heart attack if they had tried that fifty years ago. The days come, and they allow them to get up and talk like this. Why, she says, we should call God Mother once in a while. And the Spirit of God, she.
Now, where do you have any evidence in the Bible that that's the mind of God? Sixty-six books in your Bible, and everyone was written by a man. For holy men of God wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, not holy women. Not that there were not holy women. There were plenty of them, thank God. And praise God for them today. But when it comes to a task of this nature to represent, I am the holy one that inhabit the eternity. God says, I've got quarter. And I want a man to do that. In the New Testament, when the Lord Jesus was seeking followers, who did he choose?
Twelve men. Today. You've got to have twelve women, twelve men, or six women and six men. That's what men do. And frankly, God says, I too. And Jesus did, twelve men. Think of the elders of Israel, twenty-four. They were all men, representing the nation. The patriarch, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Look, Gerdu, Testament, the elders, the bishops, the deacons, and the masculine gender. And when God is going to use a man that speaks of the world, he uses a man like Martin Luther.
Not a woman. Or a witcher. Or a westerer. Or a moody. Or a graham. God certainly sets the pattern. And no, today, women have got to get up there. Women are getting into their positions in politics. And even there's some talk of having a woman, the vice president of the United States, one of these election years, or maybe she'll become a president. President. What does all this mean? Great mess. And a breakdown of God's intended order. No, that's very plain.
Not that there aren't wise with There may be some wives that know more than their husbands, but according to God's order, God says a man is to be the head of the house. And the woman's place is in subjection, and her place is in the home. What's thought about this situation in the world? I know a lot of women that women have got to work. I know that because of the pace of living and the change of life. Things are so expensive that women have got to leave their God-given place in the home and wouldn't work in order to have enough money to bring a family up.
But that very thing has been the doorstep to the breakup of domestic life. Women have gone out, and when I was a kid, I can't recall a woman on our street that went to work. They stayed home and looked after the house and the children. And they didn't have a car either to drive to work or drive to the store and get their groceries or a car to go and get their kids and bring them back. We walked in those days, even sometimes away below zero and two or three feet of snow. That's what I told her. But when it came along that light was such a pace as so many things came into existence.
And of course every family wants the best of their children. Unless their husband has an unusual job, their wife has had to go out. And when the wife went to work, she became independent. She had her own car. She was now meeting other men other than her husband and got more attention from these other men she got from her husband. And some husbands got more attention than some of the ladies than they got from their wife. And how many families have been broken up? because of the box and the secretary. And thus the breakdown of domestic life. Some, of course, Christians have been able to steer their way through it all, these troubled ones.
But here you see the emergence of the woman getting out of her place. I'm certainly not blaming you women for working because the world is in an abnormal condition, not as God intended it. But now they get in the focus, and they start talking about things such as we've read here. The Holy Spirit in the Bible is called masculine. He's in the masculine. So is God, and so is the Son. And here we find a woman treading on the dangerous ground and being guilty of blaspheming. He says, the Lord Jesus, you may say something about God, the Father, and it will be forgiven you.
And something about me, it will be forgiven. But you say something or blaspheming the Holy Spirit and will not be forgiven. And today they're blaspheming the Holy Spirit by saying the Spirit of God should be in the feminine gender or called a she because that is a mark of weakness. In the latter days these will come. Is that true? I could read an article here. Women demand bigger role in church affairs. Every now and again you can clip these things out of the newspaper. And so we see the trend of things. Women in politics and women in Christendom. Harry Reesner, I think it was a week or last Thursday, I was at the Marshman.
We did that evening and we listened to the news. And Harry Reesner came on with an apology. He said, I owe an apology because I was wrong. A few months ago, he says the Women's Liberation Movement came out with a magazine, and I said, over my broadcast, it would die within about six months. It can't look, magazine had died. Another magazine was going to die. We're on the move for dying out. But he said, you know, the growth of that Women's Liberation Magazine is fantastic. And he said, I've just got to give them my blessings, because it's outcrowing any other narrative, women liberation.
Women coming to the fore, I mentioned Isaiah three, a woman shall rule over them. So you see the trend. The rise, the rebellion, rule and ruin are women. the rise and rebellion and rule and ruin of future. And it's coming. When you set aside God over it, you're in for trouble. It's a mark of victory. When you have the rise of Israel and have returned to the land in nineteen forty eight recognized as a nation among the family of nations.
The little thing that struck me this week is that Israel is a militant army. Because it says in Ezekiel, speaking of Israel's revival in the last days, she stood upon her feet in exceeding great arms, a man for man, the Jewish nation has got the best army in the world. Look at the Six-Day War. And you know why that war was fought? Read the last three chapters of Zechariah. that they might possess Jerusalem. And for the first time that Nebuchadnezzar took the Jews to battle the first time the Jewish nation has possessions on Jerusalem.
Now, was this true fifty years ago or before? No. It wasn't true ten years ago. Here you see that nation coming to the fore in a military way that astonished the world. And she's got all those ag companies smeared to death. Who went for Roshetan, the bull threw them up. They'd take them off. Showing that just like in Gideon's day, when God used three hundred, the whip of great armies, God was with that new nation of Israel. Or they couldn't do what they'd done. And God is with them. Israel's rise militarily.
Then again you have it agriculturally. Why the land of Israel has come to light to life. She has received her early unlappery. Seventy-eight years ago, the land of past Palestine was a veritable Sahara, a desert. Swamp land couldn't develop until they brought in the eucalyptus trees that soak up a lot of moisture. And God started sending the rain that hadn't come for centuries. The early and the latter rain.
And today, little Jerusalem out does California in shipment to exports of citrus fruits and other fruits, and also out does pork. The land has come to life to receive the returning nation of his These things true, you know they're true. Then you have the lineup of the northern powers, Syria. And only the other day. Syria's getting fed up with Egypt. Syria wants to fight Israel. I saw it the other day, and you liked it in the paper.
Syria's going to break from the other Arab nations. They're threatening to. And who are they going to lean to? And who's going to use them? The king of the north, Russia. Syria is north the palace. And it tells you plainly in Daniel chapter eleven that the king of the north, no doubt he's pulling to Syria, backed up by that mighty power in Ezekiel Tulliator, also the north. Syria is going to be in that block of nation. And Egypt and the others will be in the south. And again, I read that we talk about how the Middle East is coming to light. A fledgling Arab state, gold modern.
And in ten years this little state has gone from camels to computers the best in the world because they discovered oil. Just think it in ten years has been taken centuries for nations to come that distance. Here's a little nation, an Arab nation, and she's come in ten years from camels to computers, showing what's happening. in the Middle East, but there you better keep your eyes on. There's the Southern powers. That's Egypt and her allies. You know, you stop to think of the Southern lineup of nations, Egypt and all her powers.
They're leaning a little toward the Eastern powers. China, more than Russia. And you have the Western alliance we've already referred to. You might just as well as say that the Western nations, the Ten Federated Kingdom, will be speaking of, is just basically Eastern or Western Europe. That's what it is. I know the common market is forming the heart, but there'll be other nations, but eventually there'll be ten. It's basically Western Europe. And see, you know, the nations are falling in light. Well, I don't know about the East. The Kings of the East.
You know, this is very significant, the kings of the East. And the Bible says, and we'll get to that over in Revelation, that there are going to be kings of the East come down toward Palestine. They're going to stop at the river Euphrates, a natural barrier. And then God's going to dry up the river Euphrates and let them through. And it says in Revelation there will be two hundred million of an army. And today, Russia boasts a militia of exactly two hundred million. And today, Russia or China, she's trying to make an agreement with Pakistan to put a highway over the mountain.
And when you put a few million China-men to work, they won't be long getting it over the mountain. And if they do, they have a straight shot of the river, where their armies are going to be stopped by their natural barrier, that God will dry up the water and let them through the battle of Armageddon. For God's safety, I'm going to bring them down, and I'll destroy them there. So here are some of the things. I'm not going any further, for our time's up. We will continue them tonight. Why are we telling you these things? For one reason. The Apostle Paul says, be ready.
Be also ready when you think not the Son of Man, not. And the only way you're going to be ready, friend, for the coming of the Lord Jesus is by knowing him as your personal Savior, by trusting his precious blood that was shed on Shelby's cross, putting your complete absolute confidence in him and him alone. to wash away your sins, to give you everlasting life, to take you to heaven. You're either going to be, in a few years' heaven, and it could be in your lifetime, you're either going to be up with Christ looking down on those fearful days, or you're going to be on this earth looking up and crying for the rocks and mountains that fall upon you and hide you from the face of him that sits upon the throne.
The choice is yours. Make it today. Will it be right, or will it be condemnation? Shall we pray? Amen. Our Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus, we come into thy presence. We ask thy blessing upon thy will. Speak to all our hearts, may those of us who are saved. Feed the warning and exhortation of thy word. Then ye see all these things come to pass. Lift up your head, for your redemption taught now, the redemption of the body. May we be alert, active, energetic, and on the move, trying to get sinners into the ark before the door is shut, and the devil.