Have you ever read the Book of Revelation? The four horsemen of the Apocalypse, trumpet judgments bowl judgments and seal judgments galore. The sun like sackcloth and the full moon like blood. Stars falling from the sky and poisoning the water. Armies of hundreds of millions of demonic men facing off across a nuclear battlefield at Armageddon. The Great and terrible day of the LORD. Treading whole armies in a bloody winepress of wrath. Really bad stuff.
Why does God let all that happen???
But, you see, God DOES say it will all happen, that and a lot more. He said it would happen through the prophet Daniel, through Jesus Himself and through His apostle, St. John.
But why does God’s Word say that the human race will come to such a violent, fire-back-with-every-nuke-we’ve-got end?
Let me give you the two primary reasons.
First is the fact that God will ultimately allow secular humanism to have their experiment with big government socialism. He will take the Church – consisting of every believing Christian on earth – out of the picture and allow sinful man to have his way in the form of the ultimate dictator whom the world will literally worship. At this point, you’ve got your liberals who believe in government-created Utopia saying that they could turn the world around and create a paradise if it weren’t for those Bible-banging fundamentalist right wingers who disapprove of abortion and homosexuality and socialism and all the things they love so much. Bible-believing Christians are “obstructionists” who are blocking human progress toward a better world.
What I’m telling you is that God will give them their chance. And instead of their big government one-world socialist Utopia, what they’re going to produce is hell on earth in only seven years’ time.
Right now they believe they could have a “Star Trek” version of history reaching out into the stars; instead, when Jesus comes and destroys them in their hate and fury, He will literally come to save planet earth from a crazed human race bent on mutually assured destruction as long as they can kill their enemies.
The Tribulation is a foretaste of hell for an unbelieving world that will accuse God of not letting them know what is coming due to their wickedness and their unrepentance.
In the end, before the Great White Throne Judgment in which all the unbelievers on earth will finally reap the hell in eternity they sowed in their time on earth, no one will be able to say that his or her way worked better than God’s way. The laboratory of the world itself will have proven them wrong.
The second reason God allows the Tribulation is even more fundamental. Why will the Christ-rejecting world go through Tribulation? Because that’s what it will take to finally bring the Jews – the apple of God’s eye (Zech 2:8) – into the true Messiah Jesus’ sheepfold (John 10:1-18). Does Jesus have other sheep (John 10:16)? Yes, He has His Church. But consider the lost sheep of Luke 15:3-7; when one sheep was lost, the good Shepherd leaves the other ninety-nine to find that sheep and rejoices when He returns it to its fold. So also is Messiah with His people Israel. They are few compared to the Gentile Church; but Messiah loves them passionately and will not abandon His nation Israel to hell.
We find that in the Tribulation the Satan-possessed Antichrist has a special hatred for Israel and a special desire to persecute them (Rev 12). God raises up His 144,000 Jews from each of the Twelve Tribes who are like 144,000 Billy Grahams to Israel. They begin to evangelize Jews after the Rapture of the Church (Rev 7:3-8); God is NEVER left without a witness. And ultimately God keeps His people the Jews safe at a place called Petra (see Rev 7:13-16).
Ultimately, when Messiah appears as King of kings and as Lord of lords, He goes to Petra and releases the Jews from their place of refuge. And just short of too late Israel will look upon Him whom they rejected and mourn for Him as for a lost Son (Zechariah 12:10). And thus all Israel shall be saved (Romans 11:25-32).
Just as it took the Holocaust to bring about the restoration of national Israel, so it will ultimately take the Tribulation to bring Israel to national repentance and worship of her Messiah. Always remember that God is the Hound of Heaven, and just as He will do whatever it takes to bring you to salvation and Heaven, so also will He be just as faithful to His people the Jews.
As a Christian, when I look at a Jew, I look upon a lost brother who is dearly loved by my Father. The miraculous rebirth of national Israel – born from dead bones (see Ezekiel 37) – was part of God’s plan which God will bring to fruition at the end of the Tribulation.
Tags: Israel will be saved, Jews, purpose of the Tribulation, Tribulation
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