I’m looking toward the time when the Trumpet of God and the Marriage supper of the Lamb. There will be much danger for those who haven’t given their lives to Jesus and many will die during the seven years of the Tribulation. But…life will go on one day if you can live through those days. The only way to live through that time is to give your life to Jesus and live during His reign on this Earth for one thousand years.
It will be dangerous because the Anti-Christ will be seeking those who belong to Jesus to kill them. But, even if you are killed by him, you will live in eternity with Jesus. If you do manage to live until the Lord comes back to the Earth and you are a believer, then you will live through the entire time that Jesus is King on this Earth. It was foretold by God and it will happen if you give your heart to Him.
Today there are so many problems and wars and other things going on but they were also foretold to happen at this time. Just before the Tribulation begins, all of the things that were prophesied will come to pass. Everything must happen as God told his prophets to write down. Most of them have happened but there are still a few more that must take place before the church is taken up. When will that happen? Only God knows the day and the hour when the church will be taken to Heaven. It could happen today or tomorrow or even sometime next year or even five years from now. We will only know when that day arrives and it will surprise many people, especially those who are not ready for it.
“But…I went to church almost every week. I’ve been in church since I was a child, why do I need to give my heart to Him?” Because knowing about Him and being in church does not save you! Keeping a place warm on a pew doesn’t make you a Christian. Even being inside a church every time the doors are open for fifty years doesn’t make you a Christian. If you haven’t committed your life to Him and given your heart to Him and made sure to walk with Him every day, then you don’t belong to Him…yet. On that day when the church is taken up, don’t be left here.
The trap that most of us live in is created by Satan when we are young. We live in the “cell” that is our life and it becomes comfortable. I’m not saying that we worship Satan but before we can decide about following Jesus, he can come in and tempt us with a comfortable existence that we don’t want to leave. Many people, especially in the South, fall into this trap and they don’t even know it. They’ve been taken to church since they were in diapers, so the idea of going to church is planted early in life. This isn’t a bad thing but for those who have grown up in this culture, it can be deceiving.
When you ask someone if they are a member of this church and they tell you that they’ve been going to this church ever since they were a baby, that is a clear expression of a “cultural Christian”. Going to church, reading the Bible, listening to sermons every week at church, and even teaching Sunday School are all wonderful things to do but these become habitual. Some would ask me “What’s wrong with having a habit of going to church?”. Nothing is wrong with it BUT if you believe that you are a Christian because of your attendance record then you’re missing the point.
Being a follower of and a believer in Jesus doesn’t automatically happen just because you are in church or are a member of a church. Belief in Jesus comes from hearing the Word of God preached and being convicted by the Holy Spirit that you NEED Jesus as your Savior! No amount of work on your part or anything in this world will help you become a Christian. God sent Jesus to do what was necessary to save all of mankind and He did. All we have to do is believe in our hearts that He did and accept Him as our Savior.
If we want the peace of God, we must first have peace with God. Jesus promised to give us His peace and that is wonderful but you must be a child of God, adopted into the family by the Holy Spirit through belief in Jesus Christ to have it! There is no formula or certain task you have to perform other than your conviction that you need Jesus and your positive response to that conviction.
In life, we have so many areas where we have to perform just to get a promotion or even a job. Salvation is a gift from God by our acceptance of Jesus as our Savior through faith in Him. There is no formula or any special act or anything that we can do to “help” Jesus in the saving of our souls. He has already taken care of the “act” that was needed to do that, all we have to do is choose to accept His gift to us…period.
What is “peace with God”? It is the joy of knowing that you are His and nothing can take you out of His hand! Once you have accepted Jesus as your Savior and prayed for understanding His Word and really studied the Bible some, you will have that joy and peace that no one outside the family of God can know or even understand. I pray that many people will recognize that they need Jesus as their Savior because we are on the verge of the prophecies found in the Bible regarding what most people view as the “end of days” or that is foretold in the Book of Revelation. Don’t dismiss this article as someone trying to instill fear about our future. The prophecy is real and every one of them in the Bible has come true except for those near the end…which is where we are now.
The Living Message of Christ 