Let us turn to Matthew 24. I thought we could go through this chapter today as much as possible, just looking at some of the verses. We have gone over these verses in the past many times. So let us turn to Matthew 24. I will just read the first several verses, but we are going to read much of this chapter as we go along. Matthew 24:1 says:
And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple.
God does not waste space. He does not waste space at all, even in describing this historical event. Even as it says:
And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple…
Right away, He is telling us what is going to be much in focus in this chapter, which is God’s leaving of the church, of the congregations. From the very beginning, Christ actually takes a physical position and His movement of going out and departing from the temple is in keeping with what we will learn as we go through Matthew 24, as this is exactly what God has done in our day.
Then we read in Matthew 24:2:
And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.
This is a reference to the churches and congregations of the world, because there is no single or individual church that is still being used of God.
This is what some people have struggled with. Some people still struggle with this as they ask, “What about the faithful churches? I know that, for the most part, the churches have gone bad. I know that they are apostate, but my church is faithful. My pastor speaks about God’s judgment and he knows about election.” Then they will list some of the correct teachings that they think that their pastor and their church teaches. They will say, “God is not judging all churches.”
Actually, this is exactly what we used to believe. We used to think that the Great Tribulation was a time when God was slowly putting out the candlesticks, from one congregation to another. It got harder and harder to find a faithful church, but we thought that they were there.
Yet this is not how it was. God was finished with all churches. There is not one stone left upon another in all the world, as far as the churches are concerned, that God views as being faithful.
The reason for this is that Christ was in the churches—He was in the midst of the congregations—and so God could look at them as being faithful, even though they were not in many ways. But the moment that Jesus left—as He just went out and departed from the temple—the moment that He left, then that church and every church in all the world ceased to be faithful instantaneously.
The day before May 20th in 1988, which was part of the church age, the next day would be the day before Pentecost and the end of the church age on May 21st in 1988. May 20th in 1988, God was working in the churches. He was saving, though not very much; but He was working and He was saving and they were His people. As soon as the church age comes to an end, He ceases to work. They are no longer His people and the church age is over because it is the time for this.
If we look at Isaiah 1:21, this is the question that some ask. It says:
How is the faithful city become an harlot!…
This is like what we read in Revelation 17, “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS.” This is referring to the churches and congregations.
How did this happen? How did a “faithful city” become a “harlot”?
Well, first, we have to ask the question: how did they ever become a “faithful city” or become identified as a “faithful city”? They had “high places.” They had errors in their confessions and in the creeds all throughout history, and yet God counted them and considered them “faithful”; but then, suddenly, they became a “harlot.” God saw the same sins in the “high places” that they taught and were embedded in their creeds, which was the way it had been since the creeds had been developed; and yet, now, He is saying that they are not “faithful” and that they are a “harlot.”
Well, if we read the rest of Isaiah 1:21, we will see the answer. It continues on to tell us:
How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it…
Who is “righteousness”? Christ is “righteousness.” We read in 1 Corinthians 1:30:
But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:
Jesus is “made unto us…righteousness.” It is by His righteousness that many become righteous. It is not by our righteousness; it is only by His.
So when He was in the midst of the church, it could, therefore, be said that the church was “full of judgment” and that “righteousness lodged in it.” However, as soon as Jesus left, instantaneously and immediately the moment that the Holy Spirit came out of the midst, God saw their sins. It was then that God viewed them as a “harlot,” as those who were involved with sins and coming under His judgment.
This is why it does not matter what your church teaches. This is not the issue. Your church has some errors; however, it would not matter if, most of the time, your pastor was faithful; nothing that is going on with any church matters. If they are a church, God has left them; therefore, their sins “are come to remembrance” and are before Him.
This is the same thing that God says in Revelation 2, but in a different way. He is speaking about the church in Thyatira, and we read in Revelation 2:20-21:
Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not.
This is referring to the whole church age. This was the “space to repent” that they had been given. God did see their sin, but He was overlooking it. He was longsuffering with them and giving them plenty of time. Of course, He knew that they would not repent; but, per chance, even though He knew from the beginning that they would not, He waited to see if they might repent and they never did. This was the whole church age.
Then we read in Revelation 2:22:
Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation…
As soon as the church age ended, the Great Tribulation began and judgment began at “the house of God.” God left. Satan entered in. Satan had always been there; however, at this point he was given 100% total rule over the churches and congregations.
He is now the king of the church. He is the one who “sitteth in the temple of God.” He is the one who is now in charge. God had always battled him down through the centuries of the church age; however, God is not battling him anymore. God let him go. God loosed Satan, and God knew exactly what he would do once he was loosed. God knew that Satan would go after “the camp of the saints.” Satan would go where he could try to make himself to be God, the place where he could be as he has always desired to be. He has always wanted to be like God. Now he can be worshipped as God, because this was where God was worshipped since the first century A.D. This is where the whole world thinks that God can be found, which is in the churches.
So as soon as the Holy Spirit came out of the midst, this is when the church became a “harlot.” The week before, the pastor could have preached a very good and faithful message, and God could have blessed it. However, a week later, after May 21, 1988, there was no blessing. There will be no blessing because this is an impossibility.
This is what people struggle with. This is what we struggled with, too, at first. Did God depart from 100% of the churches, or was it 99.9%? The answer is that it is 100%. God gave up Judah and Jerusalem 100% into the hands of the Babylonians, and He has given up the churches today completely into Satan’s hands.
It goes on in Matthew 24:3 to say:
And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?
After reading this verse, what do you think Matthew 24 is going to be about? The disciples asked Jesus a question:
…what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?
This is pretty straightforward, but try to tell this to many in the churches. They somehow see this as a reference to 70 A.D. They think that everything in Matthew 24 is speaking about the destruction of the city of Jerusalem by the Romans in the first century A.D.
The disciples asked what the “sign” of His coming would be. Did Christ come back after 33 A.D., just 37 years later in 70 A.D.? Was it “the end of the world” in 70 A.D.? Did we miss it?
No, we did not miss it. The church is the one that is missing it. They are not understanding something. God is not always this clear. Sometimes the Bible is very difficult to understand, but this is pretty clear. The disciples asked this question, and then Jesus answers this question by giving us references throughout the chapter to “great tribulation,” to “the coming of the Son of man,” the gathering of “his elect,” etc. The subject of this chapter is very clear and very definite.
So it can only be that some people want to place this information in the first century in order to avoid what this is really talking about. If they put it there, then they do not have to worry about it, do they? They do not have to worry about what Jesus is actually saying in any of these statements throughout this chapter. It is amazing the lengths that people can go to sometimes to avoid the Bible, to avoid what God is saying in His Word.
I am going to skip down to verse 10 and we will read a few verses there in Matthew 24. It says in Matthew 24:10-13:
And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
These verses are giving us a good description of the character of this time of the Great Tribulation. It is the time when “many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many,” which is certainly true. This is definitely what is going on today.
How many false gospels are out there? How many false doctrines are there? They are so numerous. They really are. They are all over the place. They are so numerous that if you were to pick up a phonebook and you were to open it up to the churches, none of those churches are teaching the truth, none of them. You could go and visit every single one and you would not find the true Gospel being taught in any of those churches today.
For one thing, this is because God has ended the church age. It does not matter if it is a building, on the radio, or on the television. The only consistent source of truth in the world today, apart from the Bible, has been Family Radio. There are other worldwide broadcasting systems that Christians broadcast into the world, not to the degree that Family Radio does, but there are some others; however, you are not going to find the truth there either. You are not going to find the truth when listening to the televangelists. They are also not teaching the truth.
On one hand, the truth is very limited. It is very limited today because there are so many bringing untruths; but on the other hand, it is abundant as God is spreading His Word through Family Radio across the face of the earth; and this fits in perfectly with what Jesus was saying about the character of the end.
In Matthew 24:12, Jesus also mentioned:
And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
And Jesus defined “love” as, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”
As we look out on the world, what do we see? To some degree, people used to keep God’s commandments, even those just in the world. For example, on Sunday, for much of America’s history, to some degree, they kept the Sunday Sabbath because everything was shut down. Also, for much of history, to some degree, the world kept the marriage laws. They understood that they were not to divorce, as well as many other things. Homosexuality was also in the closet throughout history until today when it has just mushroomed; it is all over the place.
This is because the love of many is waxing cold. There is no love in the sense of keeping God’s commandments. This will also translate into harder hearts of men as we see the many awful things that people can do to one another, and these things are going on all over the whole world.
Matthew 24:13 says again:
But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
Endure what? What must one “endure unto the end”? What do you and I have to endure? We have to “endure sound doctrine.”
Jesus said in John 8:31-32:
Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
He is saying that we are to continue in His Word; we are to endure. It is not that easy, is it? It is not that easy. We have experienced exactly what Christ has been talking about, as far as the information that God is unsealing at this time as He is opening up the Scriptures.
What did He begin with? We learned many years ago that God finished using the churches and congregations, and some people who were Family Radio listeners or Reformed individuals just could not abide by this. They could not continue, right from the very beginning. They just thought, “Oh, no; the gates of hell will never prevail against Christ’s church.”
Well, they had this wrong, but that verse is not talking about the local churches, the corporate body. It is talking about the eternal Church, the elect of God. The gates of hell have never once prevailed against one of God’s elect people. There has never been one whom Jesus died for who perished in their sin because of Satan’s devices, never, not one case.
Have there been churches that perished over the course of history because they fell away due to Satan working in the congregation? Yes; there have been so many that we could not count them. There have been many churches, whole denominations.
Look at today. Look at what the true Gospel is in comparison to what the church is teaching today. Have the gates of hell prevailed against them, even though they are still standing? Yes; of course they have. However, when Jesus says in Matthew that the gates of hell will not prevail, He is referring to the Eternal Church.
Some people really just do not want to accept this, and so they resist it. I am afraid that what this comes down to is that they love their church more than they love the Word of God.
When Christ set up that illustration of father against daughter and mother against son, it is then that it will be seen whom you love the most. Is it something else? He used the illustration of the family because, normally, it is the family that people do love the most. Is it something else or is it God?
Now at this time, God is trying all professed believers. His people will certainly pass. In this sense, they will not be tried; but He is trying every professed Christian. Are you really a child of God? Are you truly born again? If so, you will continue in His Word; you will continue in His doctrine.
What else did we learn? We learned about God’s judgment process when we learned about annihilation. To me, this was more shocking than discovering and learning about the end of the church age. You mean there is not going to be a place called “hell”?
I thought that the number one principle of being a true believer was that you had to understand this and you had to know that God would judge man and cast him into hell forevermore and, yes, punish him eternally.
Then all of a sudden, God revealed to us all the more how good He is, how really good He is and how kind and merciful, even in His judgment and that He will not destroy a man eternally, causing them to suffer endlessly. He has even given us verses in Deuteronomy 25 in which He speaks of stripes and says that only forty can be given and no more; and so there is a limit to punishment. There is a limit to judgment that cannot be exceeded.
Many people stopped right at this doctrine. They did not endure and continue on with the true Gospel. They did not continue on with what God says in His Word. They just could not bear these new doctrines. They were an offense to them; however, Jesus warned us about being offended by His Word, because it is an offense to people.
If some of these teachings are an offense to you, this is a terrible thing. It is awful if we would be offended by what God says. It is awful because you and I are not the determiners of the Gospel. It is not up to you and it is not up to me. It is not up to anybody to say, “This is the gospel, because this is the gospel that I like. This is the one that I want to be involved with, not that other Gospel. I do not want a Gospel where I cannot go to church. I do not want a Gospel where there is no eternal wrath of God.”
If some of these people would speak honestly, they would say, “Do you know why I do not like annihilation? It is because I lived so many years under the threat of eternal damnation. I lived for such a long time as a Christian because I thought I was going to suffer in hell forevermore. If you take this away from me, then it is almost like I have wasted my life, because annihilation is not much of a threat. What do you mean that on the last day I am just going to be annihilated and that is it?”
You can hear people call the Open Forum and make statements like this. It is like they feel cheated or they feel robbed that they lived the Christian life so earnestly because they really thought and believed that there was going to be a place called “hell.” Their attitude is, “Do you expect me to now believe that there is no hell? If I had heard this when the Gospel first came to me, I would not have signed up.”
Is this really what they mean? If so, this is the problem. The problem is they signed up. They signed on board. They thought it was like joining the army, but there is no signing up to be a child of God. God is the One who drafts us. It is not an enlistment; He drafts us. He draws people to Himself against their will, contrary to their will, because no one’s will has ever gotten them saved or made them a child of God; but Jesus knows. He has always known who signed up. He has always known this. This is only known to Him. This is not known to us and we would never want to point fingers and judge, but He knows.
So God patiently waited to the proper time and then He began trying man’s heart. Each one of these teachings or doctrines that God has stored up against this day are perfectly designed by the Creator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, to hit right at the heart of a proud man, right at the heart of a spiritually dead person. These doctrines are designed to humble us.
Maybe a true believer had some pride in some of these things; and yet since they are a true believer and since God has worked in their heart, they just say, “I am not the determiner of what truth is. Jesus said that He is the truth. He is the truth. He is the One who takes full responsibility for opening up these things at this time and He is the One who is revealing these things and teaching us that this is the truth.”
So when we read in Matthew 24:13:
But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
No individual is going to be able to endure to the end in their own strength and by their own efforts.
It is like the case of the Syrophenician woman when Christ is dealing with her. She had a daughter who was ill. First, He ignored her. Then He insulted her. It seemed as if He was doing everything that He could possibly do in order to not have to listen to her and to not have to grant her request. In other words, Christ was being an offense to her. It is offensive to be ignored. It is offensive to be called a dog. It is offensive, and this is the Word of God.
So He was trying her. She knew that He was the great miracle worker. She knew that He had been going all around and doing all kinds of miracles. Then she came along and wanted a miracle that was not even as great as raising someone from the dead or as giving the blind sight or the deaf ears. She came along, but He put her off and did not respond right away.
We can see an issue of pride in this. God was intentionally stalling and ignoring her. Would she go away? Would she just become offended and get up and leave?
Then He goes on to call her a name, and so forth, and yet she did not leave. Why not? Why did she not leave? She did not leave because, on one hand, it was like He was giving her a stiff arm; but on the other hand, He had hold of her. He had hold of her and He was not going to let her go, because she was one of His elect.
So God draws on one hand; on the other hand, it appears that He is actually even pushing us away. But His elect will not be lost. They will be gathered and they will endure, because He will make them endure.
It is like Jacob wresting with God all night long. If we go back to Genesis 32, this is an interesting passage. We read in Genesis 32:24-26:
And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh…
This is God speaking and He is saying to Jacob, “Let me go.” It seems that God is trying to get away from Jacob. God wants to leave Jacob, but He has not blessed him. He has not blessed him at all and Jacob is aware of this; and so it goes on to say in Genesis 32:26 where Jacob is now speaking:
…I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.
Jacob is wresting with God. Jacob has hold of Him and he is not going to let Him go except he be blessed. Obviously, God is allowing this to happen.
So on one hand, God knows that He is going to bless Jacob. He knows “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” From the foundation of the world, God had died for Jacob’s sins. However, on the other hand, God is making as if He wants to go away. If He does go away, there is no blessing; and this is exactly how God can work with us.
This is why God tells us not to faint, not to give up. Does He not say this? Do not faint, but continue, continually come, persevere.
I was talking with someone before about “irresistible grace.” Yes, this is true. God will draw every one of His elect and they will not be able to resist. It is irresistible. But at the same time, from our perspective, we had better hang on. We had better hang on and we had better continue to wrestle with God in prayer and cry to Him like the Ninevites, “O Lord, have mercy upon me,” if you think that you are not saved; or, “O Lord, have mercy on my mother; have mercy on my brother.” We can beseech God’s mercy for whomever we are concerned about, and we hang on. We hang on, praying that God will hear.
This is what He is referring to in Matthew 24 regarding those who “endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” Ultimately and finally, we know that if we are there at the end on that day and God takes us up, it was nothing that we did, not at all. He moved within His people “to will and to do of his good pleasure.” He also moved in us to continue, spiritually, to wrestle with Him or to continue to pray or to continue to read the Bible or to continue to be humbled beneath His teaching, as this is the teaching of God and we recognize this.
Going back to Matthew 24, it says in Matthew 24:14:
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.
This Gospel is to be preached in all the world.
Can you imagine if the world that basically operated on the same level for most of its history up until the 18th or 19th century or even if the way in which the world operated in the early 20th century were still here? In other words, what if we were still riding a horse and buggy and had to take a ship to get to places, which was the transportation system that was in place throughout most of history until just the last couple of centuries? Can you imagine the task that would be staring us in the face today as we would be commanded to bring the Gospel to a whole world of seven billion people?
We sure are lucky that we do not have to do this in that manner. It surely is a lucky thing, right? It is a good thing that man just suddenly discovered electrons and developed all of these electronics and this whole electronic medium. It is a very good thing that all of a sudden, we have this instant communication.
I really believe that this is a sign of the end. This is a sign of the end. If you look at the history of man, men in past were not only our equals intellectually, but they were our superiors! We can see this if we read their writings and their studies. They were fluent in Greek and Hebrew and Latin. In all of these things, they were our superiors.
On top of all of this, they were much more diligent in their Bible studies than we are. We are all so distracted, for one thing, by all of these lights and whistles that go on in our day. Plus, since the fall of man, man is seeing more and more corruption as time goes on; and yet those brilliant men of the past were never really able to figure it out. They did not have electric lights. They did not have many of the simplest things that we have today.
The reason for this is because it was not time. God had a timetable. He knew, for one thing, that He was going to end the church age. Therefore, even though out of the seven billion people of the world, two billion of them are professing Christians, they are useless. When it comes to sharing this end-time message of the Gospel, you cannot trust them and you would not give them this task.
How was God going to do this? God says, “For many are called, but few are chosen.” He says this in one place. In another place, He speaks of the harvest and He says, “The labourers are few.”
Some churches try to use this as a plea for people, “Will you please get involved? Will you start doing something for the Lord?” But this is not what He is saying. He is saying that at the time of harvest, the laborers will be the “few,” the elect, His people who are scattered to the four winds. They came out of the church and they are not even organized. They are like ants scurrying around with no guide, overseer, or ruler. How are they going to share this message with all of the world?
God is also very clear about this as He says, “For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.” He has made these kinds of statements in the Bible concerning this day, this time of the end.
So He made some previous arrangements. He worked in the lives of certain secular men. He began giving them insight and they began to make many inventions at such a rate the world has never seen before. Now, here we sit with computers. We now even have the ability to broadcast anything that is said here at the fellowship, or you could do this in your home, to potentially anyone in all of the world.
We no longer have to take a ship, like the Apostle Paul, and go on a missionary voyage of several months and face all kinds of dangers and, on top of this, have a very limited number of people whom you wind up dealing with, because you are only one man. Today, you can be a man whom God has raised up, like Mr. Camping, and made very, very sure that he would understand the true Gospel. I am sure that God chastened him severely over the last fifty years and made very sure that he would understand the true Gospel, and then God blessed the ministry of Family Radio to the degree that it practically covers the whole world. On top of this, we were talking about how the Word of God is an offence.
When we take all of this into consideration, for a program like the “Open Forum” to succeed or for the teaching that you find on Family Radio to be successful enough to blanket the whole world, would he not have to really be someone who is very nice and considerate and he is going to have to be someone who tells people pretty much what they want to hear; because, otherwise, they will not support Family Radio?
Just think of how incredible it is that there is this ministry that for many years has just said, “We want to teach the Bible and we do not care what the churches think about it. We do not even care, dear listeners, what you think about it. We just want to be faithful to the Bible.”
At this point, for many years, the Bible has been clearly taught. How many people do you know who are offended by the ministry of Family Radio? I know lots. Many of these are in the church. There are many who were Family Radio listeners who became offended.
How in the world then does this work? Not only is the ministry of Family Radio not being pinched off since the end of the church age, since the teaching of annihilation, since the teaching that Christ was slain from the foundation of the world, not only is it not being pinched off to where they would need to sell a station here or two to make up for the loss in budget, but it is expanding. It is growing more. How is this being done?
Oh, I know what they did. They decided to sell commercial time. That is it, or maybe they had bake sales. No, they have not done this, have they? Have they sold one minute worth of time? It might be valuable to some advertisers out there when they see how many listeners there are to Family Radio in the United States or across the world. But have they sold one minute’s worth of time to try to raise money? Never.
But God is not there. God is not behind them. God is not supporting them. This is what the churches say, and yet the church itself, just about any church, struggles to raise money on a constant basis. They will do things like bake sales and they will do things to raise funds for their church, for example, to build a new wing on the building. But this is not the case with Family Radio, not at all.
Again, Matthew 24:14 says:
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.
We qualify today, do we not? This is another indicator, like Israel becoming a nation again. When we see the fig tree in leaf, “ye know that summer is nigh”; harvest is here.
Likewise, when there is the capability to share the Gospel, first of all, with all of the world, then we can begin to think, “Hey, we are there. We are there!” There was not this capability in previous centuries. They did not have this capability. We have the capability to do so, and so this is a big indicator that the end is here, the end of time, that God is finished with this world. Next year, He will be.
Let us close.