Let us go to Luke 6. I will begin in verse 20. We read in Luke 6:20-26:
And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets. But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep. Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets.
I will stop reading there.
This is the parallel passage to the Beatitudes that we find in Matthew 5. These are very familiar to us. This is known as the Sermon on the Mount. We read in Matthew 5:2-3:
And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
God loves to teach. We find this in many places in the Bible, and yet it does not make sense to the world that believers are so involved in their Bibles and that they are so wrapped up in them. The world does not understand this.
I remember one guy I used to work with. He was Catholic. When I would read my Bible at lunchtime, he would say to me, “Do you not know that there are other books in the world? There are other books.” What he meant was that he did not understand how I could just keep reading this same Book.
I understood what he meant. Some people do read a fictional book more than once, but most people do not read a fictional book again and again and get an in-depth study from it. It is the same with non-fiction books, which can have a little bit of good information in them. What value is there in wrapping one’s life up in a single book of psychology or a single book of history or a single book of math?
But for the true believers, they are completely wrapped up in the Bible. This is because the Bible is the Word of God and God teaches them through the Bible. For instance, let us go to Psalm 25 where we will see several references to teaching. We read in Psalm 25:2-3:
O my God, I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed, let not mine enemies triumph over me. Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed: let them be ashamed which transgress without cause.
One big tactic that the world uses is to try to get the believer to try to feel shame. They often declare, “You should be ashamed of yourself that you are going around fear mongering and telling everyone about May 21st. You should be ashamed of this.”
Is it fear mongering if a hurricane is coming and the weather service interrupts your regularly-scheduled programming to tell you that a hurricane is coming and that it is going to hit right where you live? No one would say that this is fear mongering, right? Instead, they would say, “Thank you. We give thanks to the weather service for telling us this so that we can make preparation. We can gather some valuables. We can collect our children and escape and get out of here before it hits.” This is not fear mongering. Everyone knows that this is a good thing and that the people of the weather service are doing a good work.
This is how things are, too, when the child of God absolutely knows that Judgment Day is coming on May 21st and they are warning people. The intent is not to fear monger.
Some people even say that we are trying to scare people into the churches. No; we do not want anybody to go to the church, so why should anyone think that we are trying to scare people into the churches? Do we have any kind of membership anywhere that we want people to sign up for? What is the purpose behind this fear mongering? It is not to get people into the churches. It is not to develop some kind of list of names. We do not even know or care who is out there and receiving this message. This is in God’s hands and under His control.
Is it to make money? This is something that the world suspects because there have been Christian ministries who have done things like this and deceived people in order to make money. But how is Family Radio making money by putting up billboards all over the world saying that Judgment Day is May 21st? They are spending all of their money. They are going for broke to get this message out. If any money were to come in, they would spend this, too. They are not trying to gather money. They are not trying to get rich. Anybody who knows anything about Family Radio would realize this. They would know that this is not the reason behind it.
The reason is just to give a warning to people because God has told us to do this. In Ezekiel 33, God speaks of the watchman. When he sees “the sword come upon the land,” he is to “blow the trumpet, and warn the people.” Then He says in Ezekiel 33:7:
So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me.
This is God’s responsibility. He is saying that He takes full responsibility. He wants His people to warn the world, but we should know that this warning is actually coming from Him and that He is the One who is behind all of this and the One doing all of this.
This is why God’s people are so busy right now occupying with this Gospel message, and this is the Gospel. Whatever God decides is the Gospel, this is the Gospel; and saying, “Judgment Day” is a big part of the message of God and the Gospel.
Going back to Psalm 25:3, God is saying to the true believer who waits on Him:
Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed: let them be ashamed which transgress without cause.
When you are standing outside a stadium on the Lord’s Day passing out tracts on Sunday the Sabbath, people look at you like you are the strangest thing in the world. But no; the child of God is doing what God requires. He is obeying God. He is being faithful to God.
The world does not understand this. They think that Sunday is just another day to relax, a day to have fun, a day to do whatever they want. They do not understand the whole idea of the Sabbath, the whole idea of spiritual activity on that day; and yet God does and He is telling the believer not to be concerned with what other people think.
We are not to even care what other people think of us. We are definitely not to feel ashamed because of the message that we have to share with them as we are standing there while these people are going contrary to His Word and to what He would have them to do on the Lord’s Day. No; we are not to be ashamed; let them be ashamed. If anyone should be ashamed it is those who are going about and doing things that are contrary to the Law of God, to the commandments of God.
We find this problem everywhere and we are not to judge them, but we should also not allow their judgment to affect us to the point where we want to just crawl under a rock because they do not like what we are doing and because they do not like this message. Mankind would try to have the child of God feel shame about this, but God is telling us not to feel any shame because God is the One who determines what is right and what is wrong, what is proper and what is improper, what someone should be ashamed of and what someone should not be ashamed of. We should be ashamed of sin in any form; but if we are doing something good, like sharing the Gospel out of a heart of love and concern, do not feel ashamed.
It goes on to say in Psalm 25:4-7:
Show me thy ways, O JEHOVAH; teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day. Remember, O JEHOVAH, thy tender mercies and thy lovingkindnesses; for they have been ever of old. Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness’ sake, O JEHOVAH.
This reminds me of the thief on the cross who said, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” Psalm 25:7 is basically what he is asking for:
Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to thy mercy remember thou me…
God’s mercy; this is what he is pleading for, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom;” and Christ said, “Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.” This is because God is remembering His mercy. This is like a plea to God. We can remind God not to forget that He is extremely merciful, that His “mercy endureth for ever,” that He “delighteth in mercy,” and that He has “abundant mercy.”
We are sinners reminding God, as if we could, and this is what He tells us to do, “God, please do not forget that You are gracious and kind and full of compassion.” This is what He tells us to do when we go to Him in prayer. He tells us to “take with you words” in order to bring these things to remembrance, but this is really just in order to encourage ourselves as we pray to Him of who He is. He is not a greedy miser with His spiritual riches, with His forgiveness and mercy in salvation. He does not hoard this. He delights to bestow this. He gives this to people and anyone whom He gives this to does not deserve it.
Then we read in Psalm 25:8-9:
Good and upright is JEHOVAH: therefore will he teach sinners in the way. The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way.
God teaches and we know how He teaches. We read in 1 Corinthians 2:13:
Which things also we speak…
This is referring to the teachings of the Bible. It continues:
…not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
The Holy Ghost is God. We are to compare Scripture with Scripture, “here a little, and there a little,” and “precept upon precept.” This is how we arrive at correct doctrine, because then the Holy Spirit is teaching.
This is exactly what is going on in our day. We read in Mark 13:11 of this period of the Great Tribulation:
But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.
At this time, God says to “warn them from me.” When His people do this, when we are acting as ambassadors as we beseech others to be reconciled to Him, we do this on behalf of Christ as we go in His name.
God is making sure that we understand this. Yes; we are doing the talking and the sharing, and we are the ones who are pointing out the verses, but this is really coming from God. It is the Holy Ghost because we have followed the right way, the proper methodology, which is Scripture with Scripture as we harmonized conclusions.
The church that is so judgmental as far as the teaching of Family Radio and these doctrines, do they follow the methodology of the Bible? Do they understand that when we look at a verse, we need to get out the concordance to look up the words? As we do, we go to Matthew, we go to Revelation, we go here, we go there, and that we do this in order to define the words and to allow God to give His own definition.
Do they understand that this is what we are to do? No; they see this as jumping out of context. If we show them this verse in 1 Corinthians 2:13 and then turn to Isaiah to understand what God means where He says that we are to go “here a little, and there a little” and look at “precept upon precept” in order to match and harmonize with what the Bible is saying, they do not get it.
This is why they are blind and deaf and why they cannot see or understand what is going on. They really believe that the people of God are heretics. They really believe that we are way off when we bring a date because the Bible clearly states that “of that day and hour knoweth no man,” and yet the real problem is that they do not understand how to understand the Bible. They do not know how to listen to God. It is not that they do not know how to teach. It is that they do not know how to sit in subjection to the One who does do the teaching, to God Himself, to the Spirit of God.
The churches think that they are the teachers. Some churches are more obvious about this, like the Pope. The Pope’s words are considered to be supreme and he is the authority. The Protestant churches do the same thing but in a more discrete way. In the Protestant churches, the pastor or the theologian or the men of the past are the authority rather than God; but God indicates that this is not the way it is. He indicates that He is the One who will teach and that we are not “to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man.”
This commandment, which is about women not teaching, does this still apply in our day since the church age is over? Definitely, because this principle still applies. The principle is that all the people who profess to be Christian are really saying that they are the Bride of Christ; they are the woman; and the Bible tells us that a woman is not “to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man.”
This is because, during the church age, as a woman sat silently in the congregation, this was a witness right back to the pastor that this was exactly the same way that they were to come to the Bible. They were to do it quietly, without a word. We should never say our ideas or our thoughts and what comes out of our mind, nor should we ever quote men in order to establish doctrine, “Calvin said this about election. Luther said this about faith.” No; this is not what we are to do. We go to the Bible and He is the One who teaches, as long as we follow His methods.
Let us go back to Luke 6:20. It says:
And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God.
Does this mean that if anyone is poor, if they do not have earthly possessions, that they are “blessed” and that “yours is the kingdom of God,” that they are saved? Is this what this means? It does not mean this, does it?
I used to have a lot more interaction with homeless people years ago. The church I went to had dinners for homeless people and we spent a lot of time with homeless people. I observed that they can be just as proud and stubborn as anyone else; in some cases, more so. If they are an unsaved individual, they still have a proud heart. Everyone has a proud heart. It does not mean that they are saved or that they are going to Heaven just because they do not have a home or because they do not have money or because they do not have things. God is not saying this.
Again, how do we know this? How would we know this if we stayed in the context of Luke 6? How could we come to this conclusion? The only way we could know what God is talking about is to go over to Matthew 5:3. We read:
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
This is a small example of how God wrote the whole Bible. He leaves things dangling and hanging so that people can quickly get the wrong idea. They can easily think that “the poor” are the “blessed” ones. Then when we search it out, we find in Matthew that He is defining them to be “the poor in spirit.” They are the “blessed” ones because they would be someone whom God has broken and humbled. It does not matter how much money they have or what kind of house they live in or their possessions. God saves someone and then they become “poor in spirit.” These are the ones who will enter into Heaven.
So this is what we have to do. If we had not found the answer in Matthew, we might have needed to even find the answer back in the Old Testament. But God kindly made this comparison of one passage to another passage easy, right?
It is not always this easy. “Of that day and hour knoweth no man”; this is certainly not easy, but it is the same principle. He does not complete His thought. He does not fill it out and He allows people to take this verse and to use it in a wrong way. Therefore, they conclude that Judgment Day will not be May 21st. They then believe that they do not have to do anything about this.
This is really what this is all about. People do not want to have to do anything about this. They do not want to stop their sin. They do not want to stop going the way that they are going. If they can convince themselves that there is nothing to worry about, then they can just continue to live as they normally do.
This is also why people are so upset. They realize that if this were true from their perspective, then they really should be doing something, right? They would realize that they really should not be involved in the things that they have been involved in and that they should go to God more and read the Bible more and pray more.
Just ask some people here, maybe even some of the children, “Have you done anything in response to this information? Have you done anything? During all of this time that you have been hearing this and hearing this and hearing this, has this impacted your life in any way?”
If anyone has been constantly shooting this down in their minds, they have probably not changed one bit. They have probably not done anything in response to this information, and yet this information requires action like the Ninevites took action. This requires someone to go to God and to go to Him in an earnest and very serious way.
Going back to Luke 6:21, it says:
Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled…
Again, this is an incomplete thought. Are the starving people in the world blessed because they are hungry? No; they are no more blessed than those who have a good meal. But we turn again to Matthew 5:6 where God makes this easy for us. We read in Matthew 5:6:
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
We find here a little more of an explanation. This is not because of different writing styles. This is not because Luke missed this part of it. This is because God wrote this in this way. This is exactly the way that He wanted it to be written.
This is what He has done throughout the whole Bible. He gives a verse and it is like a little snare that is laid for someone. One verse says that He is “not willing that any should perish.” People find this verse and conclude that God is not willing that anyone should be destroyed, that He is not willing that anyone should perish, but they need to read the rest of the Bible. He is referring to His elect. These are the ones whom He is not willing for them to perish; but, of course, many will perish.
There are just a great number of examples like this in the Bible where a statement is made. If someone quickly jumps on it and grabs it, they will come to a wrong conclusion about 100% of the time. This is just the nature of how God wrote the Bible.
This is like what people have done with this information about Judgment Day. What have they done with this? Since this is so close, it is constantly on my mind. How can we stop thinking that Judgment Day is less than three weeks away? What have people done with this information?
If someone is in the church, they might take their pastor’s word and not check anything out. But maybe they have gone to the Bible and casually skimmed its surface and read a verse like the verse that says that no man knows. For them, that was all they needed; that is it.
How can they come to right knowledge this way when God tells us that His Word is like “hid treasure” that we have to dig into and search after, like buried gold or silver? This is how we come to the Bible. We come with a ready mind to study to see “whether those things were so” when we hear of them.
It goes on in Luke 6:21 to say:
…Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.
By the way, let us get a quick definition from the Bible of what it means to be “blessed.” If we go to Psalm 133:3, we read:
As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there JEHOVAH commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit.” “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness.” Then we read again in Luke 6:21:
…Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.
That is, you are going to receive eternal life because you are one of God’s elect. Yet now for a period, there is weeping. There could be mourning or sorrow.
I have a couple of verses to look at that have to do with weeping. If we go to John 16, it says in John 16:20-22:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament…
And Christ is speaking to the disciples. It continues:
…but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.
This is the normal condition of the believers throughout history. “In the world ye shall have tribulation.” Tribulation can make someone feel a little sorrowful. It is no fun to be made a reproach or to be reviled or to be looked down on. This is no fun, but Christ is giving us the big picture; and I think that we can all see the big picture now, right? Maybe we had trouble with seeing this big picture for awhile in our lives, but we have three weeks left and then eternity. This is the big picture: eternal life! This is the blessing that has always been in view: “even life for evermore.”
So here we are under three weeks left. We have a task at hand. We have a job to do. When we carry this out, there is definitely going to be affliction in some way. With some, there will be more affliction than with others; but everyone may experience this to some degree. Anyone will experience this who is going out into the world with this message of Judgment Day.
So God is basically saying that for a short period of time, we may weep; but, however, as we read in Luke 6:21:
…Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.
God tells us that there is a certain time or a certain season for everything. In Ecclesiastes 3:1-4, it says:
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
This is why Christians do not get involved with dancing in this life. This is not the proper time. We also do not get involved in going out and having all of the fun that we can by enjoying ourselves and living it up. We do not live to “eat, drink, and be merry.” This is not the time. This is not the time to just laugh and laugh and laugh.
People really like to laugh. Everyone likes to laugh. Just look at how much the world wants to laugh. They pay people millions of dollars to put on a television show just to try to get people to laugh or for a movie in order to get people to laugh. This is probably because the best thing that someone could think of would be to have a nice laugh.
But God is indicating that there is a time for everything and that it is not yet for the child of God to laugh. Do we laugh now? Yes; but this is speaking to a state of mind, what people have in their heart, what their desires are, what they are seeking after. Fun, pleasure, and laughter all go together, but this is not what the true believer is seeking after.
Turn to Psalm 126. It says in Psalm 126:1-2:
When JEHOVAH turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter…
The captivity of Zion was when the Jews of Judah were in Babylon. After seventy years, their captivity was turned. They were released. We read again:
Then was our mouth filled with laughter…
This was because that seventy-year period, which concluded with the release of the Jews who had been in captivity from 609 B.C. to 539 B.C., typified the Great Tribulation. Then King Cyrus freed the Jews. They were told to “go up to Jerusalem,” which was a picture of the rapture. This is when we laugh. When David brought the Ark into Jerusalem, it was then that he danced. That was the time to dance; not now.
We continue on to read in Psalm 126:2-6:
Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the heathen, JEHOVAH hath done great things for them. JEHOVAH hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad. Turn again our captivity, O JEHOVAH, as the streams in the south. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.
At this time, it is a sorrowful thing to share the Gospel with everyone. This is a sorrowful thing.
Maybe the children have felt left out or maybe they think that their parents’ focus has not been on them like it was for a period of time. Maybe they used to give you more things, but now all that they are thinking about is May 21st. Do not think that your parents do not love you. They love you a great deal and they are praying for you. They are continuing to try to bring your attention back to this because what your attention is on is of very little significance.
If your attention is on summer vacation, this is not going to happen. If your attention is on college, if your attention is on a career or on a family, if your attention is on these things, they are not going to happen; and your parents are praying and hoping that your attention will be brought to where it should be, which is that you have from now until May 21st and that is it.
Do you think that your parents are not praying to God and weeping? They are crying to God, “O Lord, have mercy on my children because they do not get this. They do not see this. They still want to play games. They are still involved in the things of this world as if they must believe that these things are going to continue on. They just do not believe what You are telling us.”
So this is a time of increased sorrow. God makes a point that I think we will all be able to understand in Ecclesiastes 1. We read in Ecclesiastes 1:18:
For in much wisdom is much grief…
The Bible tells us that “the wise shall understand,” that “a wise man’s heart discerneth both time and judgment,” that “knowledge shall be increased.” This is what God said to Daniel, “Shut up the words, and seal the book,” and then “knowledge shall be increased.”
It continues:
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
We know that some of our family members, neighbors, and friends, and that even people on the street are not getting this. They are not seeing this or understanding this or believing this. Therefore, at this point, they are giving every indication that they are going to die and that they are going to perish and that they are going to be left behind to endure however long they can make it through the five-month period.
So this knowledge is a burden and it is heavy. This, of course, leads the child of God to go to God more in prayer. Do you remember the song, “Sweet Hour of Prayer”? We need to up this a little. We need more than an hour for prayer. There is so much to pray for and we have such a burden for our family and friends and everyone else that an hour just is not enough. This is our release. This is the child of God’s comfort with this heavy information that Judgment Day is less than three weeks away. We go to the Lord and we pour everything out to Him, and then He will sustain us and help us.
Going back to Luke 6:21, it says:
…Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.
Just look at Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16 and you see the world. There we see the rich man who “fared sumptuously every day,” and there was the beggar Lazarus who waited “to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table.” Then death comes to both, just like death would come to all. If the world would continue, we would all die. This life is guaranteed to end in death, except for the last generation, which we happen to be.
By the way, we have nineteen or twenty days left of salvation where the door is open. If we had nineteen or twenty years left, this would not change anything. The unsaved individual would still be unsaved in nineteen or twenty years if they were not one of God’s elect. The child of God would still be one of God’s elect and he would understand it then as well as now.
Time is not really the issue. This is not really the problem. If you had twenty years, you would do exactly for twenty years what you have been doing with the time of your past life leading right up to this point, unless God interceded and changed you.
Do not think that things would be different if you only had another year. Things would not change one bit. What God has simply done is that He has speeded up the whole process. Wherever an individual would be at the point of their death, they are there now at this point.
So we continue to share the Gospel with people, knowing that God will save His elect and leave the rest, which is what He has been doing throughout history.
Then we read in Luke 6:22:
Blessed are ye…
That is, you are a child of God who has eternal life. It continues:
Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.
So blessed are ye when men hate you. Do people hate the believer? Do they hate the true Christian?
We read in 1 John 3:13:
Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.
This is really the world’s condition. They hate the light, they hate the true Gospel of the Bible, and they also hate the one who brings this message; and so God here is indicating that this is a blessing if this is going on in your life.
Let us go to a few more verses. Turn to Matthew 24. Of course, this is the chapter where Jesus is answering the disciples’ question, “What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” We read in Matthew 24:9:
Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.
We also read in Mark 13:13, which is a parallel passage:
And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
Remember that one verse that we have noticed before in Matthew 24:13 where it says:
But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
What are we to endure? We are to “endure sound doctrine,” but we are also to endure the world’s opinion of us because we are aligning ourselves with information that comes from the Bible, that comes from Christ; and the world hated Christ.
The believer is now aligning himself with information that is going to reach everyone in the world and this is not a pleasant message. It has to do with judgment. This convicts people because if you do not have sin then why would you be judged? This means that this message implies that man is a sinner when they see this warning of Judgment Day. This also, of course, implies that God is merciful or why else would He bother to warn people except for the possibility that He might grant forgiveness?
So here God is indicating in these passages that all men shall hate you. Then in Mark 13:13, He ties all of this together in relation to enduring:
…but he that shall endure unto the end…
When the Word of God becomes a reproach and when the world casts shame upon the message, and so forth, anyone who in their heart is still of the world will not be able to stand this. They will not like this at all because, inwardly, they are just like the world. Because of this, they value and greatly respect the world’s opinion of them. They really care what the nations think of them, what their neighbors think, what their family thinks, and what their friends on the corner think. They are very concerned with the impression that others have of them.
If they themselves were to wear a shirt or a hat, or heaven forbid, if their parents were to put a sign in their yard for the neighbors to see or if their parents go even further than this and walk around with backpacks with big signs, what terrible shame they feel that this is happening and that their friends can see it. But we must remember what Jesus said, “For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory.”
We have to realize that we are not here to please man. We are not here to please people, but this is the nature of man. We read in 1 Peter 4:1-2:
Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.
So the world has its ideas of how people should live and conduct themselves, and God has His ideas. The world is very accepting and very approving of anything under the sun. The world allows you to be whatever you want. If you want to dye your hair purple, feel free. If you want to put earrings everywhere possible on your body, feel free. If you want to wear a Mohawk hairstyle, feel free. If you want to wear hardly any clothing, feel free.
You can do whatever you want to do and the world will accept you, but there is one thing that is not acceptable. Is this not interesting that this is this one thing? Should this not make people wonder and ask the question, “Why? Why is it that people can do whatever they want except for this one thing?”
Would it be crazy if our T-shirts were representing a rock band? Would it be crazy if they were representing the Yankees or the Phillies? Am I considered crazy if I am wearing a Yankees hat and if I have Yankees this and Yankees that? Is it crazy if I put a Yankee pendant on my vehicle?
Why is all of this acceptable? And why is it that as soon as you start aligning yourself with the Word of God, with the Bible, then you are considered to be a crackpot and insane? They call us morons and idiots and fools, and I am just relaying what people said about me yesterday.
When I was young, I really, really cared what people thought about me to the extreme; and I do mean to the extreme. This was how I was raised, but I thank God that He has been able to change this. My wardrobe has come down to, “What should I wear today? Should I wear the grey Judgment Day shirt or the yellow Judgment Day shirt or the florescent green Judgment Day shirt?”
When you wear a hat like this out and you wear the shirt, when these things actually become part of your attire, this is very freeing because these things have always been the case. It has always been the case that the world has hated the true believer, the child of God. It is just that it came out in little ways. Maybe they would separate from you at work because you did not participate with the cursing and because you did not agree with the backstabbing and all of the gossiping.
People in groups tend to vilify others. This is how they make allies with each other. People become friends because they each pick on the same person. When you do not do this, they separate you from their company; and this has always been the case, but this is now out in the open. We have made this very, very public, and this is very freeing. This is freeing because they now know exactly where we are coming from and we know where they are coming from.
We read next in 1 Peter 4:3-4:
For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you:
This is how they revile and reproach. They consider you an oddball and think it strange that you do not participate in these things.
The question is: do you care or do I care what they think? It really comes down to this. Do we care what they think or do you or I care what God thinks? Who is more important anyway and who has more power and authority?
God is the One whom we really want to be friends with, the One whom we want to be in a good relationship with, even if all the world hates us, even if we do not know another child of God anywhere. The Bible says, “If God be for us, who can be against us?”
So they think it strange, but here is what God says concerning the opinion of the world. In 1 Corinthians 4, God is moving Paul to write these words, and we read in 1 Corinthians 4:3:
But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self.
Compare man’s judgment to God’s judgment. We have today and tomorrow and we are under three weeks. Man can do a lot of damage and he can say a lot of bad things and maybe even physically harm someone.
This is all that man can do, but God’s judgment begins on May 21st and then there is nothing but torment. Many will be left behind in this broken world for however long they can make it. Then at the end of this, this world will be burned up and they will be annihilated and completely gone forever. They will not even be a distant memory. They will be no memory, because this world and the former things will not be brought to mind. They will be gone forever.
This is the judgment of God, and so we can see who has more power and who we really should be concerned about pleasing. It should not be man’s opinion. So what if they think that we are crazy! If the world were to demonstrate some sanity first, we might listen to them. If they demonstrated any kind of rationality, any kind of soundness of mind as we look at the world, then maybe they could pass a judgment that would have some kind of an effect upon the believer; but look at the wars, look at the crime, look at the abuse, on and on in this world. The world is in no position to cast judgment about sanity on any believer. This is for sure.
In Ecclesiastes 9:3, we read:
This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.
In other words, the patients of the insane asylum, as we look at this world, are the ones who are pronouncing a judgment or a diagnosis of the child of God. In the Bible, the child of God is typified by a man who had many unclean spirits named Legion. He was running around naked and cutting himself, and then Christ saved him. He cast out the devils. Then they found that this man who “had the legion” was “sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind” as he sat by Jesus.
This sound mind that God gives to His people should tell us something about the world in itself, because the world thinks that the child of God who has this sound mind is crazy. This really goes a long way in understanding the mindset of the world.
God perfectly knows the hearts of mankind and He says:
…madness is in their heart…
Of course it is. It has to be madness for people to hear this and to hear it and hear it, to hear something that is coming from the Bible, to hear something that is coming from God, and to take no action. This is insanity. This is craziness.
Please, do not worry about us killing ourselves. People like to say this, “When this does not happen on May 22nd, you are not going to kill yourself are you? Do not drink the Kool-Aid.”
Of course, this is a way of taking a shot at the believer, because, again, they cannot gainsay or resist Scripture, and so they have to make statements like this to try to identify the believers with crazy cults that have committed suicide.
Well, let us ask this person who would say this to the child of God a question. When day passes day over the next few days and then we are there and this happens, what did you do to yourself? What did you do to yourself by doing nothing, when God warned you repeatedly again and again and again?
You continued to disregard and to dismiss this and to claim, “Oh, those people are crackpots,” or in whatever way you dismissed this, but then this comes and this happens and you are left behind. This will happen just like God said that it would, because He declares “the end from the beginning.” It is not hard for Him to declare this. But it is then that you will want to cry out to God. It is then that you will want a drop of the Gospel mercy. Well, really, the fact is that you killed yourself. You killed yourself in an eternal way.
Let us stop here.