If everyone could turn to Ezekiel 33, I am going to read the first nine verses of Ezekiel 33. Ezekiel 33:1-9 says:
Again the word of JEHOVAH came unto me, saying, Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman: if when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people; then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul. But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand. 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. When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it; if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.
And I will stop reading there. This is a very important passage. The whole Bible is important, but this is especially important for our day and our time as God gives us this illustration of a watchman. And a watchman in ancient times or in the days of old and the times when the Bible was being written, a watchman would be someone who would be set up at a high position somewhere. There might be a watchtower in the wilderness.
If you think about it, you have to keep in mind that they did not have all of the things that we have today to provide us with early warnings, especially in relationship to an enemy. Today we have radar and sonar. If somebody launches a missile from some unfriendly nation somewhere, if they launch a missile, we can spot it pretty quickly, almost as soon as it began to take off. And then there are the anti-type weapons that can destroy the missile, hopefully before it lands and causes a lot of damage.
So that is how it is today with the military. They do keep watch. They are presently, believe me, they are presently watching all the rest of the world to see if there is anyone who might be some kind of a threat and pose some type of danger to the people of our country.
But in the old days, they would have had some men who would watch the city. There would be some stationed right in the city, walking around in the evening and late hours. We actually read about that in the Song of Solomon. There would be watchmen who were just walking around. We would think of them like guards who patrolled the premises to make sure that nothing was broken into and that there was no one sneaking in and stealing something.
So that is like one level, but more than that, they would have someone, more than likely, out in the wilderness, far off from the city, in a tower. In 2 Chronicles we read about them marching to the watchtower in the wilderness. There would be a person, a man stationed there and he would have a trumpet. Or, actually, the more you think about the best way of setting that up, the best way would be to have someone far off and then if he saw an enemy approaching, to have someone else there, like a runner or a messenger, to go to the city to warn the people, because if the man in the watchtower blew the trumpet, well then the enemy might hear that, too.
So God is really using a picture that ancient nations and peoples would have been very familiar with, because their lives could change at any moment. We read about that in the Bible. Time and again, we read about the Assyrians on the march, conquering nations, or the Babylonians on the march, conquering nations, or Egypt. All of the nations were constantly warring and they would come upon a city and destroy the city, and the only early-warning system they had would have been a watchman. It would have been a watchman and the sound of the trumpet.
When the watchman would blow the trumpet, the people of the city or town or village would know when they heard that particular note. And they would have had some kind of an agreement between the watchman and the inhabitants of the city, “When I blow this way, it means that the enemy is close at hand. When I blow, it means that the enemy is in the wilderness. I see them, they are on the march, and they are coming for the city.”
Now, when they heard the trumpet, it could be, if they were basically a defenseless city, that the women would gather up the children and run and would just try to find refuge somewhere. Or if it was a city with a wall, they might just begin fortifying the city and the men of the city would take their positions and they would get into a defensive posture because the enemy was coming.
And so God is using that picture, Ezekiel 33:3:
If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people;
So it had to be a very distinct sound, and remember what we read in 1st Corinthians 14. In 1 Corinthians 14:8, it says:
For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?
It could not just be anything or it could not be a weak blow on the trumpet. It had to be something specific that would signal to all those who heard it, “This means danger. Danger is coming! They are coming out of the north!” Or, “A great army of King Nebuchadnezzar,” or whatever it might be, “is coming and we do not stand a chance unless we do take warning,” and maybe they would flee or maybe they would fight. Whatever they arranged, it was all conditioned on the sound of the trumpet.
Now, we know that today, with our technology, there are all kinds of advanced warnings. With hurricanes, we know that. Even though people speak badly of weathermen, normally, and they think that anyone could do that job, still, they give us advanced warning, sometimes days in advance, or more, of an approaching storm, of a hurricane that could do a great deal of damage. There are many people who are probably alive today because they heard the weather report days in advance and they were able to get out of their city and flee before the storm came.
But what if the weatherman would say, “There is a hurricane off our coast and it is going to hit tomorrow, tomorrow night, or it is going to hit the night after tomorrow, or that hurricane, which is extremely dangerous and powerful, is doing to destroy this city next week, or that hurricane is going to come and destroy our city next month, or that hurricane is going to come at this time next year, or that hurricane is going to come a decade from now”? Who is going to get ready? Who is going to take that kind of a warning? Are you going to board up the windows of your house? Are you going to make sure that you get all of your valuables out and that you get your family together and that you get on the road and that you go to another state because, well, the weatherman said it might come today or tomorrow or next year or somewhere down the line?
It is uncertain. It is uncertain. And when things are uncertain, people ignore it: “I am not going to worry about some hurricane that may or may not come this day or next year or whenever. I am not going to worry about that.”
This word “uncertain” is found in only one other place. In Luke 11:44, it says:
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as graves which appear not…
Now, that is the word “uncertain.”
…and the men that walk over them are not aware of them.
So there is a spiritual meaning there about falling into the pit that false teachers really dig out for their listeners, which leads to destruction. But it also, you see, this word “uncertain” is “appear not.” Appear not—they do not see it. There is no warning. They are just walking over the ground and oops! There is a fall because they could not see it coming.
That is what God is saying about the trumpet: if the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, then who will prepare himself to the battle? And the battle is the battle of Armageddon, and the battle is coming on that day on May 21 st, 2011.
Now, one thing that people cannot deny, nobody can deny this: May 21st, 2011, is the rapture; October 21st, 2011, is the end of the world; in between is 5 months of torment. Now, no one can deny that this is not a very clear and plain declaration. Is it not? Is that not giving a very certain sound?
Now, people might think whatever they want about those particular dates. They might brush them off, they might totally ignore it, and amazingly, amazingly, even though people know that we have modern technology and they have been very accurate at predicting these hurricanes, you are always going to find people who ride out the storm. Well, maybe you find them after the storm. Probably many who have perished in storms did so because they did not take warning, but there are always a couple who survive.
I remember this last hurricane that hit in Florida. They had to send a boat down this street. They rescued this man and his wife and they asked them, “Are you ever going to do that again?” He just shook his head, “I will never do that again. When I hear the warning, I am getting out of here,” because he had just gone through something very, very difficult and he realized that it was not the wisest thing to do to ignore the warning. It was a very dangerous thing to do, and yet God spared him. And we know that we are talking about a time when no one will be spared, which is coming in 2011, beginning on May 21st.
Let us turn to 2nd Kings 6. In 2nd Kings 6, we are going to read of the situation where God is revealing information to His servant, the prophet, just as He does in just about every situation that we read about. God does this time and again. Before the flood, God warned Noah. Noah took warning, it says in Hebrews 11:7. He took warning and built the ark to the saving of his house. God warned Lot before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. God also warned Abraham prior to that destruction.
Is it not interesting that when Elijah was taken up, when he went up in a whirlwind, that everybody seemed to know about it before it happened? The sons of the prophets in one city said, “Knowest thou not that the Lord will take up thy master from thy head to day?” “Yea, I know it. Keep your peace.” Then they went to another city near Jericho, or Jericho, and 50 sons of the prophets came up to Elisha and said, “Knowest thou not that God will take up your master from your head today?” “Yea, I know it.” So all kinds of people knew before it happened that God was going to rapture Elijah. He was going to take him up. It was well-known.
God must have revealed it Elijah, to Elisha, to the sons of the prophets. And then, indeed, he was taken up to the full expectation of the people of God of that day, or the professed people of God. Of course, then those sons of the prophets wanted to do a search to make sure that God had not cast him down somewhere. Finally and reluctantly, Elisha allowed them to search, and so they searched but they could not find Elijah because he had been translated. He was taken into Heaven itself. God reveals things, not to everyone. Well, He would declare it openly, but only His people are going to receive what God speaks to them and receive His revelation.
Now, in 2nd Kings 6, beginning in verse 8, we have a military situation. There is a battle. There is warfare between Syria and Israel, and it says in 2 Kings 6:8-12:
Then the king of Syria warred against Israel, and took counsel with his servants, saying, In such and such a place shall be my camp. And the man of God sent unto the king of Israel, saying, Beware that thou pass not such a place; for thither the Syrians are come down. And the king of Israel sent to the place which the man of God told him and warned him of, and saved himself there, not once nor twice.
Which means more than twice.
Therefore the heart of the king of Syria was sore troubled for this thing; and he called his servants, and said unto them, Will ye not show me which of us is for the king of Israel? And one of his servants said, None, my lord, O king: but Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber.
Here, the Syrians had their plans. They set up camps in some strategic positions and they were planning on attacking Israel, but God, for His own purposes, told the prophet Elisha of these plans, “This is where they have the camp.” So then, Elisha possessed intelligence, we would say today. He had information where he now saw the sword coming upon the land, because there was the enemy. He had this information, and God sets down a principle that the watchman, when he sees the sword come, must declare it. He has to reveal it. He has to warn those who would be affected by it, those who would die possibly if there were no warning.
So Elisha warns the King of Israel, and he saves himself more than two times. And it is so frustrating to the King of Syria that he has his generals and whomever together and says, “Tell us! Where is the spy? Where is the spy? Who is for the King of Israel?” And they say, “None of us, but it is Elisha. He tells the King of Israel what you are speaking in your bedchamber.”
You see, this is what God is basically telling us. When He gives us information, when He teaches us something from the Bible and He reveals truth to us, then we have an obligation, a responsibility, a duty to then share that truth and reveal it to others. That is why God 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.
From Me. A watchman could be any believer, any believer who has learned something from the Bible. He understands something, like we do today. We all understand, or many of us, that May 21st, 2011, is really the end of salvation. It is the end for the people of God, and then there will be that 5 months followed by the end of the world. And God is saying, “If you see this, then warn them. And when you do warn people, it is from Me.” God is saying, “It is coming from Me. I am the One who is revealing these things. I am the One who is going to bring it to pass. I am the One who knows all about it. And I am the One who is telling you in advance.”
Now, He is not telling us like He spoke to prophets of old, through dreams or visions or tongues. He will not do that because He has completed the Bible. But He is telling us this as we are able to discern spiritual things and as we compare Scripture with Scripture. Then God opens up our eyes to see His overall plan.
Now, we know about May 21, 2011, because of the Biblical timeline of history. We know that God has established a timeline where events unfold throughout the course of history. That is found in the Bible. It is found in Genesis chapters 5 and 11. And when we read something from the Bible, it is coming from God.
Now, God always works this way. For instance, when Jesus fed the 4,000. He took the seven loaves, Christ broke the bread and then gave it to the disciples and then the disciples gave it to the multitude. It came from Christ. He is the One who performed the miracle. He did the breaking of the bread, but He worked through the disciples in order to distribute it and to feed the multitude.
God also says in 2 Corinthians 5, beginning in verse 19, 2 Corinthians 5:19-20:
To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.
And that has always been the case. When the people of God bring the Gospel, it is on Jesus’ behalf. It is on God’s behalf that the Word of God is coming to your ears. Yes and unfortunately, unfortunately, the messenger or the servant or the child of God is not really anybody. He is nothing and the world lowly esteems the believer and does not really think that they are much of anything. The believer is not looked on in a high way, in any sense, in the eyes of the world.
Remember Naaman, Naaman the Syrian, in 2 Kings 5, when he came to Israel, to the prophet Elisha, that his leprosy might be healed? It says in 2 Kings 5:8-12:
And it was so, when Elisha the man of God had heard that the king of Israel had rent his clothes, that he sent to the king, saying, Wherefore hast thou rent thy clothes? let him come now to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel. So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean. But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of JEHOVAH his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage.
He was so proud, so arrogant, that he thought, “Since I am a general of a great army, then certainly he will come and he will heal me personally, but he just sent a messenger.” He just sent a messenger, a lowly servant, and relayed the message, “Here is what you do. Go down to the river, wash, and you will be clean again.”
And that is exactly what God has done with the whole Gospel. God has commissioned His people, as He tells us in another place that God uses the foolish things of the world to confound the mighty, and He sends them out into all the world with the Gospel to bring good news to people, and yet mankind does not really have much time for the people of God. The people of God are, many times, reviled and disdained, as we see in Matthew 22, with this parable, where it says in Matthew 22:2-6:
The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come. Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage. But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise: and the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them.
So it is typical, it is normal for people to look down upon those who are bringing a message that they do not want to hear. And God is the One sending the messengers. He is the One behind it. He is the One who is verifying it. It is faithful and true because it comes from the Bible. However, people look at the messenger and they say, “Well, this means nothing to me. This means nothing to me.” But God tells us, “Go and warn them from Me,” in Ezekiel 33. “Warn them from Me.”
Normally in history, anyone who would warn his people about an approaching enemy would be celebrated. You would be a hero. You would be a great man if you warned of the approaching enemy. You would be considered a faithful person, and the people of the town or city would rejoice in hearing the news. However, when we are discussing the end of time and the end of the world, people do not want to hear that news. They do not want to receive that kind of information, and so there are no heroes. There is no one who is going to be applauded because they are bringing this kind of information from the Bible. Rather, there will be all kinds of things spoken against them.
But God still says, despite all of that, we are to warn those that the sword is coming, as we read in Ezekiel 3. In Ezekiel 3, it says in Ezekiel 3:17-21:
Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth…
And that is the Bible.
…and give them warning from me. When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul. Again, When a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumblingblock before him, he shall die: because thou hast not given him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Nevertheless if thou warn the righteous man, that the righteous sin not, and he doth not sin, he shall surely live, because he is warned; also thou hast delivered thy soul.
So, again, God is basically telling us that if we are a true believer, we will hear the Word from the Bible and we will carry that message to others.
You know, if you or I were a watchman in the wilderness and we saw the enemy approach and we did not say anything, we did not say anything, what would that say about how we really felt about our neighbors in that city? What would it say about how we really felt about our family in that city, if we did not blow the trumpet and sound the warning? It would indicate that there was something really wrong with us as an individual, that we did not care enough about the people to sound the trumpet.
Now, let us go to Acts 20, and in Acts 20:27, this is the Apostle Paul writing under the inspiration of God, and it says:
For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.
And the word “shunned” is actually found in verse 20, where it says in Acts 20:20:
And how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you…
It is the words “kept back.” That is what it means, “I have not kept back. I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.” And that means, “I have not learned something from the Bible and realized that it was something that I felt uncomfortable sharing and did not want to talk about, so I am going to hold it back.” The Apostle Paul is saying, “No. I have not kept back anything that God has revealed to me. I have spoken it all.”
Then it goes on to say in Acts 20:28-31:
Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.
That is the testimony of the Apostle Paul. He was chief of sinners, he declares in another Epistle. He had persecuted the people of God, but then God saved him and he became a faithful watchman who warned people. He warned people of the wrath to come. Even though in his day it was far off, he warned them that they must become saved and that only by the grace of God and by the mercy of God could they become saved. And he especially did so for this three-year period, night and day.
Now, let us go to Amos 3:6, where it says:
Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid?…
Shall the trumpet be blown and the people not be afraid? Now, first of all, if we are watchmen and we have trumpets, what is the trumpet? What is the trumpet? I see Robin forgot to bring his trumpet today? It is what? It is the Gospel. It is the Word of God. We know this because if you go to Revelation 1:10-11, it says:
I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, saying, I am Alpha and Omega…
That is the Lord Jesus, but the great voice is as a trumpet. That is the voice of Christ.
Or in Revelation 4:1:
After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will show thee things which must be hereafter.
You see, with the trumpet, God uses, of course, the picture of the musical instrument, because you can make a long blast with the trumpet. It can be heard far away. But, really, it points to the Word of God, the Bible.
Declaring the Bible is sounding the trumpet. When we give out a tract and it has information—as “Does God Love You?” does—about May 21 st, 2011, that is sounding the trumpet. When we are sharing that, one-on-one, with a neighbor or friend, then that is blowing the trumpet. It is bringing the Word of God, as God has opened our minds to it and He has shown us what is coming, because He is fully capable of doing that since He knows the end from the beginning and He reveals it to us. He breaks the bread and gives to us and we give it somebody else. That is blowing the trumpet, and yet God asks a good question in Amos 3:6:
Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid?…
I would fear if I was in a city and I heard the watchman blowing the trumpet and I knew what that trumpet sound, what that particular sound was signifying. I would be afraid. I would be afraid, and God is saying that this is a normal reaction, a typical reaction to hearing the trumpet.
And then it goes on in Amos 3:6-7:
…Shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it? Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.
You see, in that very context of blowing the trumpet, God is saying that He reveals secrets. And, certainly, the timeline of history was a secret, sealed up till the time of the end, until our day. God reveals secrets to particular people, like Elisha, His servants the prophets.
Well, none of us are prophets like Elisha today, but we are all prophets in the sense that God has given us His Word and we are to foretell it. We are to declare it to whomever will listen.
Now, there is also another verse. In Isaiah 18:3:
All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye.
God is speaking to everyone, everyone, “Hear! Hear the sound of the trumpet! Do you not hear the sound of the trumpet? If you do hear, if you have heard about this information that is a little ways off, why do you not fear? Why do you not fear?”
How can a trumpet be blown in the city and the people not fear? It must be that you do not fear because you are not really responding in your life, you are not turning from your sins, you are not turning to God in a more-desirous way, cleaving unto His Word. You are not crying for mercy as someone who is about to die. You are not beseeching the Lord that He save you and rescue you from what is coming. Do you not hear? Yes, you are hearing. You are hearing the sound of the trumpet. Then why are you not afraid? Why are you not afraid?
Now, we do know that people in the churches and congregations at this time, they are not afraid. They are not afraid. They just write it off, “No man knows the day or hour. You cannot know it.” Of course, God reveals to us also that this is referring to the unsaved, when He will come as a thief in the night and they will be unaware. But He definitely tells us that God’s people will know. They will have information of His return.
Let us go to Jeremiah 6. In Jeremiah 6:1, just to set the context, it says:
O ye children of Benjamin, gather yourselves to flee out of the midst of Jerusalem, and blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and set up a sign of fire in Bethhaccerem: for evil appeareth out of the north, and great destruction.
You can see the blowing of the trumpet because evil is coming and it is full of great destruction. And then look at verse 16, Jeremiah 6:16-17:
Thus saith JEHOVAH, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein. Also I set watchmen over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they said, We will not hearken.
God is predicting. He sees what is going on. He, of course, sees all the way up until May 21st. He knows who is going to stay in the very same condition that they are in right now, all the way up until that date, because they are not hearkening. They are not listening. They are not fearing. They are not afraid. “Humph! Five months! I can do that in my sleep,” you hear people say, because it does not make them fear like the idea of an eternal damnation made them fear.
Well, I know that anyone who is caught in a burning building for 30 minutes would definitely do all that they could to escape the pain of that fire for those 30 minutes. And, likewise, anyone who is caught in this great destruction that is coming on May 21st, when it comes, when it is here, when that day is actually here, certainly, they will be terrified out of their minds for what has come upon the earth.
So God is saying that He is blowing the trumpet, but they will not hearken. They will not listen. So we are failures. We are failures? No, remember what God said about watchmen. It is not our business, it is not our business to worry over who is responding, who is listening, who is taking heed, who is not.
God says, again, in Ezekiel 33:3-4:
If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people; then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning…
It is amazing…the stubbornness, the hardness, the desperate wickedness of man that he will hear and not respond. He is not going to respond, and yet God recognizes this. He is talking to us because we are all going to be greatly involved in blowing this trumpet over the next couple of years, and God is saying, “Okay. If this happens, if he takes not warning, if the sword come and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head.” We are not responsible. We are not responsible. Like Pilate, “I wash my hands from the blood of this innocent Man.” Of course, Pilate bore some responsibility in that situation. But that is basically what he was saying, “No. No. Do not put His blood on me.” And the Jews cried out, “His blood be upon us!” And remember, the Apostle Paul, in Acts 20, he also said, right before, that he declared the whole counsel of God. He did not shun. In Acts 20:26:
Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men.
“I did my job. I did my job. I did my duty.” And, of course, God’s people will do their duty, because He will see to it. He is going to move in us to will and do of His good pleasure. He is going to make sure that the world hears and that His watchmen do their job, that they do not get lazy. God will make sure of this, that there will be money sufficient to get the Gospel out. There will be people sufficient to bring the tracts. There will be technology sufficient to bring the Word of God to the world, like the waters cover the sea. God’s people will do it because God is going to make sure that they do it, and the world will hear. And if they do not listen, well, we cannot save anyone. We just bring them the Gospel and then we can at least have a free conscience and we can say, “I am pure from the blood of anyone who did not take warning,” and that is a great relief to the child of God.
Well, let me go on, because we do not want to finish with those not taking warning. It says in verse 5, well, this is continuing with the one who did not take warning. Ezekiel 33:5:
He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul.
Which means that some are going to hear and they will, like Noah, they will find salvation. They will be delivered by the mercy of God. They are God’s elect. They are part of that great multitude, those tens upon tens of millions whom God is saving from around the world at this time.
And so there is grace and there is judgment—it is a two-edged sword—but we have to proclaim it. We have to bring the whole counsel of God, and then God will do what He wills with His Word, and it will accomplish His purpose.
Okay. Let us stop here and have a word of prayer. Dear Father, we come to You because we are watchmen. You have given us this commission and some of us are very reluctant watchmen. It is not within our nature to make a big noise. And yet when the danger is coming and a trumpet is blown, then it is drawing attention and we just pray that the attention will be brought to the trumpet, which is the Word, and not to us as watchmen. Help us to be more careful in how we speak and in what we say and to just be faithful ambassadors. We do not come up with our own message to bring to others but we bring the message from our Kingdom, which comes from You. And we ask, Father, that You would help us to perform this task, that You would guide us to do Your will in this area in the days to come. And we pray that You would help us to expend ourselves and to exert ourselves so that we do not hold anything back. Help us to go forth trusting You and knowing that You are in complete control. Father, we pray for the rest of this day and we ask that You would help us to spend time with You today, more time in the Bible and in prayer. And, also, we ask that You might give us opportunities to share the Gospel. And we pray these things in Christ’s Name. Amen.
Chris: Okay. If anyone has a question or a comment, you are welcome at this time to come up to the mic or to raise your hand on Paltalk and Bob can relay your question. Does anybody have anything here?
1st Question: Ezekiel 33:8.
Chris: Ezekiel 33:8.
When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.
1st Question (continued): This is the first time that I have read that verse, and it was glaring to me during your teaching, that God is saying “O wicked,” and that includes…there is no one who is excluded, as all of us are born that way, and the command then is to all mankind. My understanding is that God is commanding all of us to be a watchman. And it does not mean that all watchmen are saved, but we all are to convey whatever God commands us to warn people of. And if we do not, it is a test of whether I am saved. If I am too lame to go out and warn people, if I do not want to offend my family, if I do not want to be the party-pooper in the group, if I am too bashful, if I am too tired, then I have to question my own salvation.
Chris: I think that you are right, Howard, because that is how God can make this kind of a statement. He cannot really make it any other way. When He says:
…his blood will I require at thine hand.
Because if we fail to warn a person, a sinner, if we fail to warn them, well, that is sin. That is sin, and all of our sins are laid upon Christ and Christ paid for all the sins, including our fear, or whatever reason, our sloth, whatever sin was in view when we did not want to share the Gospel with this person or that person. And, honestly, if I were to ask the question, “Who here has had a tract on them and had it come to their mind to hand out the tract and did not?” I have. I have. For various reasons, at times, this has happened. And, yet, if our overall, our overall mindset is to bring the Gospel and we want to do it more and more—and I think we will be seen to do it more and more in our life—and yet, any failures to bring the Gospel are forgiven if we are a child of God.
Now, that is where what Howard was saying comes in. If we are not, if it is a lifestyle with us and it is not in just, you know, in this particular instance, if it is a lifestyle, if we just do not have the mindset that we are bringing the Gospel to people, then that is another matter and that is indicating that we are not obeying God’s command to go into the world with the Gospel, and we are, in all likelihood, not saved. And I think that is what God is saying here. If we fail to warn the people, then their blood would be upon us, because the true child of God will be used of Him in some way to warn the people.
Okay. Anyone else? Someone on Paltalk?
2nd Question: Please look at Isaiah 21:11-12.
Chris: Isaiah 21:11-12:
The burden of Dumah. He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will inquire, inquire ye: return, come.
Is his question on what this means?
2nd Question (continued): What is the message that the watchman brings here?
Chris: Well, I do not know. That is why I did not mention it in the message today. I looked at this verse and I was not able to really understand exactly what God had in mind, so I cannot comment on this.
“Latterdayraney,” please post your question.
3rd Question: I have some tracts that I got from EBible. I would like to know why the print quality is so light and almost hard to see. Is there anything that can be done about making them bolder print? These are the “Did God Die for You?” tracts.
Chris: Yes. We will check into that. Thank you for letting us know. We have a copier and sometimes, for whatever reason, the ink maybe is running out or something. It could be that you got a batch where it is lighter. But we will take a look at that. Thank you.
4th Question: Acts 20:31.
Chris: Acts 20:31 says:
Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.
Is this question related to…I think it has been about three years when we suddenly began declaring May 21st, if we go back a few months, when we began to learn that, up until May 21st, 2011. Does it have bearing? It may. It may, but I do not know how I could tie them in, even though it is very interesting that we do have or we did have about three years left when we became very specific in warning people about the end.