If you will turn with me to the Gospel of Mark, and to the thirteenth chapter—the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of Mark. I am going to read from verse 3.
And as Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives over against the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked Him privately,
“Tell us, when shall these things be? And what shall be the sign when these things are all about to be accomplished?”And Jesus began to say unto them, “Take heed that no man lead you astray. Many shall come in My name, saying, ‘I am He’; and shall lead many astray. And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be not troubled: these things must needs come to pass; but the end is not yet.
“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: there shall be earthquakes in divers places; there shall be famines. These things are the beginning of travail.
“But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in synagogues shall ye be beaten; and before governors and kings shall ye stand for My sake, for a testimony unto them. And the gospel must first be preached unto all the nations.
“And when they lead you to judgment, and deliver you up, be not anxious beforehand what ye shall speak: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye; for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Spirit. And brother shall deliver up brother to death, and the father his child; and children shall rise up against parents, and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for My name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.”
“But when ye see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not—let him that readeth understand—then let them that are in Judea flee unto the mountains; and let him that is on the housetop not go down, nor enter in, to take anything out of his house: and let him that is in the field not return back to take his cloak.
“But woe unto them that are with child and to them that give suck in those days! And pray ye that it be not in the winter. For those days shall be tribulation, such as there hath not been the like from the beginning of the creation which God created until now, and never shall be. And except the Lord had shortened the days, no flesh would have been saved: but for the elect’s sake, whom He chose, He shortened the days.
“And then if any man shall say unto you, ‘Lo, here is the Christ’; or, ‘Lo, there’; believe it not: for there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show signs and wonders, that they may lead astray, if possible, the elect. But take ye heed: behold, I have told you all things beforehand.”
“But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall be falling from heaven, and the powers that are in the heavens shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And then shall He send forth the angels, and shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven.
“Now from the fig tree learn her parable: when her branch is now become tender, and putteth forth its leaves, ye know that the summer is nigh; even so ye also, when ye see these things coming to pass, know ye that He is nigh, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away until all these things be accomplished. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but My words shall not pass away.”
“But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.
“It is as when a man, sojourning in another country, having left his house and given authority to his servants, to each one his work, commanded also the porter to watch. Watch therefore: for ye know not when the lord of the house cometh, whether at even, or at midnight, or at cockcrowing, or in the morning; lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.”
And then, if you will turn to the Book of Revelation—Revelation, chapter 19, from verse 6.
And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders, saying, “Hallelujah: for the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigneth. Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad, and let us give the glory unto Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready.”
And it was given unto her that she should array herself in fine linen, bright and pure: for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.
And he saith unto me, “Write, Blessed are they that are bidden to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he saith unto me, “These are true words of God.”
And I fell down before his feet to worship him. And he saith unto me, “See thou do it not: I am a fellow-servant with thee, and with thy brethren that hold the testimony of Jesus: worship God; for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”
Shall we pray together? Let us all really take hold of the Lord together for this time.
Heavenly Father, we just want to gather to thank You for Your presence in our midst. We want to thank You for these days that we have spent together, Lord, and for all Your gracious visitation of us.
But, Lord, now for this particular evening time, we want together to take hold of all that You have provided for us. Lord, we dare not be left to our own resources. We need You, Lord.
And we need that divine ability which You have, through the finished work of the Lord Jesus, made available to me for speaking and to all of us for hearing. Help us, Lord, in this time, we pray.
We ask, Lord, redeem it from all futility; redeem it from all vanity; redeem it from any heaviness, or anything that is blind, or that would lead to a frustration of Your purpose for these days.
O Heavenly Father, You know we love You. With all our weaknesses and failings, we love You. That is why we are here, Lord.
And we want, Lord, to be those who are in the train of Your triumph in the days that lie ahead. We want to be involved, Lord, in what Your Holy Spirit is seeking to do in these last phases of human history.
O Heavenly Father, catch us up even tonight by Your Spirit—in vision, in understanding, and in a reviving and renewing of our hearts before You. And we shall give You all the praise and all the glory. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
This evening, I want to take this whole subject of the unfolding of God’s recovery work in the church one further stage.
It is too late now to go back over anything that we have said, except that we have reached the twentieth century. And in reaching the twentieth century, we have to ask ourselves a question: How far have we to go?
Can we honestly say that we have moved into the last days, or the end time, of the age? I would myself consider that to be of extreme importance and significance, especially for you younger people.
If it were possible for us to say that we have passed into the end times—however long those times may last—we have passed into the last phase of world history. This, to me, would give an added depth of meaning and strategy to all the last four hundred years of recovery.
It would also mean that you and I would be challenged in a way that we need to be challenged: that we shall not sleep, as do so many; that we shall not be half-blind, as are so many; that we shall not be more than half-dead, as so many are.
And if we can say that we are in the last days, how far have we really to go? What further does the Lord want to do in the whole matter of recovery?
One of the interesting things about this matter of recovery is, as I have repeatedly said, that there is a continuity in it. It is, to me, a most interesting thing that not one single thing that has been recovered has been lost.
Today, we talk about things that others laid down their lives in martyrdom to recover. Today, we treat them almost familiarly. They are so much part and parcel of our Christian experience and Christian phraseology, even if they are not in our hearts.
I remember, only thirty years ago, when I first heard Theodore Austin-Sparks. He used phrases that caused a storm in Christian circles in Britain. Now, the British—especially the English—are dreadfully conservative and very, very cautious.
He used phrases like “body life” and “body ministry.” Pamphlets were written on these things, accusing them of new-fangled doctrine. I remember a whole message he gave on relatedness—the need to be related one to another. At that time, it was revolutionary.
Today, unfortunately in some ways, “body life” and “body ministry” are used all over the world. It does not matter where you go; everybody uses them.
I sometimes say to you, I remember someone coming up to me some years ago, saying, “We’ve got a body in Chicago.” I was not quite sure what they meant.
Especially when I was a boy, Chicago was all gangsters. I wondered, you know, really, what they were talking about: “We’ve got a body in Chicago.” It is not exactly a New Testament way of speaking of the church.
But it is interesting that the phraseology which thirty years ago was absolutely radical and revolutionary is today accepted by the vast majority of believers, even in institutional denominational fellowships.
Relatedness has been taken far further than ever Mr. Sparks thought of it, in the whole discipleship matter and in other areas too. How amazing this whole matter of recovery is, even with its excesses and extremes.
It is still amazing to see how the Holy Spirit has recovered precious aspects of truth—living truth—and, as far as I can see, they will never be lost again.
Our problem is to have revelation. You can know it out here, but do we know it in here?
Now, the question I have asked is whether we have passed into the last days, because it seems to me that if the Lord has shown such care and such determination in these last four hundred years, He is not going to give up simply because we are in the nuclear age, or simply because we have got someone onto the moon.
The Lord is obviously, in my estimation, going to go right on to the fulfilment and completion of this work. And that must give us tremendous encouragement and hope.
If our Lord has been so careful in taking the initiative by the Holy Spirit to recover one matter after another, He is going to go right on to the end.
There is one other point I want to make for our safeguarding: there is nothing recovered that is not old. This is very important.
I do not know what it is about some of our brethren: they want something that puts them into history, so they become a monument. They want to recover something that really was never even in the New Testament—some new experience, some new idea.
That is not recovery. Recovery is the recovery of what was there at the beginning. Have you got that clear?
And this will preserve us from a lot of extremes, a lot of imbalance, a lot of error, and a lot of counterfeit work. It is important for us to understand this.
Now, my question is this: can we say we have passed into the last days? I have to be very careful on this matter. I do not want to spend hours talking about it and seeking to prove it to you. But I want to say that there are two things which make it absolutely clear to me that we have passed, irreversibly and, in my estimation, incontrovertibly, into the last period of world history—however long that lasts.
Jesus gave a major discourse on His second coming. It is recorded in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21. In this discourse, He gave a whole number of signs.
Now, in my estimation, the main emphasis of our Lord Jesus was not actually the sequence of events. His main emphasis was: “Take heed. Take heed to yourselves. Take heed. Be ye also ready. Watch and pray. What I say unto you, I say unto all: Watch.”
That was His emphasis. Unfortunately, it has been overlooked again and again in this whole great paraphernalia of prophetic interpretation. We get to arguing and debating, confronting one another with details—what is going to happen, where it is going to happen, and all the rest—and lose sight of the real emphasis of the Lord Jesus: you could be caught out.
I always remind myself that it was not to the unsaved that the Lord gave this major discourse, as many Christians imagine; nor to the great company of disciples; nor even to the twelve apostles. It was to the four who represented the inner circle of the inner circle: Andrew, Peter, James, and John.
They came to Him privately, saying, “When shall these things be, and what shall be the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age?” To these four, whom He took with Him again and again—to the Transfiguration and to the raising of Jairus’s daughter—He said, “Take heed. Take heed to yourselves. Be ye also ready. For in an hour that ye think not, the Son of Man cometh. And what I say unto you, I say unto all: Watch.”
Now I say to myself: if Andrew, Peter, James, and John needed to take heed to themselves, how much more I? If they needed to be ready, how much more I? If they needed to watch and pray, how much more I?
When the Lord Jesus gave this discourse, He gave general signs. He spoke of wars and rumours of wars, nation rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom. He spoke of earthquakes in many places. He spoke of famines; and in one of the Gospels, it is recorded that He also spoke of plagues. He spoke of persecution worldwide in its nature.
All these things, He said, are not the actual end of the end, but the beginning of the end.
Now, I have heard ever since I have been saved—and I was brought up a pagan. I never went to chapel, synagogue, or church of any kind. I was excused all religious instruction at school. When I was twelve years of age, I had never heard the Lord’s Prayer, and I had never read the Bible.
When I found the Lord at twelve years of age, I found the Bible—which nobody bothered to give me. I only had a Gospel of John, so I read it. My sister came to the Lord a month later than I, and we read that Gospel of John until it fell to pieces. To this day, the Gospel of John is written in my heart.
Then we found an old Bible, and we hid it from our mother, who tried to steal it from us because she thought we had become religious cranks. We studied the Bible. You know, the Bible for us was so exciting, so thrilling.
Ever since that day, I remember being told that the signs of the last days were war and rumours of war, earthquakes, plagues, and persecution.
I understood that when the Lord Jesus summed up everything—“Now from the fig tree learn its lesson”—He was referring simply to the fig tree putting forth its leaves. When the fig tree puts forth its leaves, you know summer is coming.
Actually, the fig tree is the last of the trees in Israel to put forth its leaves. When it puts forth its leaves, toward the end of spring, the dry summer season is only a matter of weeks away.
The real harbinger, if you like, of a longer time is the almond tree. Now, if the Lord had said, “Learn the parable of the almond tree,” then we would have felt that we had some time. But if He really meant, “When these things come to pass,” then you have not got much time.
Can you tell me any time in the last nineteen hundred years when, in the history of this world and the nations, there has not been war and rumour of war, nation rising against nation, and kingdom against kingdom? Can you tell me any time in the last nineteen hundred years when there have not been huge earthquakes, sometimes following one after another? Can you tell me any time when there have not been famines, plague diseases, or persecution?
If we look at the history of the last nineteen hundred years, there has not been a single period in which the world has been free from war, rumour of war, nation rising against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
Now someone will immediately say, “No, no, no—you have got it wrong. Our Lord never meant that. Our Lord meant worldwide war, and worldwide rumours of war.” This may be true. But how did any generation know that the wars in which it was involved were not the worst that had ever happened?
We have all the wisdom of hindsight. We can see that the First World War and the Second World War eclipsed everything that had ever gone before. But how could any generation down through the last nineteen hundred years know that the wars, earthquakes, plagues, and persecution it was experiencing were not the worst that had ever happened?
For instance, supposing you had lived through the Hundred Years’ War, which devastated such a large part of Europe. Would you not have thought, “Maybe the Lord is coming”?
Supposing you had lived through the great plague, the bubonic plague, the Black Death, which swept away eighty-six percent of the population of the British Isles, Scandinavia, and Europe. In Norway, whole valleys were left without a single inhabitant.
Guilds died out. Some of the secrets of the guilds, such as dying things in stained glass, died because they were never allowed to write down the formula. They had to pass it from father to son. But when the father was dying, he told the eldest son, and the son was dead within two hours.
Would you not have thought that the Lord was coming? War, then plague, and then nobody to sow the fields or to labour in them.
Luke, being a doctor, very often noted small points that the other Synoptic writers do not mention. In Luke 21:29, this is how he puts it:
And He spake to them a parable: “Behold the fig tree, and all the trees: when they now shoot forth, ye see it and know of your own selves that the summer is now nigh.”
Someone once said to me—at least I heard it said in a sermon—that this word of Luke was to make sure that nobody understood it was anything to do with the Jewish people. He was saying, “You see, it is all the trees. There is nothing special about the fig tree.”
Then why did Luke not say, “Behold all the trees”? He does not use the term “abomination of desolation.” He says, “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies,” which was very interesting.
It saved the whole church in Jerusalem, because when they saw the Roman armies laying siege to Jerusalem in 66 AD, they did not wait for the abomination of desolation in 70 AD to be set up. They got out of the city while they could, and the whole lot were preserved and delivered.
Why did Luke not just say, “Behold all the trees”? Then we would know it had nothing whatsoever to do with a specific nation or people on this earth. But he said, in his careful way, “Behold the fig tree and all the trees.”
It is as if Dr. Luke were simply saying to us: twofold significance. Something about the fig tree is the same as what happens to all the trees—that is the general thing: wars and rumours of wars, nation rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom, earthquakes in many places, famines, worldwide plague diseases, and persecution.
But those signs are not valid until something happens to a specific tree among the trees of the wood. And that specific tree represents the Jewish people.
When something happens to that people and that nation, and at the same time there is war, rumour of war, nation rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom, earthquakes, famines, persecution, and plagues, then you know you have passed into the last time. He is nigh, even at the doors.
Now, my dear friend, it is a fact of history and a fact of the Gospel that on the day before Jesus said, “From the fig tree learn its parable,” He passed by a fig tree on the Mount of Olives on His way into Jerusalem.
He went over to look for fruit and could not find any. The disciples noted it, and then they heard Him judge the little fig tree. Then He went down into Jerusalem. The writer specifically says, “It was not the season for figs.”
Now, I have heard some extraordinary interpretations about this. I have been told that Jesus was a man just like the rest of us, and when you get hungry, you get irritable; and in a fit of irritation, looking for food on the fig tree, He cursed it and it died—which was a very unkind thing to do.
I find this quite remarkable, because Jesus was always talking about the birds of the air, the seasons, sowing and reaping, and everything else. Am I to understand that He did not know that in March, fig trees in Jerusalem, three thousand feet above sea level, do not bear fruit? This is ridiculous. Was He so absent-minded, or was He so merely human? Of course not.
He must have been acting a parable. The fact that He went into the temple, took a whip of cords, drove out the money-changers, overturned the tables of those that sold doves and oxen, and said, “My Father’s house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but ye have made it a den of robbers and thieves,” must have had something to do with that little fig tree.
The next morning, passing by again early in the morning—the very morning of the day in which, in the evening, Jesus said, “From the fig tree learn its parable”—Peter said, “Look, look, look, look at the fig tree. It has died.” And he made a very interesting comment: “It has died from the root.”
It had not been blasted from outside to inside by mildew or blight. It died from the root. And Jesus then spoke about having faith.
He obviously did not mean that you need faith to kill fig trees, because the fig tree is the softest of all woods, and the easiest thing to do is just to saw it down. I mean, it really is. Even I could do it.
What did Jesus mean when He said, “Have faith”? He meant this: where there is living faith, there is life; where there is life, there is fruit; where there is fruit, the blessing of God is there. Where there is death, there is barrenness; and where there is barrenness, there is judgment.
Here you have, on that evening of the day that Peter—one of those four—had said to Jesus, “Look, Lord, the fig tree You cursed has died from the roots,” that same day Jesus said, “From the fig tree learn its lesson.”
Even if that fig tree was not in their minds, which I am sure it was, the Holy Spirit would have reminded them later when they came to write the record of what Jesus had said.
Now, my dear friends, this is my point. In the last nineteen hundred years, that fig tree was plucked up out of the land. It died from the roots. It ceased to be a nation. It lost its capital, its national territory, and its national institutions. It was dispersed to the ends of the earth.
It was the easiest thing for Christians, theologians, and Bible scholars to say, “The wrath of God is now forever on the Jewish people. They are finished. Now it is only the church.”
But what happened is quite interesting. In the twentieth century, a miracle happened. Whatever we may feel about the politics of it, the right or the wrong of it, the fact is that the people are back in the land, and Jerusalem is the capital of a reborn Jewish state.
Now, if that is the case, it is a prophetic milestone that the church of God, in its recovery, has passed in our day and generation.
It is not as if there are a whole lot of other possibilities in the last nineteen hundred years, because there has not been a single possibility that comes anywhere near the fulfilment of this word. But it happened on 14 May 1948.
I am not going to dwell on this. I only want to make a point, because there is a second thing just as remarkable. In Luke 21, Jesus said that there would be great distress in the land, wrath upon the people, and that they would fall by the edge of the sword, be led captive into all nations, and Jerusalem would be trodden down by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles were fulfilled.
In the last nineteen hundred years, except for a few months in 135 and 136 AD, in the time of Hadrian and the Bar Kokhba revolt, Jerusalem has never at any single time been under sovereign Jewish government and control. But on 6 and 7 June 1967, it happened.
Now, my dear friends, I know there are some who will find it very hard to accept. I find this incontrovertible evidence that the church has passed into the last phase of world history.
That means that every one of us needs to wake up. God does not give us prophetic milestones so that we can be carried past them on stretchers—half asleep, caught up with our own routine, with absolutely no knowledge that we have passed something epoch-making.
But we have passed into a final epoch, however long that lasts, of world history.
I was told by a very godly aunt—she was not a real aunt, but she adopted my sister and me, and we owe a tremendous amount to her. She was Swedish, and I shall always be thankful for the Swedes because of what she taught us in those first days of our Christian experience.
She used to say to us—and this was in 1943 and 1944—“You mark my words: when the Jewish people become a nation again, then you will know that you have passed into the last stage of world history. The Lord will come.”
In fact, she said, “The Lord will come in that generation.” My sister and I were very excited about this possibility. We thought it might be a hundred years off, or two hundred years off. We had no idea that it was going to happen within a few years of our conversion.
However, ever since then, I have been concerned about this interpretation. It was all very well for Grattan Guinness in 1860, in his Life for the Last Days, to say, “When the Jewish people are a reborn state, that will be the last generation of history.”
It was perfectly all right in 1920 to say, “When the Jewish people become a recreated state, that will be the last generation.” It was even all right in 1948 to say, “Now we are in the last generation,” because a generation is roughly about forty years—you can give five or six years either way.
But what has happened is this: if we say that this is the interpretation—“This generation shall not pass away till all these things be fulfilled”—then 1988 ought to be it.
Furthermore, you can give another five years. But every single month that would pass, we could date more clearly the coming of the Lord. And this is precisely what the Lord Jesus, in the very same passage, said we could not do.
He said, “Nobody knows the time or the hour—not the angels, not even the Son, only the Father.” Someone once said to me, “Ah, you see, the Lord said you do not know the day or the hour. He never said you would not know the year.”
But then Mark goes on to say that we do not know the time when the Son of Man comes. You have got it? “Time” is a very general word. It covers the whole thing.
I have wondered very much about “this generation shall not pass,” and I feel we ought just to spend one moment on it because of you young people. I have often felt that some of the interpretation, and some of the books written on the basis of this interpretation, are saying, “This is the last generation.”
It is very exciting and thrilling. But when you young people pass 1988 and go into the 1990s, and nothing happens, and get to the end of this century and still nothing happens, you will be very disillusioned with the whole prophetic word of God.
Of course, the liberals say Jesus was a man just like you and me, and that He actually meant, “This generation shall not pass,” because He believed He was going to be back in the lifetime of those listening to Him. I cannot accept that.
If Jesus was so wrong on such a significant and important matter as His second coming, what else could He be wrong on? I cannot accept it. No, it is not the Lord Jesus I know.
Then, of course, you have evangelicals and charismatics who rush to the defence of God’s Word. They say, “Oh, no, no, no. He never meant this generation. He meant that generation—the generation that sees the fig tree blossom.”
But if Jesus had wanted to say “that generation,” why did He not say “that generation”? In Greek, He could have very clearly said, “That generation shall not pass away till all these things be fulfilled.” But He did not. He said, “This generation.”
I once went to one of the leading Cambridge Greek scholars who was in fellowship with us at Halford House in Richmond. Whenever I had a problem, I used to ask him if he could go away and investigate it.
I gave him this word. I said, “Listen, what do you think about ‘this generation’?” He said, “I think, if I remember rightly, it is a rather interesting word. It is a genetic word.” He said, “Leave it with me for a few days, and I will come back to you.”
He did come back and said, “This word is a very interesting word. It comes from a Greek root meaning begetting. Now, it can mean a tribe—all those born of the same forefathers, the same patriarchs. It can mean a race—all those born from the same forefathers. It can mean a family—those born from the same parents. It can mean kith and kin—those who all come from the same stock. It can mean a generation—those born at the same time in history.”
For some reason, the King James translators felt that it was “generation,” and everybody has followed it ever since. But he said, “You could say, ‘This family, this kith and kin, this tribe, this race.’”
I thought immediately, I am sure that is what Jesus really meant. He said, “This race, this family, shall not pass away till all these things be fulfilled.”
I notice now that in the New American Standard Bible and the New International Version, for the first time, there is an alternative rendering in the margin: “This race shall not pass away.”
Now, what it means is this, in my estimation: when we see the fig tree back in its territory, putting forth its leaves and getting ready to blossom and bear fruit; when we see Jerusalem back under sovereign Jewish control; we know we have passed out of the times of the Gentiles and into the last era of human history, however long that may last.
It could last a century. It could last two centuries. It might even last three centuries. I would be surprised if it does. The very word says, “He is nigh, even at the doors.” But what our Lord means by “I come quickly,” and what we mean, are two different things.
So we do not know how long—and I find that very exciting. It cannot, relatively speaking, be so long.
I hope that wakes up every single one of you, and especially those of us who are a little younger. What it really means is this: you and I have passed out of one tremendous period of history, described as the times of the Gentiles, into another era in God’s programme for the nations.
That era has different phases in it, but it is the last era of world history as we know it.
I always love to describe this period we are in by the rabbinic title: the threshold of the Messiah. It seems so comprehensive to me.
As is related to us here in Richmond, He is not even on the outskirts of Richmond. He is not even on the edge of the campus. He is actually in the foyer. He is even at the threshold.
Now, that to me is exciting.
What about these last days? What can we say about the last days into which we are moving? It has a very real bearing on recovery—on any further recovery we may see.
There are dark features about this era, and there are glorious features about this era. I am not going to dwell too long on them, but here are the dark features first. We will take the Jewish way of doing it: evening and morning.
Gentiles always speak about morning and evening. We will speak about evening and morning. It is a slightly more optimistic way of looking at it.
The first dark feature of the last days is that Antichrist has to come. I would not be the least bit surprised if, within not too many years, he appears.
Plainly, we know that materialistic humanism has swept over the whole world, and particularly the intelligentsia of the world.
I am very interested that this Antichrist is called “the man of sin,” which I think is some indication of his philosophy. I am also very interested in Revelation 13. We have the mysterious number, which I think some people have got very fanciful over: 666.
But six is the figure of man. Six-six-six: materialistic humanism—a system that will span the world and unite both the capitalist and communist worlds in its philosophy, which it is doing.
Abortion; in the end, euthanasia; even the destruction of classes—these are based in the whole idea of materialistic humanism.
Whether that is still a way off, or whether we shall before long begin to see the thing build up, it is one of the features of the last era of human history. We already see our educational system, our scientific system, and our medical system being taken over by this philosophy.
A second feature is an apostate church—a worldwide faith. I do not believe it will be the Christian church.
This worldwide faith will have Christendom and so-called Christianity as its foundation and base, but it will include within it Hinduism, Islam, Confucianism, Taoism, Shintoism, spiritism, occultism, and animism.
I was very interested recently that the Pope had an extraordinary service in Saint Francis of Assisi’s church in Assisi, Italy. In that church building, all the various religions did their own thing in different corners.
They had a big prayer meeting. The Buddhists had one corner; the Hindus had another; Muslims were over here; a Reformed rabbi, sadly, was over there; there were a whole lot of liberal churchmen elsewhere; and there was a Red Indian from the States with all his feathers, smoking a pipe and doing his thing to some great spirit of the wind.
Somebody from somewhere in Polynesia poured blood out on the floor. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope went round together to watch each of the groups and visit with them.
My dear friends, I think this is an indication of this harlot of which we have spoken in the Book of Revelation, that rides on the beast. The beast, of course, has the number 666.
The harlot that rides on it is gilded with gold and precious stone and pearl. Outwardly, she is an absolute replica of the city of God, of the bride.
Outwardly, she looks as if she is made of gold from within to without, as if there are real precious stones right inside her, as if the pearl is in her. But it is only skin deep.
An apostate church. We read of a false prophet. This false prophet has a most extraordinary description: we are told that he looks like a lamb, but speaks like a dragon.
He has the horns of a ram, so that he looks like the Lamb of God. But when he speaks, it is the dragon.
Now, my dear friends, do you begin to understand maybe why God has led us in this particular conference to consider this whole matter of recovery? Once you start on the path of compromise, you compromise and compromise and compromise.
Years ago, I remember Anglican vicars telling me they were going to get out of the Church of England when this happened, or that happened, or the other happened. When this happened, and that happened, and the other happened, they still stayed.
Compromise leads us in the end always to the same thing. That is why the Word of God says in Revelation, “Come ye out from among her, and be ye separate, saith the Lord.”
The third dark feature of the last days is the judgment of the nations. Although many of us, if not all of us, believe in a rapture, the fact remains that we do not know when we are going to be taken.
Some people say that we are not going to see the judgment of the nations. They say, “Oh, no, no, no. The church is going to be gone. They will see nothing of that.”
But, my dear friends, just think for a moment. In Thessalonians, we are told that the coming of the Lord will not come before the man of sin appears. So at least we have to be there until he comes, which means that we have to go some way into this period of tribulation and trouble.
The second thing is this: I have never been able to understand the Anglo-Saxon mentality. It is a kind of inherent superiority.
Evidently, the Chinese can suffer incredibly in the last generation, but that is because they are Chinese. Russian believers can suffer terribly, but that is because they are Russians. Eastern Europeans can suffer abominably and horrifyingly at the hands of these anti-Christ and anti-God powers, but that is because they are Eastern Europeans.
But God will not allow the church in Britain or the church in the United States to see any of this. He is too kind.
What is the difference between Chinese believers, Russian believers, and European believers who are suffering terribly at this present time? What is the difference with these people? Why do we think we are going to be preserved from it, and they are not?
It is perfectly true that God promises He is going to rapture the church, but He nowhere tells us how far we have to go in suffering and tribulation. Therefore, we must be prepared and ready.
Now I want to talk about the glorious features. The first is very simple: the church is going to be completed and prepared as a bride for her Lord in this era.
The last stages of her dress, the last ornaments that have to be put on her bridal gown, are going to be put on in this last era.
I do not believe, sadly, that all believers are going to be in this. I wish I could. I wish that every single born-again believer in the whole world would be involved in a preparation for the coming of the Lord, and in the producing of the bride and completing of the church.
But, my dear friends, if I see the Word of God in a right light, I understand that it will only be in a remnant. That remnant will not be elitist and exclusivist, but inclusive and filled with the love of God for every other believer in the world, whatever their name or whatever set they happen to be found in.
This church is going to be fulfilled. Do you believe that God went to the whole trouble of turning the medieval world upside down and inside out, and taking that monk, Martin Luther, and some of those others, to recover the great truth concerning God’s Word, justification by faith, and the finished work of the Lamb?
Do you think the Lord went to all that trouble to recover the truth of baptism, so that thousands upon thousands laid down their lives for the truth of baptism? Do you think the Lord has recovered the whole truth of our great commission to carry the gospel to all nations as a testimony before the end comes?
Do you really think the Lord has recovered all these things—recovered the oneness of believers, recovered the truth of His second coming, recovered something about the cross and spiritual life, something about the nature of the body of Christ—to let the whole thing disappear in the end?
Of course not.
Jesus said:
“Upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
Oh, my dear friends, it is a question of what you are looking at. If you look at the dark features, you are going to be frightened. You are going to have a sleepless night.
“Oh,” you say, “what a dreadful way to end the conference—talking about things like that. That is dreadful, especially to us nice Christians in the United States. Our job is to pray for the Chinese and the Russians from the comfort of our lovely homes.”
God is doing something in them, and He needs to.
If God sees that the church in the United States, in Europe, and in the so-called free world is not getting where it ought to get, He will bring tribulation, persecution, trouble, and economic disaster upon nation after nation.
Then believers in the United States, Canada, Britain, and the EEC will start to discover where their treasure really is. Then they will begin to discover the real truth concerning the recovery work of God: that it is more important to be in what God is doing than anything else in the whole world.
I understand from that marvellous word, “Then is finished the mystery of God, according to the good tidings which He declared to His servants the prophets,” that the church is going to be completed right in the midst of all these dragons, beasts, false prophets, and harlots.
There is a second glorious thing I want to underline, dear friends, which has very much to do with recovery: the gospel of the kingdom is to be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations before the end comes.
I understand that to mean that the authoritative declaration that Jesus is both Lord and Saviour is going to be made by believers anointed by God throughout the whole world, for a testimony to every nation before the end comes.
Let us not throw in the glove. Every recovery move in the last four hundred years has resulted in hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, coming to know the Lord Jesus.
In the last phase of world history, there will be multitudes and multitudes and multitudes and multitudes coming to know the Lord.
Yet that means a very simple thing: you and I should be behind every genuine endeavour to take the gospel to the lost. We should be behind every means—not devaluing it, not deriding it, not belittling it.
At the same time as we understand what God is doing in the church, our hearts should go out to the world around us in such desperate need.
When you realise—I do not know about the United States—but when you realise that in the third world over two-thirds of the population are under the age of sixteen, it is sobering.
You go to some of these countries when the schools open, and it is like a human tide pours out of the schools. The streets, the lanes, everything is filled with young people.
Every one is someone for whom our Lord Jesus died.
The third glorious feature—and I will not spend long on this—is that Israel will be redeemed.
It says in Romans 11:28:
As touching the gospel, they are enemies for your sake: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the Father’s sake. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
In that same marvellous chapter, it speaks about you being wild olive branches, grafted into the good olive tree, while they through unbelief have been put on one side. And it says, “How much more shall the natural branches be grafted back into their own olive tree?”
My dear friends, I do not believe that God has kept the Jewish people alive through over four thousand years of recorded history in order to damn them.
Nor do I believe that the colossal suffering our people have gone through, which has no parallel in human history other than the suffering of the true church, is because God has judged them.
It is true that there was a Jewish hand in the crucifixion of Jesus. It is true that terrible trouble came upon us. But God has always been righteous to the third and fourth generation, and we are now in the fiftieth.
I do not believe that the millions who died in the Holocaust were simply dead. It was the powers of darkness who, in some way, understood that the ultimate miracles of God in human history are going to be worked within the boundaries of the promised land and in connection with the Jewish people.
After all, Jesus returns to Jerusalem. It is quite extraordinary if He returns to the capital of a political accident. Why does He not come to Washington, London, Rome, Moscow, or Peking—the capital of the most populous nation on earth?
But Jesus comes back to Jerusalem. Why? Is He a lover of antiques? Does He simply want to come back to His childhood memories? Of course not.
Why does the Lord Jesus return to Jerusalem unless something is going to happen to the people?
Furthermore, the way these people are going to be saved is the way you have been saved. There is no difference. In the same way you have been saved, they will be saved.
“I will pour upon them a spirit of grace and of supplication; and they shall look unto Me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for an only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for a firstborn. In that day there shall be a fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness.”
My dear friends, I will not dwell on this except to say that here is another glorious feature. The whole history of God with the Jewish people has been a love story, and we are in the last chapter and almost the last paragraph.
When finally that reconciliation takes place, then will come to pass the words of the apostle Paul:
If their fall is the riches of the world, and their loss the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fulness? For if the casting away of them is the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?
This is a glorious feature. Although we must not look too much upon our blood or our background, I believe that today we stand very near to the fulfilment of this age-old prophecy.
How those patriarchs, prophets, kings, and Jewish apostles must wait for this day to be fulfilled.
If all that is true, then I simply want to say: we are on the victory side.
Whatever is going to happen in this last era, and for however long it lasts, the fact remains: God is going to do it. The Lord is preparing us for the last stage.
Now, I love this little word, and I am going to end here, that Jesus speaks of Himself in the last part of Revelation, Revelation 22:16:
“I Jesus have sent Mine angel to testify unto you these things for the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright and morning star.”
The bright and morning star. I have so many times seen that morning star.
I have been privileged to climb Mount Sinai fifteen times. One of the most exciting things I know about climbing Mount Moses, Mount Horeb, or Mount Sinai is that you have to start early in the morning, about half-past three.
But about four o’clock, over a ridge, you suddenly see this one huge, luminous star. It is the morning star.
I remember years ago, when I was in Egypt doing some duty at night in a particular area, I was with an Egyptian. I saw light in the east, and I said to him, “Oh, look, the dawn is coming.”
“No,” he said, “it is not the dawn.”
“Well,” I said, “what is it?” There were no lights there—no city lights, you know, anything like that. So he said, as best he could get me to understand, “False dawn. False dawn.”
I understood later that it was the mock dawn. I do not understand it, but evidently in desert areas there is such a thing. “Wait,” he said.
A little later, we saw this one star in the darkest part of the night. Then he said, “Now the real dawn comes.” And so it came.
This is what Jesus meant when He said, “I am the bright and morning star.” Be careful of mock dawn. Be careful of false dawn.
He is the One who is going to shine brightest in the darkest part of the last era. Then we know the dawn of a new day is coming.
That new day, that new creation, that new order, that new man, that new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness—Jesus is the morning star heralding a new age when all things will be made new.
This is the testimony of Jesus.
My dear friends, if that is true, we have to recognise two things. Satan is preparing this world for his final bid to take over. We see it, as I have already said, in the educational system, in the political system, and in scientific and medical theory.
He is preparing it. It is the dragon, insidiously working everywhere.
But the Holy Spirit is preparing for the final triumph of the Lord Jesus. Dear people of God, we need to wake up.
I want to ask you a question in closing this evening. We have heard so much in these last days about recovery and God’s recovery work in the church.
There is a little phrase that is very interesting in 2 Peter 1:
And we have the word of prophecy made more sure; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day-star arise in your hearts.
Now, that is very strange, is it not? Why did he say, “in your hearts”? Why did he not say, “Until the day dawn and the day-star arise”? Or better still, “Until the day-star arise and the dawn come”?
But he said, “Until the day-star arise in your hearts.” Now I want to ask you a question: Has the day-star arisen in your heart?
Let me ask it again. Listen carefully to me: has the day-star arisen in your heart?
In other words, has the full truth that we are in the last days, and that Jesus is bringing in a new age, a new day, a new creation, a new man, a new order, a new heaven and a new earth—has it dawned on you?
Have the consequences dawned on you? Have the implications dawned on you? Have the inferences dawned on you?
Because if they have, my friend, you will not be afraid to go outside the camp and bear His reproach. You will not mind belonging to these funny little groups that meet in homes and houses, that are so despised and devalued. You will not mind belonging to the pilgrim church.
You will not mind what the world talks about, because God is preparing a people who will be able to go into caves and holes, into catacombs, and survive in the days that lie ahead until He comes to take us.
God is not going to run a kind of ambulance service, with angels and stretchers, that will carry us out.
Take heed to yourselves. Be ye also ready. For in an hour that ye think not, the Son of Man cometh. Watch and pray.
If Jesus said that to us, we need to take heed. We need to get ready. We need not just to pray routine prayers. We need to watch and pray, so that our prayer comes out of our watching.
Has the day-star arisen in your heart?
It seems to me that there is a challenge inherent in all of this that we have been talking about these days, and we must surely have felt it this morning. It is a challenge that only the Holy Spirit can give to all of us.
What are you going to do? What am I going to do?
Am I going to love the Lord with all my heart? Am I going to relinquish everything for Him—relinquish my ownership and become a steward? Am I going to obey Him and follow Him wherever He goes?
Am I going to be faithful, by His grace and by His power? Am I going to be committed to His recovery work?
Dear people of God, the day-star cannot arise in your hearts unless we can say, “Lord, in spite of all my weakness and failing, by Your grace, yes.”
Lord, only You can challenge us. Only You can get out of us the kind of response, Lord, that is needed in these days that lie ahead.
You need a new generation coming livingly into all that You have been doing in this age.
O Father, challenge us this night as to whether we are awake, whether we are alive, whether, Lord, we are ready to follow You and go with You.
Do not let it be lost on us, Lord, we pray—not just another conference, but something that becomes almost a kind of catalyst in our lives.
We ask it in the name of our Lord.