Monthly Archives: August 2020
The Shortest Days in the History of the World – Matthew 24:22-35
Summary:
How will the Lord shorten the days of the “great tribulation” (Mt. 24:21, 22) for the sake of the elect (those who will believe on Him during the Tribulation)? It has to last exactly 1260 days (Rev. 12:6-12), three and a half years (Dan. 12:6, 7), 42 months (Rev. 13:2-5). Some say He was going to make it last longer but shortened it to 1260 days. But after Daniel said it would last three and a half years the Lord said the days “shall be” shortened, future tense. No, He won’t shorten the number of days, He’ll shorten the days by doing the opposite of what He did in Joshua 10:12,13.
When those days come, false christs will claim to be Christ in hiding (Mt. 24:23-26). The Lord told His disciples not to believe it because His coming will be like lightning (v. 27). Lightning always gets our attention! So He was saying when He comes everyone will know about it—specially if it starts in the east and goes all the way to the west! But lightning that starts in the north and goes to the south would only reach the south pole, for after that it would be going north again. If the Lord came like that, only half the world would see Him. But lightning that comes out of the east and goes to the west has to circle the globe, meaning “every eye shall see Him” (Rev. 1:7).
Since lightning travels 3700 miles per second, some think the Lord was talking about the Rapture (cf. I Cor. 15:52). But He compares this coming to what happens when eagles gather around a dead body (Mt. 24:28). That’s Armageddon (Rev. 19:11-21). The Lord will use the birds of the earth as a sort of heavenly cleanup crew to cleanse the planet of the rot and stench of the dead before establishing His beautiful kingdom
But if this coming of the Lord is associated with Armageddon, that means it is a coming that will take place after the Tribulation—and that’s what the Lord went on to say (Mt. 24:29,30). But Paul promises we’ll be raptured before the Tribulation (I Thes. 4:15—5:5) and escape that wrath (I Thes. 1:10; 5:9) by the “salvation” of the Rapture (Rom. 13:11).
Part of the “wrath” that the ones left behind will have to endure will fall when the stars fall (Mt. 24:30) to the earth (Rev. 6:12,13). These can’t be literal stars. Stars are suns, and even one falling would incinerate us. Stars in the Bible can be an-gels (Job 38:4-7). The ones that will fall are the fallen angels, the “powers” that rule “high places” (Eph. 6:12). That’s why “the powers of the heavens shall be shaken” (Mt. 24:30). There’s going to be a shakeup in the government of heaven.
Then the sign of the Son of man will appear in heaven (v. 31). Normally we can’t see into heaven because the “curtain” of the stars keeps us from seeing into the “tabernacle” of God in heaven (Isa. 40:22 cf. Heb.8:1, 2). But God is going to peel back the curtain of the heavens “as a scroll” (Rev. 6:13-16) and they’ll see the Son looking slain (5:6), i.e., still bearing the wounds of Calvary. Knowing that men like themselves gave Him those wounds, they’ll fear His wrath. That explains how they’ll see Him “sitting” and then “coming” (Mt. 26:64) instead of coming and then sitting in the kingdom.
People also think Matthew 24 is about the Rapture because people will be gathered with a trump (24:31 cf. I Thes. 4:16, 17). But God only uses angels with Israel (cf. Gal. 3:19). And right before angels gather saved Jews into the kingdom He’ll use them to weed out the tares of the unsaved (Mt. 13:38).
Knowing that the fig tree (Mt. 24:32, 33) is a symbol of Israel (Hos. 9:10), prophecy preachers got excited when the nations of the world created what is now known as the nation of Israel in 1948. Some added the “generation” (Mt. 24:34) of 33 years to 1948 and predicted the Rapture would come in 1981. But national Israel is represented by the olive tree (Ps. 80:8). The fig tree represents religious Israel. Adam used fig leaves to cover his sin, and covering your sin is the very definition of religion. Antichrist will rebuild Israel’s temple and give them back their sacrifice system, something the Lord cursed (Mt. 21:18). That’s the sign of the fig tree that will signal the Lord’s coming and the end of the world.
Don’t you love it when prophecy preachers try to determine the day of the Rapture from a passage that says you can’t know it (Mt. 24:35, 36)! Those that claim they know when He will return claim to know more than the Lord (Mark. 13:32)!
Video of this sermon is also available on YouTube: The Shortest Days in the History of the World – Matthew 24:22-35
Did the She Bear Kill Little Children?
“You have said that the she bear killed the children in 2 Kings 2:22-24 because of Israel’s sin (Lev. 26:14,22). Others explain those difficult verses by saying the Hebrew words for ‘little children’ referred to older kids, who may not have all died. Could this be so instead?”
If these were not little children, they were over the age of accountability. And since most older children are not saved, that would mean most of these children went to hell because of the sins of their nation. It is far more just to believe that they were little children who went to be with the Lord when they died.
And I don’t think there is any way to read that word “rob” (Lev. 26:22) and conclude those children didn’t die. Wild beasts don’t rob parents of their children by injuring them. They rob them by killing them.
The law was a covenant, which is an old word for a contract. If the people of Israel broke the terms of the contract, God was bound by the laws of justice and righteousness to keep His part of the contract and punish them in the manner specified in the covenant. If He didn’t, He could rightly be charged with breaking His Word and being unfaithful to His own covenant
To the Reader:
Some of our Two Minutes articles were written many years ago by Pastor C. R. Stam for publication in newspapers. When many of these articles were later compiled in book form, Pastor Stam wrote this word of explanation in the Preface:
"It should be borne in mind that the newspaper column, Two Minutes With the Bible, has now been published for many years, so that local, national and international events are discussed as if they occurred only recently. Rather than rewrite or date such articles, we have left them just as they were when first published. This, we felt, would add to the interest, especially since our readers understand that they first appeared as newspaper articles."
To this we would add that the same is true for the articles written by others that we continue to add, on a regular basis, to the Two Minutes library. We hope that you'll agree that while some of the references in these articles are dated, the spiritual truths taught therein are timeless.
Two Minutes with the Bible is now available on Alexa devices. Full instructions here.
Good News and Good Works
One of the Greatest Prophecies in the Bible – Matthew 24:1-21
Summary:
The 12 were overly impressed with the temple (24:1) even though Christ called it a den of thieves earlier and had just stormed out of it (23:37-39). So the Lord told them it’d have to come down stone by stone (24:2). The only buildings torn down like that had leprosy (Lev. 14:44), a type of sin. When the Lord left the temple and went to the Mount of Olives (24:3), that should have reminded Jews of how the glory of the Lord did the same thing in Ezekiel 10:18.
The end of the world the 12 asked about (Mt. 24:3) began 2,000 years ago (Heb. 9:26), but was interrupted by the dispensation of the mystery (Eph. 3:1-3).
Daniel said the “everlasting righteousness” of the kingdom would come after 70 weeks (Dn. 9:24) of years (cf. Gen. 29:29) when the Lord returns to establish it. You see, He meant the end of the world as we know it, the end of man being in charge of the world and Christ being in charge of it in the kingdom. It was supposed to start after Christ came 69 weeks later (Dn. 9:25), but didn’t. Daniel said that 70th week would be horrendous (9:25-27). We know Matthew 24 is all about that week for the 12 asked about the end of the world.
It will start with “many” a false christ persuading unsaved Jews who rejected Jesus that they are the messiah Israel’s been looking for (24:5). There’s always been wars and rumors of wars (24:6) so the Lord added there’d be “pestilences” (24:7). That word means sicknesses (I Ki. 8:37), specifically epidemic sicknesses. This has many thinking Covid-19 is a sign of the end. Many are also quoting Leviticus 26:14,25 to say God is judging us for our sins, but we’re not under the law of Leviticus 26 (Rom. 6:15)! When God starts sending pestilences a third of Israel will die (Eze. 5:12).
Others are quoting Psalm 91:3-8 to say God will spare Christians of pestilence even though He’s not! Nothing but disillusionment and shattered faith can come from claiming promises that God made to Israel if they obeyed Him.
When a third of a nation dies the world will think the end is near, but the Lord said that’s just “the beginning of sorrows” (24:8). The believers whom He said would be killed (24:9) are the 12 apostles, not us. He expected them to live to see all this (24:34; Mt. 16:28), but the mystery interrupted things.
That didn’t make Him a false prophet, for Hezekiah said something that didn’t come true (Isa. 38:1-5). But God told David if his sons were good that one would always sit on the throne (I Ki. 2:4). Hezekiah reminded God if he died childless that wouldn’t come true! So God knew all along Hezekiah would live despite what His prophet said, and He knew all along that generation would die and not see these things in Matthew 24, even though the Lord said they wouldn’t.
In the Tribulation, believing Jews will be “betrayed” by unsaved Jews (24:10) of their own families (Mark 1:13-15). It’s a cold day when even your wife might sell you out to the Antichrist (Micah 7:5,6), so the Lord said “the love of many shall wax cold” (Mt. 24:11,12). But they’ll have to endure till the end of the Tribulation without selling out to the beast if they want to be saved (24:13).
After the gospel of the kingdom is preached in all the world the end of the world will come (24:14). That gospel isn’t “Christ died for our sins” (I Cor. 15:3,4). The 12 preached the kingdom gospel and didn’t know He’d die (Lu. 9:1,2; 18:31-34). The kingdom gospel was the good news He was their king and ready to give them their kingdom (Mark 1:14,15).
We know Matthew 24:15,16 is halfway through Daniel’s 70th week because it sounds like Daniel 9:27. The over-spreading of desolations has to do with the cherubim that overspread the mercy seat (Ex. 37:9). Antichrist will cause the sacrifices he reinstated to “cease” by dying and rising (Rev. 13:1-3) and claiming to be their fulfillment. The mercy seat will become “desolate” when Antichrist sits on it (II Ths. 2:7,8) because “desolate” means empty of inhabitants (Jer. 33:10) and God is supposed to inhabit the mercy seat (Ps. 99:1).
Tribulation Jews will have to move fast to escape the beast (24:17-29) and break the sabbath (v. 20). Worrying about that is more proof this isn’t about us who are not under the law!
Video of this sermon is also available on YouTube: One of the Greatest Prophecies in the Bible – Matthew 24:1-21
Show the Lord’s Death
After our Bible conference last fall in Alcester, England, my son Jesse and I did some sightseeing in London. As we waited for one of London’s legendary double decker tour buses to pick us up, I noticed that the Ritz Hotel across the street had some pockmarks on the exterior of their otherwise beautiful building. These marks didn’t look like the kind of deterioration that all buildings suffer from age. They looked more like the kind of damage that is inflicted when something impacts the building. That got me to wondering if those marks might be injuries sustained during the Blitz of London in World War II.
Sure enough, our tour bus driver later pointed out similar pockmarks on St. Paul’s Cathedral, and confirmed that they were indeed the result of shrapnel from the countless bombs that rocked the city during Hitler’s horrendous eight-month onslaught of England’s capital.
Our tour guide said nothing further about the marks, but I began to wonder why those damaged areas were never repaired. Surely a hotel as fine as the Ritz could easily have afforded to erase the scars of the Nazi barrage. And I have to assume that at some point the Church of England could have scraped together the money to restore the flagship church of their religion, and put the memory of that horrific bombing behind them.
The only conclusion to which I could come is that they don’t want to put it behind them. They don’t want to forget the suffering they had to endure as a city. They don’t want to forget the price they had to pay for the freedom from fascism that they continue to enjoy to this day. And it’s not likely that they will forget. Those pockmarks won’t let them.
That got me to thinking of how we’ll never be able to forget the price the Lord paid to save us from our sins. The pockmarks in His blessed face won’t let us. Isaiah describes how His face was brutalized (Isa. 52:14), and He retained those scars after He rose from the dead (cf. John 20:27). We know He continued to bear them even after He ascended into heaven, for in a vision of heaven John describes Him as “a Lamb as it had been slain” (Rev. 5:6). So once the Lord raptures us to heaven, His pockmarked face will “shew the Lord’s death” for all eternity.
But “till He come,” our apostle Paul says it is important to “shew the Lord’s death” in the communion service (1 Cor. 11:23-26). If God’s people didn’t tend to forget Him, He wouldn’t have had to keep telling His people in Israel not to (Deut. 6:12; 8:11,14,19). No wonder the Lord tells us to partake of the bread and the cup “in remembrance of Me” (1 Cor. 11:24,25).
To the Reader:
Some of our Two Minutes articles were written many years ago by Pastor C. R. Stam for publication in newspapers. When many of these articles were later compiled in book form, Pastor Stam wrote this word of explanation in the Preface:
"It should be borne in mind that the newspaper column, Two Minutes With the Bible, has now been published for many years, so that local, national and international events are discussed as if they occurred only recently. Rather than rewrite or date such articles, we have left them just as they were when first published. This, we felt, would add to the interest, especially since our readers understand that they first appeared as newspaper articles."
To this we would add that the same is true for the articles written by others that we continue to add, on a regular basis, to the Two Minutes library. We hope that you'll agree that while some of the references in these articles are dated, the spiritual truths taught therein are timeless.
Two Minutes with the Bible is now available on Alexa devices. Full instructions here.
What Kind of Church?
Ananias Passes the Test! – Acts 9:10-19
Summary:
The Lord asked Ananias to go see Saul, who was persecuting Christ’s followers unto the death (Acts 9:10-17). That was perhaps the hardest test of faith in the Bible, but Ananias was able to pass it because he was “a devout man” (22:12).
“Devout” is the adjective form of the word devoted, which means to take something that is yours and say it is the Lord’s (Lev. 27:16, 21). That’s what Ananias did with himself before his hardest test of faith came. That’s how he passed it. Your hardest test may be yet to come, but you too can pass it if you devote yourself to the Lord in advance like he did!
Saul was “praying” (11) like you probably were right after you got saved. I hope you never stopped! Paul had to write “pray without ceasing” (I Thes. 5:17) because when grace believers learn God isn’t answering prayer in the miraculous manner in which He used to answer prayer, some of them cease praying. Paul didn’t, and neither should we! God still answers prayer through His Word working in His people.
A “vessel” (v. 15) is something you put things in to carry them from one place to another. Your blood vessels carry life-giving blood and oxygen to the furthest extremities of your body so you can have life. The Lord chose Saul to carry His name to the Gentiles so that they might have eternal life.
That means the Lord was calling Saul to a different kind of ministry than that to which He called the twelve, who were not sent to the Gentiles (Mt. 10:1-6). The Lord didn’t say that because He didn’t like Gentiles. He planned to use the Jews to reach the Gentiles! That means in time past Israel was God’s chosen vessel to bear His name before the Gentiles.
But when the Jews refused to be the ambassadors that God sent them to be among the Gentiles, He allowed them to be “swallowed up” of the Gentiles (Hos. 8:8), and instead they go “among the Gentiles” as His prisoners in Babylon instead of as His ambassadors. God would have been pleased with them if they’d have obeyed Him, but when they didn’t, they became “a vessel wherein is no pleasure.”
God eventually let them out of Babylonian captivity. But when He tried to use Israel to reach the Gentiles in the New Testament and they responded by rocking Stephen to sleep, that was the last straw. God chose Saul to be His new chosen vessel to bear His name to the Gentiles.
But when Acts 9:15 mentions the Jews last, that means God is now reaching us Gentiles first and using us to carry His name to the Jews. But His plan to use Paul and us to carry His name to the Gentiles was different from His plan to use the Jews to do it in many ways. We see one very important way in Verse 16 when the Lord told Ananias that He’d show Saul how great things he’d have to suffer for Him.
When God used the Jews to reach the Gentiles, any suffering they had to suffer was of their own making! God told them that if they obeyed Him that He’d protect them from sickness and their enemies. But the Lord promised Saul—and us!—that we will suffer for Him (Acts 14:22). But after all that the Lord suffered for us on the cross, it’s a privilege to suffer for Him to get the truth of the mystery out to the rest of the Body of Christ as Paul did (Col. 1:23,24).
The filling of the Spirit back then (Acts 9:17) empowered men to be able to speak in tongues (2:4) and heal the sick (5:15, 16). But today it empowers us to thank God in “all things,” and empowers wives to submit to husbands and children to submit to parents and servants to obey their masters (Eph. 5:18-6:5). That’s way more powerful!
Saul was baptized (Acts 9:18)—but not for the remission of sins (cf. 2:38). We know he was saved before he was baptized, after he called Jesus “Lord” (Acts 9:6 cf. I Cor. 12:3). Ananias asked him to be baptized because that was the only message he knew. The new program of salvation without baptism wasn’t revealed to him, it was revealed later to Paul!
To make it so Saul could kick back with the disciples he’d come to kill (Acts 9:19) God had to change the nature of that “wolf” to get him to lay back with those lambs (cf. Isa. 11:6). God can still do that today in the most violent of men. He’s the answer to all the violence we’re seeing lately!
This sermon is also available on YouTube: Ananias Passes the Test! – Acts 9:10-19
Was Paul the Chief of Sinners?
“What did Paul mean when he said he was the chief of sinners?”
“…Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief” (1 Tim. 1:15)
When we think of sinners, we generally think of those who commit carnal, fleshly sins such as fornication and murder. But the Bible speaks of another kind of sin, that of religious pride and hypocritical self-righteousness. You’d think God would hate fleshly sins more, but when the Lord was here, He was kind and patient to sinners of that genre. By contrast, He delivered blistering denunciations of the scribes and Pharisees for their religious pride and self-righteousness, and for their persecution of their Messiah.
But it doesn’t really matter which sort of sin is worse in the context of this question, for before he was saved, Paul was guilty of both varieties. Murder is the worst sort of fleshly sins, and he was guilty of murdering God’s people. But he persecuted them in religious self-righteousness, for “touching the righteousness which is in the law” he was “blameless” (Phil. 3:6). This sinful combination certainly made him the chief of sinners.
In addition, the Bible word “chief” can mean most prominent, as it does when it speaks of “the chief singer” (Hab. 3:19) and “chief priests” (Ezra 10:5). The word can also have the idea of leadership. “The chief man” on the island where Paul was shipwrecked (Acts 28:7) was probably the leader of those native people, and “Beelzebub the chief of devils” (Luke 11:15) was a reference to Satan, who is certainly the leader of all devils.
So in calling himself the chief of sinners, Paul was also saying that he was the most prominent leader of the world’s sinful rebellion against God (Acts 8:3; 9:1). That’s why God saved him, to prominently show His grace in him (1 Tim. 1:16), just as He judged Pharaoh, the world’s most prominent and powerful leader, to show His power in him (Exod. 9:16).
This might be why Paul used the present tense to say he was still the chief of sinners, even now that he was saved. He was still the world’s most prominent example of the worst kinds of sinner saved by grace.
If you’re not saved, Paul’s story is solid Biblical proof that no matter who you are or what you’ve done, God can save you. “Christ died for our sins…and…rose again” (I Cor. 15:3,4). “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31).
To the Reader:
Some of our Two Minutes articles were written many years ago by Pastor C. R. Stam for publication in newspapers. When many of these articles were later compiled in book form, Pastor Stam wrote this word of explanation in the Preface:
"It should be borne in mind that the newspaper column, Two Minutes With the Bible, has now been published for many years, so that local, national and international events are discussed as if they occurred only recently. Rather than rewrite or date such articles, we have left them just as they were when first published. This, we felt, would add to the interest, especially since our readers understand that they first appeared as newspaper articles."
To this we would add that the same is true for the articles written by others that we continue to add, on a regular basis, to the Two Minutes library. We hope that you'll agree that while some of the references in these articles are dated, the spiritual truths taught therein are timeless.
Two Minutes with the Bible is now available on Alexa devices. Full instructions here.
