Live Urgently: Stand Firm Until Christ Returns

Stand firm, you win. And those who stand firm are the people who stood for. If you stood for Christ when you were given an opportunity, God will persevere you. You will stand firm. You win. But if you don't stand for, you won't stand firm. If you don't stand firm, you lose. So the only way to stand firm is to stand for. [01:01:06] (27 seconds)  #StandFirmStandFor

But every now and then, you gotta wake up and realize everything you see will be gone. There's two things in this room that'll last forever. This and you. This and you. And when our focus is solely on the temporal and we don't think about the eternal, We're not allowing that which is going to happen to penetrate the immediate. And this is going to happen. That word is not going anywhere. It'll never pass away. [01:11:49] (36 seconds)  #EternalPerspective

The urgency of the moment is to get right with Christ because there's a high likelihood your demise is probably going to happen long before the earth's destruction. The reason we're given all of that information is not so we know what it will be like, although that's certainly true. It's so that it can affect the way we live now. Right here, right now. What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? I suggest you repent of your sins. [01:17:36] (37 seconds)  #RepentNow

In the final week of the life of Christ as he entered into Jerusalem, he would not himself find nor experience traveling mercies. He would not find the type of protection that you would expect. He would finally experience a moment where it appears certainly that God has forgotten him and God has forsaken him. He went into Jerusalem and would receive no mercy. But the reason he did it is so that as you and I travel, we could experience mercy. The one who traveled to a cross and received no mercy did it so that you and I can live the rest of our lives in traveling mercies. [00:32:21] (44 seconds)  #TravelingMercies

I suggest you repent of your sins. It's a change of mind. That word means to change your mind. There is a God and you're not him. He makes the rules, you don't. If you don't follow him, you die. Now, there's an alternative opportunity for you. God sent his perfect son who did not break the rules to die for you. He paid your penalty. Then he raised himself from the dead for, the bible says, your justification, where you now have clear standing with God. [01:18:10] (31 seconds)  #RepentChangeMind

Now, if you express faith in that truth, the belief that this confident trust, you'll be saved. I'm not telling you your life is gonna be great. It might just suck. But the painful moments don't ever declare that this is the way it's always gonna be. No. No. The pain is real, but it's not permanent. Unless you don't want Christ, then it's permanent. [01:18:43] (32 seconds)  #PainNotPermanent

The certainty of future judgment is grounded in the past and present experiences of it. That the certainty of that which is going to happen, and that has been the theme of the entire gospel of Luke. It's basically encapsulated in many ways in this one chapter. That which is going to be, we can live with certainty about because of that which has already happened. [00:37:36] (27 seconds)  #CertaintyFromLuke

If God's willing to destroy his own temple twice, why would it be hard for you and I to understand his willingness to destroy his own creation once? And he would destroy creation for the same reasons he destroyed the temples. Sin, faithlessness driven by judgment, how complete will it be? Utterly complete. And so what happened for the the the hearers of it for out of the mouth of Christ, the hearers the first time it was read after Luke wrote it, is the same thing that's supposed to happen to us. [00:44:30] (37 seconds)  #JudgmentForSin

So anybody who ever says in human history, short of the day after the rapture, the time is near, don't listen to them. It's pretty simple. Anybody ever projects or predicts and that's been happening literally since the ascension of Jesus Christ. I mean, since it's happened and people still continue to do it. Remember, what was it called? Y two k. Okay? And some of y'all, I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but you still got like eight years of canned goods in your attic. [00:47:28] (33 seconds)  #NoPredictingTheDay

there's gonna be social chaos, cataclysmic events, wars, famines, pestilence, nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom, all the way through. There's also gonna be individual strife in homes and family dysfunctionalities, and all of these things are gonna be ever present in the near. That's the truth. That's what's gonna happen. And everybody will hate you because of me. But just because it's painful doesn't mean it's permanent. Because what we go through, we come through. [00:59:39] (38 seconds)  #EnduranceThroughTrials

For two thousand years, these things have been going on. And he's saying at the end, it's gonna be even worse than that. So don't confuse the immediate with the eventual is what Christ would say. Listen, there this war that's happening right now is not the war to end all wars. It's not. That's Armageddon. The next time two nations decide to fight and bomb each other listen, we're not going to destroy the planet with nuclear weapons. That is not going to happen. [00:54:11] (33 seconds)  #Don'tMistakeWarForEnd

So what am I supposed to learn from war after war after war after war after war after war? That if you can begin to get your head around the atrocities that have happened on this earth through nations rising up against nation and wars and why would Christ tell us don't be frightened? Because we know just because there's a war doesn't mean he's on his way. But what you better learn from all the wars is what's gonna happen when he comes this way. [00:50:32] (31 seconds)  #LearnFromWars

Okay? First Peter is very clear about what happens to this planet, and then there's gonna be a new heaven and a new earth. Now, could nuclear weapons wipe millions and millions of people off the face of the earth in a day? Absolutely. What will that indicate? What it's kinda gonna be like when Jesus wipes every single solitary human being who didn't believe him off the face of the earth in a moment of his coming. The bible calls it with the breath of his coming. [00:54:48] (32 seconds)  #NewHeavenNewEarth

That you could take every war that has ever happened in human history, and it will not compare to what's going to happen the day he puts his foot on this earth. Right. What evidence do you need of the the projections in the book of Revelation and Daniel about the global cataclysmic slaughter of unbelievers at the second coming of Christ. Like, that's not possible. Do you remember when just Adolf Hitler executed and exterminated 6,000,000 Jews? [00:51:04] (38 seconds)  #GreaterFutureJudgment

Did that second temple go down in a d seventy? Well, actually, yeah, it did. 900,000 Jews were killed inside the city of Jerusalem. Rome had laid siege to it for month upon month, which means they set their army around it. No water in, no water out, no food in, no food out, nobody in, nobody out. The cannibalized children of the people that were locked inside those walls. They finally had to start eating their children. [00:55:27] (32 seconds)  #HolocaustAndHistory

Because have Christians not been paying a price since the day Christ ascended into heaven? I mean, how much more do you want them to face? Like when Nero sets the entire city of Rome on fire using dead Christian martyrs bodies because he impaled them with stakes and sticks them and lights them on street corners, so that people can go out and have their evening dinner in cafes lit by the burning bodies of followers of Jesus Christ. [00:57:38] (31 seconds)  #HistoricChristianPersecution

Right. And you're like, well, that doesn't happen anymore. That's because you don't read the news. You don't know that hundreds of followers of Christ are being slaughtered weekly in Nigeria. Weekly. They're kidnapping children. They're kidnapping women. I mean, it's just awful. It just doesn't happen here yet. Yet. Because you know what I do know? The book of Revelation never mentions America. [00:58:09] (33 seconds)  #PersecutionToday

You might think that in the first sixty, seventy years after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the most talked about thing was his first coming, and you'd be wrong. It was his second coming. The intensity of conversation picked up very quickly after he ascended into heaven about when is he coming back. A lot of the earliest writings in the first two to three hundred years after his resurrection had a lot to do not with his first coming, but with his second coming. [00:33:06] (30 seconds)  #FocusOnSecondComing

The intensity of conversation picked up very quickly after he ascended into heaven about when is he coming back. A lot of the earliest writings in the first two to three hundred years after his resurrection had a lot to do not with his first coming, but with his second coming. There was this sense of urgency, a sense of immediacy, a sense of what the word is is called imminence, the the the any given moment he could return. [00:33:19] (27 seconds)  #ImminentReturn

That which is going to be, we can live with certainty about because of that which has already happened. And that which has already happened gives us certainty in the days in which we live, because it gives us confidence in that which is about to happen. And all of that encapsulates right here in the middle. Okay? Of chapter 21, in the final days of the life of Jesus Christ, he wants to talk about the near and the far. [00:37:56] (29 seconds)  #PastGivesCertainty