Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – Psalms 105-107
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Mark 13:14-27
Jesus: On the day you see it, whoever is in Judea should flee for the mountains. The person on the rooftop shouldn’t reenter the house to get anything, and the person working in the field shouldn’t turn back to grab his coat. It will be horrible for women who are pregnant or who are nursing their children when those days come. And pray that you don’t have to run for your lives in the winter. When those days come, there will be suffering like nobody has seen from the beginning of the world that God created until now, and it never will be like this again. And if the Lord didn’t shorten those days for the sake of the ones He has chosen, then nobody would survive them.
If anyone tells you in those days, “Look, there is the Anointed One!” or “Hey, that must be Him!” don’t believe them. False liberators and prophets will pop up like weeds, and they will work signs and perform miracles that would entice even God’s chosen people, if that were possible. So be alert, and remember how I have warned you.
As Isaiah said in the days after that great suffering,
The sun will refuse to shine,
and the moon will hold back its light.
The stars in heaven will fall,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
Then you will see (as Daniel predicted) “the Son of Man coming in the clouds,” clothed in power and majesty. And He will send out His heavenly messengers and gather together to Himself those He has chosen from the four corners of the world, from every direction and every land.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
Having seen combat and the results of combat, the things men can do to other men, these words of Jesus terrify me. I know too many people who have not come to know Jesus as their personal Savior yet and I believe the days are getting short heralding His return. The signs He gave us in the verses we considered yesterday happen with increasing rapidity every day. Those birth pangs the earth experiences show His coming is close at hand.
Yet so many today discount those prophecies. They say it’s just a lot of stories. Marx said religions is just something to calm the emotions of the masses. I wonder what He would say about the alignment of the things we are witnessing today with the signs Jesus gave His disciples in Matthew 25 and Mark 13. More earthquakes this week in Oklahoma that could be felt from Nebraska to Texas. We can blame it on fracking and the oil industry, but I just don’t think the earth is so fragile that we could do that kind of damage to it. The nuclear blasts in the 1930’s and 1940’s didn’t create earthquakes that large, so why would we think fracking could do so much damage? It doesn’t make much sense to me.
We don’t have the power to destroy the earth the way the climatologist and the ecologists think we do. Yes, we pollute it. Yes, we cause damage to it. Yes, we are not very good stewards of God’s creation. But it seems every time we think we have done some horrific thing to the planet, the planet heals itself as if God is showing us that we just can’t break it ourselves. But He can. It’s His to do with as He wills, and the signs are growing stronger.
Many refuse to believe it, though. So what will happen? Things will get noticeably worse. Jesus said it would. Christians will be hated more than they are now. We will be blamed for the failing economy. We will be blamed for the increasing violence. We will even be blamed for the climate changes our failure to stop the capitalist movements to make more money. Somehow, it will all be the Christians’ fault. And we will feel the brunt of the world’s wrath because of it. We will suffer because of the world’s false accusations.
But Jesus is returning. He’s coming back and when He does, something dreadful will happen to those who have pointed the finger at the wrong people. Those non-believers will feel the wrath of God. Jesus says there will be suffering like no one has seen since the beginning of the world. When He begins to defend His children.
Think about that for just a minute. No suffering like that since the beginning of the world. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not as bad as this. The Nazi annihilation of the Jews. Not as bad as this. The hurricanes like Andrew, Katrina, and Ike. Don’t hold a candle to the suffering God will pour out. Sodom and Gomorrah. Nope, not like the suffering that’s coming. Even the flood in Noah’s day will pale in comparison to the suffering the world will endure at the end of time.
Jesus gives us warning. We’ve read the words many times. They are available for anyone to read and hear in almost every language now. No one has an excuse. The time is ripe for His coming. All the signs are playing out before our eyes. I don’t want anyone to miss their opportunity for salvation, but many are asleep and just pretend it isn’t going to happen.
But Jesus said, “Be alert and remember how I have warned you.”
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