Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

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February 2010 Issue

God's Warning to an Apostate Nation
Feb 1st, 2010
Art Sadlier
Uncategorized

Jeremiah faced the Nation of Israel on the brink of disaster. For nearly 400 years God had been sending prophets to warn Israel to repent.  About 90 years before Jeremiah, the Lord had sent Isaiah who said, ‘“Judgment is coming!”  Jeremiah said “its here”.  Jeremiah said, “The Babylonians are going to come and slaughter you and those who survive will be carried away in chains to Babylon.” Jeremiah stood on the edge of a holocaust.  Jeremiah preached at the end of the glory days of Israel. Isaiah prophesied at 11.00 P.M., Jeremiah prophesied at midnight.

Today we are standing on the brink of a holocaust, for our society it is midnight!  Jeremiah knew what was coming; he was not fooled by what appeared on the surface to be a revival. While Josiah was on the throne there appeared to be a great turning to God. The Spirit of God said of that apparent revival, “And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah hath not turned to me with her whole heart, but feignedly, saith the Lord.” Jer. 3:10.

Today some preachers are making like we are in the midst of a revival. Some churches are being filled by using church growth methods, the methods of the world.  Purpose driven churches are multiplying and are bulging at the seams. They attract the carnal, the uncommitted and the unsaved. They preach the false gospel of easy believism, deleting repentance and the proof of salvation, a changed life. They fill the church with those who profess faith but have not been regenerated. They have churches that are filled with mostly unsaved people who have been led to believe that they are saved.

What do you give a church filled with unsaved people and carnal Christians? They give them the world’s music, entertainment and teaching for itching ears. They use the world’s business techniques, the world’s programs and the world’s methods of promotion. They appeal to the shallow and the unsaved.  They throw out the hymn book and the church loses its song. They abandon the evening service and replace it with small groups that debate what God’s word says.

At Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church they focus on how to solve the world’s problems in the world’s way HIV/AIDS, Poverty, illiteracy, Leadership and Health are a focus with the goal of bringing peace to the world. Their method is partnering with other groups. Warren has demonstrated by his actions and words that he will partner with anyone to bring the world peace. Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Homosexuals and pro abortionists are all welcome.  He has called for Evangelicals to be reunited with mainline liberal denominations. They are in turn joining with the world to solve the world’s problems in the world’s way. It is counterfeit Christianity, it is apostasy.

This is the ultimate fruit of New Evangelicalism, which refuses to contend for the truth, instead they dialogue and compromise. God has a program for this world; it is the proclamation of the gospel involving repentance and faith. It brings salvation and regeneration and it results in transformation.

I believe our society is standing on the brink of a holocaust, the Day of the Lord, the tribulation period. I believe a large part of the Evangelical Church has been swallowed up in apostasy!  Every day has its own peculiar apostasy. Today’s apostasy is incredibly deceptive, as Jesus said it would be in Mt. 24:5, “For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.” Today we have apostates who say they are Evangelicals, who say they speak for Christ. They deny what the scriptures teach the church is to be and what it is to be doing and how it is to do it.

They fail to ground people in sound doctrine. They fail to preach and practice ecclesiastical separation. They fail to teach personal separation from the world. The bottom line is that they are destroying the Church of Jesus Christ. It is the ultimate fruit of New Evangelicalism and the only way to stop it is to separate from it!  “A little leaven leavens the whole lump.”

After 42 years of warning, the Lord sent Jeremiah to give the final warning. For 42 years Jeremiah warned of coming judgment, for 42 years Israel steadfastly refused to repent. Finally the Lord said to Jeremiah, Judah has crossed the line, their fate is sealed, judgment is now inevitable. “Therefore pray not for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to me: for I will not hear thee.” Jeremiah 5:23. It is now too late! “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”  Jeremiah’s message now would be a message of judgment. The nation is now doomed!

There is a striking similarity between Jeremiah’s day and our own day! We live in a society that is in rebellion against God. In our society justice is breaking down, standards are perverted; right is wrong and wrong is right. We are so far removed from God’s standards that there is no moral foundation left in our society.

Amazingly, the midnight hour of Judah’s judgment had come and yet Judah was still insensitive to her sin!  “And it shall come to pass, when thou shalt shew this people all these words, and they shall say unto thee, Wherefore hath the Lord pronounced all this evil against us? Or what is our iniquity? Or what is our sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?”

What have we done to deserve judgment? We haven’t sinned!  We are the people of God!  The Laodicean church of the last days, our day, is a church that is blind to her sin, just as Judah was as the judgment of God was about to fall. We read in Revelation 3:17 “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing: and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:” That is our generation, a generation that is blind to their sin and spiritual bankruptcy.

America and Canada have declared war on God, by our courts, by our government, and by our people. The Bible and prayer have been ruled out of our schools by the courts. In the US, the courts have ruled that all Christian symbols must be removed from public property. The courts have sanctioned and protected homosexuality. Our society has ruled out the existence of God by the teaching of evolution.

The courts, the government and the people have said, “God you shut up, we are not interested in what you say. You don’t even exist as far as we are concerned. God don’t tell us what to do.”

In America and Canada 50 million babies have been murdered in their mother’s wombs, all sanctioned by the courts. Their blood cries out from the ground for the judgment of God to fall. Four out of ten babies are born outside of marriage; God’s Word is despised and rejected.

Materialism, pleasure,  moral  perversion, pornography, pedophilia, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, brutality and bestiality are all intruding into the living rooms and lives of our people. More alarming is the fact that Evangelicals are imbibing in the world’s sins. Charles Swindoll stated on TV that 50% of professing Christian men are involved in internet pornography. Laodicean/Evangelicalism has deeply imbibed of the world, giving evidence that it is counterfeit Christianity.

Greater than all of these sins is the sin of turning against Israel, the U.S. is leading this charge but Canada is also complicit in this matter. I believe we have entered the final countdown to the beginning of the Day of the Lord judgment on this world. I personally believe that our society has crossed the line of God’s grace as Judah had so long ago. The world is a sinking ship, we can`t save the ship so we are to rescue as many passengers as we can.                                    Art Sadlier

The Attempt to Remove Israel
Feb 1st, 2010
Art Sadlier
Uncategorized

Since the fall of Satan (Isaiah 14:12-15) a war has raged between Satan and God. That war has gone on unabated and continues until this very hour. As this present age comes to an end, that war will come to great climax. Satan desires to replace God as the ruler of this world. God has appointed His Son to return to the earth and rule this world through the nation Israel, actually sitting on the throne of David in Jerusalem.   (Luke 1:32).

God’s program is to rule this world through Israel; therefore, the focus of the climactic end time war is the nation of Israel. Satan has determined to destroy the nation of Israel, thus preventing Christ from ruling over a restored Israel.

 A study of scripture reveals that Satan works through men and nations. Today the nations of the world are determined to remove Israel from the promised land, or at least to divide Israel`s inheritance.  The Palestinians are at the focal point of this attempt. We need to understand that the goal of the Palestinians is not a two state solution; their goal is nothing less than the total destruction of Israel.

When the Palestinians talk about the end of the occupation, “what do they mean”? The western nations think they mean the end of the occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinians actually mean,” the end of Israel.”  The Palestinians are quite bold in proclaiming this intention, for some reason the western nations cannot or will not see this fact.

The Palestinians have published many maps of a liberated Palestine; these maps conspicuously show no sign of any Israeli presence. This map appears in P.A. school text books and it also appears on a patch on the uniforms of some Palestinian leaders and on some official PA logos. The map of the liberated Palestinian state is a map of all of Israel.

Palestinian leaders have claimed that liberated Palestine will stretch from sea to sea, (from the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean Sea). When you hear the Palestinians talk about a liberated Palestine they are not talking about a Palestinian State alongside Israel, they are talking about a state in place of Israel.

The Palestinians do not want a two state solution. When Prime Minister Barak made surprising and extensive concessions to Yasser Arafat at Camp David, Arafat turned them down. The PA end game is the total removal of Israel, not a two state situation. Today with Barack Obama and the EU involved in the negotiations for a two state situation the possibility of real Israeli concessions are very good.  The PA now refuses to negotiate because they will not settle for anything less than the removal of Israel.  Abbas cannot negotiate a peace deal which recognizes Israel that would isolate him from the Palestinians and Hamas.

Hamas has stated over and over again that their goal is nothing less than the elimination of Israel. Hezbollah has stated the same thing. The sponsor of both Hamas and Hezbollah and the associate of Syria, Iran, has declared many times that their goal is the destruction of Israel. A recent news item stated, “Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, predicted on Tuesday that Israel will be destroyed by the Muslims in the not-too-distant future.”  The item continued, “Khamenei's views on Israel are identical to those of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad”.

All down through history the goal of some men and some nations has been to eliminate the Jewish people. We are now coming to the climax of the history of this age and the final great attempt to eliminate God`s people, Israel.

What lies ahead? We know that Satan’s goal is two- fold, he wants to replace God as ruler of the Heavens and the Earth and he also wants to be worshipped by men and angels. Satan’s program involves a worship component. Satan not only wants to be worshipped, he wants to be worshipped in the very place where God has been worshipped in the past, and the place God has set aside to be worshipped in the future. That place is the Temple in Jerusalem.

What is Satan’s program to bring this about? Paul tells that Satan will gain control over the rebuilt Temple and at the half way point of the tribulation period and will set up his man, Antichrist, in the Temple and demand that the entire world worship, him on pain of death if they refuse. Then the final and greatest attempt to eliminate Israel will come about.

The next move by Satan will be the Peace Treaty.  Satan needs the Jews to rebuild the Temple and re-establish the worship system. The peace treaty will enable that to take place and seem to favour Israel, and Antichrist will appear to be Israel’s benefactor.

All down through the years as Satan has many times sought to destroy Israel; God has intervened to preserve His people. In the last sixty years we have seen the hand of God preserving Israel time after time. Today the nations are trying to eliminate Israel through the Land for Peace negotiations. God has repeatedly intervened to frustrate these attempts; ‘THE’ Peace Treaty will not be signed until, by the permissive will of God, antichrist comes on the scene.

Satan uses men and nations to try to bring about his purposes but the sovereign God is in control. This sovereign Lord loves His people Israel and has revealed in His Word a plan to restore them to himself. (Zechariah 12:1 - 13:9)

All of this explains the reason why successive American presidents who, with the expending of all of their energies and resources cannot resolve the Mideast situation. President Obama has, just this week, admitted that he has failed in his attempt to solve the Mideast problem, however, he is recommitting to another attempt. God has a time and a Satan has a man, who by the permissive will of God, will bring about the false peace that will trigger the cataclysmic last seven years of man’s day.

It seems to me that the stage is being set for the whole biblical scenario to unfold. Israel has her back to the wall. The Islamic nations are totally and openly committed to destroy Israel. The Revived Roman Empire is rising in Europe with the appointment of a Super leader who appears to be filling the office of Antichrist?  It is out of Europe that he will come and sign the peace treaty. America is the ‘fly in the ointment’.  America has no role in the last days scenario. In fact, American diplomatic and military power is totally frustrating the unfolding of biblical last days prophecy.

The signs of America’s demise are everywhere. Headlines speak of economic collapse, of devastating terrorist attacks with WMD that could turn America into a third world country overnight. The real threat to America is not really these dangers; the real danger is the defiance of God in the matter of turning against Israel.

The British Empire dominated the world when I was a young man. I watched as they turned against Israel, in much the same way as America has now done, in a few short years the British Empire was no more. America is walking a very dangerous road!

Perhaps the cause of this threat goes back to the way in which America has given itself over to materialism and pleasure and sensuality which has gone hand in hand with a dulling of the spiritual senses.  America has abandoned God;   Obama has declared that America is no longer a Christian Nation. There remains a faithful remnant in America (and Canada), if that remnant were to be removed in the rapture, what would hold back the judgment of God upon the nation?

Art Sadlier