Should We Expect Revival or More Social Decay?
00:00:00.000 | Well, what's coming to America?
00:00:07.920 | Can we anticipate widespread spiritual revival or should we expect a deepening social degeneracy?
00:00:14.680 | It's a question from a listener named Cole.
00:00:17.600 | "Hello, Pastor John.
00:00:19.040 | I'm a 21-year-old recent college graduate and I've noticed over the past few years among
00:00:23.440 | younger believers, especially in the college setting, a lot of encouraging talk of revival.
00:00:29.920 | Everyone seems to be expecting an awakening, that is, a lot of non-believers repenting
00:00:34.440 | and coming back to God.
00:00:36.240 | However, the more I read scripture, it seems like we should actually be expecting things
00:00:40.360 | in this world to get worse.
00:00:43.080 | There are so many instances in the Bible where it says that in those days there will be more
00:00:48.600 | egregious sins, even within the church and a lot of deceptive teaching and people walking
00:00:54.280 | away from the faith.
00:00:57.560 | Should we really be expecting revival and where did that notion come from or should
00:01:02.880 | we be expecting the number of believers to dwindle up until the coming of Christ?"
00:01:08.000 | Pastor John, what would you say to Cole?
00:01:09.920 | I surely do not want to in any way discourage prayer for and God-given expectation of a
00:01:20.160 | great move of God in our church, our denomination, our city, our ministries, our nation, or the
00:01:30.680 | world.
00:01:32.520 | But I want to provide a biblical orientation, perhaps, for how to think about such prayers
00:01:43.040 | and expectations.
00:01:44.560 | So I've got seven positions that I hold and I'll try to show that they're biblical, just
00:01:51.520 | briefly for you to think about, Cole.
00:01:55.200 | One, this age, until Christ returns to establish his kingdom, will draw to a close with an
00:02:03.160 | intensification of evil and a great outward rebellion against God.
00:02:10.200 | And the reason I say that is mainly because the Apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2 says
00:02:18.400 | this, "Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together
00:02:24.940 | to him, let no one deceive you in any way, for that day will not come unless the rebellion
00:02:34.560 | come first."
00:02:35.560 | And I think "rebellion" is the right translation there, as opposed to just kind of a gradual
00:02:40.920 | drifting away.
00:02:43.560 | Rebellion come first.
00:02:44.560 | "And the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts
00:02:52.640 | himself against every so-called God or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the
00:02:58.880 | temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
00:03:03.400 | For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who restrains it will do
00:03:10.120 | so until he is out of the way, and then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord
00:03:16.640 | Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of
00:03:22.760 | his coming."
00:03:23.760 | So my conclusion from that is a great rebellion and a singular figure of great arrogance claiming
00:03:31.980 | to be God will arise at the end of the age, and then the Lord comes and slays him by the
00:03:41.760 | sword of his mouth.
00:03:44.000 | That's position number one.
00:03:45.500 | Number two, this time of intensified evil and rebellion is already happening in some
00:03:53.680 | measure in Paul's day.
00:03:56.840 | He says the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.
00:04:00.760 | There's a man of lawlessness coming, there's a great rebellion and lawlessness coming,
00:04:04.600 | but the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, or as John says in 1 John 2.18, "Children,
00:04:10.840 | it is the last hour."
00:04:13.020 | And as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so now many Antichrists have come, therefore
00:04:18.840 | we know it is the last hour.
00:04:20.640 | So we have been living in the last hour for 2,000 years.
00:04:25.740 | That's the biblical perspective since the time of the apostles.
00:04:30.220 | But a final upsurge of lawlessness and rebellion, a man of lawlessness, is yet to come.
00:04:37.580 | Number three, there's no teaching in the Bible that I'm aware of which says that a great
00:04:44.480 | rebellion will come by a steady, irreversible decline of the church through history.
00:04:54.020 | So we have no authority for saying there can be no great revival.
00:05:00.620 | The gospel has advanced in the last 2,000 years in history mainly by great awakenings
00:05:10.100 | and great declines.
00:05:12.340 | And I just assume that's the way it's going to happen until Jesus comes.
00:05:16.220 | There will be seasons of remarkable awakening, and there will be seasons of sad decline.
00:05:23.420 | No teaching about a gradual worsening with no interrupted blessing.
00:05:30.140 | Number four, Jesus describes the progress of the gospel to all the nations in and through
00:05:40.620 | the very time when the love of many grows cold, which means that not all have grown
00:05:49.040 | cold at the end of the age, because it will not be cold people who take the gospel to
00:05:56.580 | the nations at the cost of their lives.
00:05:59.140 | So I'm getting all that from Matthew 24, 11 and following.
00:06:02.060 | Here's what it says.
00:06:03.420 | "Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death."
00:06:07.780 | This is Jesus talking.
00:06:08.940 | "And you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake.
00:06:13.280 | And because lawlessness will be increased."
00:06:16.380 | Now that sounds a lot like the man of lawlessness in that season of outbreak at the end, because
00:06:20.540 | lawlessness will be increased.
00:06:23.260 | The love of many will grow cold.
00:06:27.140 | But the one who endures to the end—he's not going to be cold—will be saved.
00:06:33.900 | And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony
00:06:40.060 | to all the nations, and then the end will come.
00:06:42.700 | That gospel proclaimed in the face of great tribulation is not going to be proclaimed
00:06:47.540 | by cold people, but white-hot people.
00:06:51.060 | So many may grow cold at the end, but not all, because only those with a passion for
00:06:57.680 | Jesus will endure to the end through martyrdom, required to finish the Great Commission, and
00:07:03.260 | therefore there will never be a time when the church is completely cold and ineffective.
00:07:11.220 | She rises with faith and passion and mission, and she declines in church history, but there's
00:07:18.100 | never a time when there are not people who are red-hot for God and pursuing his mission.
00:07:27.420 | Here's number five.
00:07:29.620 | Is there biblical warrant for knowing that a revival, a great revival, millions repenting
00:07:36.940 | and coming to Christ, a great purifying of the church—is there biblical warrant for
00:07:42.660 | believing that's going to happen?
00:07:45.100 | Can we expect this with biblical certainty?
00:07:49.820 | And my answer is, I don't know of any such promise in the Bible.
00:07:54.980 | The many promises, for example, in the Old Testament that all the nations will worship
00:08:00.660 | the Lord may simply refer to the time when Christ has established his kingdom in person
00:08:07.620 | on the earth.
00:08:08.700 | For example, Psalm 22, 27, "All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the
00:08:15.140 | Lord, and all the families of the nations will worship before you, for kingship belongs
00:08:21.180 | to the Lord, and he rules over the nations."
00:08:23.580 | Amen, amen, come Lord Jesus, that's going to happen.
00:08:27.500 | I don't think we can assume that refers to a great revival on this side of the Second
00:08:33.820 | Coming.
00:08:35.260 | It certainly is an encouragement to press on with world evangelization, because Jesus
00:08:41.340 | underlined that promise, that people from every tribe and tongue and nation are going
00:08:46.860 | to be saved because they're bought with the blood of Jesus, Revelation 5, 9.
00:08:53.140 | You were slain, and by your blood you bought people from every tribe and tongue.
00:08:56.980 | They are going to worship.
00:08:58.340 | All of them, sooner or later, are going to worship the Lord.
00:09:03.380 | Six, there is one great awakening that we may expect, and that is a great turning of
00:09:13.580 | the Jewish people to the Messiah, Jesus.
00:09:18.660 | That's what Romans 11 promises.
00:09:22.780 | Romans 11, 15, "If the Jews' rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what
00:09:30.140 | will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?
00:09:34.100 | If the dough offered as firstfruits," that's Abraham and his people, "is holy, so is
00:09:41.060 | the lump," Jewish people as a whole, "and if the root is holy, so are the branches.
00:09:46.320 | Or even more clearly, if you," the Gentiles, "were cut from what is by nature a wild
00:09:54.460 | olive tree and grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree," that's
00:10:00.220 | the Abrahamic covenant, "how much more," here's the key sentence, "how much more
00:10:05.980 | will these," the natural branches, that is ethnic Judaism, "be grafted into their
00:10:13.540 | own olive tree?"
00:10:15.080 | So that "much more," in my understanding, is a great movement of God in this world.
00:10:23.100 | And then he adds, "A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of
00:10:27.460 | the Gentiles comes in, and in this way all Israel will be saved," which I take to
00:10:33.660 | mean corporate Israel turns remarkably, amazingly, to their Messiah, Jesus.
00:10:41.300 | That is a great awakening.
00:10:42.580 | I think we should work toward, pray toward, and hope in.
00:10:46.900 | And lastly, number seven, so how should we live?
00:10:51.140 | Picture the end—this is my conception, this is how I have done my ministry for the
00:10:55.580 | last 40 years—picture the end coming like a glacier over the world, because it says
00:11:03.460 | the love of many will grow cold.
00:11:05.500 | It doesn't tell us how fast it's coming, it doesn't tell us whether it can come
00:11:09.420 | and recede, it's just coming like that.
00:11:12.220 | Matthew 24, 12.
00:11:14.080 | But there is no requirement, none, no biblical warrant, mandate, demand that your church
00:11:22.020 | or your city or even your people or nation be frozen by the glacier.
00:11:30.460 | Instead we should live by God's command for white hotness, not His providence.
00:11:38.400 | We don't live trying to sniff out God's providence, we live by the commands of Scripture,
00:11:45.820 | not His providence that brings cold on the earth.
00:11:49.260 | Who knows, but that you and your church could be among the wide awake white hot servants
00:11:57.780 | when Jesus comes.
00:11:58.780 | So my picture for ministry is wherever I'm speaking, wherever I'm living, wherever
00:12:04.140 | I'm pastoring, I'm going to torch the glacier.
00:12:07.640 | So if it looks like a glacier is coming over Minneapolis, I've got my torch, my torch
00:12:13.280 | of the Word of God, and I'm poking it, picture me now, poking it up into the glacier, and
00:12:17.740 | I'm melting big holes in the glacier.
00:12:19.960 | So the glory of God is shining through, and who knows, but that enough churches poking
00:12:25.040 | holes in the glacier would make your city a vibrant white hot witness being found faithful
00:12:32.440 | when He comes.
00:12:33.440 | Amen.
00:12:34.440 | That's very hopeful and hope-giving.
00:12:35.920 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:12:38.680 | Well it is not uncommon for us to get emails from listeners who are wearied by this life
00:12:43.960 | and who want to know if it's okay to anticipate death.
00:12:49.160 | Sometimes the thought of a world where suffering and pain is over is a hope so strong that
00:12:54.120 | we can feel inside of us a strong longing to be released from this life.
00:12:59.280 | It's such a desire, sinful.
00:13:02.880 | And at what point does that desire become a sinful desire for escape?
00:13:06.640 | It's a really tricky pastoral question, but that's what Pastor John is known for on this
00:13:12.200 | podcast, and that question is up next when we return on Monday.
00:13:16.360 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:13:17.360 | We'll see you then.
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