Marcus Mecum - How To Be End Time Bullet Proof
1 Thessalonians 5, and let's look at verse 12. And I wanna talk to you about, "How be bullet proof in the last days". I want you to know that when you talk about these types of subjects, a lot of people have a lot fear surrounding end times and the last days. A lot of people think destruction, they think fear, but the Bible says that we talk about this and we're to encourage one another in these things. If you really look at the Book of Revelation, it's a book of a Revelation, not of an event, but it's a Revelation of the person, Jesus Christ.
That's what the book is about. It's revealing him, not as we've seen him in the New Testament, where he came, he lived a sinless life, he died a horrible death, rose again from the dead. The picture that we get in the Book of Revelation is how he is today, not how he was then, but how he is now. And he's introduced as the triumphant lamb and when you look at the Book of Revelation, you see in the end a victorious church, you see a victorious Savior, and so, when we look at the Book of Revelation there is great hope attached to it.
But a lot of people get discouraged specifically by the tribulation period, it seems like God is kind of rough on people, somewhat. Seems like he's a little, you know, kinda going for people a little harder than the picture up to this point, you know, we have Jesus as just kinda this nice, lovely-dovey kinda, but in Revelation, when you get to the tribulation, it seems like he's kinda changing a little bit, he's shifting things a little bit, but he's actually not. The word tribulation, if you look up the etymology of that word, it begins with a Latin word. Without going into all the words I can't pronounce anyway, just Google, "Etymology of the word tribulation".
And you can look, find this pretty easily. But it's a Latin word and it means, to rub, to turn, to twist or to pierce. And it's speaking specifically of a tool called a threshing sledge. So, when you think about the tribulation, the imagery that we get is that of a harvesting tool that removes the husk from the grain, it rubs it, it wears away and grinds away until the hardened, external shell around the grain is removed. And so, this is the final stage of the harvesting process. So, tribulation is not about punishment, tribulation is a last day harvesting tool in the hand of God. And what God wants to do is he's speaking about the last day condition of people's hearts.
The Bible says that, "In the end times, in the last days, the heart of many will grow cold". We know that, it says that, "Your conscience will be seared with a hot iron". And so, the idea is, in the last days, we will struggle more and more to keep our hearts sensitive towards the things of God which is the pressures and the attitudes of people in the last days, and it will be more and more difficult to not be hardened and callous towards the things of God. And so, the Bible says that, "After the church is done, all it can do is preach the gospel into all the world". It's given people an opportunity to receive Christ, to hear the gospel.
Then the Bible says at that point, God will move into the tribulation period and some people say, "Well, will we go through it"? I'll get to that in just a second, but he introduces it as his final way of winning souls and reaching people that are far from God. If you wanna know what the tribulation is all about, it's God personally getting involved like never before in the winning of souls, specifically, the hardest of hearts, the most callous of hearts. God, in the tribulation, is going to do everything he can to get through to those people.
This is an important thing. Because in California, where the redwoods grow, the large redwoods, one season, they found that the redwoods were not growing like they needed to be and were in jeopardy of becoming extinct. And what they discovered was that the rangers had become so efficient and effective at putting out forest fires, just through the technology advancement. They could see where the lightning struck very quickly, they had the technology to get to the point where the fire had started very, very rapidly. And so, they were putting the fire out, they thought it was a positive thing, a good thing, by getting to where the fire was and putting it out.
But what they found out was they became so sophisticated and so good at putting out the fires that before that technology had appeared, the fire would begin, the lightning would strike, the fire would begin to take off, but by the time they had got to it, it had burned hotter, and hotter, and hotter. And as a result, it would take that seed and the husk around that redwood seed, and it would burn it off. If the fires did not reach a certain temperature, that husk around the redwood seed would not burn off. And as a result, the seed would not be germinated by the soil, and there wouldn't be a new season, or a new generation of redwoods.
And the reason there was no new generation of redwoods was because the hardened external shell had never been burned off. And so, the point is simply this, in the church we have to be very careful that we don't become so sophisticated, and fancy we think that we can do this without the fire of God. And the way that God introduces us to the fire, of course, that's how he births the New Testament church, right. He pours out his spirit, the Bible says like a mighty rushing wind, he comes into the upper room where they were gathered, divided tongues, there's a fire set on each one of them. This is the fulfillment of what John the Baptist said Jesus was coming to do, and that was to baptize us with Holy Spirit and with fire.
And a lot of Christians think that we can do what God's called us to do without fire, without some heat, without being hot for God. But when it comes to the preaching of gospel, the gospel is not effective at breaking the hardened hearts open, and getting to the seed of people's soul without making sure there's some fire in the gospel that we preach. There should be fire in our worship, there should be fire when we reach the next generation, there should be fire behind our evangelism, there should be, everything that we do should be saying, "God, keep us hot, burning hot". Especially in the last days.
So, God will do all he can to get to people's hearts, and then it will shift into the tribulation, where through just intense judgments, that God will pour out on the earth, it'll be his final effort to burn off the husk of indifference, to burn off that hardened heart by this world, to get involved and really take our lives and put them on the threshing floor and begin to break us open and make us sensitive to God again. What we will know is that anytime you read about fire in the Bible, it somehow or another, though it appears very difficult, though it appears very challenging, though even if it feels at times like God has withdrawn his presence from a person, God always draws closer to people during the fires of life.
When Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace, the Bible says when they looked in there, there was a fourth man. So, they got closer to God as a result of the fire. They were closer to one another as a result of the fire, and ultimately, the Bible says, they were thrown in bound, but he say them walking around free. So, what we can know about the tribulation, number one, it is going to be a time God wants to draw closer to people than ever before. It is also a time where we'll have to draw closer to one another, if you are still here. And it's a time, it's a wonderful time, not only to draw closer to one another, but to free from the things of this world.
So, will we go through the tribulation? Will we go through it? We talked about how in the very first three chapters of the Book of Revelation, the word, "Church," is mentioned between 18, and 23 times. After the third chapter in the Book of Revelation, you do not read about the church again until we're in heaven. So, there is the belief that the church is no longer here, that we're gone, that the church has been raptured and we've been taken. There's great emphasis on this to me, through the scripture and that God is not appointed as to wrath, which is what the tribulation is about. It's about God pouring out his wrath. And of course, it's to get people saved, but it's ultimately a judgment on the earth.
So, in my opinion, my prayer is that God will remove us, take us out before the tribulation. However, I wanna talk to those of you who are not gonna be right with God, when Jesus takes the church or maybe he just decides to let us go through the tribulation. You say, "Well, are you saying we will"? No, I'm saying, my prayer is that we're gone, but if you're here, you might wanna know how to get through it. So, we'll talk about that real briefly. You say, "Well, I'm not gonna be here, I don't wanna know". Well, then just enjoy it.
So, chapter 6 is where the Book of Revelation turns, it takes a pretty severe turn, and it defines three different judgments that God pours out on the earth. Each of these judgments has seven parts to it. You have the seal's judgment, is first. Secondly, you have the trumpet judgment. And thirdly, you have the bowls of wrath judgment. So, there's seven judgments or seven parts to each of the three judgments. So, 21 total judgment that goes on over a seven year period of time. During the seals judgment, the first thing that happens is the antichrist shows up on the scene, he is a person. He will come out of Europe, it what the Bible says.
And his ability to unify the world will be unparalleled by any world leader before him. Up to this point, the world is continuing to be at our throats. The Bible says that there will be war, ethnicity, or the way that it says is nation against nation, but that word nation is ethnicity or race, so more than ever before, you can see the racial tension, this is a sign of the end times that that's increasing, that that's getting greater, and greater, and greater. We wanna make it about race and that's fine if you wanna do a little bit of that, but don't forget to remember our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and rulers of darkness.
There is a demonic agenda to get us to see color, instead of see each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. And I'm not saying there's not differences, and God did those, and God made us that way, however, more than ever before, we gotta make sure that we keep our hearts focused on what God calls us to be, what he calls us to be. So, we don't jump on to the enemy's side in the end times. The Bible says that not only will there be those type of things, but the Bible says that the continual stress and battle in the Middle East, this world leader will be able to bring a peace treaty to that. Which I think is interesting because it says that that has to take place before Solomon's Temple, or the temple can be rebuilt on the Temple Mount.
Up until today, this would've been very difficult to have happen. One, we weren't even, Israel wasn't even a nation until 1948, faced a great war in 1967, in 2015 and 16, they began making the articles that would go into the temple, this is easy to Google. But all the articles, the table of shewbread, the menorah, all the different furnishings that would go into the temple are already made or being made and they're stored. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of people for the first time ever over the last several years have been allowed on the Temple Mount. So, Jewish people are on the Temple Mount worshipping, and praying in the hundreds and the thousands, and this precede the building of Solomon's Temple.
Once again, this is a sign that we are in the last days, in every judgment, the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven bowls. God is giving people an opportunity to be rescued. Each judgment, God is pleading out to the hearts of humanity to come back to him, to no longer run from him, to not resist him, but to come back him. In the seventh seal judgment 144,000 Jewish people at least, get saved, they become the greatest evangelist the world has ever seen. A mighty revival breaks out, and occurs, and the number of people that get saved during that revival is, they cannot even count it, they didn't put a number to it, that's how significant will be.
Then those 144,000 people are martyred, they're not just martyred for preaching Jesus, and saying they love Jesus and singing songs. They're martyred because they actually take this book and this is God's word and they, in an uncompromising way say, "This book is how I guide and lead my life". This is the Word of God. This is God's word to us. And the people that hang on to it, the Bible says they killed them, not just for saying they love Jesus, but they kill 'em for they love this book.
So, we should grow close, the way you grow close to God is through his word. You can't separate him from his word, c'mon. Then there's seven trumpets, this is where it gets increasingly worse, there's two witnesses that show up on the earth. Some believe it's Moses and Elijah, others Enoch and Elijah. Nonetheless, they are there and they are confronting the antichrist, they end up being killed. The whole watches these two witnesses as they're lying in the city streets on live TV or on phones, which again, this technology was not available till the last several years where in real time the whole world will be watching these two witnesses, not a recording, not through a delay, in real time we will watch these two witnesses lay in the streets for three days.
And after three days, they'll be resurrected. When they're resurrected, the people will get mad at the antichrist, they'll turn on the antichrist, this will make way for the false prophet to show up. When the false prophet shows up, he makes a statue of the antichrist and he puts that statue in the temple and again, this is a final sign to us of God is getting to come back, Jesus is coming back. Daniel 9:27 explains that, and all of this precedes the taking of the mark of the beast. The mark of the beast is a mark that many people believe will be a computer chip in your hand or in your forehead. It's been talked about for many, many years. I'm not trying to be a broken record, I'm not trying to be redundant, but you could look, Google Bill Gates, he invested 200 million dollars in the technology.
This technology is not coming, it is here. On these microchips, everything about you is on these microchip, everything about you. Everything you've ever Googled, every conversation you've ever had. Every text message you've ever had, that information is stored and it will go onto that little disc. Everywhere you go, you'll be tracked and without this, you cannot buy and you cannot sell. And they will tell people the reason they have to take it is for peace and safety. We cannot have peace without this and we cannot be safe without this. And people by the droves, including Bible believing Christians will laugh at sermons like this and will laugh at messages like this. Because they'll just be so woke by the culture that they'll push away from the Bible and push away from God's word and his warnings and they'll take the mark as a result.
The Bible says, the reason they will do this is because of the sin of arrogance. In Revelation 16:9-11, the final judgment, the last judgment that God pours on the earth, and again see this, there's been seven years that have gone by, seven years inside of each one of the judgments. There's seven different moments that God is pleading for people to get right with him. Twenty one different times, he's calling out to people to soften their heart. Twenty one times he's calling out to people to not be hardened, and to be sensitive towards him, twenty one different times. And finally, people's arrogance grows and it grows, and it grows, and the last judgment is poured out.
The antichrist will rally the rest of the world to go to war against God, they'll come from every nation around the earth. They'll meet in Jerusalem, they'll go to the beautiful valley called the valley of Jezreel real Armageddo where the Battle of Armageddon will take place. And the army that is there waiting to go to war against God will be made up of all the hardened people that refuse to repent after every effort God had made over those seven years, over, and over, and over God is pleading to them to come, the spirit, and the bride are crying out, "Come". But they'll refuse to do it and as a result, in the end their pride will cause them to go to war against God.
The Bible says, "Jesus gets on a horse, we will gather behind him, and we will go to this battle". Revelation 19:19-20, we learn several things, but the most important thing we learn about the tribulation is that God is constantly requesting that we humble ourselves, that we soften our hearts, and not run from him, but run to him. Our job is to say, "Okay God, we wanna run to you, in the mighty name of Jesus". Jeremiah 12 says this, it says, "If you cannot run with the footmen, what chance do you have of dealing with the horses"? In other words, if you cannot deal with the easier trials and struggles of life, how do you really think you're gonna deal with the real ones? And what we've been experiencing over this last season in the earth is some tremors.
The pandemic is a tremor. Watching Russia and Ukraine is a tremor. The threats of nuclear war is a tremor, it's a tremor, it's all just, the earth is tremoring, we're getting signs, and we're beginning to see all kinds of things happen. It blew my mind that during the pandemic, how to this day many people that have lived their whole life loving God, they know God, they know his word, they know what he's called them to be. They've received his grace and his mercy, but just a few months of the pandemic, they started pulling, the Bible says, there'll be this great falling away in the last days. And I've always wondered, "How is that possible? How can there be a sudden great falling away, like there was a great revival"?
And so much of it is attached to the way the enemy got us disconnected from one another, got us disconnected from church. And by the way, I'm just going to take a second and say this, I would never cancel another church service again. That doesn't mean you have to come. Hey, you should take every, hold on, hold on, you should take every precaution you should. And none of us knew what was going on, and we were all doing the best we can. And some of you are mad at a pastor, and you're here 'cause he took longer to get back than I did. Some of the people that used to go this church felt like I took a little too long, so they're somewhere else too.
So, none of us really did great, okay? So, let's just take a second here. None of us did amazing. And I don't think that we, I think we should be protective, I think we should be cautious, I think, I'm just saying for me, as a pastor, one thing that I learned more than anything else is, I can come in here and preach to an empty room. And if you wanna come and sit over there, and over there, we'll figure it out. But my point, I'm trying to get to this, it was a pandemic that pushed us to where we're at. The church at large still is not back. The church at large is still in many ways struggling from just a few months of what that did. I know it took years, but you get what I'm saying. It's the indication that they were saying, "You can't get dinner, you can't buy lunch. You can't do this, you can't do that, if you don't have this kind of card or this kind of thing".
Again, peace and safety, peace and safety, peace and safe, and they force people, corralling them like lambs being led to the slaughter. And none of this is new to us, it's all right here in this book. It mentions in Revelation 6, 4 different horses that show up, which represent 4 different calamities that hit the earth. The white horse is deception, the red horse is war and terrorism, the black horse is economic collapse, and the decisions that we're making now around our world is leading us in that direction. The pale horse represents disease, so we've seen the four horses. And what Jeremiah said, "If you cannot run with the footmen, how do you expect to run with the horses"?
If you cannot handle what is now, how do we think we're gonna handle what's coming? So, we have to get ready, so we can be bulletproof in the last days. And 1 Thessalonians 5:12, it teaches us to run with a covering. In the last days, you will need a spiritual covering. That's what pastors are, that's what the church is, that's what small groups are about. If you're a teenager, you'll need to stay close to your parents, be very cautious to think that your parents are stupid and they don't understand. If you have a spouse, that spouse is there to cover you. Sometimes God will speak to your spouse about something when he's not speaking to you, and sometimes he'll speak to you instead.
And so, we need one another, we need to be covering one another, we need to be standing with one another. And that spiritual covering is going to help you run, and be bulletproof in the last days. Number two is found in verse 14, it says, "To run with passion". If there's ever been a time we need to be passionate about the church, passionate about souls, passionate about the gospel, passionate about prayer, it is today. And if you're going to survive in the last days, stir up the passion that God's given you.
Number 3 in verse 15, it says, "You'll have to run with forgiveness". You'll have to be a person that refuses to grow bitter in the last days. Refuse to allow that bitterness to get a hold of your heart. Number 4 in verse 16, "You'll run with joy". Joy is not something that just comes to you, it is a choice you make. You make a decision to be filled with joy. Joy is something that comes from God, it's not something that comes from circumstances of life. This is why you can go through the worst of circumstances, but you can still have the joy of the Lord because my joy is not dependent on circumstances, my joy comes from God.