Withholding The Most Precious Hope
For many, following world events in our increasingly wicked world can be a daunting and discouraging task. So much so that often, even Christians opt to avoid the news altogether. However, world events are seen through different eyes for those who know and love Bible Prophecy.
Watching portions of the Bible jump right off the page and into daily headlines is astonishing, humbling, and a fantastic comfort to those who recall Jesus words in Luke 21:28: "When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh."
Yet, most churches have chosen to withhold the precious hope of our soon redemption from the weary believers in their pews. Apparently, our Blessed Hope is inconvenient, distracting, and too controversial in the eyes of the majority of Church leaders.
Terry James in an article this week urged silent Pastors to share with their churches this incredible Prophetic Hope.
“Sadly, even the pulpits of America are filled by pastors who point congregants to cope with their daily troubles in societal and cultural ways–to the exclusion of prophetic hope,” James insisted. “Teaching to cope is well and good, if done with Christ at the center of the messages on how to best get along in this life on a deteriorating, disintegrating planet. But people in the pews and across the nation and world virtually never are shown the magnificent future that awaits those who truly understand the majesty and promises wrapped up in the name that is above every other.”
“In that name resides a future of incomprehensible life and prosperity beyond imagination,” he explained. “His is the only name that can comfort the demonically savaged souls of these closing days of the age.”
“Preachers who are truly messengers of Jesus Christ should be shouting from the elevated platforms of their pulpits,” he urged. “We should be doing the same at every opportunity.”
“All the things surrounding us that point to planet earth’s most wicked time of destruction are a holy siren of alert,” he continued. “Jesus is about to step onto the clouds of glory and shout, ‘Come up here!’ When we see all these things we have seen–and continue to see—we are to look up and lift up our heads. For He is on the way for His own. This is the ultimate promise from the Creator-God—from Jesus Himself.”
“What promise! What incomparable comfort!” James added.
1 Thessalonians 4:16-18 KJV - “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.”
