(November 30, 2020)
I am writing this two weeks before Thanksgiving 2020.
As of this writing, it has been a very eventful year and month.
I would like us to pause and be mindful of just a few events that most of us were unaware of.
In November 2020, Christians are being beaten, jailed and killed for being Followers of Jesus, the Christ.
Pastor Wang Yi was sentenced to nine years of imprisonment in China.
Pastor Lawan Andimi was beheaded in Nigeria.
Fifty people were beheaded in Mozambique Africa.
These all happened in November 2020. These atrocities are just a few we know about world-wide.
Persecution and suffering for Christ seems to be expected before the Second Coming of Christ.
Do you think persecution of Christians around the world will increase or decrease in the near future?
Concerning the year 2020, it is nothing more than a sign of what is to come!
Yet compared to what has happened and is happening in the world, we have a lot to be thankful for.
As our “freedom of speech” seems to be under suspicion lately, at least we can still work for the Lord in many ways.
Don’t you think for a minute that you or me have a reason or an excuse for not serving the Lord and for not doing His work.
I wonder how the early church longed for the return of Christ as they were tortured and killed for just believing in and loving Jesus Christ.
2 Thessalonians 3:13 says “…do not grow weary in doing good.”
Doing good is simple – doing what pleases God.
That always involves salvation for the lost.
Romans 10:14
14 How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?
If we are entering into a time just before the Rapture of the Church, what would we expect the spiritual climate to be like?
If we are trying to do the Lord’s work, we definitely need His Power, His Word, His Spirit.
Things are being set up to harm and weaken the church…to make it ineffective.
But My Lord and Savior is NEVER POWERLESS or INACTIVE!
Has fear, of whatever, blinded us from our duties?
2 Thessalonians chapters 2 and 3 give us important insight into how we are to be at the end of the church age.
The lawlessness we are watching this year is so scripted that it is hard not to see all the scriptures being fulfilled!
Clarity of spiritual warfare from or in high places!
Lawlessness – wow – it’s all around us.
It is hard not to see where 2020 comes from and who is doing the planning for all of this!
2 Thessalonians 2:6-8
6 And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time.
7 For the [a]mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only [b]He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way.
8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming.
We are the restraining force.
We keep back the gates of hell!
We can be ineffective if we choose too!
Our Heavenly Father will provide for all our needs and all the means of what is necessary for His work to carry on.
A number of years ago I traveled to China.
There were two kinds of churches:
- Government sanctioned churches who did only what the government approved and they did not approve salvation messages.
- The second kind of church was what was called Underground Church. Churches not sanctioned by the government. All the underground churches taught was Jesus Christ!
The underground church comprised the fastest growing Jesus movement in the world.
We are not to that place yet!
The American church HAS NOT been forced underground.
We CAN and ARE the LIGHT OF THE WORLD!
Now is the best time in our lives to shine for Jesus Christ!
People are fearful…unaware of God’s plan.
What a wonderful time to set with them and share with them from scriptures exactly what is happening right now!
You will find they are willing and hungry to hear the old, old message of Jesus’ love for them!
THE TIME IS NOW!
GOD IS EXTENDING OUR TIME…OUR DAYLIGHT…TO WORK FOR HIS KINGDOM!
The Good Shepherd Ministries 