SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/11/2023 11:55 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Deliverance of Believers to
Tribulation”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 24:9
Message of the verse: “9 "Then they
will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by
all nations on account of My name.”
The persecution that is going on here will not
actually be directed so much against believers themselves as against God, whom
they serve and represent. MacArthur writes “The unbelieving world will
intensify its hatred of God, and because it cannot attack Him directly it will
fiercely attack His people. When Paul
said he bore in his body ‘the brand-marks of Jesus’ (Gal. 6:17), he was
affirming that he had received wounds that were really directed at Christ. Because people could not get to Christ, they
abused the one who represented Him.”
This
still goes on today, and today it is much worse than it was even a couple of
years ago. Now the question is why is it
much worse in the tribulation period than it is today? Well the answer is that after the Rapture of
the Church the Holy Spirit withdraws His restraint and Satan is allowed greater
freedom, the results is that the saints will suffer as they never have
before. For the ones who openly profess
Christ there will be no place to hide and no way of escape, now remember that during
this part of the tribulation period all people will be forced to wear the mark
of the beast, but believers during that time will understand that they cannot
accept this mark and so they will be exposed.
It’s bad now, but it will be far worse during that time.
These
believes will suffer on account of Christ’s name, that is, because they are
identified with Him.
Now
we want to look what happened when Christ broke the fifth seal as seen in
Revelation 6:9-11, as John saw those martyred saints under the altar,
“the souls of those who had been slain because
of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained; 10 and they cried out with a loud voice, saying,
"How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and
avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" 11 And there was given to each of them a white
robe; and they were told that they should rest for a little while longer, until
the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be
killed even as they had been, would be completed also.”
Let
us look at what John saw later on in 7:9-10 “9 After these things I looked, and behold, a
great multitude which no
one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and
tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white
robes, and palm branches were in their hands; 10 and they cry out with a loud voice, saying,
"Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’” As we move onto looking at verse 13-14 we
will see that one of the elders explained what John saw “13 Then one of the
elders answered, saying to me, "These who are clothed in the white robes,
who are they, and where have they come from?" 14 I said to him, "My
lord, you know." And he said to me, "These are the ones who come out
of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white
in the blood of the Lamb.”
MacArthur concludes this section: “The murders of which unbelieving mankind
will not repent (Rev. 9:21) will include the killing of other unbelievers, but
as with the Antichrist (13:7) and the great harlot (17:6), the most vicious
assaults will be on the saints.”
12/11/2023 12:17 PM
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