In the case of the outstandingly gifted prophets and prophetesses and witnesses of the last days, particularly the Tribulation period, their powers to fight off the Enemy and to continue to protect their witness and witnesses may be similar to some of the powers we’ll be using in the Millennium to force evildoers into submission. The Lord uses the words “rod of iron” (Revelation 2:27), which certainly symbolizes the use of force.
There comes a time when even good has to use force against evil, and this is certainly clear throughout the Bible, because force is almost the only thing that evil understands. That’s why the Lord says that the police are officers of God who bear not the sword in vain (Romans 13:1-8). This means they need to bear swords, weapons, and not in vain, which means that if necessary, they use them. Even some of Jesus’ disciples carried swords. But our weapons are not carnal but are much more powerful, unto the tearing down of strongholds, spiritual strongholds, fighting and opposing the spiritual wickedness in the spiritual realm (2 Corinthians 10:3-4).
Therefore, we have to have weapons that are more powerful than normal physical, carnal weapons. We have to have powerful spiritual weapons, and we don’t carry these in vain. We’re supposed to use them if necessary to resist the powers of evil and to protect ourselves from the Devil, and we even have some of these powers available now. Men and women of God have always had these powers available from the very beginning. God had to give godly people godly powers to defeat and oppose and defend themselves from the powers of the Devil.
So there’s nothing new about it, and it could happen with others and will happen definitely during the Tribulation when we need particularly strong powers for self-defence and to make our witness possible and to protect us to the very end. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be any live Christians left for Jesus to rapture! We would all have been killed by the Enemy.
It says that power is going to be given to the Antichrist to overcome the organized church and to destroy its temporal power (Daniel 7:21–25; 8:24; Revelation 13:7). But that doesn’t mean that they’re going to defeat or dominate or destroy all of us, the true believers and those who have the supernatural powers and miraculous defences of the Lord. “For they which do know their God shall do exploits and shall instruct many, but even some of these shall fall,” it says (Daniel 11:32–33). But when they fall, it says that they’ll be helped. The Lord is going to enable us to continue till the end and to survive all the onslaughts of the Antichrist and his forces. Otherwise there wouldn’t be anybody left to rapture. So the Lord is going to have to give His true believers, men and women of God, prophets and prophetesses and witnesses, supernatural, miraculous powers of self-defence and even of attack in order to survive and continue witnessing until the Lord comes.
It says that the Antichrist forces weren’t able to do anything against the final two witnesses until the very end because they were able to cause curses and plagues on the evil and to call down fire from God out of heaven to devour their enemies. (Revelation 11:3-6) That’s a picture of mighty men and women of God fighting a victorious battle over the demons of hell right until the very end, even though some of them were allowed to be martyrs. Obviously most of them are going to survive and endure all of that until the very coming of the Lord when they’re raptured out of it all, and that’s no little mean handful. It’s going to be millions. So they must have survived somehow with some kind of supernatural, miraculous help.
I believe, according to the Scriptures, that certain very powerful men and women of God like the ancient prophets and prophetesses of old are going to have miraculous powers to protect and defend their flocks and followers and help them to survive to the very end, the final great witnesses depicted in Revelation, even the famous two last witnesses described in Revelation 11. It doesn’t say that they are the only ones, but it shows how victorious they are right up to the very end, that the Antichrist and all his forces and all the forces of hell are not able to really touch them until only 3½ days before the Second Coming of the Lord and their rapture. Their bodies are left in the streets for 3½ days while the wicked rejoice over them, thinking they have won the victory, when suddenly to their surprise they arise from the dead and are raptured into the heavens at the Second Coming of the Lord (Revelation 11:7–12).
So I believe there are going to be millions of Christians who survive until the Rapture.—Some by hiding out in the wilderness as the Scripture says (Revelation 12:6,14), others by defying the forces of Satan face-to-face and being victorious over all the powers of the Enemy till the very end! “Where sin doth abound, grace doth much more abound” (Romans 5:20). And where satanic power is going to abound, then God’s power is going to much more abound to protect His own. God’s purpose is not going to be defeated; He’s going to have millions of witnesses right up to the end, at least 144,000.
The Tribulation period is not going to be a defeat for the church of God, for genuine Christians. It’s going to be a time of waging war on the Antichrist and all his forces right up to the end! Otherwise there’d be nobody to survive to be raptured. So don’t worry about it! Those who live during those times will have what it takes when the time comes—power for the hour, and every hour. Even at the darkest hour they’ll still have power for the hour to meet every difficulty and every problem and every opposition—the supernatural, miraculous power of God.
Just think, there will be nothing the Antichrist can do against the famous two witnesses of Revelation 11, nothing he can do to stop them until 3½ days before the Lord comes. Then he will be allowed to kill them, so that the cup of the iniquity of the wicked may be full, and while they’re actually rejoicing over their deaths, suddenly the Lord will come and resurrect them and rapture them. That in itself is a mighty victory, showing that God can even be victorious over the deaths of martyrdom and slaughter. What is death if you can be resurrected?—And be raptured on top of it! So it will still wind up a mighty victory for the Lord right in the sight of the whole world. And the world will be amazed, as the Lord will show His wrath then with a great earthquake and hail as He rains wrath on the wicked as He resurrects and raptures His saints. (Revelation 11:13-18)
So we don't have to think that those who live through that time are just going to be cowering, hunted victims, although some may be. Obviously most are not going to be cowering but powering in their fight and battle and defence of the Gospel right up to the end, with all the forces of heaven on their side, including the curses and plagues of God on the Enemy, and the Lord’s defence by all kinds of strange monsters described in the Bible that appear during the Tribulation period to defend His children.
It is not a period of complete defeat and destruction as some have pictured, particularly some of our teachers and writers of the past who seemed to enjoy drawing the most gruesome kind of pictures to terrify us about that period. We’ve been given too much hell about the Tribulation. We need to show a little more of what heaven can do and is going to do for God’s children during that time of trial. There’s going to be a lot of hell—in fact, the most hell the world has ever known—but the world is going to get most of it, not the Christians! Although there’s going to be the most hell the world has ever known, there is also going to be the most power of heaven that we have ever known, the most heavenly power and defence and help and protection in order that we can be powerful witnesses to the truth right up to the end.
So why have this terrible picture of constant defeat of the saints and the Christians? The Tribulation period is not going to be a period of just defeats and horrors for the Christians. It’s going to be a time of probably our greatest victories and greatest battles and greatest powers that the true church has ever known, to defeat the forces of evil in spite of all the satanic power of the Antichrist forces of the Devil.
The Tribulation period is going to be mostly a time of horror and suffering for the Antichrist forces and his people. They’re the ones that are pictured as suffering the most, and in a sense, it’s the time of their greatest defeat. For despite the fact that they’ve finally got the whole world under their power and control, they still can’t defeat the true Christians or stop them or even stop their witness.
We need a picture of the Tribulation as a time of great battle, that’s true, a great struggle, great tribulation, but most of the horrors are for the world and the wicked, not for God’s children. It’ll be a time of some of our greatest victories and greatest witness and greatest miracles and greatest manifestations of the supernatural.
So we shouldn’t be always painting such a horrible gloomy picture of the Tribulation. It’s true, it’s going to be a time of great persecution and great battles. But it’s also going to be a time of great, phenomenal, supernatural, miraculous victories that will spare us and protect us and help us to survive and witness to the very Coming of the Lord, when “We which are alive and remain shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:17). There are going to be a lot of us who are still alive and remain right to the end.
The Lord is going to take care of His children and He’s going to have mighty saints and men and women of God, prophets and prophetesses at the last day to continue our witness until the very end and the Coming of the Lord.
We need to show our people the other side of the Tribulation: the victorious view of what marvellous witnessing His children are going to do then, in which the whole world will know about us and even see us on television and hear of our mighty wonders and miracles and supernatural protection in spite of everything the Devil and his Antichrist can do. What a defeat for Satan to do everything he can to kill us and be unable to! How humiliating that’s going to be for the Antichrist when he has declared war on God’s people and said we should all be killed, and yet he can’t. That will surely be a time of frustration and humiliation for the Antichrist and his forces.
So why get so worried about the Tribulation? It’s going to be a period when God’s children are going to have a greater testimony and a greater witness and even more miraculous survival and supernatural defence, and in some ways it’s going to be a time of great victory and marvellous testimony, so that the whole world will know, and every last person that can possibly be saved is going to be saved. The whole world will hear the Gospel and our witness will have gone out to the ends of the earth. Even angels will be preaching the Gospel from the heavens so that the whole world will hear it and be without excuse, and so that everyone who can possibly be saved then will be saved.
The greater the battle, the greater the victory; the greater the test, the greater the testimony. And the greater the trial or tribulation, the greater the triumph! You can’t have a triumph and a victory and a testimony without a war and without battles. So it is going to be a time of great battle and great war between the forces of good and evil, but it’s also going to be a time of great victory, tremendous triumph and terrific testimonies of the victories of the forces of God over the forces of evil. For the greater the battle, the greater the victory, and the more tremendous the trial, the greater the triumph!
So quit looking on the Tribulation as a horrible defeat with nothing but persecution and suffering. There will be some of that, but I’m convinced from Scripture and the nature of God and His dealings with man that it’s going to be primarily a time of great victory over the forces of Satan and tremendous triumph over the Antichrist wicked. So don’t fear it. Don’t worry about it!
When you watch those Superman and Wonder Woman movies and others of that sort, you don’t really worry about what’s going to happen to them, because no matter what happens to them, you know they always win in the end. They’ve got to win. They’re the hero and the heroine of the series. If anything happens to them, it would be the end of the series. God’s people are the heroes and the heroines. We’ve got to win! The forces of God cannot be defeated and the plan of God cannot be frustrated. We’re bound to win. We can’t lose!
Copyright © 1983 by The Family International.
1 Comments:
Great message. Thanks for posting.
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