Signs Of The End

TEXT: Revelation 16:16

TITLE: SIGNS OF THE END

(We are a Terminal Generation)

1 Thessalonians 5:3 – “For when they say, ‘Peace and safety then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape.”

(TLB) – “When people are saying, ‘All is well; everything is quiet and peaceful’- then, all of a sudden, disaster will fall upon them as suddenly as a woman’s birth pains begin when her child is born. And these people will not be able to get away anywhere – there will be no place to hide.”

Time Magazine’s cover read, “Thinking the unthinkable!” The story stated that mankind is at the brink of disaster in a world bristling with nuclear weapons. Harvard professor Bernard Lown lamented that mankind is doomed, locked into a race toward Armageddon.

When Scripture tells us that a day of destruction is coming you can count on it. When it tells us that heaven and earth will pass away, you can be sure that this world as we know it will definitely end. There will be a last baby born, a last marriage performed, a last kiss, a last song, and a last hurrah.

My purpose is not to scare you but to let the Word of God sound a trumpet blast to awaken us up from our sleep. If the end is in sight, if we can see that we are headed for destruction, just think of how close the rapture must be.

God tells us when, how, & where the world as we know it will end: Armageddon.

Armageddon is the Hebrew word meaning “the mountain of Merged.” The mountain of Mageddo lies east of Mount Carmel in the northern part of Palestine.

Napoleon looked at the expanse of Armageddon and described it as the most natural battlefield on the face of the earth, for armies would be able to maneuver easily over its empty plains, On those plains, the Bible tells us, human blood will flow to the height of a horse’s bridle for two hundred miles. There the false man of peace, the Antichrist, will join with his armies to fight the Son of God for supremacy.

There are several signs, which indicate that we’re on our way there. There are signs that indicate we are on the road to destruction; that we are a terminal generation; that we are heading toward the end. Jesus is coming back soon & the end is in sight.

1. The Knowledge Explosion! The first road sign pointing toward Armageddon is found in Daniel 12:4 – “But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.” The literal translation of this Scripture indicates that during the end time, or the terminal generation, an explosion of knowledge will occur.

Just such an explosion has occurred in the last century. From the Garden of Eden until A.D. 1900, men walked or rode horses just as King David and Julius Caesar did. In the span of a few years, however, mankind invented the automobile, the jet plane, and the space shuttle. You can fly from New York to Paris in 3 hours today. Just think of all the knowledge involved in developing these marvels of modern technology.

Technology, has made fathomless depths of knowledge and information available to us at the press of a button. You can receive faxes in your car, take a message on your pager, and explore encyclopedias of vast knowledge small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. You can sit in the quiet of your own home and drown yourself in information from the Internet.

In the last two generations we have put men on the moon. Medical science has the ability to keep a corpse breathing for months on life support. Tiny babies weighing less than one pound can survive, and unborn babies can even undergo surgery while within the womb.

You would think with all this knowledge the world would be better off. You would think that we would be headed to world tranquility – peace. All this knowledge ought to be a good thing, but still we’re on the road to Armageddon or destruction. Our knowledge has not produced utopia (heaven on earth): instead it has created a generation of well-informed people who know more about rock stars than history. Our “enlightened” society seeks freedom and self-expression, but is actually enslaved by drugs, perversion, and occult practices.

Knowledge without God can only produce intellectual barbarians, smarter sinners. Hitler’s Nazis threw Jewish children alive into the ovens. Many of them were educated men, some had Ph.D.s, but their education was accomplished without the acknowledgment of the knowledge of God.

We are the terminal generation, “always learning but never able to come to knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7) because we seek truth apart from God. You can’t think your way to truth. The only way you will ever find eternal ultimate truth is by seeking & finding the God of the Bible.