The Grim Reality of the Last Days

"I think we’re all finding out that this is a very dangerous planet to live on. You...you can get caught in a war, a war that you really had nothing to do with and become a victim of the hatred and the greed and the struggle for power by people in high positions. We are watching essentially war stretching across the Middle East, very much aware of it. Now that war engages virtually the world in a no-fly zone of Libya, a coalition of nations coming against Muammar Gaddafi. Before it’s all over, there will be thousands if not tens of thousands who die. That’s really nothing new for us.

It’s a dangerous world as well because you can be the victim of an earthquake, or a tsunami. You can be the victim of a famine because you can’t get to the food or the food can’t get to you because of a natural disaster. You can be the victim of a fire, or a flood, as we see repeated again and again throughout the world.

In spite of the fact that living in this world has its bliss and its blessing, and in spite of the fact that our world, our planet bears the marks of divine creation, and the benevolence of God is in the very fabric of life on this planet, in spite of the fact that riches are provided for us and provisions are provided for us, the backside of all those provisions puts us in really imminent danger. We can be killed by disease. We can be poisoned in our food. We can be radiated to death. All of these things are the backside of the blessings. We create civilizations, we create crops, we create dams to dam up the water. We harness all the resources in the world and yet we have to do everything we can to create the prevention of those very things destroying us. It is a very dangerous place to live. Disaster is all around us. War and death are ever present from a myriad of ways.

This, by the way is no surprise to anybody who understands the Bible. Human history is no surprise to God and it is no surprise to our Lord Jesus. If you go to Mark chapter 13, we’re going to find Jesus on the last day of His public ministry in Jerusalem, Wednesday of Passion Week. On Thursday He will prepare to celebrate the Passover with His disciples. On Friday He will be crucified. On Sunday He will be raised from the dead.

But here on this last day of public ministry, He has brought that public ministry to an end and now He is speaking to His disciples as of verse 43 in chapter 12, He calls His disciples to Him. And for the remainder of this day and the next day, He focuses on talking to them.

In this portion that is recorded for us by Matthew in Matthew 24 and 25, and also by Luke as we have recently seen in Luke 21, He gives a picture of history to come. This is prophetic. It is predictive. And it will be very familiar to you because this is exactly the way history has gone." -John MacArthur

Read, listen or download the full message here.