Hey everybody, Pastor Brett
here on this Friday evening. It's so good to
have y'all with us. And man, I know we're doing a little different
format tonight with just being online, but I'm glad to have you joining us. And this evening we're just going to
be doing a normal Prophecy Update, our first Friday
Prophecy Update. I'd like to pray and ask the Lord's
blessing on our time, and then we'll dive in. And Lord, we are so thankful for a chance
to search the scriptures, to look at your Word carefully and to see what it
says about the days we're living. And I pray, Lord, that you bless this time,
bless the conversation we have, and Lord, that you just be able to just put your heart
in your people, Lord, that we'd have your mind, your heart during
these days that we're living. So bless this time, we pray. Use it for your
purpose in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, July Prophecy Update, so
many topics we could talk about. I could dive into some pretty amazing things
that are going on in the Middle East right now. I'm tempted to talk about what's going on
with Israel there in Jenin, where the Israelis have been sort of combing that area, which
is known for active terrorists and weapons. And boy, there's this big propaganda war
about what's happening in Jenin right now. And, you know, the world tries to always
make the Israelis look like they're horrible people. But what they're doing is they're getting
rid of weapons and, you know, dangerous to the population of Israel, these
weapons that are in Jenin. And you know, just more
and more anti-Semitism. We could talk about that. We could talk about, you know, the Russians
messing around with our drones over Syria. There's some interesting
activity up there in Syria. But you know, we could, you know, dive
off into the geopolitics of what's going on with China and the world, Taiwan,
what's going on down there. But I want to take these prophecy updates
and often it's so easy to shotgun different topics because there's
so much to talk about. And I'm trusting that you've got your
favorite prophecy information people out there. But you know, I just want to kind of look
at the scriptures and some things having to do with the topic of the
persecution of the church. And what is that looking like? What is it going to look like? Could we be persecuted? And the questions about, well, Brett, I thought we
were going to be raptured before the persecution of the church. Well, that might be a little bit of a misnomer
that I wanted to cover and talk about. So we'll do a little
bit of a dive into that. As it turns out, Open Doors report in 2022 show
us that around the world, you know, persecution is on the rise. In 2022, advocacy groups said at least
360 million Christians experienced high levels of persecution. And this is 20 million
higher than 2021. The group also estimated the number of
Christians killed for their faith rose to 5,898 in 2022, up from 4,761 in 2021. Afghanistan, North Korea, Libya, Yemen all
saw the highest rates of persecution globally. And persecution included instances of
intimidation, disinformation, stereotyping, legal threats, attacks on places of worship. One thing I think we have to be careful
about is a lot of times we as Western Christians think of persecution
only if there was death. In fact, I think that we wrongly think of
the persecuted church, even of the ancient Roman times as
people that were killed. But there was all kinds of different types
of persecution, even in the first century through the third century
that we could talk about. But you know, some of those things, you
know, I think we discount them in the West as not really being church persecution. But if you kind of check it
out, it is sort of the issue. Persecution is possible
before the rapture of the church. And the reason I want to bring that up is
because we think, oh, we're going to be martyred for our faith before the
rapture of the church. Well, that may not be the type of persecution
that we see, but there are various kinds. And I think that, you know, one of the
things we need to do is ready ourselves for that kind of persecution. And what does that mean to ready yourself
for persecution if that's coming our way? We're going to talk about that. But I think, you know, to be ready,
it reminds me of Daniel the prophet. Daniel, when he was a young man taken
from his home in Jerusalem and, you know, lost his parents, kind of, you know, fresh
start in there in Babylon, you might say. But he was a guy who, like this scripture,
Daniel chapter 1 verse 8, you know, it says, but Daniel purposed in his heart that he
would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with
the wine which he drank. I love Daniel as a young man, this phrase
in the Bible that he had purposed in his heart. That's what I think the Lord would have
us to think about is to be a people of clear purpose in the days where clarity is
lacking and disinformation and misinformation. And what are you
going to believe? And what are you
going to accept? And what are you going to say? And how are you going to respond to the
non-believing world that puts all kinds of pressure on us to be more like them, to
be conformed to the world? And I think if you're not ready for this,
you might be caught off guard and not really be ready to do the right thing. Should we be surprised that persecution
could happen to the true church of Jesus Christ in the days before the
rapture of the church? Let me talk about
that for a second. You know, don't get me wrong, the tribulation
period will include persecution, no question about that, and martyrdom. But largely the persecution that's going
to happen there is going to be directly from Satan. Some of the trouble in the world is going to
be the wrath of God being poured out upon a Christ-rejecting sinful world. That's the tribulation period. But I think we have to be careful not to think
that because we're going to be raptured before the tribulation period that we are somehow
going to be protected from any persecution. I'd be arrogant because historically the
church has been persecuted for millennia. And we're not special in that sense,
Christians, that are going to bypass persecution. I believe it's the enemies of a pre-trib rapture
view that likes to promote, oh, you guys pre-tribbers are just trying to say you'll
never go through persecution. Well, that's not the case. I believe that we pre-trib
view Bible students, we really like to believe that we get to
escape the worst time that's ever going to be on the planet Earth. That's the tribulation period. We do get to
escape those things. But that's not to say there won't be
really bad things coming right before that. In fact, I would argue that it's possible
that we, in last days, believers, Christian Church will see some of the buildup that
leads to the events of the tribulation period. And so that's some of the things that
really I'd like to kind of cover on this Prophecy Update. And does the Bible
talk about persecution? Well, it says a ton about how we
will probably likely face persecution. Let me go through a few of them. 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 12,
it says, yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall
suffer persecution. That's a promise of God's Word. You can put that up on your
mirror as a memory verse. You know, it's funny how I love to do all
the promises of God's Word that, you know, my God shall supply all your needs
according to his riches and glory. Those are the ones
we love to memorize. But this is a good one. All that live godly in Christ
Jesus shall suffer persecution. That's a promise. Also, 1 Peter chapter 4, verses 12
through 14, it says, beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to
test you as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice in so far as you share Christ's
sufferings that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. Now notice this next line here in verse
14, if you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed because the Spirit
of glory and of God rests upon you. What a shock. You know, I think we as Christians, when
we're insulted because of the name of Christ, we're not blessed. We're offended or
even angered or upset. But Peter says, no, when you're insulted,
excuse me, for the name of Christ, you are you're blessed because that means
the Spirit of glory of God rests upon you. That's a sign that God's with you when you
hear people insulting you because of Jesus. First John 3:13 says, don't be surprised,
brothers, that the world hates you. Boy, do you get a sense that the world,
their hatred for Christians is on the rise? We're seeing that exponentially. We'll talk more
about that in a second. Matthew 13, verses 20 through 21, it says,
as for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the Word
and immediately receives it with joy. Yet he has no root in himself,
but endures for a while. And when tribulation or persecution arises
on account of the Word, immediately he falls away. This is what I'm talking about, purposing
in your heart, being ready for when trouble comes. There in Matthew 13:20-21, talking
about the seed that's sown and how, you know, some of it doesn't really take
root and it endures for a while. But when tribulation or persecution arises
on account of the Word, that immediately falls away. And I, I'm really concerned that the modern
day church today, because we've moved away from teaching the scriptures verse by verse,
and we've skipped over a lot of Bible study and scripture, and I'm not sure people, they're
rooted as deeply as maybe they once were even a generation ago
in the scriptures. You know, did you see that Jeopardy round
where they asked, you know, the Lord's prayer finished, you know, our father who
art in heaven, blank, be your name. And the, and the, the, all the contestants
just sat there blank and they didn't know the word, hallowed,
hallowed be thy name. And it's kind of funny because, you know,
that would have been a giveaway for a lot of people a decade ago. But I think that the world is less instructed
in the Word and because they don't have the roots in the Word. When persecution comes,
this verse is prophetic. We're going to see people
immediately falling away. And the Bible even says there's
going to be a great falling away. As we get closer to the end, the word is apostasia,
talked about in 2 Thessalonians, that's going to happen in the end times
and, and in the tribulation period. So part of what I want to talk about this, this
evening is basically how do we root ourselves? How do we prepare ourselves if
persecution, in fact, is coming on the way? And I believe it is. I think we're seeing that. Let me give you a
couple more scriptures. 1 Peter 3:17, for it is
better to suffer for doing good. If that should be God's
will, then for doing evil. That's a decision you and I
are going to have to make. Are we going to do good and suffer even
though, you know, what, what are you talking about, Brett? Well, you know, what's good. That's a new term
that's being redefined. What is good? And what is evil? You know, if you're saying, I'm going to,
you know, stand up for the unborn baby that the world likes to call a fetus, that it's
actually a person that God has created and fearfully wonderfully made. If you're going to stand up for that
good, the world is going to think you evil. So like Peter saying, for it is
better to suffer for doing good. If that should be God's
will, then for doing evil. A lot of the people of the world are
defaulting to the evil just to not suffer. And I think as a church, we need to make it
up in our mind to say, what are we going to do when we're faced with decisions when
persecution may be coming right around the corner? Didn't Jesus warn
us about persecution? I mean, I could just go on and on
with scripture about persecution. In the Olivet Discourse, when Jesus was
asked by the disciples, you know, what's going to happen? When's the end of the age? You know, in your second coming. And Jesus answered that really
long dissertation, the Olivet Discourse. And he said there in Matthew 24:9, he said,
then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted and shall kill you. And you shall be hated of all
nations for my name's sake. Now, you may say, well, Brett,
that's going to be in the tribulation. I believe that could happen as a
ramp up to the tribulation period. It's possible. I think we should perhaps be mentally
ready, mentally prepared for if that is to happen. So persecution is
kind of a big deal. Now you say, Brett, so we're going to be
thrown in prison or tortured for our faith? Maybe you remember Richard Warmbier
and Tortured for Christ and some of those books. I remember my parents read one of
those books to me when I was a kid. And I remember thinking,
wow, persecution is real. And it was helpful for me to see what people
in the church history have had to go through. But I want to basically show you how persecution,
I believe, could come in many forms and perhaps ways that you may not really think about
unless you're following what's going on in the world today. Persecution is not going to look
like Stephen the martyr necessarily. It might look more like
that during the tribulation. But in the ramping up to the tribulation,
there's more subtle forms of persecution that I think we need to
be perhaps thoughtful of. The stage is set, in my opinion, for a new
wave even of persecution, something that is fairly unfamiliar to
us, at least in the West. You know, and it starts
to answer some questions. Have you ever thought about why is Target
and Budweiser, you know, businesses, why are they willing to lose so
much money right now? Have you ever
thought about that? Like what drives a company like, you know,
North Face, you know, that just used to be about tents and camping
and backpacks and stuff. What would make them throw a bunch
of profit away by going extremely woke? Well, this leads to one of the things that I
think will be more of a future way of persecution of the Church of Jesus Christ. Those corporations are
concerned about their ESG score. Do you know what
an ESG score is? It's kind of an interesting thing, and if
you don't know about it, it kind of explains why these companies,
they're in it for the long haul. They know they're going to take a loss now,
but it's almost like these companies are feeling like they have to check a politically correct
box to get their sort of their ESG score. What's that? Well, here's what it is. If an investor, say investor A, prioritizes
environmental and climate issues, they can easily look at the ratings provided by the
Carbon Disclosure Project, you know, to identify companies that are big performers when it
comes to climate change and stuff like that. If you're a company that's really good
about your climate change and stuff, then you'll get a higher score. And then there's also not just environmental,
but social and governance factors. They can look at the ratings provided by Bloomberg
ESG ratings, for example, to identify the bigger companies that are doing what they
would call a really good job with their ESG. That is environmental, social, which
is LGBTQ stuff, the big performers. So Target is right
at the top of the list. Target risked all, put all their, got a Satanist
to design their artwork and their sales situation for these gender fluid people. So Target gets a
score that's higher. Dodgers get a better score,
along with North Face and all that. Now, these companies are, look, your diversity,
equity and inclusion score also is part of that. And these large corporations that are the
bankers that hold all the money, like BlackRock and others, that's
not the coffee. The coffee is a great company. But BlackRock, the big dollar bank, they're
the ones who are kind of behind putting all this pressure on these companies
to get their high ESG score. I remember when Debbie and I got our
bill in the mail for our electricity one winter, when we lived in Tualatin, and we were living
in a neighborhood there in Tualatin, and our bill said, you are 75% higher use of electricity
than all the neighbors in your neighborhood. And they told us how we were, you
know, using too much energy in our home. Now, at that time, we had three high schoolers
and two other adults in our house, along with a guy that was staying with us, who was
on the road and stuff, and he stayed with us for six months. So we were definitely, you
know, cranking out the energy. Plus, I like lights and I like heat
and things like that, so we let it rip. But we got zinged, you know, by the PGE
for telling us, oh, you guys are using too much electricity. Well, that's kind of where this all goes,
not only in corporations, but also in the personal life. And that's where we start to get to
some of these other kinds of things. By the way, the idea of diversity and equity
inclusion score, basically, being a Christian counts against you in
this whole social thing. Because if you're a Bible-believing, God-fearing
Christian, you're against abortion, you're against some of the
diversity, the so-called. You know, I have to say, by the way, I've
been wrestling with this idea of LGBTQIA+, and I, you know, I jokingly say it
because it's just hilarious, all the letters. And you know, some people just call it
alphabet soup, and I laugh at that because it is kind of funny. It is sort of, they change
it every 10 minutes. But I also have to say, by us saying LGBTQIA+,
it's almost like we're affirming, passively sort of affirming, what
they want us to say. We're supposed to include
and be inclusive of all those. And if you haven't looked at what all those
mean, boy, you've got a lot of homework to do because it includes, if you look at the
flag of the LGBTQIA+, and the plus basically at the end is anything goes. If you're talking about
pedophilia, it's part of that group. And for us to say it like it's something we should
respect and honor, LGBTQTIA+, or whatever, I feel like we're sort of, if we're not careful,
we could be speaking lies by just saying the acronym. I'm wrestling with that myself. So call it what you will, but alphabet soup
or just perversion and sin, that's what the Bible calls it. But it's funny how we have, by embracing
their acronym, it's almost like there's an inch by inch acceptance
of the whole thing. I'm concerned about that as Christians, at
least to be aware of that is kind of important. But obviously that kind of a worldview
is not going to get a high score in a social kind of situation. Mocking Christianity
is fair game. If you mock Christianity,
you get a high score. Like I said, the Sisters of Indulgences at the
Dodgers game, Gerald Garth applauded the Dodgers. He was the pride board president for the Dodgers,
and he stands there and applauds for the Sisters of Indulgences. That's a company that
is mocking Christianity. It's not only that they're getting a good
score for being socially into homosexuality and transgenderism and queerness and all
that stuff, they're getting a high score because they're also knocking the Catholic church
and what have you, which is interesting. And Hollywood has made an
art form out of mocking Jesus. Have you guys seen this? Musicians mocking famous people, mocking
Christ and mocking Christianity and mocking the cross. It's amazing. Not just these Sisters of Indulgences, but
Hollywood performers and maybe you've seen some of these celebrities. They're heroes of
your kids probably. If you're not careful, mom and dad, the people
your kids are listening to and watching, and they're heroes, Demi Lovato, Conor
McGregor, Beyonce, Chris Rock. Chris Rock did a whole bit on how God doesn't
know what he's doing, and everybody laughs and chuckles and
thinks it's funny. And it's a mockery of Jesus Christ,
and you get points for that in our world. If you're mocking
Christianity, it's amazing. You can't mock Islam. Christianity is the only religion that is
fair game for mockery, for hatred, for vitriol. We're seeing that on a
whole new level right now. That's something
to kind of watch. We're seeing that. And I believe that one of those points of
persecution, by the way, is that we're going to see that even get greater. Christians are going to be more hated,
and the things we believe that are biblical are going to be more despised. So what happens when you don't get the
higher score socially because you're a Christian? Well, that leads
to another point. That is the central
bank digital currencies. They could lead to
Christian persecution. In recent years, we've discussed this on
other Prophecy Updates, but the central digital bank currencies that they're talking about,
we've witnessed an interest, a growing interest in the idea of the central bank digital
currency, and it can be programmed. The monies can be programmed. Similar to cash, central bank digital currencies
are a form of money issued by central banks. It's money that can be programmable in that
you can make it do something or not do something, unlike our current dollars. Central bank digital currencies are expected
to hand authorities, whoever they may be, the ability to completely control
the finances of their citizens. States would be able to restrict citizens
from purchasing any services and goods. The governments would gain greater
influence and control over people's lives. For example, societies will be able to decide
whether limiting someone who's addicted to gambling from buying a lottery
ticket is a positive feature of the money. I mean, they'll have their ways of selling
this, like it can help solve the gambling problem and what have you. Similarly, they might also be able to decide
whether welfare assistance can be only used for food or medicine or rent. They'll be able to delineate where
monies go, but controlling the money. And so you say, well,
that sounds great. That really brings us to the next level,
which we've talked about, and that is the social credit score. It's already happening in China. This Time Magazine article, how China is
using social credit scores to reward and punish its citizens by the
author Charlie Campbell. Basically, government agencies of the Chinese,
compile and share data on judgments against individuals or companies. If you fail to pay a fine or court-ordered
compensation or default on your debts, you'll be put on the list of untrustworthy
persons, blacklisted individuals. If you're in that category, they won't allow you
to make luxury purchases such as high-speed rail or air tickets
or hotel rooms. By the way, 5 million people in China have
been barred from the high-speed trains and 17 million from flights under the scheme
of their social credit score, according to the official website. The ripple effect on every part of your life
becomes very much of a multiplier of punishments. A professor, a big data expert, wrote
about all this, Frank Pasquale at the University of Maryland, and writes about how they
can pretty much shut you down completely. Now, you might be tempted to think, oh,
Pastor Brett, no problem, I'm a good person, I pay my bills, I have a
good credit score today. We all have a credit score, we've been
comfortable, sort of, with that for many years now. And maybe you do have a good credit score,
why would my social credit score be any different? The answer is very clear. You know, they're not going to measure you
on being a good person in your sense of what is good. They're going to measure what
is good in their sense of good. We'll talk more about that. By the way, a new federal rule that just came
into the United States, homebuyers with the higher credit scores, they're actually using
that to see their fees on mortgages increase. So if you have a good credit score, they're
talking about how they're going to ding those that have been really good with their money,
depending on their own payment amount. People with lower credit scores will generally
see fees decrease on the mortgage and what have you. So that's going
to be interesting. There's an example of you having a good credit
score where it's actually going to count against you. In the same way, I think, it's going to be
like what the Bible tells us about, calling good evil and evil good. Another thing that we're starting to see is
this massive movement and what Isaiah talked about, calling good
evil and evil good. Isaiah 5:20 declares, woe unto them that
call evil good and good evil, that put darkness for light and light for darkness, that
put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. You know, we're seeing that happen
right before our eyes in radical, radical ways. Stuff that we would have never imagined, you
know, not that long ago, we would have jailed some of these men who are today living out
their sexual fantasies at the expense of children. These pedophiles, as we used to call
them, now they're minor attracted persons. You see how they did that? They do that all the time, changing the
vocabulary and the words and all that. But isn't it amazing
how it's turning? If you're a person who's saying, yeah,
that's horrible and wrong, and if a guy is doing that in front of children, he needs
to be put in jail like we used to do. But these are just perverted men living out
their fantasies, and they should be corrected. But if you say that, you are
the one who's the evildoer. You're the one who's called bad or
evil if you say that that's evil and wrong. And it's starting to turn. We're seeing big
issues like that turn. It's really kind of a
religion in and of itself. I believe it's part of the great deception
that the Bible talks about in the last days. But Yahoo! Life article,
maybe you saw this. Did you see this
this last month? I feel like sometimes our Prophecy
Update's a little bit of review of the past month, but you saw it on June
28th there in New York City. The LGBTQ activists defend,
we're coming for your children chant. LGBTQ activists, I'll just read part of
this article, defended drag queen marchers who chanted, we're
coming for your children. A chant they claim has been
used for years, according to a report. NBC News published a story on Tuesday
how LGBTQ activists claimed the chant, which was recorded at the New York City Drag
Queen Parade in June, was taken out of context. It's all just words, Brian
Griffin, the original organizer of the New York City Drag
Queen Parade, told NBC News. It's all presented to fulfill
their worst stereotypes of us. How do you take
that out of context? We're here, we're queer, and
we're coming for your children. That's what they were chanting. If they didn't want to be misunderstood,
they probably shouldn't have been saying that. I believe their objectives are very
clear, and it's exactly what they're doing. They're basically throwing
our children, again, into real peril because they're actually
going for your children. We're seeing that in
our education system. By the way, so what happens? With all this stuff,
fear is what they use. The idea of being afraid to
stand up and say, that's wrong. That's pedophilia. That's illegal. That should never be done, a guy doing
those behavioral things in front of children. That should never happen. Now, there's fear to say, well, you're
now a homophobe, or you're a hater, and they call you
all kinds of names. And by the way, this using of
fear, this is a process using fear. This is one of our
main things here. The process of fear has
been a long work in progress. They've been slowly chipping away,
especially here in the West in America, to help those of us that
are strong in our beliefs to sort of chip away to
weaken those beliefs. And I think we saw that perhaps in a real
profound way during the whole COVID deal. City Journal article called
Thown to the Wolves. A Physician Reveals the
Nightmare of Transgender Ideology in a Major Children's Hospital
by Christopher F. Arrufo. This is an interesting article. Christopher Arrufo
interviews a doctor, and this physician won't give
the name or let us see his face. He's trying to be not known, but he's
answering this article author, his interview. Christopher Arrufo said, please
begin by setting the scene. What's it like at a major children's
hospital in the United States regarding transgender
interventions for children? And the physician answered, I think
the best way to answer that question is to talk about the cultural
shift that happened in 2020 because transgender ideology
and COVID are inextricably linked. Normally, doctors operate by the
authority of the professional societies that govern our
specific practice. That worked because the
individuals in those institutions were reliable,
intelligent, and thoughtful. But with COVID in 2020, we
started getting medical decrees without peer review or evidence. You saw this, he goes on, he
says, you saw this with masks, social distancing,
emergency use authorizations. These decrees were expressed as
something that everyone had to do without justification
based on sound science. The other thing
was also censorship. If you were asked questions to express
a doubt about these medical decrees, you would be ostracized
within your department and you stood a good chance of being
publicly humiliated, severely reprimanded, or fired. That's when transgender
ideology really took off. This is the beginning of that new
kind of persecution I was talking about where they'll try to,
with fear, put pressure, and it's this group piling on
of anyone who wants to say, hey, that's wrong, or that's not even
scientifically sound, but this dogpiling on a person and causing people to be
afraid to stand up and speak out. It's happening, so sadly, it's
happening to doctors in the medical field, which they had an oath to stand up
for what was right and help people. But it's even worse, it's happening
in the Church of Jesus Christ. It's amazing to me how
many pastors still neglect to just speak the whole
truth of the Scriptures. Paul said there in Acts 20, I have not
shunned and declared the whole counsel of God. Oh, how the Church needs that. And I believe when Jesus said, you know,
that you're going to have your soil, the seed, not get very deep, rooted, and then when
persecution comes, you'll just flee away, just like the
shallow rooted plant. That's what's happening today in many of
the Christian churches today, pastors, churches. This tells us we need to be
soaking up the Word of God. We need to read the
Scriptures carefully and be letting the Word dictate
what is true and what is right. You know, speaking of
transgenderism and fear, this is happening in a
radical level in California. California Globe article
under new California bill, parents would be charged with child
abuse for not affirming transgenderism. This is a video under
California's AB957. A parent could lose
custody of their children for not affirming whatever their
child believes about their gender. This is where one of the officials
there in California tries to defend this bill. Let's roll that. So this particular bill adds
the very important factor that affirming a child's gender
identity is in their best interest, which is what your
question is about. Why does it actually say
that in an affirmative way? And it really is because if
you have a seven-year-old who's talking about
having a potential to say, I being able to articulate
that they believe that they are not the same gender as they
are biologically, then it should be affirmed, and through care, it
should be determined. And that's what we
did with our own child. And that would give
the ability for a parent who wasn't sure to affirm and get
their child the care that they need to make that so they can begin
to articulate that determination. But by saying and rejecting it in wholesale,
then you're essentially rejecting your child. And that is not in the
best interest of a child. We should be affirming our
children in every possible way and getting them whatever appropriate care
they need, whether it's based on their gender, whether it's based on how
their studies are in school. It doesn't matter. Our
children should be affirmed. And this is saying that you have to
include gender affirmation as a part of that. Well, with that kind of logic,
I think we're in big trouble. It's amazing that a person
who's a political official could even say such a horrible
thing and be so brainwashed, really. But that is where
things are going. And if you're one who says what
that woman just said is ridiculous, you're a hater, you're a homophobe,
you're a bigot, you're fill in the blanks. And your social score
is going to go down, which is going to affect
your ability to buy and sell. Does that sound familiar? You see, in the tribulation, we
know there's going to come a time where there's going to be a
system, a financial system, where you will not be able to buy or sell
unless you've taken the mark of the beast. The Book of Revelation
makes that really clear. And we've talked
about that for years. It's only now where we're seeing
that really focused end of view and the ramping up to that
moment when that's going to happen. And some people think, well,
have I taken the mark of the beast? If I get this or that,
if I get a credit card, I remember people thinking, if I get a
passport, am I taking the mark of the beast? One thing about the mark of the beast
you need to know is you'll know that you're going to be signing an
allegiance with this antichrist character when you take the
mark of the beast. It's going to be the Bible says it's an
act of worship of the mark of the beast. And so and it's also going to
be during the tribulation period, which we're not going
to be here for that. So let's be clear. I'm not talking about the mark of
the beast with your social credit score and buying or selling with the
mark, but we're seeing the precursors, the ramping up to that before
the tribulation and all those pieces could be in place before
the tribulation even happens. For example, a digital currency
that would be very transferable to buy or sell only with a mark. That's all in the
process right now. But if your social score is low,
then they'll be able to control whether you buy or sell on what you're
able to do, which could affect your very life. That could all happen even before
the mark of the beast even is employed. Speaking of which, one of the
people that's interesting to watch in these last days, and we've
talked about him a few times, is, you know, this George Soros. You know, he's getting
pretty old up in his 90s. This Washington Examiner article, what
George Soros' succession plan means for America. You see George Soros
is passing the baton as this sort of cartoon indicates to
his son, Alex, who's the younger son. He's got an older son in his
50s, but this son's, I think he's 37. But this article says a
George Soros funded charity is the architect
behind a democratic bill to decriminalize hard drugs
across the United States. We in Portland, we
know how that works. Drugs have been decriminalized
and we're way worse off than we were just even
a couple of years ago. Just an FYI for you other
states that are wondering. It doesn't work.
It's horrifying. Portland is the joke of our nation and it's
because we've legalized all these drugs. So Soros is very big on that. Why? The question is. Despite overdose
deaths, this article goes on, notching record highs during
the COVID-19 pandemic. But chief among
George Soros' interests is his campaign for what
he calls reform prosecutors. We've seen this already. And that more than
any other factor, it is what makes his donations not
merely wrongheaded, but flat out dangerous. He's funding these prosecutors
that are not keeping criminals in jail, not enforcing the law, putting more attractive
reasons why people should commit crimes than the penalty if
they commit crimes. That's a Soros-funded thing and all
these prosecutors are funded by him. Now, what's interesting is people think,
well, just let George Soros kick the bucket. He's in his 90s. I think
he's, what, 92, 94? Well, they're already talking
about what's gonna happen. They're gonna put the
more attractive personality, the article says, of Alexander
Soros at the head of the OSF. It doesn't alter the facts
about how one family enterprise is changing America
for the worse. It isn't going too far to assert the Soros
foundations are now endangering American and, by the way, Jewish
lives, which is very interesting. Soros has sort of been kind of
anti-Semitic, which is shocking, as much as any other factor. America, with Soros money, is
starting to, we're starting to see really bad fruit from that. You know, it's interesting to me
because as we see this stuff going on, you know, we realize that there's
people that are anti-America, but you wonder why is
Soros doing what he's doing? This gets back to the World Economic
Forum and the whole global kind of thing. And, you know, people that are
constitutional, Bible-believing Americans, we're the one thing that kind
of stands in the way globally of all that coming together
in one world government, just like the book of
Revelation talks about. And so they use all these things, the money,
the politics, the LGBTQ, the climate change. The climate change
thing is one of the tools. Oh, and by the way, one
thing I'd like to bring up, whew, we made it past
Greta Thunberg's prophecy. By the way, I'm not a prophet. I read Bible prophecy, but
Greta Thunberg made a prophecy. Let's see if she was correct. Five years ago, this article reminded us
on June 20th because it would be the 21st. First, five years ago, Greta Thunberg
said the world would end on Wednesday. And, you know, people should be saying,
how dare you, Swedish climate change activist, Greta Thunberg, remember? As she said that to all of us. How dare you? You know, she cried out
after she predicted in 2018 that climate change would wipe out the
world this Wednesday a few weeks ago. A top climate scientist is warning that
climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil
fuels over the next five years, said Thunberg in a
since-deleted tweet. You know, it's funny how all these
so-called experts, not that Greta was an expert, but boy, the experts
jumped on her bandwagon. She was their poster child, and
they used her and put her out in front to display someone who was
right about climate change. But climate change is one of those
tools they're using to cause us to be fearful. Fearful that the world's gonna end,
which it is going to end, as it turns out, just not in the way that
they're saying it's going to end. Just read 2 Peter chapter three. You can find out how the world's
gonna end there, as well as other places. But it's interesting because
if you're one who's to say, yeah, this climate change
thing doesn't measure up, and everything that they've been
saying, since the inconvenient truth, it's shockingly inconvenient
that none of the truths that Al Gore talked about has
come to pass, none of them. Now, Brett, didn't you notice the
globe is warmer the last few days? They're saying, you know, the last
few days we've broken new records. Well, the climate people
that I've been reading and some of the scholars and scientists
are saying the world goes through cycles, and they're sort of
concentric circles. We go through cycles, winter,
summer, winter, summer. But even outside of that,
we go through El Ninos and different types of
weather patterns each year. And then outside of that, we go through
decades of different, you know, stretches of time. Of course, the Ice
Age was one big one. But many of the scientists
are not really standing as strongly on climate
change as they once were. The ones that are standing
on it are, I think, driven by fear. You'll be, like the doctors, when we talked
about the transgender issue with medicine, same thing with the science behind
climate change, so-called, there's fear. You'll be ostracized,
you'll be demoted. Even if you're a Pulitzer Prize winning
scientist or a Nobel Peace Award winning person, they'll just totally cancel you if you
say anything wrong about the climate. Thunberg, just as another of many, who
was just wrong about what they prophesied. Well, Brett, you've been
wrong about the rapture. Claire, to clarify, I've never said
when the rapture's gonna happen. Anybody who claims they know when
the rapture's gonna happen, they're wrong. The Lord says at an hour when you think
not, that's when the second coming of Christ is. The rapture's gonna
come and shock people. It's gonna be something we
don't know the day or the hour, nor will we know the
second coming of Christ. So we've never prophesied that. We're just saying, we're looking at the
times and the seasons, and it sure seems that we're getting nearer
and nearer to that end. With all that said, if more
of this modern version of persecution comes, where they
cancel you or give you a social credit score, not a credit score, but
a social score that's bad, and suddenly you're
limited, and you can't travel, and you can't purchase
things, and they're gonna make it so it's hard for you to even exist,
what do we as Christians do? How do we, you and I as Christians,
prepare for persecution if and when it comes? Now, I want to deal with this question
from a pastoral, biblical perspective. And I say that because some of you are
thinking, Brett, practically, should you get gold and store food
and build bunkers? Well, I'm just gonna say that's
out of my realm of expertise. I've got a lot of different
feelings about all that stuff. But spiritually, biblically,
how should we prepare? That's what I wanna
mostly talk about. And it really goes back to
what I mentioned about Daniel. Where did Daniel get that
notion from Daniel chapter 1 to purpose in his heart not to
defile himself with the king's meat? Long before he was ever tempted with the
king's meat in Babylon and the king's wine. Long before he was tempted to
become a good old Babylonian, you know? Where did he get that? I believe it's possible that Daniel
received that from his parents. He was taught that you need to be set in your
ways, and you need to not be easily tempted. And I bet you that Daniel's parents
rehearsed the Scriptures, the Old Testament, the first five books
of the Old Testament. I'm sure Daniel and his parents went
through that stuff over and over again. And Daniel, already as a young
man, had purposed in his heart, I'm not gonna defile
myself with the king's meat. You guys that are dieters,
you know how this goes. If you're dieting and
you're trying to lose weight, you know, I've spent half my life
dieting and trying to lose weight. And don't send me letters. I know all the diets, keto, and fasting,
and intermittent fasting, and all that stuff. And I can write the book on
that. I've lost lots of weight. But one thing I've learned
is if I go into a restaurant with no plan and I'm trying to
diet, it'll look something like this. I'll have your ribeye steak
with mashed potatoes, extra butter, and a side
of bacon, and a Diet Pepsi. That's my no plan version. If you go into a restaurant and say,
okay, before I go in, I need to think about, okay, I'm gonna have
something that's leaner. Like you have to plan it out. Because once you get in
there and smell the food, and once you're in there with all the people
and your friends, you don't want to be weirdo with all your dieting things,
you're just gonna mess up. I fear that the Christian
church is like that. If we don't purpose in our heart
long before the persecution comes, then when it comes, we're
gonna easily be blown away. Like Matthew told us there, Jesus told
us, that the rooted plant that was so shallow, it just blew off at the
first sign of persecution. That's sadly the condition
of the church today. So what we need to do
is really set our mind on, Lord, I'm gonna purpose in
my heart to follow your Word and not say the words
they want me to say. I'm not going to give in to the
ideas they want me to give in to. I'm not gonna accept things that the Bible
calls sinful and wrong, even an abomination. I'm not gonna accept those things as
good when your Word calls them evil. And you have to decide that right now
because when you're in a tense situation in front of a crowd or
people or work or at school, if you're not already
purposed in your heart, you're gonna kind of go,
oh yeah, yeah, whatever. Yeah, you know, LGBTQIA or
whatever, just to kind of go with the flow. I think those days are over. I think it's time for the Christian church
to just speak the truth, to speak it in love, but to nonetheless
speak the truth. Matthew chapter 5, verses 11 through 12,
Jesus said this on the Sermon on the Mount. So here's the first
thing you need to do. When people put you in that
persecution, what do you do? How do you purpose
in your heart? Well, the first thing is you
have to recognize the good. There's a silver lining. Matthew 5:11 and 12 says, blessed are
you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil
against you falsely on my account. And then he says,
rejoice and be glad. Isn't that funny? When you're
persecuted, here's what you do. Rejoice and be glad for your
reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the
prophets who were before you. That's the first
thing you need to do. When you feel like
you're being persecuted or they're putting that fear
mongering thing against you and you've already purposed in your
heart, say, I'm not gonna defile myself. I'm not gonna speak
lies about the pronouns. I'm not gonna speak lies
about what I believe about sin. But instead of just being fearful,
the Bible says we should be joyful. Rejoice and be glad for your
reward will be great in heaven. For so they persecuted
the prophets before you. So that's the first marching
order Jesus gives us about how to prepare
ourselves to be ready to rejoice. If people come against you, that's
something that you should mentally prepare for. Luke chapter 6, verses
27 through 29 says, but I say unto you who
hear, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who
are abusing you. To one who strikes you on
the cheek, offer the other cheek. And from the one who takes away your
cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. This is what Jesus says, and you
can't get away from these words. I know what some of you are
thinking, Brett, what are we gonna do, just sit around
and take a beating? Let me say this,
I'm not a pacifist. There's obviously another
side of this coin for me. And that is, you know, there's a
time to protect the people you love, defend your family, even go
to battle, if that's what it takes. Have you ever read the Old
Testament? There's a few battles. God's people fought
battles and killed people. So warfare, battle, in the right
context, in the right setting, has its place. But as an individual,
it's kind of interesting when the Lord Jesus gives
us these words in Luke, and says, man, bless
those who curse you. Pray for the, well, what
if they're violating it? If they smite you on the
cheek, turn the other cheek. If they rip you off and take your
cloak, don't even withhold your tunic. I mean, Jesus takes it
to the opposite direction, because I think human nature wants
to go the opposite of what he just said. In these days of persecution
and where the world is going, I think we need to be
Christians that are practiced. We need to practice right
now, loving our enemies. We gotta get better at
knowing what that looks like, to love your enemies, to do
good to those who hate you. So when that neighbor who hates
you because you're a Christian, instead of doing something mean to
them, or ignoring them, or banning them, or talking bad about them, the
Lord tells you to do something good. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who wanna curse you,
and even pray for those who abuse you. Are you a person who feels abused
if you're a public school teacher, and they're trying to cram
some woke curriculum down your throat that you're
supposed to teach to the other kids? That's, this is a great example
of what I feel is persecution. It's persecution to make a
Christian teach something that's totally against
their belief system. And the early church didn't, they
didn't know anything about that. When the early church, the Romans
came and said, say Caesar is Lord. They said, we will not say
Caesar is Lord, because he's not. Jesus is Lord. They all made a decision to say,
we're not gonna say Caesar is Lord. And I know a lot of you public school
teachers, a lot of you Christians out there, you're in the front lines
having to make those decisions. Am I gonna talk about, to seven year
olds, about gender, you know, fluidity? Am I gonna encourage and even keep from
parents that there are kids changing their name and changing their gender
as if you could actually do that? Some of you teachers have purposed
in your heart saying I will not do that, even if it costs me my job. But that's the kind of decision
making you're gonna have to have. You're gonna have to make that
decision before that day comes. But even still, when those people are
cramming that curriculum down your throat, while you're not gonna live those
lies and speak those lies as a teacher, nonetheless, you're called to
love them, to do good to them. This is what Jesus taught us. Bless those who curse you, pray for those
who abuse you, and just turn the other cheek. So I'm not a pacifist, but I do
believe that we as Christians perhaps need to be
willing to sort of take the hits and even love those
that are mean to us. That meanness is
getting more rampant. That's my point. Persecution is coming in all forms
today, and I'm just saying be ready. Purposing in your heart. 2 Peter, chapter 3, that
same passage I was talking about, the destruction of the world. And basically, Peter says the earth
is gonna melt with the firvent heat. So yes, I believe
in global warming. It's gonna melt,
according to the Bible. But it's gonna
happen really fast. And then right after Peter tells us
that in 2 Peter 3, in verse 11, he says, since all these
things are thus to be dissolved, in other words, since the world's gonna be
destroyed, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness
and godliness? And verse 12, waiting for and hastening to,
or hastening the coming of the day of God. Because of which the heavens will be set
on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. What are we supposed to do since
the world's gonna be destroyed? Live lives of holiness
and godliness. Holiness just means
whole, lacking for nothing. Like God, Jesus was holy. God, in his word, tells us, be
ye holy, as I, the Lord, am holy. He lacks for nothing. The Lord
wants us to be those people. But how do we do
that? By being godly. Trying to be more
and more like the Lord with his heart, his mind,
his attitude, his action. We, as the church, need to
be less worldly and more godly. That's what we need. And then it says, waiting
for, that means patience, and hastening the
coming of, in other words, patiently excited about the
coming of the day of God. This is the thing that we're to do, to be
loving of our enemies, holy and godly, waiting for and looking forward to
the day of God when the Lord comes. Now, I kind of start to
wrap this up a little bit tonight with the idea of a word that
maybe you've bumped into there in Paul's letter to
the Corinthians. He used that word, maranatha. Oh, Brett, that's a hippie 70s term that the
Jesus movement talked about all the time. Yeah, when I was a kid growing up in that
kind of a thing, people said, maranatha, man. Like, it was like
a hippie thing. But I think we need
to bring that term back. Where does that word
maranatha come from? Well, as it turns out,
it's an Aramaic word, which is the language
that Jesus spoke, Aramaic. And the word maranatha, it just means
the Lord is coming or come, oh Lord. The early church
faced huge persecution. And under that life as a
Christian under Roman rule and the Roman empire, they faced all
kinds of trouble and torture and all that. And so the Romans
required, like I said earlier, everyone to declare
Caesar was God or Lord. But the early Christians
knew there was only one God. So in good conscience, they
wouldn't say Caesar is Lord. And so they would
be put to death. Living under those adverse,
that's serious Christian persecution. But living under those adverse conditions,
the believers, their morale was lifted by the hope of the
coming of the Lord. So they would say, in
Aramaic, maranatha. And some, when you read some of the
early church history, first century writers, they said that the believers said maranatha
and it became common as a greeting of the persecuted
Christian church, replacing the Jewish greeting of all
things, shalom, which means peace. When you go to Israel,
you always say, shalom. You know, and that's the way
everybody greets each other. But, and they did in the early church,
they'd say shalom, the Jews would. But eventually that word shalom was swapped
out for maranatha by the persecuted church because they said,
oh Lord, come quickly. Their hope was the
return of the Lord. Now you might say, well,
Brett, they were misguided then because they were hoping the Lord
would return in their time but he didn't. So see, you guys have
been wrong all this time. I think that that's the way the Lord
wants us to live with the hope of his return. And good news, if he
doesn't return in your lifetime and you're dead or die of natural causes or
whatever, you're still gonna be glad you lived with that hope
of Christ's return. We're supposed to live as Christians with
the imminence, the doctrine of imminence, that it can happen at any moment,
the second coming of Christ. They lived it that way. We too can live
it that way as well. So one other thing I wanna
say about these last days, because all the stuff I'm talking about,
I've noticed with some of the letters I get and some of the emails I get,
I've noticed that people kind of go, yeah, Pastor Brett, whatever,
but, and then they sort of ignore it. Like I say, here's
what the Bible says. And I have to say, I pretty
much camp out on the Bible. Everything I say, I want it
to be in line with Scripture. And people will write back and
say, yeah, but what about this? And what about that? And again, it's not about
what we feel or what we think, because that's the deception
that's happening today. I'll give you one more verse
before we pack it up for the evening. 2 Timothy chapter 4, verses
3 and 4, it says, for the time is coming when people will not endure
sound teaching, but have itching ears. They will accumulate for themselves
teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to
the truth and wander off into myths. And I just wanna say, if you're
gonna be ready for persecution, you also have to have clear
headedness and not be deceived, not be easily duped,
not to be gullible. We as Christians, you know, the Scripture
is talking about how we need to be wise as serpents, but
harmless as doves. That's my argument for
the persecuted church. As we're seeing this ramp up, I think we
need to ready ourselves for what's coming. And that is to be wise, searching
the Scripture, not having itching ears. The term itching ears was a phrase that
said people wanted to hear something new that was fit their
culture a little better and made more sense to
what they believed about stuff. So it's like in our culture when some,
you know, somebody says love is love. Well, what does that mean? They're saying that if a person loves
somebody, whether it's a male loving a male or a female loving a female or a 47 year
old man loving a 12 year old boy, love is love. And we shouldn't knock that. It's all good
because love is love. However, be wise. People wanna hear that because we're
gonna embrace the whole LGBTQ agenda. You wanna be pro that because
there's pressure on you to be that way. I'm telling you, this is a day where we
have to say, nope, that's actually called sin. And love, according to 1 Corinthians
13, love does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. That's true love. So love is not love
as they're saying it. Be careful with that one. Don't be deceived,
study the Scriptures. That's the word I wanna give for
us on this Prophecy Update July. I know we didn't cover a lot of
anything really geopolitically as much. Maybe we'll tackle some of
that next month a little more. By the way, we might with this format,
instead of being in the sanctuary with, and if you're wondering
why we're doing this in the sanctuary, we're
opening up our sanctuary for so many other events that are
happening here at Athey Creek. We had a lot of things going on and I thought
it'd be better to bring the Prophecy Update strictly online and it kind of opens up all
the Fridays for the whole rest of summer. We'll do this for a season and we
might go back to in the sanctuary. We'll see how that goes. But in the meantime,
because of this format, we might once in a while throw in a
little extra Prophecy Update once in a while because there's so
much to talk about. So stay tuned, watch our website, watch
my social media, Pastor Brett Meador Instagram or Athey Creek
Instagram or Facebook. You can kind of follow and
we'll give you a heads up if there's any Prophecy Updates we're doing
between now and the first Friday of August. Let's close with a word of
prayer and then we'll call it a night. And Lord, I do pray that
you'd give us ears to hear. Lord, that we would purpose in our hearts,
even as Daniel the prophet, not to be defiled with this world and its system. Lord, we see how really
demonic and how very evil the very things that we're
seeing right in front of us in these last days, Lord, we're seeing them
just get more and more crazy as time goes by. Give us wisdom, Lord, I pray
that you'd let our light shine in this dark world, show us that balance
of what it means to protect our families, which is what you've called us to do,
but at the same time to be loving and kind, even to our enemies. Lord, give us that
balance, help us to think through these things and be
ready for when that time comes when we're called into
account, that we'd be faithful, that we'd be found, Lord, Christians,
like those first century Christians who were willing to
even die for their faith. Lord, give us boldness, give us strength, I
pray, and bless these, your people tonight. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen, well, thanks for joining us
tonight and we'll see you next time. God bless you.
