Dec | 27 | Talking Tsunamis

Key Word:-TRUST

Title:- Talking Tsunamis

Matthew 24:7,8  
For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.

Now dear friends, stick close to my words this morning, right to the end and you shall be rightly encouraged. However, before we get there today, we must traverse some terrible terrain. So stick with me right to the end.

As we move towards the end of the year, it has been my observation that in my whole life, whenever I arrive at this point of observing my planet and its peoples, I am amazed at the advances in technology and medical care, in fashion and in fun. Yet when I examine the human condition expressed in community, both local and global, I despairingly come to the same conclusion: nothing changes; nothing gets better. Indeed, things are getting worse. (Stick with me now, stick with me.)

Our text today is part of an answer given by Jesus to a particular question posed by the disciples sat with Him on the Mount of Olives. He has just wept in anger and despair over the coming desolation and destruction of Jerusalem, when they ask, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” (Matthew 24:3) We have no time today to proceed to cover His reply with an eschatalogically fine-tooth comb. Let’s just be a little shaken today when Jesus says in effect, “It’s gonna be bad and it’s gonna get worse!” (Stick with me now, stick with me.)

Tsunamis are viewed by the scientific community as natural disasters. Tsunamis are still currently viewed by the financial community as “acts of God,” that is, actions that are both terrible and out of their control. Tsunamis are viewed by the victims as inexplicable. I met an old lady, a Christian, who after many years was still suffering the after effects of holidaying with her husband on a secluded beach, where a freak wave reached onto the shore and before her face, snatched her loved one away to a watery grave. The sea reluctantly but eventually gave up its dead and she spent the next few weeks battling to get the corpse of her beloved, back to the dry ground of her homeland to be buried. As she recounted her story to me, her face and especially her eyes, were a constant witness to the fact that she had never really recovered from this. There are some things we must never recover from. (Stick with me now, stick with me.)

There are some things we must never recover from and despite government control of battlefield information, there are horrors that must not be hidden from us. Despite the glib mental sickness smiles of made up news presenters, that can through shiny teeth and loud lip gloss, tell of both death and destruction and the drop of a few degrees in temperature in the same smiling sentence, there are things we must be sad and very sorrowful about. Remember, no anaesthetic lasts forever. Jesus replies sadly and honestly about the signs prefixing His return. It would appear that the enemy will try to apply a scorched earth policy to His impending arrival, as well as Jesus Himself “eating up the ground” before Him in righteous indignation. Look. What is to come is not lovely! Look. It is not lovely!

At the end of this year let us talk tsunamis. Let us look at the devastation around us. Let us lay aside our numbing Novocain and see that all these things are indeed but the “beginning of sorrows”. Prophecy shall be fulfilled and friends, before we get to a better chapter, we must read ourselves through this next horrific one.

So how can we possibly be encouraged by what we see around us? Well in truth we cannot. Except that Jesus foretold that this is how it should be. His word is true, and if His word regarding these things is true, then so are His other words. All His words are true. He shall make all things well. Yes, in the end, He shall make all things good.

Listen: “Let your character or moral disposition be free from love of money (including greed, avarice, lust, and craving for earthly possessions) and be satisfied with your present (circumstances and with what you have); for He (God) Himself has said, I will not in any way fail you nor give you up nor leave you without support. (I will) not,(I will) not, (I will) not in any degree leave you helpless nor forsake nor (let you) down (relax My hold on you)! (Assuredly not!) So we take comfort and are encouraged and confidently and boldly say, The Lord is my Helper; I will not be seized with alarm (I will not fear or dread or be terrified). What can man do to me?” Hebrews 13:5-6 AMP

Pray: My Lord, I will not fear, even though the earth be removed and the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; even though its waters roar and be troubled, even though the mountains shake with its swelling. For I know that there is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God. Amen and amen.