Dear Brethren and Friends,
As this age comes to an end, you and I will really need God’s Holy Spirit more than ever! For we humans cannot fully imagine the sense of absolute desperation that hundreds of millions of our fellow human beings will soon begin to feel. Indeed, many are already there.
As my wife and I watch the BBC World News, we are often deeply moved by the vivid scenes of mass starvation, torture, rape and brutality. More recently, we have all beheld the sad images of bulldozers scooping up thousands of corpses of our fellow humans after the earthquake in Haiti—nameless, faceless people “made in God’s image” just as we are. But now, in the crush of events, their bodies are treated as so much rubbish because of the enormous chaos and suffering caused by the recent earthquake.
Do we somehow imagine, “It can’t happen here”?
Dear brethren, think again.
For if you carefully read and believe all of the inspired biblical prophecies found in Leviticus 26:14–46, Deuteronomy 28:15–68, Ezekiel 5:1–17 and other scriptures, you will certainly soon understand that, yes, the very type of utter devastation now afflicting Haiti will happen here in years to come!
That is why Jesus Christ directly warned us about the soon-coming Great Tribulation. He said, “For in those days there will be tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the creation which God created until this time, nor ever shall be” (Mark 13:19).
Of course, many worldly people—including false ministers—will say, “Why would a just God allow such awful things to happen?” We need to think through and fully understand the “mind of God” on all these things, brethren. Remember that the word of God declares, “A curse without cause shall not alight” (Proverbs 26:2).
There is a genuine reason why we humans end up with so much suffering and anguish. And, regarding the very events of the coming tribulation described by Mark, God says, “Because you have multiplied disobedience more than the nations that are all around you, have not walked in My statutes nor kept My judgments, nor even done according to the judgments of the nations that are all around you’—therefore thus says the Lord GOD: ‘Indeed I, even I, am against you and will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of the nations. And I will do among you what I have never done, and the like of which I will never do again, because of all your abominations’” (Ezekiel 5:7–9).
Abominations?
Many young people who read this or who hear about our warnings to the American and British-descended peoples may say, “What abominations?”
For the minds of untold millions of our youth have become so desensitized to absolute evil that they honestly think there is “no problem” when they see images or read about the thousands of leading politicians, actors, singers, sports personalities and others living openly in fornication, adultery, homosexuality or other sins. It will take many truly awful events to finally wake them up!
But as God’s powerful but loving correction comes down hard on a sarcastic, smirking, God-rejecting society, even we in God’s true Church will be tried and tested as never before! Remember that our forebears in ancient Israel were allowed by God—even though they were His “chosen people”—to suffer through the first three plagues right along with the Egyptians. You can read about this in Exodus 7 and 8. For no doubt this suffering humbled them, and helped them more fully understand the power of the great God who was beginning to deal with them. Also, this probably helped them to have more of the right kind of human compassion for the Egyptians—who would go on to suffer even more the full wrath of God.
Brethren, everything in the Bible indicates that we in God’s Church will also soon be facing hunger, disease, earthquakes and no doubt serious persecution as this society continues to disintegrate and turn further and further away from God—with many around us actually hating God and anyone associated with His true teachings! Will you and I continue to remain faithful to God who has opened our minds to understand His Plan and the very reason for our existence—the God who is even now fashioning and molding us and preparing us to become His full sons in the soon-coming resurrection from the dead?
Our God tells us, “If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small” (Proverbs 24:10). Yet God’s word also reveals to us that—except for Joshua and Caleb—every single one of the older Israelites who came out of Egypt with Moses perished before they entered the Promised Land! Only Joshua and Caleb remained truly faithful to the Eternal God during those 40 years of trial and test.
What about us?
Jesus Christ tells us, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).
Truly, without Jesus Christ actually living within us through the Holy Spirit, we can do nothing. We cannot and will not “make it” into the Kingdom of God on our own strength. Brethren, every one of us needs to fervently “cry out” for more of God’s Holy Spirit—probably more than we have ever done before! Jesus Christ described God’s elect as those who “cry out day and night to Him” (Luke 18:7). Does this accurately picture the way you pray and continually seek God?
Think about it.
Even though Jesus had known God from eternity, He realized the absolute need to literally “cry out” for help while He was in the human flesh. The book of Hebrews tells us this of Jesus: “In the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered” (Hebrews 5:7–8).
When we gather for services on the Day of Pentecost, the full meaning of Pentecost should be explained in all of our congregations. But certainly we all realize the basic fact that Pentecost was when the Holy Spirit was poured out on God’s people for the first time. The same Peter who earlier denied Christ three times was now filled with courage and power! “Doubting Thomas” no longer doubted. And awesome healings and miracles began to take place!
Jesus had told His apostles that He would send a Helper, or Comforter, that would proceed from the Father, testifying of Him (John 15:26). And later we learn that God’s Holy Spirit will guide God’s people “into all truth” and will tell us “things to come” (John 16:13).
The Apostle Paul encouraged Timothy to “stir up” the Holy Spirit, which God had given him through the laying on of hands (2 Timothy 1:6). Greek scholars explain that this expression translated as “to stir up” is the same expression meaning “to kindle into flame.” Therefore we, brethren, must kindle into flame the “power” of the Holy Spirit—like stirring up a roaring fire! And Paul here tells us also that the Holy Spirit is a Spirit of “power, and of love and of a sound mind” (v. 7). For the very nature of God is imparted to us through the impregnation of the Holy Spirit.
In Peter’s final letter, he tells us of God’s “divine power” through which He “has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Peter 1:3–4).
Just as surely as children receive a part of their parents’ very nature, we as God’s begotten children receive more of His very nature to the degree that we genuinely surrender to God, seek Him to live within us through the Holy Spirit, and so “walk with God” more and more each day of our lives.
Our Savior tells us, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). In plain language, Jesus is telling us that, unless we fully drink in of God’s very nature, we are spiritually dead. And Jesus goes on to explain, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him” (v. 56). So Christ must live within you and me through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit!
The Apostle John records Jesus’ own magnification of this concept: “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:23).
Brethren, the sometimes slow-moving, drawn-out, agonizing trials facing God’s people just ahead will make it imperative for each of us to go “all out” to seek God and to seek the power of His Spirit in our lives. Only in this way can we faithfully “endure to the end” (Matthew 24:13). In the years ahead, there will be many times when it will seem like we are “all alone” during the agonizing troubles and trials which will come upon us. But if you and I truly seek God—if we come to know God and constantly walk with God through earnest Bible Study and meditation, fervent prayer and regular fasting—we will never be truly “alone.” For Jesus has promised in His word, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).
Remember, Jesus experienced the same kind of trial—and showed us how to overcome it—when His disciples deserted Him in those awful hours before His death on our behalf. Jesus said, “Indeed the hour is coming, yes, has now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me” (John 16:32). So both Jesus Christ—and the Father—will always be with us if we heartfeltly seek God and His Holy Spirit now.
Then, we will never be “alone,” but will be filled with and led by the awesome power through which God created the entire universe—the power of the Holy Spirit. At this Pentecost season, let us urgently seek that power!
With Christian love,
