end times and prophecy are all written for us to constantly live in a state of being ready to go. And the interesting reality of the church throughout the centuries is that they were always ready to go. It's only in recent days that the church has gotten so prosperous. It used to mean when you were a Christian that you didn't get, kind of like the communist countries for the last 70 years, You couldn't get a job in the higher echelons if you were a Christian. You couldn't get an education in the higher Ivy League kind of schools. Your children were ostracized. You were not allowed to win awards like cultural awards or academic or athletic awards. And so the Christians really were constantly singing, this world is not my home. I'm just passing through. In the West, we've gradually gotten more and more prosperous, the Christian West. And so we have changed the song and said, this world is my home, and I'm going to serve, but I'm at home here. And from the book of Revelation, we're going to look at no regret living. That means we have no regrets. That we don't say, I wish I would have done something different. I wish I would have served more, gone more, spoken more, given more, lived differently. We're supposed to live expectant of Christ's coming, in the air, or calling us through the valley of the shadow of death at any time. What I'm going to show you at the end, and I learned quite a while back, that if you tell people what to look for, they're more likely to see it. So the whole purpose of studying Revelation is the keys to being ready to go at any time. One key is learning to trust Christ completely today, not just when you're... wasn't that a catchy picture underneath the viaduct with the F5 coming a mile wide? I mean, that says it all. Well, the coming of Christ is not something we are afraid of, but it is something that we should be trusting Christ completely today, not just in the tornadoes, the hurricanes, the earthquakes. Secondly, we should invest now in disciple-making. The only thing we can take with us are people. It says in 1 Thessalonians 2.19, people are my hope, my joy, my crown of rejoicing. The only thing we can actually hold on to and take with us to heaven are not the photo albums, are not the honors or the investments. The only thing we can hold on to that doesn't get left behind are people. And we should invest now in disciple making. We should obey Christ now, like we talked about this morning. We should give sacrificially now. Remember, post-mortem giving does not count. The Lord only counts for eternity what we give while we're alive and well. And this is a new thing in America that people rethink their giving so they can give it all after they're gone so they can kind of enjoy the security of it now. And Christ said he wants us to give to him now, which is our American culture, always turn stuff around. And we need to learn to stay in touch daily with him and renew that. Well, here are the descriptions. And this is going to be the main emphasis of what I want you to underline in your Bibles. How do we live as Christ's servants today? We need to learn to be seeing Jesus. We need to fully be in living sacrifices. We need to cultivate a burning devotion for Christ, one that doesn't need to be pumped up on Sundays, one that doesn't need constant coddling. It's just a consuming passion for Him. We need to have ministry that's just an overflow of our life. It's not, oh, I've got to go. Oh, it's time to, yeah. Oh, I've got to do. No, it should be an overflowing desire of our heart. to be offering our service to Christ in every way. We should be doing good deeds. The world around us should see that. Our prayers should constantly be ascending to Christ. And finally, our lives ought to be pouring out worship. Okay, do you remember this period of time that we've got to get ready for before it comes? You say, what do you mean? Well, remember, the Lord says there are going to be birth pangs. I personally do not believe born-again Christians in the church will go through the tribulation, but I think Many of us will think we're in the tribulation because it's going to be so bad. You say, what do you mean by that? I mean, if just a little bit of what's already happened to the church in the last 2,000 years happens to us, we will think it's the high point of the tribulation. We know nothing of suffering in this country. We know nothing of deprivation. We know nothing of the sorrows the church has borne in Israel in the Old Testament. What is the world going to become like? A global graveyard, we saw. There's going to be, as we saw, global grass fires, a third of all the grass. The sun is going to diminish and become dark. There is going to be horrors of the abyss opened up, starvation. We'll talk about this more. Warfare. I mean, you think the Balkan War, that is a surgical made-for-television war. I mean, I love. You can read the armaments they're going to drop that day. And you can see pictures of them. And you know exactly how far they go in and how much of our tax dollars. And oh, we hit an embassy on the side. Well, we're sorry we did that. Oh, a hospital, we're sorry we did that. But our GPU or GBM or whatever it is that costs $547,000 is supposed to go, but the clouds deflected it. I mean, that's not the warfare we're talking about. The Bible says a global conflagration, warfare everywhere. I'm not sure America is prepared for that. Isn't it interesting that all the other nations of the world have low-tech armies? We have a high-tech army. One glitch in a GPS satellite, one glitch in an infrared or microwave relay, one glitch in an operating system, our stuff is not very good, only if there's surgical precision in the computers, in the command and control between the laptops. You know, the Soviet tanks just plow through and shoot, and they don't need to position it with lasers and satellites. They just shoot. And there's going to be that going on all across the world. Finally, a global nightmare. We saw this, this section we're studying right now, The Approaching Hoofbeats, covers three parts of the Bible. Revelation 6, The Seals of Death. Revelation 8 and 9, The Trumpets of Doom. Finally, Revelation 16, The Bulls of Wrath, which all... Did you read this week about the hog farms in North Carolina? The hog farms, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the assassinated RFK, he wrote an interesting op-ed piece where he's an environmentalist, of course. And he toured North Carolina. And he said that in those football stadium-sized hog farms, they put 100,000 pigs in one building in these little cages that are just the width of the largest a pig will get and the right length. They never move their whole life. They just stand there. There's a conveyor belt running behind them and one running in front of them. They are force-fed all day long. And they just had this conveyor belt taking all the waste out and dumping it into these huge lakes. They said that there's a, this is Kennedy's words, there is a cell from hell growing in those ponds. One pond broke in 1993. It was the largest death toll of fish recorded ever in American history. Just off of the North Carolina coast 1 billion beautiful fish washed ashore. 1 billion. They said it just coated the beaches and all the estuaries. Last week, another lake of that stuff burst. And all those fisteria, whatever they're called, germs, went down. And they're sickening people in their course. They're killing the fish. And it's headed to the ocean. The Bible says the whole world's going to experience that, not just North Carolina in the bulls of wrath. We see that beasts, and we're going to study this tonight, germs, a biological warfare attack kills a fourth of all people. We saw that. We saw what the effects are of a Scud missile with one pathogen warhead on Washington, DC. A third of all the plants die. There's going to be the solar flares. Pollution is going to break out. We saw that God's going to pull back the effects of the sun. It's going to darken. This would make it a nuclear winter scenario where it gets very cold on the earth. Then the worst part of all is the abyss open when the infernal creatures of Satan's domain come. Then global famine will break out. We already see the beginnings of that as the arid areas of the world are increasing and the arable, the land that is plantable in crops is decreasing. It's shrinking all over the world. There is the overproduction of our lands. There's the overfertilization of our lands. There's the Right now, the Middle East is experiencing the greatest water shortage they've ever had. The wealthy Jews in the million-dollar houses on the coast cannot water their lawns, and they can't water their golf courses. It's very hard for them, while the people in the Palestinian territories are actually without enough water to live, and they can't play golf. It's really hard. Global war breaks out. We saw the Abom family is growing, proliferation of terrible weapons. And the net result is one half of all the people on this planet will die in seven years. Last week, that was 5.93 billion people. That means 1,496,158,043 people will die. We saw that the first seal of death is a false peace, which will fool the world. We're already seeing the warfare going on in the Balkan War. Most people don't even realize that there are so many wars going on. Never before in history have so many wars been going on. This is the new Africa. All the names in red, there are current wars going on in those places. I mean, just Algeria. I mean, if you just, on the internet, listen to Algeria. There are mobs of these rebels going around, and they just drive into a village, shoot everybody, hack them up with machetes, and drive away, and nobody knows who did it. That is going on exponentially around our world. Also, it's just getting all too common. Look at the news. That's Belgrade burning right now. Even more, look at this. the central government building in downtown Belgrade, next to the central hospital of Belgrade, burning after cruise missiles launched into that thing and did their work. They fly them right through windows, and then they go into the center of the building and cause a complete conflagration. The scriptures also tell us that there will be a global famine. And this is just some of the tragedy that's going on in Sudan. where literally thousands and thousands don't even have the strength to crawl to the relief places. They are so malnourished. The children are emaciated. Well, what does that tell us about our lives to this point? Well, if you turn with me to Luke chapter 21, and we are going to look at what Jesus Christ said about this, and then we're going to look at what we should do about it. Because if we're not going to be here when there's a global famine, there's a famine right now. If we're not going to be here when there's a global war, there are wars all over the world right now. If we're not going to be here when there's a global peace and the UN is totally orchestrating itself to be a global, one-world government, we are living in the beginning of birth pangs. Now, I'm not saying that the tribulation starts in a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, half of a century. The Lord says, don't set dates. So I'm not going to set one. I don't want to pick one, because I want the Lord to come soon. So he won't come when we pick it. In other words, as soon as you say it's on this day, most likely it's not. But how should we live? Let's look at what Christ said, starting in verse 7. And let's let the Lord Jesus Christ, especially through these verses, touch our hearts as we just open our hearts for getting ready to go. living a no-regret life as we approach the end of the age. And I'll read down to verse 28 of Luke 21. Let's listen with our hearts as the Spirit of God takes the Word of God and applies it to our heart. So they asked him, saying, Teacher, but when will these things be? What sign will there be when these things are about to take place? And he said, Take heed that you not be deceived. For many will come in my name, saying, I am he, and the time has drawn near. Therefore, do not go after them. But when you hear of wars and commotions, do not be terrified. For these things must come to pass first, but the end will not come immediately. Then he said to them, Nation will rise against nation. Literally, ethne against ethne, ethnic group. I mentioned last week, that's happening now. Kingdom against kingdom. Did you hear Boris Yeltsin this week? He threatened the United States, the most blatant threat. He says, what if one of our missiles goes astray? He wasn't talking about a cluster bomb. He was talking about an atomic bomb. I know they say he's had too many surgeries and everything, but kingdom is against kingdom right now. And there's just wait till that Hitler of Russia takes over. We'll see who threatens then. Verse 11, and there shall be great earthquakes. I mean, just wiped out 100 people in Iran. Just wiped them out just recently. I mean, they're just... If you look at a graph showing earthquakes, they are going up exponentially in our century. And it's not that our detection methods are getting better. It's they're getting exponentially more, just like the Lord said. And they're in various places. Famines right now. Pestilences here. There will be fearful signs. There will be great signs from heaven. But before all these things, they will lay hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons. Ah, you see, this is written primarily to the Jews who are going to be here now for us to learn lessons. The entire context, as I said two weeks ago, of all the tribulation is it's Jewish. Jewish people running to Jewish hills to get away from Jewish persecution of the Jews. The whole context is not for the New Testament church. It's for the remnant of the Jews. But they will deliver you to synagogues. No one will deliver us to a synagogue, maybe prison someday. And you will be brought before kings and rulers for my name's sake, but will turn out for you as an occasion for testimony. See, we should be ready, even now as the world's declining, to be ready to testify. Someone said to me this week, do you think Oklahoma City, it's God's judgment because they got the bombing and now they've got the tornado. I go right back to what Christ said in Luke. He says, do you think those people were any worse upon whom the tower at Siloam fell? No. This whole world is filled with cyclical disasters. God is not especially judging Oklahoma any more than he's especially judging Columbine High School. It's just part of being in this sin-sick, fallen world. I do think we should pray, though, because Satan is the prince of the power of the air, and he does use storms. And I'm glad to see how hard people pray when the tornadoes come. May we have more tornadoes, get more prayer. Therefore, settle it, verse 14, in your hearts, not to meditate beforehand what to answer. For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which your adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist. And you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. And you'll be hated by all for my name's sake, but not a hair of your head shall be lost. By your patience, possess your souls." What he's saying is what you can lose. And that picture I showed a while back of that mass from the tornado, nothing that a storm or fire can take away matters. He says, possess your souls, invest in me, they can't take it away from you. But, now here's the Jewishness of the tribulation, verse 20, but when you see Jerusalem surrounded by the armies, then though the desolation is near, let those who are in Judea, this is speaking to Jews, it's not to the church, flee to the mountains, let those who are in the midst of her depart. the midst of who? Of Jerusalem. And let not those who are in the country enter her. Enter what? Jerusalem. This is speaking to Jews in the Middle East in the tribulation. For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. All things written about what? About the destruction of Jerusalem, about the Holocaust and the Jewish people. Verse 23, But woe on those who are pregnant and those who are nursing babies in those days, for there will be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people." Who? The Jewish people. And they will fall by the edge of the sword. They will be led away captive to the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled by the Gentiles till the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. And of course this is speaking of destruction in A.D. 70. Then he zips right into the tribulation time and there will be signs in the sun and the moon and the stars and on the earth, distresses of nation and perplexity and the sea and waves roaring. and men's hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth for the powers of the heavens will be shaken." That's a kind of a summary in two verses of the whole tribulation. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Not in a moment in the twinkling of an eye, not come up hither. This is a slow motion coming to earth and every eye will see him, Revelation 1 says. And when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near. Wow, what a lesson from our Lord. Let's bow before him in prayer. Father, I pray that we, your church, would learn the lessons you want for us to learn. You are going to judge the nations, and you are going to bring to faith your remnant out of Israel. In the process, this world is going to go through its darkest hours. But prior to that is our finest hour, the time when we live ever ready to go with no regrets. Teach us about that, we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask it. Amen. I was reminded with this tornado that came through. It's been 52 years since a storm as bad as Monday's has struck Oklahoma. The last bad one, really bad, was April 9, 1947, when a twister killed 113. We just lost 41. But Monday's tornado was awesome even for our region used to twisters. Here in this region, between Texas and Oklahoma, we have often large storms, as you know. This tornado was unique in that from 550, when it was first seen, skipping across the flat country, which they normally do. almost like a garden tractor putting down its back spike. It just put in to the ground and didn't leave it and just kept going, which is so unusual for a tornado. It was from a, and the scientists have been analyzing this, it had winds in excess of 260 miles per hour. It soared 60,000 feet high. It lasted for several hundred miles. That cell did not break up for hundreds of miles. Usually it just goes and they dissipate, But on Monday, May 3rd, that swirling mass of twisting, tortured, supercharged air, as it began its descent from the sky over the quiet pastures, blanketed in the lush green carpet of spring, it went from being a normal spring storm to an ugly brown scar. As in the wake of this monstrous tornado, hundreds and thousands of families' lives would change forever. In the next hour, this tower of destruction began its systematic rape of the land as grass, trees, fences, farm buildings, and then inexorably marching along this tidal wave of death laid quiet rows of beautiful homes into rubble. Inside them were grandmothers and infants, photo albums and hamster cages, brand new pickups and pop-up campers. And behind the storm laid shattered homes, shattered families, shattered lives, shattered bodies. What could be worse than that? Oh, something far worse is coming. We see it by looking back. In this very area, the worst plague that's ever hit the earth started just over 100 miles from Tulsa. Most people don't even know about that because they're always preoccupied with World War I. But in Kansas, on May 3rd, 1918, the worst plague that's ever hit the earth hit right just 100 miles from here. That is going to be worse than a tornado because it's going to come back. In March of 1918, the flu pandemic of 1918 began. And tens of millions of deaths later, It was then, and it remains today, a mystery of what happened. You say, what are you talking about? Look back in the history books. They haven't edited all this out. And look at the flu epidemic of World War I and what happened. I just want to tell you a little bit about it. It began with a relatively mild assault on March 4th. The first reported case occurred at Camp Funston in Kansas. Within four months, the virus had gone all the way around the globe. The flu sickened millions of people, but it killed only a few. With all the tumult of World War I, the first wave was nothing compared to all the doughboys being gassed in the trenches. No one knew at that time, of course, but flu viruses are notoriously unstable. The scientists call them genetically liable. One researcher said that you put one flu virus beside another and the two will trade genes. The process is called scientifically reassortment. If this reassortment produces a virus that closely resembles one of its parents, it is said to have undergone antigenic drift. And on rare occasions, this scrambling can be dramatic. The virus will become a kind of Frankenstein virus. It's so different from existing strains that the human population has no immunity to it, to flu. I'm not talking about AIDS or Ebola. I'm talking about the flu. And who hasn't had the flu? But through genetic reassortment, It is absolutely deadly, as the world found 70 years ago. On August 1918, a mild virus apparently reassorted into something positively deadly. Outbreaks caused by this new variant exploded almost simultaneously in three far-flung locations. They showed up in France, Sierra Leone, and in Boston, here in the United States. The flu struck with ferocity that shocked the doctors. They feared this strange new pathogen might be an airborne version of the Black Death that everybody was afraid of from the Middle Ages. Patients died, listen, in Boston, awash in their own blood and gore. They literally drowned as fluid filled their lungs. Now this isn't old timers. This flu struck the strong, the healthy, and the young. It was very interesting. The virus rocketed to the farthest points of the globe. From September of 1918 through March of 1919, it killed 33,387 people in New York City. That was 1% of the population. In some Alaskan villages, the death toll topped one half. In one, that's Teller Mission on Alaska, it's now called Brevig Mission, 85% of the inhabitants of the town died in one week. And we're not in a tribulation. That was in 1918. That's how deadly flu viruses are. Rumors flew that this strange influenza-like disease was affecting animals, even moose, according to some of the pandemic's chroniclers. One of the great mysteries of this 1918 outbreak was on who was killed by the virus. Even ordinary flu will cause death among the very young and the very old and people with weakened immune systems. But the 1918 virus killed those within groups, old and young, but it seemed to especially target and have a passion for the young, the hardy, and the strong. The majority of people that died in 1918 were between the ages of 25 and 34, the ones most likely able to weather the flu. Well, this epidemic finally worked its way out, but the one that's coming won't. I'd like to show you a little bit about what's going on, and I'd like to read to you from what I mentioned to you before is the new book that's being released. It's a book through the auspices of a senior defector from the Soviet military. He calls it biohazard. His name is Ken Albiek. What he tells us is that the Soviet Union and China have suffered serious accidents because one of their secret plans for developing biological weapons, they know how deadly the flu is, so they're trying to do this reassortment thing. Instead of letting it naturally occur, they're trying to reassort and put flu viruses alongside of other deadly viruses and try and see if they'll reassort into a super killer bug. Well, obviously it got out of one of their secret plants and two major epidemics occurred. The Soviet researchers were working on turning HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, into a weapon of mass destruction. As Mikhail Gorbachev a few years ago was pursuing peace opening with the West, he ordered During that time, now the Soviet Union's records show, a vast expansion, this fellow in this book says, of the effort to turn germs and viruses into weapons of mass destruction. This man, whose real name is Kanatyan Albikov, now known as Ken Albeck, says in his book that he was the deputy director of the top branch of the Soviet germ program. He knew of the disaster in China because he saw the secret Soviet intelligence reports twice a month showing they always were watching the Chinese germ plants because they were trying to keep up with them and work with them. The spy satellites peering down at China found what seemed to be a large biological weapons laboratory. near a remote site for testing nuclear warheads. Intelligence agents then found evidence that two epidemics of hemorrhage fever swept the region in the late 80s. The area had never known such diseases, which causes absolute profuse bleeding, which is a nice way of saying every orifice in your body pours out blood and you just die on the spot, and death. Our analysis, Albeck said, concluded these were caused by an accident in a lab where the Chinese scientists were weaponizing viral diseases. They were working with the dreaded Ebola virus and the Marburg fever and doing this reassortment thing, trying to make the genes. When you get the viruses by each other, they trade genes and reassort. And the child of that reassortment is deadly. And of course, it broke out in the laboratory. Moscow, he says, has mastered the art of rearranging genes to make them harmful microbes and even more potent and harder to counteract. They worked with anthrax, a top biological warfare agent that causes fever and death. It was genetically altered, he said, to resist all known antibiotics. So that means you can't inoculate or send packs with the troops when they go to fight because there's nothing in our arsenal of medical work or medical weaponry that will stand against it. This top secret program obtained samples of HIV, the H virus, from the United States in 1985 under the Center for Disease Control's sharing and open policy. And they tried unsuccessfully, according to him, to turn this slow killer into a rapid weapon of death. On and on he goes. Basically, he says that whereas in the United States we have two specialists that are working on countering the deadliness of anthrax, the Soviets had, back in 1991, two 2,000 scientists, microbiologists working at deadening anthrax, while the Americans had two scientists working at stopping anthrax. That's where we're getting in our world. Well, what does this mean? Basically this, the fourth seal, and if you want to turn now to Revelation chapter 6, let's look at verses 7 and 8, and that's our real focus of our study in God's Word. Revelation 6, verses 7 and 8, tell us about the fourth seal. We've already seen the other seals, and I remind you what they are. The first seal was peace back here, the false peace. The second seal is war. Third seal is famine. This fourth seal is death. Now look at verse 7. It says this. He opened the fourth seal. This is during the tribulation, but we're seeing the beginnings of it now. And I heard a voice of the fourth living creature saying, come and see. So John does. He comes and looks. And he looks and says, I beheld a pale horse. It's very interesting. With the breaking of this seal, one fourth of the population of the world was going to die. Now, this horse, notice what it says. I saw a pale horse. The word is chloros. That's where we get the word chlorine. So that means it was a pale, sickly green color, this horse that comes onto the scene. And this horse is dead. with death and Hades following." See, this pale green horse, the name of him that sat on it was Death. And Hades, that's the abode of the dead, followed him. It's almost like if you've ever seen one of those great big lawnmowers that has the big tube and behind it's the trailer and it's going along cutting and sucking up the grass and throwing it in the trailer. This Death Angel is coming across the planet and Hades, the grave, is right behind catching the dead, taking him to the abode of the dead, Hades. The grim reaper concept is what this is talking about. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth. That means to kill a fourth of the earth with the sword, with hunger, with death, and this is what we're looking at, with the beasts of the earth. A mysterious and deadly, this is from, by the way, February's Time Magazine, the flu hunters article. I don't know if you can read the print so small, but a mysterious and deadly virus struck Hong Kong last year. 1997. This was written February of 98. And medical detectives from around the world feared a repeat of the 1918 epidemic that killed more than 20 million. That's what I just described to you that started in Kansas. And these scientists all jetted to Hong Kong because they were so afraid. Because through the miracle of genetic research What they're doing now, if you hear in the news, they actually went to Alaska. Remember I told you that 85% of all the people died in Alaska from that last flu epidemic in this one town? Well, they were so afraid of it that as soon as someone started hemorrhaging and died, they just put them in the ground. They didn't know how it was transferred, and they didn't want to know how. They just threw them in the ground and buried them. Well, the permafrost never thought And so they would dig these graves and they'd throw them down in these pits where it was frozen on the bottom, then they'd put the stuff on top so their bodies of the people that died in 1918 were perfectly preserved, perfectly, like mummies, frozen, just laying there, dead from this flu. So these scientists went up there, exhumed them, took out genetic samples, found a little coil of the DNA of this virus, and what petrified them was When they flew to Hong Kong, it was an exact reassortment version of the 1918 outbreak. It had somehow resurfaced and had done this number where there was no known immunity. That's why, if you read the newspaper, they killed all of the birds, the chickens, and got rid of them all because they didn't want them to pass this on. With the breaking of the seal, back look at verse 7, a fourth of the population dies. Think for a moment of the vast legions of deadly germs surrounding us tonight, okay? Pandemics, influenza we've been talking about, TB. Let's just look at what would happen, and I'll just give you a side by side. In 1918, there were 1.8 billion people in the world. Today, 5.9, I told you. The only way people traveled were on ships or railroads back then. Today, people jet around the planet. Back then, it took four months for this virus to leave Kansas and get to the far reaches. Today, any virus can get anywhere in four days without even trying, just with the way people zip around nowadays. Back then, they put gauze over the wounds, they wore masks, and they sprayed disinfectants in the air and washed their hands. Today, we give people vaccines, but how can you vaccine when there's no vaccine available? The treatment for dying of this total hemorrhagic fever was bed rest and aspirin. Now we have developed some antiviral drugs which aren't effective because of the reassortment process. Twenty-some million, they don't even know how many died in 1918. I have friends when we were at Grace Church, Bonnie and I used to talk to them. One woman whose husband was a pastor in 1918, downtown LA was cordoned off and there was martial law And it was so bad, so many people were dying. They shot anyone that tried to get out of the infected area, the National Guard or the police or the army or whoever was there. And if you climbed the fence, they shot you on the fence. You'd fall on the inside. That's how desperate our country was in 1918 with this virus. Her husband, by the way, this pastor in downtown LA, instead of being out here protected, he willfully went inside and he ministered to the people, and actually survived it. He did not die of the virus. He died later of other things. But he went in, and he had a wonderful... Can you imagine what kind of ministry you have where everybody's dying inside? You're leading them to Christ as fast as you can. Let's look over some of the known diseases that are around us, though. Influenza, I've already talked about. Tuberculosis, it was once thought conquered. It's reemerged. It's highly resistant. The strains today are highly resistant. They even are known to piggyback on the HIV virus to be contagious in an inborn airborne infectious mode. TB is deadly. It scares the scientists. Staphylococcus or staph causes a fifth of all hospital system infections. There are 2 million people infected within the hospitals where we go to get well. They're infected 2 million a year with Staphylococcus. And Staphylococcus aureus is resistant to vancomycin, you know, the most powerful, the end of our ability of making antibiotics. It's the final gun. At present, there are 60,000 to 80,000 who die annually in America of staphylococcus. Very deadly. If the form known as aureus comes out, it's so deadly the numbers will skyrocket if this really deadly form of the virus comes out. Ebola, you see up there, Ebola has a mortality rate of nearly 100% in less than a week. There's been a new Ebola outbreak in Africa. Science fiction guys, Clancy and all, they talk about these terrorists. They're going to spread it all over the world. If the world can do anything about it, they're trying to keep it in Africa. Basically, Ebola. Ebola. You know what it does? It liquefies the connective tissues of the body. You know what your connective tissues are? The tissues that hold everything together. This virus attacks those so that nothing is held together in our bodies. And basically, the infected person begins to bleed, goes into convulsions. As they convulse, they splash deadly contaminated blood in every direction. And there is no known cure, no treatment. In fact, there's no awareness of even how this is transmitted. It's chilling to say the least if this Ebola thing spread in a populated area. Because if people so rapidly get it, they immediately, the connective tissue liquefies, and out of every part of their body, blood starts flowing, and they begin convulsing. It's almost like they're spraying their blood, infecting everybody around them. But look at this. This was another cover in Time Magazine, the killer germs. Here are two more, Yersinia pestis. You say, what is that? Yersinia pestis, to us non-doctor types, is the bubonic plague. It's a rod-shaped, non-modal, non-sporulating, gram-negative aerobic bacterium, if that means anything to you. In other words, it's the bug that killed tens of millions of Europeans in the Middle Ages. Today, it's the germ of choice in the terrorist nations. There are dozens of known laboratories tonight where the black death is being cultivated in biological weapons centers. The problem is they can't figure out yet how to get it and spread it, but they're working on it. And now they've gotten, you know, all of our ICBM technology, so once they get it, they can shoot it. Then the last one there, botulinum, the most powerful known poison in the world. There's nothing known more powerful. It causes nausea, diarrhea, dizziness, respiratory paralysis, and death, all from a cultured bacteria called clostridium botulinum, which you could grow tonight in your home laboratory if you just bought $10,000 worth of temperature regulating material and a little system. And all you need is a room the size of a bedroom and $10,000 worth of equipment, which you can buy today on the internet. And you can, if you talk to some unfriendly people, even get a culture of botulinum. And what's amazing is in 1986, There was a confessed terrorist in Oregon who grew and spread trillions of bacteria in four restaurants and 750 people became seriously ill before they stopped this person who went and sprayed, it was very crude, but they went and had this little thing and they sprayed it down the salad bar and just infected the leaves of lettuce with deadly agents, biological warfare. What should we learn from this? Well, pandemics. This is a map. I picked this up from the Center for Disease Control. This is where horrible epidemics are going on right now in our world. You can log on in Atlanta and see it. In fact, they will tell you exactly, I mean, which one of those are Ebola, which one of those are the terrible Marburg fever, which ones are forms of this AIDS-borne tuberculosis. They'll tell you. I mean, it's just enough to make you sick and stay up all night, what they'll tell you. But basically this, this is what's happened in the last few years. 1917 to 19, 20 million people died of this Spanish flu. 1957, now we're getting into some of our lifetimes, the Asian flu started in Southwest China in February of 57, and before it was done, it spread around the world. It caused a mortality rate not of 20 million in 1957, but the amazing thing was that it killed 35% of the populations wherever it struck. Most viruses kill 0.2%, not 35%. So it was a horrible Asian flu. In 1968, the Hong Kong flu claimed nearly 1 million lives. 34,000 people died the winter of 68 of the flu in the United States. Most recently, in 1976, 100,000 people died of the swine flu. Say, what's the swine flu? Remember I told you about the pig farms in North Carolina? Did you know that pigs, in their whole physiology, are unique creatures? Pigs have receptor cells in their throats, which can take a crossover of a fowl, a duck or a chicken virus, which you cannot catch. I can't catch something from a chicken. If it sneezes at me all day, I can't get it because it doesn't enter into my cells. But if a pig gets sneezed at by a chicken, and it gets those viral things, it crosses over in their throats, and it can become a human-infected virus, which transfers from, you say, what difference does that make? Well, the pigs usually, if they're not in North Carolina in the cages, are outdoors, running around. We used to raise pigs. Every story you've heard about them, they're horribly messy. In New England, we had friends that would raise, have one every year. Boy, those things will eat anything, and they eat more than anything. And so what they do is they go into the lakes where the ducks have come, and those infected ducks have left behind their waste, and the pigs come right behind them and drink that up, and the receptor cells in their throats do the transfer. It's like that genetic reassortment. And all of a sudden, an only-born-by-bird virus, an avian virus, becomes a virus that can become humanly communicable. That's why it's so dangerous when you have swine flu, because people get it too. In fact, I was reading an article that said that scientists were so concerned because they said when this swine flu took place in 1976, it said the pigs were coughing and sneezing. You know, it's not Wilbur and Charlotte's Web, it's real pigs coughing and sneezing, deadly viruses. Can you imagine if that took off in North Carolina? Let me just conclude this section by saying, up until 40 years ago, there was no way anyone on earth could kill one-fourth of the world. No way. There weren't enough hydrogen bombs to kill everybody in the world. But today, the beasts of the earth are multiplying by the trillions in laboratories boiling in the cauldron of hatred in the Middle East and many other places. And before long, those will spill out into the deadliest hour in the history of our planet. So deadly are these beasts that Jesus said, and I want you to turn back to Mark 13 20 with me as we wind down. Listen to Jesus' commentary on this whole period of time. Luke 21, Matthew 24, Mark 13 are the three places Jesus talks about the end. And Mark 13 20 is the verse I want you to see. And this is what Jesus said Unless the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh would be saved. That's how deadly it's going to be. Well, the question is, what are we here for? What are we here for? Well, no regret living. We should be ready to go. Here are the keys to be ready to go. Trust Him completely. Don't go around. If a pig sneezes at you, don't worry. You're not going to die a day early or a day late. Just stay away from them if they're sneezing. But don't worry. Trust the Lord. Start investing in disciple-making. Because if you don't know how to disciple someone, how are you going to take someone with you? If the Lord says, I truly give great reward to those who disciple, if you don't know how to lead someone in the process of sanctification, you ought to learn. Obey the Lord now. C.T. Studd, I talked about this morning. Do you know what he used to do in his Bible? He put a little check by every command in the Scriptures, and then he put another check by it if he knew he was obeying the Lord. The Lord won't take us any further, and we're willing to obey Him today. obey him now." Another realm, give sacrificially now. Before the tornado takes it away, give it away. What we give the Lord can never be taken away from us. And also, as I said, we need to stay in touch with the Lord daily. Here's the last section. I just want to zip over these with you. We who are the servants of God should be seeing Jesus in everyday life. We should be those who see Jesus Christ, who has given us this ministry. And I want to read to you from Revelation 1.6 real quickly. This is what Jesus told us that we are. You know, I always get back to Revelation. It's hard to get away from it. Revelation 1.6, He has made us kings and priests to our God. You know how you live ready to go? Jesus describes it in a unique way. And I think sometimes we don't think about this enough. Jesus described those of us left on this earth doing His work as his priests." What is a priest? It's one who sees Jesus as the Great High Priest. Whoever lives to make intercession for us, but Revelation 1.6 says, He made us to be priests to our God and Father. What does that mean? Well, it means this. A priest is constantly involved in offering themselves as a living sacrifice. Do you know the only sacrifice we can offer is our body, our words, our voices, our deeds. We don't pick up sheep and bullocks, cows and doves. We don't offer, we don't have the old covenant anymore. There's no longer any sacrificial system. We are the priests and we are offering ourselves as living sacrifices. So therefore, if we want to be a servant ready to go, we should be what we were talking about this morning, constantly renewing ourselves as a living sacrifice to Him. What else does a priest do? Well, it says that, and you might want to write this verse down, in Mark 12, 33, Jesus says, Love the Lord with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your soul, with all your strength, and love your neighbors yourself. This is more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. The Lord said our consuming love for Him and for the world around us is an offering we offer to Him. Did you know you can just stand on your front porch and look at your neighbors and you can worship the Lord by having a burning love for them and say, Lord, how can I intersect with their lives? How can I intersect with their lives? How can I share the news with them? I look out my window from my study and I see all the kids standing at the bus stop. And if we didn't have all these crazy laws, I'd love to go out and talk to them. But they'd start thinking I was bothering the children at the bus stop. Everyone's so nervous nowadays. What's that adult doing at the bus stop? Are they stealing kids? doesn't your heart go out you see them standing at those bus stops doing absolutely nothing you know profitable at least and you wonder your heart goes out and your love flows from your heart did you know that's part of our worship to the Lord to have a burning devotion to see them come to know Christ what's this overflowing service Philippians 2 17 It's pouring our lives out as a drink offering. What we're supposed to do is not spare our lives, not be trying to live in such a way we can live as long as possible. The Apostle Paul said this, Philippians 2.17, Yes, I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, and I am glad and rejoice over it. What does that mean? It means if you're teaching Sunday school, if you're leading a ministry, if you're driving off to the prisons, or if you're involved in some ministry of this church, if you pour your life into it, it is like a drink offering. What was a drink offering? A drink offering is when you took a perfectly good drink and you poured it out on the ground, especially in that arid land, and it soaked right in. It could never come back. You can't get it back. You know what the Lord loves? He loves when we pour our lives out in service for Him. in such a way we can't recover back what we gave. Those are gifts that go only to Him. That's what a servant looks like. Philippians 2.17, another repetition, Paul said in 2 Timothy 4.6, I am already being poured out as a drink offering. He said my whole life was a drink offering. My whole life was being poured out to God. Another one, doing good deeds, what's that? Our deeds are intentional spiritual sacrifices. Hebrews 13.16 says this, But do not forget to do good and share. Why do you think God gave us all so much so we could share? I thought that the recent boxes to Russia was such a blessing. I mean, we had too many boxes. Isn't that exciting? That's when the Lord runs it. We have more than we need. And I mean, it all went over there. But I mean, it was almost, what are we going to do with them all? There's not enough room in the church to store all these things. It's coming in so fast. That's an intentional sacrifice when we do the good deeds. Now, here's another one, 1 Peter 2.5, but you are living stones and you're built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God. Doing good deeds is a spiritual offering to God, sharing, giving. Another one, our ascending prayers. Psalm 141 verse 2 says this, I love it. let my prayers be set before you as incense." The Lord inhabits our worship like incense rising up before Him and He lets it ascend before His face. The New Testament puts it this way, Revelation 8 verses 3 and 4, another angel having golden censer came and stood at the altar and he was given much incense that he should offer it with the prayers of the saints. And then verse 4 says, And the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saints ascended before God. God collects our prayers, and at propitious times He pours them out like incense as He accomplishes His will. Are our prayers ascending before God? You can pray anywhere. You can pray in the car. Just turn the radio off. Turn the music off, unless it's worship music, and pray. You can pray in the shower. You can pray if you can't sleep at night. pray when it's boring what you're doing. But ascend prayers to God and learn. Read the prayers in the Bible. Someone asked me today, what can I look for in the Bible? Look for all the prayers in the Bible and see how they did it. And pattern yourself. Some of the great prayer chapters in the Bible are Ezra 9, Nehemiah 9, and Daniel 9. The 9s, big prayer chapters. Learn how to pray. Finally, the last one. We need to be pouring out worship. Hebrews 13.15 says this, Therefore by Christ Let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God. That is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. We should be pouring out worship to God. The sacrifice is when we turn these lips into a sacrificial offering of praise to God. Instead of criticizing, instead of of telling stories that you're not a part of the solution or the problem, which is called gossip. Instead of meddling, instead of using our mouths for corrupt communication and having it be foul and having it be cutting, we should be using our mouths to praise God. Because everything we say worshipfully to God is what we offer as His priest in praise to Him. That's how we live a life ready to go. by seeing Jesus all through our life, by offering ourselves continually as a sacrifice, by having a burning devotion for him, by serving him as an overflow of our lives, by constantly doing good deeds, by having our prayers always ascending before his throne, and letting our mouths pour out worship to him. Then when the tornado comes, or botulinum yersinia pestis comes, or staphylococcus aurea, or whatever we don't even know about that's one of those crossover viruses, we don't fear. because we trust Him completely. We're ready to go because we've been investing in making disciples and we obey Him today. And He said, A thousand will fall by thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand. It won't come near you till it's your time. We're invulnerable until the appointed time God has picked for us to go into His presence. Let's go into His presence right now in prayer and just thank Him for the comfort of His Word Father, we want to be your priests offering ourselves as a living sacrifice. We want to be your priests offering our prayers, our praise, our obedience. We want to trust you so much that we fear not. We want to believe you so much that we invest in disciple making. We want to obey you with all of our hearts. We want to stay in touch with you so that we are those who know the times and can have a fitting word to those around us As they see a society, a world, a culture, a civilization crumbling morally before our very eyes, that we will be like lights holding forth the word of life, that we might rejoice in the day of Christ that we've not run in vain nor labored in vain, because whatever is done for you, O Christ, will last. Let's invest heavily. Teach us how to do that. In your precious name, we ask it. Amen.