For many people adversity is the only thing that brings focus to our shortcomings that leads to seeking heartfelt repentance toward God. We therefore need God to set-up the precisely targeted conditions on earth whereby the task of salvation is completed and the church becomes the light of the world.
We need God’s divine help to finish the job at the end of the ages.
The end-times Great Tribulation is not about what we would like or prefer. It is about God closing-out the human story of redemption in the highest and best way possible according to the extremely tight specifications of the final journey of faith patterned for us in the narrative stories of faith recorded in the Bible.
It is about Immanuel…God with us…in the penultimate resolution in the pursuit of truth designed to benefit the people of God for all eternity.
It is the closing chapter of the story beginning with Abraham so long ago, of trusting God and letting go in a set of circumstances that divide truth from error in a way that is incomprehensible to the horizontally conventional world of skeptical unbelief.
The example of Paul aptly exhibits this mindset.
In Acts 21, Paul is journeying toward Jerusalem for the last time. Along the way, Holy Spirit inspired Christians forewarn Paul that he will face persecution, imprisonment, and possibly physical harm in Jerusalem (Acts 20:22-24, 21:10-14).
Paul is arrested in the temple, beaten by the populace, rescued by a Roman guard, almost interrogated by scourging, in danger of being “pulled to pieces” in the Sanhedrin, and threatened with death through an ambush of forty men lying in wait, having taken a vow not to eat until they have killed Paul.
Yet in Acts 23:11, just before Paul learns of the plot to kill him and he is moved to Caesarea for safety, Jesus appears to Paul in the night and says: “Be of good cheer, Paul; for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome.”
Jesus amazingly and counter to all worldly conventional thinking encourages Paul to “be of good cheer” in the midst of deadly opposition and the most unsettling of worldly events.
Paul goes on to witness before the Roman governor Felix, and King Agrippa and Bernice in Caesarea. Paul then appeals to Caesar for a hearing in Rome, survives a shipwreck in route to Rome as a prisoner, writes his remaining four “pastoral” New Testament epistles, and is finally martyred by Nero the Roman emperor in the city of Rome.
Is this fearless example of the apostle Paul the true pre-glimpse of the selfless divine love that can go forward in the face of enormous opposition to accomplish the task of salvation for others through the enabling power of the “latter rain” of Holy Ghost evangelical fire?
Is a fully engaged Christian church on earth during some portion of the Great Tribulation the difficult but privileged calling that will define for all time the true nature and person of Jesus Christ the King of glory?
Is our blessed hope of Titus 2:13 the unbreakable assurance of Jesus with us, come what may?
God supplies Holy Spirit faith, power, and boldness when we need it (Dan. 3:16-18; Acts 4:8).
The world wants to sweep the issues of sin, repentance, and our decision regarding Jesus Christ under the rug. People want to be distracted from these issues by the everyday concerns of the world. But the upheaval of the end-times brings these issues to the surface in the same lethally unwelcome way that forced the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in the first-century.
The cross element patterned for us in the journeys of faith recorded throughout the Bible, deserves our closest examination as we approach an understanding of upcoming end-times biblical prophecy.
A commendable approach of including the cross and the resurrection in our interpretation of scripture should become part of the knowledge, wisdom, and understanding we bring to our Christian worldview as end-times events begin to come into clear focus.
The cross in the end-times, of God brilliantly displacing our worldly conventional thinking with life-scripts beyond our imagination, is a galactically huge issue.
God validating and authenticating His character and faithfulness is best discovered and demonstrated through the creative details of a God-composed adventure of faith.
The cross factored into the end-times is as large as any other issue at the close of human redemptive history. The cross fully applied to our lives creates the most space for God to effectively work out His highest ways.
“Therefore be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Mt. 24:44).
To close out this essay, I quote from 2 Corinthians 4:7-18 (KJV):
7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.
8 We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair.
9 Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;
10 Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.
11 For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.
12 So then death worketh in us, but life in you.
13 We, having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak,
14 Knowing that he who raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you.
15 For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God.
16 For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.
17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
The Cross in the Christian Life 