Transcript: Finishing the Christian Faith Race: Counting the Cost

The The The I don't know how to say this. There are so many different thoughts going around inside my head, and they all relate to just how totally people around the world are being deceived into thinking that they can sail on into heaven without any real effort on their part. This deception is everywhere, with each one thinking, oh, yes, the others have missed it, but I haven't. I know that I come across as a deluded fanatic when I say things like, no one anywhere is teaching people to obey Jesus today. But until we can see the truth in that, we are never going to change. You don't have to join me to make the change, even though I honestly don't know of anyone else apart from some close friends of mine who is teaching this. However, I know that when reality hits home and I think the world is getting very close to that with the institution of the Mark of the Beast right on our doorsteps. When reality hits home, you won't even have a chance to join me, or the people that I know. Even among ourselves, we are now discussing what we will do when we lose access to the Internet and are no longer able to communicate with one another. We all need a much deeper relationship with God than we have now to pull us through. Friends in Kenya are seriously discussing the possibility of rotting in jail cells there or just being straight out killed when it becomes common knowledge that we are exposing what is going on there. People will not even be able to visit them without the microchip ID come bank card. And in China, it will almost certainly be worse. But I think this is the wake-up call that we all need. See, I had a little revelation this morning in relation to running. It started with me thinking about what Paul said about running in a race. He said that we should run it like only one person is going to win, and we want to be that one person. You see, we often get this picture of millions, if not billions of people around the world being swept into heaven together. Everything about churchianity is measured in numbers, and the bigger the numbers, the more confident we feel that we are right, and everybody else must be part of a sect or a cult. But we forget that Jesus himself said, almost in despair, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? The implication is that there may not be anyone, and that includes me. Maybe there will be only one winner, one person with the kind of faith that Jesus was looking for. I have no guarantee that I am going to make it, and I can see a hundred reasons why God would not accept me. I fall so far short. Okay, so I was thinking about this concept of a marathon. And along with that I was thinking about all the people who have actually come and worked with us over the last 45 years or more that my wife and I have been living like this Some of them worked with us for 10 or 20 years and then they fell away They just became tired of waiting, tired of being accountable, tired of going out day after day and witnessing to a world that wasn't interested. The race was too long, almost like an ultra-marathon. And then I thought about how Jesus said there would be people coming from the east and from the west in the last days while the children of the kingdom, as he called it, would be left out. And I thought, in some ways, my friends and I have been the children of the kingdom of heaven in these last days. We have set out to preach this gospel of faith in all that Jesus taught about the kingdom of heaven, But all of us, myself included, could all fall away just as easily as so many others have done over the years. It has been a long race, and it's easy to let tiredness make us give up. It's like that in a marathon. It's a long race. Not many could finish it the first time they tried. But hey, even if we did lose out, how fair is it to let someone else jump in half a mile from the finish line and get a reward for finishing when they never went through all those long miles of hard slogging that we have had to go through. It doesn't seem fair. Would they have been able to make the distance if they had started as early as we did? And then I saw it. I saw the Great Tribulation. That's it. That's what makes the difference. That's why they may make it at the last minute after the rest of us have fallen away. There is something about torture and death which sharpens our focus. Everything fits into an eternal perspective then. All the little excuses we use for dropping out of the race are exposed for the lies that they are. We're getting close to it, brothers and sisters. We're reaching the point where it's going to be a choice between a painful and unheralded death or compromise with the system. By comparison to the 45 years of hard slogging, it'll be extremely brief, but it's just what we need to really get this show on the road. So praise God! Bring it on! Let us get a vision of eternity. It's not about building an organization. It's not about counting how many people have heard our message or watched our videos. It's not about organizing teams and sending people off to various bases scattered around the world. It's about dying, right there where you are, and possibly all alone, without anyone to comfort you. People write to me all the time crying about how they don't know where to start about how they can't leave their wife or children or their pet cat about how there won't be any good for God out there on the streets without any money to give to the poor or about how they have a handicap of some sort and need regular medical treatment And I usually respond to tell them that the answer is in living with others of us where we can support one another which is true but only for as long as it lasts We are not going to have that support forever. I think we're getting very close to the point where I'm going to have to say that you will just need to face reality and do it right there, right now. all on your own, regardless of the consequences. Go ahead and do it. Step out on the streets and freeze to death preaching the gospel. Leave your wife and kids in their nice warm or perhaps air-conditioned house while you set off walking from town to town until you die of starvation. Get someone to push your wheelchair out the front door far enough that you can move it along the road shouting your love for Jesus until you are arrested and locked away in a mental institution. You see, unless you have that kind of vision, you're probably not going to make it anyway. You'll be putting your faith in me or in someone else to be constantly reminding you to not give up, to count your blessings, to pull your socks up, to pray more and for goodness sake, open your Bible and read those four gospels like I've been telling you to do for years until one day you just get fed up with all my shouting and nagging and you just go back to the system anyway. Someone wrote to me today, telling me that he had finally decided to obey Jesus and come live with some of us, but that he could not stop crying because he had to leave his pets. I told him that he'd be better off to just keep his pets and cancel the bus ticket. Seriously, brothers and sisters, if you can't see that we're talking about eternal life here, then you may as well not even start, because you're simply not going to finish. You'll end up a laughing stock, as so many other backsliders have. You'll be wasting our time and your own time as well. And the problem, of course, is that so many of you have been told that you already have eternal life all sewn up. Obedience is optional, and when it gets a little difficult, you'll just cave in assured that a loving God would not keep you out of heaven just for that. After all, you said a magic prayer. You ever so courageously accepted Jesus as your own personal Saviour. You had a dream or a vision. God himself or one of his angels spoke to you and told you that you are saved. Don't count on it. God already spoke to you when he said, If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. That is what God said to you, to me, and all these religious leaders who want to tell you that you don need to have that kind of fanatical faith I not interested in some evil spirit that told you you don have to do that Believe me it not the Holy Spirit talking like that The apostle Paul said, Though we teach you any other gospel than the gospel of Christ, let him be accursed. Do you hear that? Paul had the courage to tell you to toss out all those great testimonies you have about every little thrill and every little tear you have shed in your emotional roller-coaster ride through life. Damn them if they have not caused you to obey Jesus. Jesus himself said it. People will come to him bragging about all the demons that they cast out in his name and he will say to them, I never knew you. Do you hear what I'm saying? None of this. None of these glowing testimonies mean a single thing if you are not obeying Jesus, if you are not laying your life down in humble submission to all that he taught in the four gospels, right now. Not in four months. Right. Now. Yes, you may be able to make it at the last moment, and that may not be very far away, But the longer you put it off, the more likely that you will die without the opportunity to do anything to express your appreciation for how real God is and how true the teachings of Jesus are in this godless, Christless world. If you are watching this right now, you may have an opportunity to come and work with others of us. You may be able to sell everything you have and catch a bus or a plane to where we are. You may even be able to walk there. But you may not either. That doesn't matter. You will still be accountable. Start doing it right now. You don't know the next step? Well, neither do I. It may be to sell everything, or it may be to just walk out the door and start sharing with others on the street what you have learned so far. It definitely will require some serious prayer on your part. prayer that you won't mess everything up through pride, through laziness or greed. God may call you to face a quick death, in a few days or in a few weeks, but use those days and hours to do all you can to point others to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our only hope of eternal life. And it may be that you will survive longer than a few weeks. You may even have opportunity to find others and work with them. Just don't hold back. Accept that you are going to make mistakes, and then get out there and do the best that you can, always staying open to more guidance from the Word of God Himself. We'll be praying for you, and if we don't meet you on this side of eternity, we look forward to meeting you on the other side. God bless you. Thank you.