Transcription
So, how can we know the world is ending? Well, Jesus gave us a map. And in your Bibles, if you have them, in Matthew 24, Jesus preaches his longest sermon on the end of the world. He actually does two chapters on that. His longest sermon is three chapters long, which is Matthew 5, 6, and 7. But Matthew 24 and 25 is his second longest sermon, and it's about the end of the world. He introduces the end of the world in Matthew 6: “Thy kingdom come.” That’s actually what the end of the world is. When God’s kingdom comes to earth, the first installment is the second coming of Christ. The second installment is the millennial rule. Then the, you know, that bang at the end I show you on that chart when the great white throne is, and then the Lord’s kingdom rules. He outlines it right here in Matthew 24.
And notice what happens in verse three. As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately and said, "Tell us when will these things be? And what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?" So, that’s a very biblical topic. What’s going to be the sign that you’re coming and what is going to be the sign of the end of the age? And Jesus doesn’t give just one. He gives multiple. And what he says is you’re going to see these signs, and they’re going to first show up, and then they’re going to show up brighter and brighter and more intense, more visible, more kind of widespread, and then boom, I’m going to come.
Now, how he says that is illustrated in the book we’re covering. So, I’m not teaching Matthew, I’m teaching Revelation. But look at this: what he introduced in Matthew 6, he outlines, and I’ll show you the outline in Matthew 24 in just a moment. And then he illustrates it in the seals, the trumpets, the BS of Revelation. Now, where we are, you notice we’ve moved in our journey through Revelation. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 are the church on earth. Chapter 4 and 5, we saw the church in heaven. Now, we’re moving to chapter 6 onward, which is the events of the tribulation that fluctuate between heaven and earth, and it goes back and forth, and it’s very, very exciting to watch. You’ve seen this chart many times, but you see we’re in the third section there, the big red block, you know, the tribulation, which covers from chapter 6 to 18.
But what we see in the outline is in Matthew 24:8, and then verse 33, then verse 34, we see God giving specific trends. Now, basically this Matthew 24 is Jesus describing kind of like what the world looks like as he’s coming to touch down on the Mount of Olives. So it’s kind of like a drone view, one of those drone pictures where it’s up above and the drone comes down until it’s down on the ground, you know, and that’s what Matthew 24 and 25 are. We can see what the world looks like when Christ returns.
Now, specifically, this is what he says: “All these things are the beginning of sorrows,” the Greek word odin, the birth pangs or pains. Verse 33: “So you also, when you see all these things,” now remember what the original question was in verse three: “What are the sign? What is the sign?” And Jesus said there isn’t one. There are many. But when you see all of them, he says, “Know, it’s near.” Verse 33: “At the doors.” And Mark was talking about the book of James, teaching through the book of James. Remember what James says to the church in Jerusalem? He says, “Behold, the judge is at the door.” Uh, and what he was talking to was the church. What he’s saying is, “We’re not talking about the return of Christ.” At that moment, he was saying that the one who wants you to live for him before his return is at the door. He’s watching. He wants to see if you are.
But look at verse 34: “Assuredly I say to you, this generation,” so the generation that sees the launch of the tribulation events are going to live through it because it’s t. That’s the word in Revelation. Like a tachometer. It means they’re rapid. The events that happen at the end are very rapid. And he said the generation will by no means pass away till, and there it is again. All these things, what what happens to be the things? Well, on the left of that chart is the Olivet discourse. On the right is the book of Revelation. Remember I said Jesus outlined the book of Revelation. So in verses four and five he talks about false Christs. Six and seven of Matthew he talks about the war. Verse 7 famine. Verse 9 death. 9-13 martyrdom. And then in his corollary parallel um synoptic version of this, which by the way is Mark 13 and Luke 21, he talks about the signs uh that are in the heaven and the kind of like a cosmic earthquake.
Did you know that exactly parallels Revelation 6? The first seal is a white horse, which is the false Christ. Second seal is the red horse, which are global wars. The third seal is a black horse, which is global famine. This morning, there was a new uh in in that uh what is the name of that popular stock investing um thing that uh I don’t know what it’s called. It’s the one in everybody that kind of broke uh stock investing into everybody. It’s some app. I can’t even remember what the name of it is, but they send out a daily report. And they called the current condition in the earth, listen to this, farm, like f-a-r-m-a-geddon, like Armageddon, only they called it farmageddon. And they said the world is heading toward an incredible time of food scarcity and famine. Wow. That’s the black horse, but that’s not the tribulation black horse. That’s the beginning of the runup for it. The pale horse is death. We’ve seen that with the pandemic of co- which has morphed into all these variants which it’s it’s it’s shown the whole world what what one uh pathogen can do to the planet. Can you imagine the pale horse when a fourth of the population of the world? I mean we’re seeing horrors now uh that are only going to intensify, then martyrdom, that’s the fifth seal of revelation, then the sixth seal is just the the complete explosion of all the end-time events.
Now, here are the trends uh what Jesus said is uh this is the beginning verse 8 of Matthew 24 of the sorrows, the birth pains. What this means is what starts small gets bigger. What what happens? Well, there’s greater visibility. And what we’re seeing right now is that is truly an end of days thing that we’re seeing that everybody in the world now knows about everything within seconds. I mean, a missile hits in Ukraine, someone’s filming it on YouTube or or I mean on Facebook or on YouTube Live or whatever and it’s out there or they tweet it out or, you know, they post a picture on Instagram or whatever. We’re seeing visibility of events that is nearly instantaneous. But the Bible says they’re going to get more frequent and they’re going to get more intense. See, that’s what birth pains are. First, there’s this visible uh you know, the the expectant mother goes, “Oh, you know, she’s kind of paralyzed for a second because you can see it. She’s feeling this contraction.” But the contractions get more frequent. They get more intense and they have a greater impact, which for birth uh is the arrival of a baby. Well, look, look at I mean, these are just great charts. This is the NOAA, National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration of America. They track the the big weather events and this is just right off their site from 1980 to 2020. NOAA climate. Look at that. That’s the droughts, the freezes, tropical cyclones, wildfires, winter storms, severe storms, flooding, the cost, blah blah blah. Boom. Just the total number of events. Does that mean there’s more events? Not necessarily. We’re aware. Now, what they were not aware of in 1980, we were just at the front end of all this satellite stuff. I mean, we were in the space race and all that and then all of a sudden they commercialized all this and they started watching everything with satellites for crop planning and for weather prediction. I mean, weather prediction is a phenomenal that you you just have grown up with it. We didn’t have that. We had the almanac, a a paper that was written for a whole year. It told you the weather. Oh, it was very It was interesting and and had the trends and they were usually very right. But you didn’t look at your phone say it’s going to rain at 9:37. But now with these the these satellites, they’re seeing all the weather events going on.
Look what Jesus said in Luke 21 on the left: “Nation will rise against nation.” Verse 11: “Great earthquakes, famines, pestilences, fearful sights, signs up in space, the sun, moon, and stars, and on the earth, distress, perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring,” and all of this because everyone is seeing it. Verse 26 says, “men’s hearts will fail them,” Greek word exo, suk is your spirit. Apo means to pop out. People’s spirits will pop out. What that means is they’ll just drop dead from fear because what’s going to happen is people are going to be watching these global events and and then kind of like that strange cloud that went over Alaska over the weekend. They don’t know what it was, whether it was a burning meteorite coming down or some space junk or some Soviet or Russian or American vehicle. We don’t know what it was, but it was a very, very strange dark burning across the sky and it scared people. Over the weekend in Times Square, if you’d been doing open-air evangelism, it was a great time. A manhole cover popped and made a big loud explosion sound and everyone ran for their lives. They thought they didn’t know what it was. The Bible says that as people see these global events, they’re going to die of fear.
Okay, what are the end of world trends? Global diseases will get more lethal. Haven’t we seen that the last two years? Global warming will get hotter. Don’t we hear about that? Global water shortages will get worse. Have you been watching Lake Mead? Have you watched that? There is an argument in America over the Colorado River because are we going to send the water, you know, one direction to to help Colorado or are we going to send it the other way to help the millions of people in Arizona and California? Wow. And that’s just our little dilemma with water. Global food scarcity. I mean, need I say anymore? There are 12 million metric tons of wheat that are in the storehouses of Ukraine that are getting destroyed, which is equivalent to giving a loaf of bread to everybody on Earth once a week. I mean, that is a huge amount of food that is going to be soon destroyed. Global conflicts are going to get bigger and deadlier. Global hatred. This is everything Jesus said in Matthew. Global hatred for Christ. It used to be for Christ. Now it’s getting personalized down for Christians. See, it’s going to it’s it’s getting more intensely personal. Global tracking. We’ll we’ll see that in just a second. It’s going to get more complete. That I mean, I can’t buy gas at a gas station without getting an immediate text from Visa or Mastercard telling me I just purchased something instantly like that. I mean, it’s gone from the gas station through their satellite dish up to a geocynchronous satellite and back down to Omaha, Nevada, where all those things are processed underground in that vast computer housed uh credit area. And then it goes back to me and it does it in less than a second.
Here’s the first trend. Daniel said this, remember Daniel was Jesus’ favorite prophetic prophet. He’s the only one he names by name when he preaches his sermon on prophecy. He says, “Do you remember what Daniel the prophet said?” Well, what did Daniel the prophet say? Well, here’s one thing: Daniel 12:4, “But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book until the time of the end.” How are we going to know when it’s the time of the end? Number one, many are going to run to and fro. There is going to be this this movement that’s going to be unlike any other time in history. No matter how you take this, something is going to happen that’s going to characterize the end of two and froess. Well, let’s just look at global transportation history. 3,000 years ago, Jonah went down to a port in Jaffa to run away from the Lord and got in a boat very similar to the boat that Paul 2,000 years ago would have sailed on his missionary journeys. Very similar to the boat that Columbus got on 500 years ago and, you know, tried to find the new world. Not very dissimilar to the boat that Ben Franklin, as in, you know, from Philadelphia, Ben Franklin went to the French to have him aid us in the revolution. But then everything after 3,000 years started changing just over 150 years ago with the advent of the steam engine. No, before that everything traveled by the speed of wind or the speed of horse or the speed of foot. Those were the three. Either a horse was pulling you, you were on it, you were in a chariot, the wind was pushing you, or you were running. Everything changed. We went from wind to steam. And then you know what happened? We went right from that to the internal combustion, then to the airplane, then to the rocket. Now look at where we are. Over 4.9 billion people in 2020 or 2019 were flying anywhere you want schedule. They’re running to and fro.
Well, the next thing is global explosion of knowledge. He says, “And knowledge shall increase.” Let me show you how knowledge is increased. I brought you a prop. Okay, this is my phone. Let me read to you the ad. Now, this is an old one. They’ve already the WWDC or whatever they call it, the new Apple event. They’re already unveiling the new stuff. This is old. The old one I have, my phone, as Apple describes it, just the camera on the back is powered by a chip with 11.8 billion transistors. That’s just this camera. You say, “Uh-huh. What does that mean?” Well, it has a 16 core neural engine. It’s capable of 11 trillion operations per second, aka terra. That’s That’s for the trillion teraflops. Now, you say, “What is that?” Well, for perspective, just 15 years ago, a teraflop computing could only be done by building government-funded computers in Japan, USA, and the EU. Now, we have one in our pocket. See the you have grown up with this. You don’t realize how staggering this is. I have in my phone my whole Logos library of 7500 books. The books I have on my shelf at home. I have 6,800 books in my home office. I have all of them on here with Logos and I can search any word I want with them. That’s unheard of, unparalleled. It’s indescribable transformation of knowledge and and you all have I mean the collection of everything Google in your pocket. Amazing.
What’s happening? Well, look, they’re analyzing everything. Did you know this week two things happened? One thing is they announced that some doctor somewhere as he was drawing blood with a normal blood drawing needle out of someone’s vein. It’s the first time in history he pulled into the syringe microlastic in the bloodstream. I mean first of all in the ancient world they didn’t know what plastic was and they didn’t know how to make it. Now we’re making so much of it and it’s breaking down that they’re finding it on top of the highest mountains in the world in the virgin white pure snow. It’s laced with microplastic. So is the ocean. I mean you guys are reading this. I mean you everyone talks about you know how the straws are, you know, harming the fish life. It’s not just the straws. It’s microlastics are everywhere. Plastic is ground up into such small pieces that we’re breathing it in. It’s going into our lungs, into the alveoli, into the bloodstream, circulating through our body, collecting in organs, and now they’re pulling it out in blood draws. That’s unprecedented knowledge.
How about our weather? Jesus said there’s going to be distress with perplexity in the sea and waves roaring and people’s heart failing them from the expectation of what’s coming. Well, look, here’s the NOAA satellite image. Do you see that? Bonnie and I experienced that. That was last summer. That was the Derecho, they called it. It was a wall of winds that that devastated the crops across the the bread basket of the United States. And the satellites caught this and it it it was to the people that were there. I mean, we we just were driving across Nebraska. Then we went into Iowa and I said, “Honey, look, all the cornfields. They were like, you know, Deegon statue bowing down to the ark. All of them had fallen.” And the further we drove, the wider it was. It was one of the greatest crop losses in the United States. But that’s not I mean, that’s been going on all the time. But did people see this now on the news and it’s scaring them.
Number four, the globe, which is part of what I’m talking about, the global communications explosion. You guys don’t think anything of it. You can text, you can tweet, you can post, you can whatever all those terms are with friends that that maybe were here and now they’re in Asia or wherever and you don’t think anything of that. Did you know when the Roman emperor died during the time of the Bible, the world didn’t know about it to the ends of the empire for six months? They were still at outpost, still operating like the former emperor and there was a a big war and three emperors came in and finally the final emperor came and they finally got word six months later they didn’t even know about it because news traveled at the speed of foot or horse or wind and the empire was really big. But look what Revelation 11 says: “those from the peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations.” That’s the way the Lord describes the world. How else are you designated? People’s, tongues, tribes, nations. That’s just like all the groupings of humans. So, the people around the world are going to see the dead bodies of the two witnesses for three and a half days. And as if we didn’t catch that, verse 10 says, “And those who dwell on the earth are going to rejoice over them. They’re going to make Mary.” And here’s a communications amazing ability to communicate. They’re going to send gifts to one another. That means Amazon or something is going to be operating during the tribulation. People are going to be able to send gifts all over the place and communicate and watch events.
Now, watch. This is yesterday at 4:30 p.m. That’s that’s Facebook’s chart of Facebook Live, the people that are watching it. That’s the blue. And the green are the people that are broadcasting something to be watched. And if you look, it’s everywhere. I mean, this is encompassing like 90% or more of the global population. Yesterday, we’re able to see live events. Unbelievable. Until God turns everything off. By the way, he turns it all off in Revelation 18 to get the earth’s attention. He turns off the music. Even turns off the electricity in verses 23 and 24. I I like this. This was a headline: “Digital days. 73% of adults cannot imagine going a full day without their screen.” That’s where we’ve gotten.
Okay. Number five, the trend of global pandemics explosion. I don’t even need to discuss that, right? “Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and pestilences.” How about this? We don’t even think of this. You guys grew up with it. The the Bible says no one can buy or sell without a number and people first of all in the ancient world they laughed and then in the more modern world they wondered and now we don’t even think of it. I mean uh you you just wave your phone in front of the you know if you have Apple Pay you just or you touch you tap your card. What is all that? Money is digitalized before you worry about what the forehead or the hand means. You can’t buy or sell without a number. In other words, no longer were people going to be trading gold and silver and grain and oil or whatever, wine or some other good for something else. Wealth no longer is physical. It’s digital. It’s in the ether as they call it. Let’s talk about the number of the beast. In Revelation 13:16, it says they have to have this number on their right hand or their foreheads. Well, what’s interesting is we’re we’re getting ready for it. Biometric facial recognition stuff is everywhere the more we travel. I mean, you you’re checking onto airplanes by smiling and it oh, you know, you don’t need paper. They they can see you and they they can I mean, look look at what’s going on. We have doorbells that are tracking visits. Bonnie and I travel, usually gone 10 to 11 months a year. Yet, we get a little notice when anybody goes near our front door, and
It doesn't just tell us someone went there. It tells us who it is. Wherever we are in the world, we get a notice. That's nothing. That's a $79 doorbell from Amazon, and it's low tech compared to what the government has.
Okay. How about this? Every car—uh, you get a rental car, or you have a company car, or you have a delivery van—they are tracking your movements. My son rented um a car in New York to drive to see another family member in Colorado, and he rented the car in New York unlimited mileage. He was driving across country to Colorado, and in Kentucky, as he pulled into a rest area, a black car pulled in beside him. A US marshal got out and smiled at him and said, "Where are we going, son, with this rental car?" He said, "Son," with—he's a US marshal, you know, showed his badge. He said, "You know," he said that it's crossed about six states and they wonder where you're headed. He said, "I'm going to see my family in Colorado and getting back over the weekend." They said, "Okay, fine," and they got in their car and drove away. They knew right where he was. Following him into the rest area was not a criminal; he was a renter of a rental vehicle that they track everywhere when—when the algorithm says it did something strange.
How about tracking your conversations? I mean, Bonnie and I were talking. We were in Hungary, I think, and we're in our rental car between the Word of Life Bible Institute in Budapest, and we were driving. I said, "No, honey, you have some unread messages." And the car said, "Unread messages? Do you want me to read them in English?" In a Hungarian rental car that had a listening device because I hooked up my phone to use CarPlay? You know, it's listening all the time, not just when you want it. All the time listening. And of course, your phone is constantly being tracked. Our daily lives are tracked by phones, by laptops, even by our doorbells. And it's all being used.
Well, you know how they're using it in China? They now have an app they've given out to everybody in China where you can tell the government when someone expresses—how does it put it?—a mistaken opinion. A mistaken opinion. And of course, that's about—if you read the article—it's about anybody that says something wrong about the history of China or the government of China or whatever. You can immediately, you know, take their picture or or tag them and just say, you know, "Bill has a mistaken opinion," and the police will come visit Bill. What is it going to be like when this is a mistaken opinion? And they give to the world—one leader called the Antichrist—gives to the world an app that when you express a mistaken opinion, they'll come visit you. See? See how fast it's coming.
Now, in the midst of all this, you know how it says no one can buy or sell except one who has the mark of the beast? Did you know cryptocurrency is now worth more—even though it keeps crashing—than all US currency in circulation? See, there isn't as much paper money as there is digital money. And so there's a constant problem with what happens if everybody wants to take out of the digital repository, you know, the bank account, paper money because there isn't enough of it. And that's why this whole Bitcoin thing is so, you know, interesting to people. It's all happening before our eyes.
How about number seven of 10? The trend of weapons of global human death and destruction. Look what Jesus says in Matthew 24. "For there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be." Now listen what Jesus says in verse 22. "Unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved." Those are what we call WMDs, weapons of mass destruction.
In the ancient world, the world of the Bible, the only way that you could kill someone was either to be close enough to them to get them with your sword or knife, or a little further away, your spear, or a little further away, your bow and arrow, or your slingshot, or a little further away, your catapult. What else was there? And what would people do? Stand there and wait for you to reload your catapult or your arrow or your slingshot, or run toward you with the sword? No, they ran in every direction. And so they never got everybody in any battle unless the—the Lord was doing the—the—the conquest of Canaan. But all the rest, people would just run off and hide and dive in the river and go, you know, crawl in a cave. But then something changed in World War II. We had the unleashing of the—the destructive power of atomic weapons, and then they started bettering—I mean, not better, but making them more powerful. We—we went from the—the idea of just splitting the atom to fusing the atom, and we had hydrogen bombs which were far more devastating. But then the Israelis, you know, Israel, which Jewish people were involved with all this because of their love for physics, but the Israelite—Israel—uh, astrophys—or physicists said, "Hey, use an atom bomb around here. It'll blow everything up. We've got to figure out something else." And they came up with neutron bombs. You know what neutron bombs do? They kill every organic life form. They just leave all the buildings. I mean, if they bombed us with a neutron bomb here, we would all be dead and the building would look great. It wouldn't ruin anything. It doesn't destroy anything but organic life. Amazing.
But why am I saying all that? Because we're there. Jesus said the end is going to be when it's possible to kill everybody on Earth. Just one of the—the Soviet SAR map missiles can destroy everything—everything in a 250,000 square mile area. One missile. That's horrible. But we have—we have in America 6,000 of them. So we have enough to do the whole world over and over and over and over. You know, it's global human death and destruction. But a lot more people are getting on it. I mean, this is the—on the left is just the Cold War. You know, it was the US and the Soviets, and then US and Russia. But now we've got more people. The middle picture—I mean, the—the right-hand side, that's China's second nuclear missile field. They're—they're building their ICBMs as fast in China, and they're expanding all their missile fields.
You know, here's something interesting to think about. In Revelation 16, the final war, Armageddon, involves the armies of the east, China, and Iran and Russia. Ezekiel 38. Now look on the left, just before the Ukraine, the biggest US Navy war games in 40 years. This is—I clipped this. This is a headline from a newspaper, you know, an online news service, warzone. "Biggest US Navy war games in 40 years to prepare for World War III." World War III. They use that so lightly. I mean, as if—yeah, that's—I mean, World War III across 17 time zones amid tensions with—oh, Russia, China, and Iran. This is not Left Behind, Tim LaHaye's prophecy. This is not any prophetic writer. This is—this is public secular news. Look at the elements. They say World War III and they name three countries that look like they're going to be the trigger: Russia, China, Iran. That's exactly what the Bible says. You know, when you read the news, looking through the window of the scriptures, it's fascinating to see how it frames everything and explains everything. So, that helps us to understand—uh—Jesus saying there'll be wars and rumors of wars. He called them birth pangs, but they're just starting now. They're getting more. They're getting louder. I mean, look at that on the left. "Death from above." Do you see that headline? That's the thermobaric missiles that—I mean, each one of those missile—um—launchers weighs 50 tons, and they tow them behind these big tank things, and they have all the missiles in there. When they shoot those—when the Russian troops shoot those thermobaric missiles, they go up, they explode a bunch of—kind of like gas vapor—and it permeates the air and starts settling down. And then a delayed—uh—explosion ignites it all so that it makes a thermo—hot bar—having to do with the atmospheric pressure. And it ignites and it actually sucks the air out of people's lungs because it's a—you know, if you ever light gas, there's this—it's a concussive kind of movement of the air. Well, this is a large movement of air that actually pulls the air out of your lungs. And when you gasp in, you breathe in the hot, deadly, explosive gas that's on fire. It's a very cruel way to fight a war, and they have been using them. "Death from above." Putin is feared to have deployed thermobaric rocket launchers in Ukraine. And not feared. That's an old headline that was from the beginning of March. He did.
Now, now in Revelation 9, it doesn't say that everybody dies with plagues or worshipping demons and idols. They also, in verse 21, says they don't repent of their murders. Now, look at the—here's another article I clipped out. "American Horror Story map reveals 54 mass shootings over the past month, as CNN host says there's an active shooter situation." Now, that was not quite one year ago. America made the record that in one month, we had 54 mass shootings. Let's call them what they are: murders in America. That's just America. God says the whole world is going to be involved with murders, sorceries—that's occultic drug use, sexual immorality, thefts. That's going to be what the tribulation is like. That's the seventh trend.
The eighth trend is global peace, prosperity, and materialism. What Paul adds to all this in 1 Thessalonians 5 is this. Paul says, "For when they say peace and safety, then sudden destruction comes upon them like labor pains." What does the world want? Peace and safety. They want—they want prosperity. They want—they don't want unrest. Did you know that the Ukraine grain shortage—primarily the Ukraine feeds northern Africa? The largest populous Arab nation is—is Egypt. Already the Egyptian president is bracing his people for food scarcity. Do you remember the last time there was food scarcity in Northern Africa and the Middle East? We had what was called Arab Spring, where all of these—I mean, it was terrible all the way across North Africa and everything going on in Syria and everything going on all over the Arab world, which flooded Europe 10 years ago with—with millions and millions of refugees from all those conflicts. That is starting to rumble because of the food scarcity. But while that's going on, look at this—that's Apple's right now total sales last year. Made them larger than the whole world's GMPP except for seven nations. In other words, Apple is bigger than—than Italy, uh, bigger than Brazil, the GMPP, bigger than Canada, across the bottom, bigger than Russia, bigger than Korea, bigger than Australia, bigger than Spain, bigger than Mexico, bigger than India, the GMPP, the GDP of all those countries. In fact, if Apple was a nation, it would be the seventh most powerfully affluent nation in the world. Only ahead would be the US, China, Japan, Germany, UK. Wow. Amazing to think about.
Guess where the wealth is? Well, the richest 1%, you hear about the 1% all the time, they own half of everything. One out of a hundred own 50% of everything. And you add to them the rest of the kind of the developed world, 19% of the population, they have 94.5% of everything. So 15% of all the people have almost everything. Did you know that's exactly what Revelation describes? While everybody is starving to death, the rich—you read chapter 18—they're getting their boatloads of ivory and peacocks and all the fine things and their silk and their pearls and everything they want there. There is going to be a greater and greater dichotomy, a greater and greater stratification, whatever you want to call it, of wealth concentrated. And we're—I mean, it already is. And it's amazing. The poorest 80% of the world live on 5%—5.5%. It's almost like the balcony is the 20% up there, and they're looking down at the 80%, and the 20% have everything, and the people down there in the flatlands don't have very much of anything. Uh, the average—um—family in Egypt lives on $232 a month. 232 a month. Amazing. They spend a third of it on food—just to—not to build up—just to survive. And their food has gone up by 50% in the last couple of months. See, that's—that's very dangerous and ominous.
Uh, number nine, the trend of global hatred for Israel. Do you know what the Bible says? "On that day, the Lord God Almighty said, 'I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples.'" And—and whoever lifts it will hurt themselves, and all the nations of the earth will gather against it. There's going to be united global hatred of Israel. Well, guess what? It is already there. Did you know no one flinches when the top Iranian general says, "Our forces in Syria are awaiting orders to destroy Israel." Destroy. Amazing. That's exactly what God said. By the way, when Zechariah wrote that, there wasn't an Israel to destroy. It had been carried off into captivity. And never was a nation after that. After the Babylonian captivity, they came back into the land. They fought wars and they tried to throw off their occupiers. And the Romans finally just devastated them. There was not a nation for 2,600 years called Israel on earth from the Babylonian times until 1948. And now there's a target called Israel, and all the world is going to hate and want to destroy Israel. Recently they showed the new Cold War. It's the Middle East. The green—Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen—are committed completely to the annihilation of Israel. And the UAE and Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and Jordan are kind of not wanting them to be annihilated because they're a buffer against Iran and all of that. You know, it's the Sunni-Shiite conflict.
But here's the good news. The last thing Jesus said in Matthew—look at Matthew 24:14. "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come." Mark 13:10. "And the gospel must first be preached to all the nations." Now, there's two—two elements to this. First of all, that's all we're supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be going into all the world and preaching the gospel. And so we live on earth with our sole mission from God to share the light of the gospel of Christ. Now we do that—I—you know, as a school teacher, as a plumber, or as a pastor, or as a missionary, or as an artist, or as a draftsman. It doesn't matter. God wants to infiltrate every part of society. He wants all of us to be missionaries where He placed us. And it's wonderful. And look what's happening. Global evangelism has never been like it is now. That—what you see on that big map, those red dots are the unreached people groups. What an unreached people group is, is that there's no one yet a Christian in that language, and there's no scripture yet in that language. So there's two problems. There is no one that communicates with those people verbally that's a believer. No one knows their language that can communicate. And secondly, there is no copy of scripture to share with them in their language. So it's a double whammy. But guess what? With machine learning, artificial intelligence, and this teraflop computing we have in our pockets now, Wycliffe and all the rest of the—the people that are on the cutting edge, they can go in, they can record these people talking, they can use machine learning, they can isolate the language structure, and they can—sometimes in just two and a half years—produce the scriptures in their language. Some three years, some five. And so th—this is the IMB, by the way, the International Mission Board, the Southern Baptist Convention. They produce this regularly to show where those unreached people groups are and encouraging people to go and become a part of getting the scriptures into their language. So missions is going forward, and we are at the place where it's going to soon be possible to say that—according to the mission organizations—in the next 10 years, every language known on earth will be in the process of somehow getting scriptures of some form into it.
Why is all that important? Because Revelation shows us life is fragile. As we'll see in the next two hours when we come to the fourth seal, 25% of all Earth's population dies in the fourth seal of Revelation 6. By the time we get to chapter 9 and we get to the fifth trumpet, the fifth trumpet is one-third of all humanity already having lost 1/4th. That's 58% when you add it together. Life is fragile. Death is inevitable, and Christ is the answer. And that's what we're supposed to share with people. What's the only thing you can take with you to heaven? Only one thing, people.
Real quickly, I want to tell you, I was on an airplane. I was going to speak, and Bonnie knows this. Uh—uh—I—I speak all the time. I'm a professional Bible teacher, but every time I work and work and work till the last minute. I mean, I was working on this until—uh—9:25, you know, I was—I was still fiddling and doing corrections on the slides and looking at verses. So I got on this airplane and I was flying to go to a men's retreat, and I sat down and I couldn't believe it. The plane was almost empty. So I got the tray table down, and I turned and I could look out the window and see the clouds, and I had my Bible and I had my pen, and I was studying. And believe it or not, can you believe they seated the—there actually were only about six of us on the airplane. One of them they seated right across from me, right across the aisle. So I kind of turned a little bit in my seat so I wouldn't be bothered and distracted by them. And I was underlining, and this person kept pushing the button. You know how you push the call button and calling the waitress—or I mean the stewardess—went beep, and she came and said, "Yes, sir." He said, "Could I have one of the little bottles—" you know, the $3 bottle of whatever alcohol they sell in airplanes. She got him one. I thought, you know, here I am reading—pushed it again. She came. He said, "Could I have another one of those?" And I was thinking, wow, third—he got pretty happy over there. And—and he says—and I'm studying and underlining. He says, "Hey, what are you doing over there?" I—I wouldn't even look at him. I said, "I'm studying the Bible." "Why are you studying the Bible?" He said across the aisle. I said, "Because I teach the Bible." Wouldn't even look at him, underlining, writing my message. He said, "I have a question for you." So I put my finger where I was working and for the first time I turned and looked across the aisle and said, "Yes." I mean, totally disengaged, totally disinterested. I was going to minister to a men's retreat, and that's my whole focus. And he said, "My Hispanic housekeeper, every time I see her, says to me," she'll look right at me and say, "'You go help.'" He said, "I'll see her again." She goes, "'You go help.'" He said, "So, you know, I'm sitting there holding my place, looking at him, and I—" he said, "Why does she say that to me?" I said, "Because you probably are," and I turned in my seat and went back to studying for two seconds. And that's when the Holy Spirit's baseball bat hit me on the head. And what I realized was, do you know why hardly anybody's on that airplane? Do you know why they seated you on the same row? Do you know why he's scared to death of flying? He thinks he's going to die. I put him on this plane across from you, the Lord was saying, reading your Bible, so that he would be brazen enough to say, "Why does my Hispanic housekeeper, who is an evangelical Christian, keep telling me, 'I'm going to die and go to hell if I don't get saved?'" And He put you with someone that would communicate to him across the aisle of the gospel. And I felt so bad that I turned right around my chair and said, "Excuse me." I said, "The reason why your Hispanic—uh—housekeeper says that in her limited vocabulary of English is because she's trying to share the gospel with you. Has anybody ever tried to share the gospel with you?" And I went to share the gospel with him, and—and sadly I had wasted most time. We were landing and they were saying, "Put up your tray tables and get your seats in the most uncomfortable upright position." You know, I was doing all that. So I wrote on the back of the track my name and—and I was going to try and write my cell phone number, but he says, "I've got to go." He says, "I'm—I'm catching another flight. I have to run."
I handed him the track. And he boop right off the plane. That was it. I got his name. I wrote it in my prayer journal. And I prayed for him.
Six months later, I was back at the home church where I was pastoring. I was walking like this, looking at my notes between the two services, and someone stood there. So, I just moved over, and I was looking at my notes, and they moved over. So, I moved back over, and finally I looked up, and there was the guy from the airplane. He found me. And he said, "As soon as I got off that airplane, I was so scared I was going to die." He says, "At the first bank of airline seats, I got right down on my knees, opened your track, and I read it all, and I asked God to save me." He said, "I've been looking for you for 6 months." He said, "God found me at 38,000 ft." You know, we're living in an unprecedented time, and the Lord has told us the world is ending, and we're supposed to be sharing the gospel.