35. The Big Showdown

LONNIE: Glad you could join us once again for Exploring the Word.

JEANNIE: We hope you’ll enjoy digging into the riches of Scripture with us.

LONNIE: Today we’re going to take on a subject that relates to how history is going to come to a climax, how the battle between good and evil is going to end.

JEANNIE: We’re going to look specifically at the question of how you can be ready for the grand finale, how you can be sure you’re standing on the right side.

LONNIE: Now it’s true, people have been talking about this for a long time. In fact there’s even a bumper sticker out that pokes fun at the subject: “Jesus is Coming. Look busy.” Well today we’re going to be talking about something besides looking busy. Whether or not you believe Jesus is returning to Earth soon, you know there’s a moral struggle going on. Big issues are clashing.

JEANNIE: So a lot of us want to know: what are the specific issues? Where is the dividing line? Just how do you distinguish God’s message in the end times, from something that’s deceptive or destructive?

LONNIE: People get fooled, people get off-track, in a variety of ways these days. But right now we’re going to look at an essential issue that is going to become a turning point, a test, if you please, in the climax of history. We’re going to look at the bottom line. This is a crucial distinction between God’s way and not-God’s-way. This is the dividing line between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness.

The crucial difference is this: a kind of freedom that turns into oppression vs. a kind of law that turns into love.

One afternoon in May of 1880, a U.S. marshal and his deputies faced off against a group of farmers at a place called Mussel Slough, a bare patch of ground near a modest homestead. The marshal was trying to evict the farmers. The land they had worked for some time belonged to the Southern Pacific Railroad. It had shot up in value. And now the farmers couldn’t afford the soil under their feet.

They were ready to resist by force of arms. The marshal was trying to get them to leave their homesteads peacefully.

Suddenly a skittish horse knocked the marshal off his feet – and shooting started. Many would debate who fired the first shot. But when the smoke cleared, seven men were lying on the ground, dead.

That real-life tragedy at Mussel Slough would become the stuff of legend. It would become the Wild West gunfight, the quintessential showdown, face-off, High Noon, Gunfight at OK Corral.

If you want to understand the real forces at work behind the conflicts in the Wild West, you have to go back to Mussel Slough.

Well, to really understand the forces at work in our world, as it lurches toward a wild, wild end-of-time, you have to go back to the original clash between good and evil, the original cosmic gunfight, if you please. You have to go back to a war in heaven.

It started with Lucifer, a brilliant archangel. He allowed jealousy to take root in his heart. He nursed his pride. Lucifer began grumbling about God getting all the glory. The Bible gives us a glimpse of this in Isaiah 14:12:

“You said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne
above the stars of God...
I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.’”

Instead of enjoying God's fellowship, Lucifer wanted to compete with Him. He challenged God's right to rule. Lucifer the archangel turned into Satan the accuser. Finally he led a third of heaven's angels in open rebellion against God's government. The book of Revelation tells us:

“And there was war in heaven...The great dragon was hurled down – that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.” Revelation 12:7, 9

Lucifer wanted to do things his way. He wanted independence. He wanted freedom. And he wanted to drag a lot of other angels down with him. So he was kicked out of heaven. He came to this Earth to try to sell his alternative plan, to try to sell his picture of freedom: we really don’t have to do it God’s way.

In the Garden of Eden, he promised Eve, “You will be like God, knowing good and evil.” But it wasn’t a promise of godliness; it was a promise of autonomy, of being above the rules, above the law.

Satan had tried to raise his throne above God’s authority, above the law in heaven. And now on earth he would try to prove that God's law was not necessary and that people could be happy without fellowship with God.

Satan’s, “You can be like God,” was the promise of ultimate freedom. You can be above the law.
And I believe that, in a nutshell, is the issue that’s going to hit people in the end time. Do you want to know what the Enemy is up to? Do you want to know what deception is going to center around in the end times? It’s this:

A promise of ultimate FREEDOM.

That’s based on this assumption:

We don’t need God’s LAW.

That’s it. That’s Satan’s basic sales pitch. It comes in many forms, many disguises, but it boils down to this: the promise of ultimate Freedom—without God’s Law.

That was Satan’s sales pitch when he tempted Christ in the wilderness. He promised Jesus the world on a string. You can have it all, if you bow down to me. That is, if you flaunt the first principle of God’s law, the first of the Ten Commandments: “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Exodus 20:3

That will be Satan’s sales pitch in the end times. The Antichrist figure, or the beast, is pictured as someone who dazzles the whole world, who seems able to do anything, who seems able to give people everything. But what’s the hidden catch? Daniel pictures the beast this way:

“He shall speak pompous words against the Most High . . . He shall intend to change times and law.” Daniel 7:25

You can have everything—if you don’t have God’s law. That’s the basic lie that will trip people up in the end times. And it’s the lie that’s tripping people up today.

The promise of freedom, without God’s law, always turns into the SLAVERY of our human nature.

The Apostle Peter warned about false teachers who try to lure the gullible back into error:

“While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage.” 2 Peter 2:29

The promise is freedom. But detouring around God’s law always ends in slavery.

Now, let’s look at the alternative to this bad news. Let’s look at the truth God is trying to establish as history moves toward a climax.

God’s Kingdom, in contrast to the kingdom of darkness, is based on what? What’s the bottom line? Well, Jesus made it pretty clear. He said that all the Law and the Prophets, in other words, all of God’s revelation, hangs on one word: love. Love God with all your heart; love your neighbor as yourself. That’s in Matthew 22.

Paul made it pretty clear in 1 Corinthians 13. There he eloquently tells us why human life is nothing without love.

John made it pretty clear. He tells us simply: God is love.

God’s kingdom is based on the promise of LOVE.

Let me give you just one example. It comes from India.

Some time ago a Norwegian missionary named Lars came to live among two-and-a-half million people called the Santal. They lived in a region north of Calcutta.

Lars learned the language pretty quickly and soon people were coming from miles around just to hear this foreigner speak their language so well. So he began to talk about Christ's great kingdom of love to these people; He explained the good news of salvation.

Now Santal culture appeared to have had no contact with any Jewish or Christian influence. So Lars, like many missionaries, wondered how many years it would take before these people showed an interest in the gospel.

Well, to his amazement, the Santal were immediately electrified by his words.
One of the their leaders exclaimed, "What this stranger is saying must mean that Thakur Jiu has not forgotten us after all this time!”

Now Thakur was the Santal word for "genuine," and Jiu signified "god." The genuine God?

A Santal elder proceeded to tell the story of his people from the beginning. As Lars listened he began hearing amazing parallels to the Bible story. There was the creation of the first man and woman, their temptation and fall. There was a flood that engulfed corrupt mankind. The elder explained how worship of the one true God had been corrupted by spirit worship.

Lars began to realize that these people had been prepared to receive the Good News just as the Jews were prepared by their sacrifices and ceremonies to receive Christ as the Messiah. Before Lars knew it, he had thousands of inquirers on his hands, begging to know how they could be reconciled to Thakur Jiu through Jesus Christ. They were thrilled by the thought that the rift between themselves and the Genuine God could be healed.

And Christ’s love did conquer. In this one Santal mission, 85,000 believers were baptized. And soon many other missions were created to evangelize and train those who had been waiting so long for Thakur Jiu.

God’s principles center around love. He doesn’t coerce. He doesn’t manipulate. He doesn’t oppress. That’s something the Enemy does. God’s government is based on love.

But here’s the interesting thing. And this is something that, I believe, will become more and more of an issue in the end times. In Scripture, love is based on God’s LAW. It arises from God’s law. It is nurtured by God’s law.

A lot of people don’t make that connection. Fewer and fewer are making that connection today.

Listen to how Jesus Himself described it in John 14. This was your homework assignment from last week. We asked you to look at this passage and think about the relationship between God’s law and God’s love. John 14 brings us one of Christ’s last discourses to His disciples.

“He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.” John 14:21

How do we express love? By keeping God’s commandments. And God the Father responds in kind. He expresses love to us, and Jesus manifests more of Himself to us.

Now at first glance this may appear legalistic. Is God saying He will only love us if we keep His commandments? Well, many verses in Scripture celebrate the unconditional nature of God’s love. So what is this verse talking about?

It’s talking about how we experience God’s love. It’s talking about how God’s love becomes real in our lives. God can love us unconditionally, but if we don’t obey His principles, we won’t take in the benefits of that law.

It’s very much like the love of a parent for a son or daughter. Children won’t benefit from the parent’s love unless they live at home, follow the rules, recognize the parent’s boundaries. That’s how they grow up safe and healthy.

If children wander off to do their own thing, they may be loved very much by a parent, but they won’t experience that love; they won’t benefit from that love.

Look a few verses down in John 14 at something else Jesus said:

“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.” John 14:23

Keeping Christ’s Word, following His commands, results in what? The Father and Son “make Our home with him.” The Father and Son enable us to grow up, spiritually, in a healthy, nurturing environment.

Love is based on God’s law. It arises from God’s law. That is the truth that Satan is trying to subvert. He’s got his ad campaign going. He’s promising freedom; he’s saying we don’t need God’s law.

But the truth is, God’s truth is, following the law is what enables us to experience God’s love, the practical benefits of God’s love in our lives.

And what is the end result of that obedience?

Listen to the words of Jesus again.

“If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:31, 32

What’s the end result of abiding in Christ’s Word, of following His commandments? Freedom. True freedom.

Obedience results in FREEDOM. Listen to James expand on this principle:

“But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.” James 1:25

God’s law is really the law of liberty. The Enemy wants us to believe that evading God’s law is the way to freedom. But in reality that ends in slavery. We end up imprisoned by our worst impulses.

God calls us to a life based on love. It’s a love defined by God’s law. Love is how we fulfill the law. And the law is how we experience God’s love. Love and divine law are inseparable.

And our obedience results in genuine freedom.

The Enemy claims we can have it all if we just get out from under the law. But God shows us that, it’s precisely within the boundaries of the law that we can be blessed in everything that we do.

The promise of freedom without the law ends in slavery.
The promise of love, arising out of God’s love, results in true freedom.

The stark contrast between these two ways of life is becoming more and more evident.

JEANNIE: Lonnie, I think you and I have seen how blessed our lives have been as a result of trying to follow God’s essential commandments.

LONNIE: I think we’ve avoided an awful lot of heartache and misery because of those divine boundaries. No question.

JEANNIE: And I feel fortunate too to belong to a church that emphasizes the eternal nature of God’s moral law, the Ten Commandments, the law of love. I think some people just sort of assume that when you accept Jesus as your Savior you sort of graduate to a higher place and don’t need the law anymore.

LONNIE: That is a common misconception, I think. But the ironic thing is that Jesus is holding out His commandments, God’s law, and saying, this is how you can be blessed as a believer; this is how your life can be enriched.

In my mind, a really useful distinction is this: We’re not saved by keeping the law. We are blessed by keeping the law.

JEANNIE: I like that. You know Lonnie, talking about these issues that are going to intensify in the end times, and the conflict between good and evil – it can get a little scary. What can we say to people today that’s especially encouraging? In other words, we’ve talked about the two sides in the battle. Maybe we should talk about who’s going to win.

LONNIE: Good idea.

I think we can all take great comfort from the fact that love is going to win in the end. God’s kingdom of love is going to prevail over every dark force arrayed against it.

Here’s one reason I believe that so strongly. Christ’s kingdom of love is making conquests all over the world. It’s breaking through to people’s hearts in all kinds of ways—in every corner of the globe. It’s bridging cultures. It’s leaping over conflicts. It’s outmaneuvering prejudices. It’s igniting hopes and soothing fears – everywhere.

I’ve seen it happen. This ministry has been part of it happening. And I can tell you there is no force in this world greater than the love of Christ. There is nothing that can transform individuals, or transform society, like His grace. Nothing comes close.

Friends, battle lines are being drawn right now. The Enemy is fine-tuning his most seductive lie. But we can know who’s going to win in the end. And we can know how to stand firmly on the winning side. We can stand for truths that are eternal. We can place our hope in the kingdom that lasts forever.

Will you make that commitment with me right now? Let’s stop discounting God’s law. Let’s stop making detours around His eternal principles. Let’s determine to follow them as we live in the love of Jesus Christ, as we bask in the grace of a Heavenly Father. Let’s decide that we will follow His leading implicitly—so that we can be blessed in all that we do.

Father, thank You for establishing Your kingdom of love and reconciliation on this earth. Help us to firmly grasp the principles that underlie that kingdom. Helps us to live in your love. Help us to abide in Your Word. Help us to find our place of safety in Christ who died for us and lives for us. Help us to cling to Him through the coming conflict. In Jesus name, amen.

JEANNIE: It’s time to tell you about our homework assignment for next week. Lonnie and I would like you to read two short passages in the book of Revelation.

LONNIE: They are passages that picture two very different churches, symbolized by two women. Look at Revelation 19:7,8 and Revelation 17:4. Check out these pictures and try to think about what the images represent.

JEANNIE: So remember, Revelation 19:7,8 and Revelation 17:4.

LONNIE: Until we meet again, God bless you. Never stop Exploring the Word. And remember, God really does love you.