Brethren, I do not want you to be uninformed about them which have died and are Christians, that they are not as others. For we believe that Jesus died and rose, even so them which died as Christians will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain at the coming of Christ shall not go before the dead Christians. For Jesus himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, and the dead Christians shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds. We will meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Lord, if Jesus Christ does not come back to this world, he is a liar, because he emphatically said, I go and prepare a place for you, and if I go, I will come again. If Jesus Christ does not come back to this world, then death is victorious over life, and the grave is the victor. If Jesus Christ does not come to this earth again, we will never again see our loved ones. If Jesus Christ does not come back to this earth again, there will never be any peace on earth, and sin and unrighteousness will prevail. If Jesus Christ does not come again, the ultimate consequence of evil is inevitable. If Jesus Christ does not come back again, the devil is never going to be bound hand and foot, as Revelation says, and cast into the lake of fire, and there is no justice meted out on workers of evil. If Jesus Christ does not come back again, the bride of Christ is an unfinished product, and the church an incomplete dream. But Jesus is coming to this world. The Bible says he is coming exactly as you have seen him go. They're not going to send a substitute. Jesus will come in person. There will be no representative. There will be no ambassador. There will be no imitator. There will be no one coming in his stead. The Bible says this same Jesus, as you have seen, will in like manner come as you have seen him go. When he went, he went victoriously. He's coming victoriously. He went visibly. He's coming visibly. The second coming of Jesus Christ is a future event. Many misguided theologians believe that Pentecost was the second coming of Christ, and that the visible victorious return of our Lord in the future is not to occur, but that we are now in the millennium age. Well, all I have to say is, if this is peace on earth, then give me war any day. We are not in the millennial age of peace. Righteousness does not cover the earth. Righteousness does not flood the world as the waters cover the sea. There are those who believe that Pentecost was the coming of Christ, but that was the Holy Spirit coming into the world. The coming of Jesus is the re -entry of the Son of God coming into the world. There are those who believe that the death of a Christian is the coming of Christ, and we go to be with the Lord, that that is what Jesus meant about the second coming. Not so. Not so. The death of a Christian is our going to be with Christ. The second coming is Christ coming to be with us, and there is a difference. When will Jesus come? He will come when there is confusion in the world. He will come when iniquity abounds in the world. The world is going to have to move toward more and more lawlessness before the church will be raptured. Jesus is going to come when apostasy abounds. He will come when the ecumenical church is being formed. Because for Antichrist, after Jesus comes and takes the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers out of this world, for Antichrist to step forward and bring a false peace and a false security to the world, the world will have to be in a great state of unity. The ecumenical church will be a reality. There will be one metric system, one language, one court, one police system, one government, one church. Jesus Christ is going to come when unity abounds. Jesus Christ is going to come back, the Bible tells us, when there is a great power that comes on Israel from the north. Let me read to you from Ezekiel 38, verse 1. The word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshach and Tubal, and prophesy against them, and say, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I am against thee. O Gog, the chief prince of Meshach and Tubal, I will turn thee back, and put hooks in thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horse and horsemen, all of them clothed with all force, and all thine army, horse and horsemen, all of them clothed with sports of armor, even a great army with bucklers and shield, all of them having shields and helmets, Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them, all of them with shield and helmets, Gomer, and all lands of his band, the house of Torgamah, and the north quarters, and all of his band, and many people with thee. Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou and all thy company that are assembled with thee, and be thou a guard unto them. After many days thou shalt be visited. In the latter days thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of my people against the mountains of Israel, and they dwell safely, all of them, I'm sorry, which have been always waste, but it is brought out of the mountains of Israel, which have always been waste, but is brought forth out of the nations, and they dwell safely, all of them. Thou shalt ascend, and come like a storm. Thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land. Thou and all thy band, and many people with thee. In the end time, Israel is to be invaded by the bands of the north. The nations are to be led by Gog, the land of Magog. Gog of the land of Magog is clearly identified by Bible scholars as Russia and her allies. She is to come down, the Bible says, like a spoil to take her prey. It is strongly suggested that under the guise of coming as a police action against Israel, when the complicated East Middle East continues to move toward explosion, that they will come and intervene in the affairs of the Middle East. It seems that the stage is set. Russia has every reason to invade the land. She is in urgent need of vast resources of oil. that are there. The student of Bible prophecy looks continually for the invasion of Russia against Israel. They say that love makes the world go round. No, love just makes you dizzy, and you think the world's going around. Oil makes the world go round. Without oil, no microphone. Without oil, no piano. Without oil, no organ. Without oil, no wristwatch. Without oil, no bomb. No car. No tank. No airplane. No rifle. The Bible tells us that the vast power of the wealth of Israel and all of those oil holdings in all of the Middle East will be so coveted by the far north lands of Russia and her neighbors that they will invade. The invasion of the land is clearly prophesied by Ezekiel. The results are also set forth. Russia is to be utterly defeated, and only a sixth part of her large armies will escape with their lives and flee to the north. Five, six of her armies will be left dead on the battlefields of Israel, Israel, and they will learn. Woe unto him that cometh against Israel of God. Then Jesus is going to come when Israel blooms. Israel has been cursed and dispersed and divided. The rejected, misunderstood, persecuted nation of the world throughout all the centuries of time, Israel, before the coming of Christ, will once again flourish and bloom and blossom. The reason is this. The will of God, though thwarted and detained, will ultimately be done. Remember that. The will of God, though detained and thwarted, will ultimately be done. And the Bible says in John 1 .1 and in Colossians 1 .16 and 17, that Jesus made the world. He made it by himself. He made it for himself to rule on, to govern, to have relationship with him and give honor to him. And it must become a reality. He will come to his chosen people. He will come as he did the first time to the Jews, to the Jews again. He will sit, Luke 1 says, on the throne of his father David, where yonder one day who rules in Israel rules the world, and there Jesus will come. The Bible says Israel shall know her king, and the cursed, dispersed, dispelled nation of Israel around the encircling globe will once again flourish and be a united body, intact, flourishing, and prosperous, so ready to look up and receive her king when her redemption draweth nigh. The blessings of God upon Israel is that which will provoke Russia to invade. In Ezekiel 36, verses 33 to 36, we read, Thus saith the Lord God, in the day that I have cleansed you from all your iniquities, I will also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the waste shall be builded, and the desolate land shall be tilled, speaking of the flourishing of Israel. The desolate shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by, and they shall say, This land was desolate. It is now become like the Garden of Eden. The waste and desolate land and ruined cities are become fenced and are inhabited. Then the heathen that are left round about you shall know that I the Lord have builded the ruined places, and plant that which was desolate. I the Lord have spoken it, and I will do it. One of the latter -day miracles that we are seeing is the blessing of God upon Israel. For 2 ,500 years she has been cursed, and barren, and waste, and desolate. One only needs to visit the land today to see that the hills of her neighbors are bare, and where crops and where crops and fruit do not go in the rest of the Middle East. They grow and prosper with plenty in the land of Israel. The land only produces enough for a few herd of sheep, the land about. The barrenness of the land is great and highly obviously obvious to even the casual visitors. But when one leaves Syria and Jordan and goes into Israel, the contrast is amazing. There are fruit trees, oranges, bananas, tomatoes, are an abundant harvest. They have irrigated the land, and it is now one of the most prosperous, if not the most prosperous land per square inch in all the world. Israel today is an isolated garden of Eden in a land of barrenness in the Middle East. The same material blessings are evident in her cities. In Jordan and Syria, in Egypt, and other countries, the cities are old, dirty, run down, unkept. Even old Jerusalem is like that. In Jericho, Damascus, Ramoth, Gilead, Bethlehem, Hebron, they're all alike. Unkept, unclean, antiquated, and ancient. But as soon as you cross from that no man's land into the beautiful land of Egypt, of Jerusalem, it is like going into a new world. Jerusalem, on the other hand, is modern, clean, and improving. The Hebrew University is one of the world's three greatest universities. Her buildings are the finest and most modern to be found anywhere. The blessings of God upon the restored land of Egypt, of Israel, in the last 24 years is one of the greatest miracles in the history of the world. As a further example of her blessings, the cities of Taifa in Israel is a perfect one. This city is modern and clean and beautiful. It is more than 200 ,000 strong and has been built in just the last few years. No city in America is more beautiful or perfect or well laid out or modern or up -to -date than that city. In the old part of Jaffa, in the old, the old part of Jaffa still stands. Yet, Tel Aviv prospers today. The returning Jews have built a modern and beautiful country and her grand city of Tel Aviv is the queen of all the cities of the Middle East. This great difference in Israel and the other Middle East nations is no accident. It is because of the promised blessings of God, these blessings that were prophesied by the prophet Ezekiel. Ladies and gentlemen, I say simply to you tonight that the war, the lawlessness, the rebellion, the uncertainty of the world, every event in history is now culminating all at once in the obvious prelude to the coming of Jesus Christ. The Bible says in the last days there would be earthquakes. In the last 20 years there have been more mine disasters in North America than in the other 200 years combined. All through our nation, all through our world, mines are caving in. What is this? The underground shuffling of the sands of the world as this earth which also fell when Adam and Eve's end is groaning and travailing to be recreated and become a new heaven and a new earth. That too is a sign of the coming of Jesus Christ. The Bible says in the last days there will be disease and famine and pestilences. We have so disturbed the ecology that we live in a day of drought and drought means pestilence and pestilence means famine and famine means disease. They are talking about in the next 60 days the only water available for our great city of Houston may possibly be the digging of great wells all around the in and outside of our city. I am saying to you that what the church of Jesus Christ is going to do in conquest, in evangelism, in heralding the gospel we ought to be busy about doing now. No man that ever lived that ever read and believed and studied the word of God and took it as literal and true and imperative and wonderful and important as it is can look at world events and say like an exploding mushroom all of the prophecies of time are not culminating with us within our lifetime for us at this very moment. Now I've talked to you a lot about the signs of the coming of Christ and allude to the different ramifications thereof often. Let me in the next seven or eight closing minutes just briefly crystallize for your minds again from the beginning and to end what our God is doing. I want to say to you that every sin and every war and every conflict and every problem and every skirmish and every difficulty that we see being worked out in our world today is but an evidence a ramification of the original and only exclusive proposition that is being resolved in this world today and that is who's going to be God. Whose world is this? Will God be the God of the world or will Satan be God of the world? Jesus Christ it appears is the darling of the Trinity, the Father and the Holy Spirit. Love, adore, honor, exalt him like a rich man lavishing gifts on a rich son. He gave Jesus Christ the privilege of creating a world a place for a society over which he would rule creatures made in his image to love and adore and serve and be in fellowship with him. But one day when Jesus Christ had created the world when he was preparing to make man in his own image when the stage was set. Lucifer, the most intelligent, the most beautiful, the most powerful of all the angels, the bible says his heart was filled with pride. He exalted himself. He declared war on Jesus. He said it's my world I'm taking over and Jesus accepted the challenge. Lucifer came to this world. He has been subtly deceiving men through the ages to follow him, to serve him. Indeed the very first temptation with which he ever faced man, yonder in the book of Genesis, was when he came to Adam and Eve and he said, defy God. Be a God yourself. Follow me down with God. Do your own thing. His program, his philosophy, his way of life is lawlessness. A Christian psychologist has said that sin is an attitude which wishes God were dead. And the old human base nature, it exists in all of us. Just under the current of the top, the desire that we would really like to be a God ourselves, to act independently from the Father, to do our own thing, to exalt our will in opposition to that of the Father. And Jesus and Satan die with each other on the stage of the hearts of millions of men for surrender and control. Will Christ be God or will self be God? And that's the only question you have to answer tonight. That's the only decision you ever have to make in life. Is God going to be God or are you going to be God and Lord of your own life? It's going to get worse. Satan will begin to reveal himself more and more and more because he knows his days are numbered. And in these last days when obscenity and filth and pornography and a desire to do away with lawlessness, when a desire for the abolishment of every kind of slavery and of every kind of reserve and discipline is increasing, it is but the spirit of the age. It is but the rise of man saying secretly to God, I wish I had a world in which there were no gods. I wish I could do my own thing. Let's put down, let's abolish every law. Down with the court. Down with the lawyer. Down with the soldier. Down with police. Down with school. Down with officials. Down with preacher. Down with the word of God. Down with discipline and law and legalism and control and restraint. A world with no God is exactly what Satan wants. And his desire is surfacing fast because his days are numbered. Now the world is going to get worse. The Bible tells us in the last days there will be such awfulness that one day God won't be able to stand it anymore. He's going to look down and say get my church out of there. Get my blood bought Christians out of that filthy mess. And the Bible says the dead in Christ shall rise first. We that are saved that are alive will be translated. We're going to go with them and we're going to split heaven wide open. We're going out of this place. Now when that happens, the Bible tells us that all hell is going to break loose in this world. You know what's going to happen? For three and a half years, the world is going to get what it's always really secretly wanted. A world with no God. And it's going to get a dose of all the sin it wants. In all the resultant chaos and confusion that will result because of the absence of all law, Antichrist will step forward. He will be intelligent. He will be beautiful. He will be a beautiful person. He will be deceptive. He will be a religious leader. He will be a political leader. And he will have great influence. And the nations of the earth will herald him as king or president or what have you. The world will be so unified with one world church, one world court, one world language, one world army, that it will be easy for one man to take control of the reins of the government of the earth. Satan will get the world in the body of Antichrist in his hand. He'll have it. He'll control it. And he will become so powerful that he will exalt himself to the throne of Israel on David's throne. He will rip off the mask. He will declare himself for what he is. And he will say that he's God. And brother, right there's where the water's going to hit the fan. I mean, that's all she wrote. The cup of indignation of divine wrath will be filled and God is coming from heaven. The Bible says, behold, he cometh with clouds and all the holy angels with him. The Bible says, he cometh taking vengeance on them that know not God. The Bible says, thousands and thousands of angels stand before him. Listen, Hebrews says, 10 ,000 times 10 ,000 minister unto him. Brother, 10 ,000 times 10 ,000 is so many millions, you just can't count them. All the angels, the cherubs, the cherubs, the redeemed of the ages are all coming in thunderous judgment, the Bible says, from heaven with Jesus. And they're coming straight to Israel to take over the throne because who rules there, rules the world. Jesus said he would reign on the throne of his father, David. And the last conflict between Satan and Jesus for the control of hearts, the control of the world will be determined by the control of Israel from the east, from the north, from the south, from the west. The Bible says the armies of the earth will join together to do battle against him in the hills of Jehoshaphat, Megiddo, the valley of Armageddon, round the encircling Jerusalem. With Jerusalem as the pride, they will do battle. The Bible tells us in the battle of Armageddon, the blood will run to the horse's bits. He will call the great beast, the great bird from the four corners of the earth to come and drink the blood of great men and pick the flesh of dead men's bones clean from the residue that will be left over in Armageddon when our God shall come in triumphant glory and splendor. We're going to find out once and for all whose world this is. And it's my Father's world. It's my Father's world. I've looked in the last chapter. I live in a day of chaos and confusion and bewilderment. But there's no question in my mind where it's going to go. There's no question in my theology of what's supposed to be preeminent. There's no question in my heart about what the church is, what we're supposed to be doing. Evangelism, evangelism, evangelism. I am not a fatalist, but I am a biblical realist. I am saying simply to you, the dire cast, the world is not going to get better. And what the church is going to do that will count is not going to be trying to make a better world, but it's going to be trying to win as many men to Jesus as fast as we can in the time we have left. One day, every knee shall bow. One day, every tongue will confess. One day, everyone will acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord. You might, of constraint, be forced to bow the knee and confess Him as your judge. You might willingly, in a service such as this, bow the knee and confess Him as your Savior. But God made you to honor Christ, and you will do that. What a day. I can't wait to be there. I don't know what's going to happen. We'll be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, in the clouds, the marriage supper of the Lamb, the reward. They're going to call a little country woman over here and say, nobody knew your name. You didn't get in the newspaper. Nobody knew you were even living. But, sister, while that evangelist was out there winning hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Christ, it was your prayer yonder in the hills of East Texas, yonder in the country of Kentucky, where nobody knew about an old mountain woman that prayed and prayed for that boy, that prayed down the power of God. Billy Graham's wife may get 10 ,000 times the rewards he does, because she will have prayed for him, and nobody knew it. And we're going to be laden down with crowns and with rewards for our faithfulness to Jesus Christ. He'll stand there smiling. He'll stand there in glory. He'll stand there and show us those cursed feet and those punctured hands and the ribbon side and the wounded scalp. And from the past, somebody about a hundred billion folks back is going to say in quivering voice, crown him. Crown him. Crown him. Someone else will join in. Crown him. Crown him. Down the ages of time will come every angel and seraph and cherub, the prophets, the preachers, those that were slain for the foundation of the world, slain for the word of God, the Christian, the deacon, the Sunday school teacher, the godly will join in in every color and every clime and every language under the sun, reverberating down the quarters of heaven. Join him. Crown him like a great crown swell. Crown him. Crown him. Bring forth the royal tide in and crown him, Lord of all. We shall run by the tens and thousands and multiply tens of thousands. Lay our feet, our crown to the pierced feet of Jesus and step back and sing, Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe. This is Jesus' world. He's the ultimate victor. And I submit to you that the ultimate rule and victory of righteousness under King Jesus is the theme of the Bible, is the grand event toward which the world is moving, and what we ever do for Jesus under God. Let's get busy about doing now. May we stand and pray together. Father, thank you for Jesus, our Savior. What a day, what a day, when we crown him Lord of all. Oh, God, thank you that this world that steals your money and rejects your book and despises your teachings and breaks your laws and desecrates your name and blasphemes your church and perverts your gospel and in every other way, as Hebrews says, tramples the blood of the covenant underfoot and despises that blood and considers it a despicable thing and does, despite to the Holy Spirit, thank God, one day when Jesus comes, business is going to pick up. Things are going to change. Jesus is going to rule and be victorious. Thank God we're on the winning side. May we, like soldiers of the cross, conquering and to conquer, march on in faithfulness and steadfastness to the word of God for that glorious day when Jesus shall come and rule and reign in this world and the world to come. In Jesus' name, amen.