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A Planet in Upheaval

SERIES: The Appearing #1 of 5

2008-08-10

PRODUCTION #: 1061

SPEAKER: Shawn Boonstra

It has been called the worst disaster in United States history. An entire American city wiped out in a heartbeat by terrible forces of nature. Why does it seem like disasters are getting worse with each passing year? Is something happening to our planet that we should be aware of? And is it possible that ancient prophets saw Hurricane Katrina? Are we living on a planet in upheaval?

There is a prophecy recorded in the Bible that has haunted the human race for 2,000 years. It has bothered people as they've read it and they have often wondered, "Am I going to live to see this happen?"

Let me set the stage for you. Jesus and His disciples are walking past the temple in Jerusalem, and as they go by it, the disciples say, "Jesus, look at this temple! This is a symbol of the fact that God has blessed our nation above every other nation. This is a symbol of how important we are. And this temple is an attraction that draws the whole world."

But Jesus knows, at this point, that just 40 years down the road, the Roman armies are going to come and destroy the city of Jerusalem. And as He looks at the temple, He says, "One day, there will not be one stone left on top of another at this very spot."

Well, the disciples can't believe it. If the temple is going to be destroyed, in their minds, then it must be the end of the world. So they confer with each other and they come to Jesus with an important question.

You find it in the gospel according to Matthew (Matthew 24:3):

"Now as He [that's Jesus] sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, 'Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?"'

It's at this point that Jesus speaks some words that have haunted the world for nearly 2,000 years, because they talk about a period in history just before the end of the world.

Listen carefully now to the words that Jesus spoke beginning in Matthew, chapter 24 and verse four (Matthew 24:4-6):

"And Jesus answered and said to them: 'Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, "I am the Christ," and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet."'

And then verse seven (Matthew 24:7):

"For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places."

Well, the skeptic says, "Nonsense! We've always had earthquakes. We have always had famine, we've always had pestilence, and we've always had warfare." The skeptic says these can't possibly be signs of the end.

But the skeptics haven't read what Jesus says in verse eight. He finishes the prophecy by saying this (Matthew 24:8):

"All these are the beginning of sorrows."

Now, that word "sorrows" is a very interesting word. What exactly did Jesus mean by it?

Let me see if I can explain. It was about 1:30 in the afternoon, and I was sitting at my desk when the phone suddenly rang. It was my wife Jean, and she was saying, "Listen, I'm on my way over to your office."

"Well, that's nice," I said, "but why in the world are you coming to see me in the middle of a work day?"

"I'm coming to see you," she said, "because I've been in labor for the last hour and a half."

Well, at that point, I was convinced she should come. I couldn't get her because we only had the one car.

And when Jean arrived, she came up into my office, sat down on the couch and said, "Listen Shawn, there is something you need to understand. I know what you're like, and I don't want you to panic. It's not quite time for the baby to come yet, so you can go back and finish up whatever you're working on."

So I went back into my office and finished the letter that I'd been writing. And when I was done with that letter, I put my head out the door and said, "Honey, how are you doing?"

"I'm just fine," she said. "Shawn, don't panic, because we have all the time in the world. The contractions are at least 20 minutes apart. This baby's not coming anytime soon."

So I went back to work for awhile, and then I gave up. "C'mon," I said to Jean, "we're going to the hospital."

"No," she said, "it's far too soon to go to the hospital. Why don't we go out for lunch?"

Well, I wasn't about to go out for lunch with a baby on the way, so we decided to take our oldest daughter over to a friend's house where she could spend the night. And as we walked up to the door, my wife suddenly doubled over and grabbed her stomach.

"How far apart are the contractions now?" I asked.

"Ten minutes," she said. "But don't worry about it, this baby's still not coming anytime soon."

"Oh," I said, "that's it. We're going to the hospital right now."

Now, my wife tried to argue with me at that point, but I insisted. So we drove down to the hospital and pulled into the parking lot. And as we pulled in, my wife grabbed her tummy again. The contractions now were three minutes apart. And still, my wife didn't want to go inside!

Well, I convinced her to go, and when we got into the admissions office in the hospital, Jean looked the nurse in the eye and said, "I have no idea why I'm here."

The nurse looked her over and said, "I have a pretty good idea why you're here."

So they admitted her to the hospital, and they put her in the observation room. It's at that point that my wife told me to run downstairs and buy a sandwich because I still hadn't eaten all day. So I ran downstairs, bought a sandwich, and ran back up. And when I came around the corner to my wife's bed, to my horror, she was gone.

I turned around and looked, but there was nobody there: no doctor, no nurse, no aides, nobody! So I stepped outside and I looked down the long corridor. There must have been 30 doors along that hall, and I really didn't want to step into the wrong room. So I walked down the hall and I listened at each door. Is that my wife? No. Maybe that's my wife? Is this my wife? Maybe.

So with one eye pinched shut, I pushed open the door, and it was the right room. Our baby came at six o'clock. We arrived at the hospital at about 4:30. The baby arrived so fast that the doctor almost didn't make it there on time.

Now here is the point I'm trying to make. The skeptics say we've always had earthquakes. We've always had famines. We have always had pestilence. We've always had war, and we have always had religion gone bad. They say these things aren't signs of the end of time.

But they forget what Jesus actually said. He said, "All these are the beginning of sorrows."

You know what that word, "sorrows," means? Literally translated, it's contractions. It's labor pain. Just like my wife said the baby would never come, the skeptics say Jesus is never going to come.

But Jesus said, when the contractions get bigger, and they become more frequent, you will know it's almost time. So let me ask you a very important question. How big are the contractions on planet Earth?

Well, Jesus gave us signs to watch for in three general areas. He gave us signs in the religious world. He gave us signs in the political world, and He gave us signs in the natural world. So let's ask the obvious question: How big are the contractions in these three areas today?

Well, first of all, there are signs in the religious world. Jesus said that many would come in His name saying they are Christ, and that those people would deceive many others.

Think about this, in recent history, we have had Jim Jones who poisoned the followers who revered him as Christ in Jonestown, Guyana. And then there is Charles Manson, who convinced his followers that he was Jesus Christ. And then Sun Myung Moon from the Unification Church who claimed to be divine, and David Koresh, who told his followers, if you can believe it, that he was a sinful Christ.

Some studies indicate that as many as 1,200 people in North America, right now, at this moment, believe they are Jesus Christ, and they have a following. And Jesus said when many say they are Christ, that's a contraction. It means we are getting close to the Second Coming of Christ.

Then there are the signs in the political world that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 24, verse 7, Jesus says (Matthew 24:7):

"For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom."

In the 20th century, 203 million people died as a result of warfare. Right now, at this moment, there are 38 armed conflicts being fought in 28 countries all around this world. Every one of the United Nations' member nations is party to a territorial trade or other international dispute.

But worse than that, the eight countries that we know have nuclear weapons have enough warheads to kill off the whole human race 50 times over in just one hour.

And that's not even the scariest problem we face anymore, because people have discovered that nuclear warheads are a little too expensive. So now they are working on much cheaper weapons, things like biological weapons.

Then there's the issue of terrorism. In 2003, we set a world record for terrorist events, because there were 175 of them. But in 2004, that escalated to 655 terrorist incidents.

There is one more general area to look at and that's in the area of natural signs. In Matthew 24 and verse seven, Jesus said, there will be famines, pestilence, and earthquakes in various places.

Were you aware that right now, something like 28 million people face food shortages in Sub-Saharan Africa? A child some where dies of starvation every six seconds. And 850 million people, almost one-sixth of the earth's population, don't have enough food for basic nutritional needs. Plus four out of five children are born into families that can't possibly afford to feed them.

Watch it, said Jesus, when you notice that famine is on the rise, watch out. And watch, He said, when you see a lot of pestilence. Well what is a pestilence? It's a strange affliction or disease. It is the kind of stuff that kills you or wipes out your crops.

So, let's ask the obvious question: Do we have any new diseases? Absolutely. Remember streptococci? It became a flesh-eating disease.

Then spinal meningitis started making a comeback and the black plague reared its ugly head in the streets of India. And we heard about a new killer disease called Ebola that incidentally has accidentally made it to North America at least once in the past few years. Then we got a new disease called SARS that showed up in Asia and made its way over to Toronto, Canada. And on top of that, another new disease called West Nile virus started making the rounds.

Then we got mad cow disease, and now they say the Avian Bird Flu is gearing up to wipe out huge sections of the population. So let's think about this: Have you ever wondered where all these new diseases are coming from?

Jesus said, when you see these kinds of contractions in the world, then you know that it's just about time. And that's not all He said, because He also mentioned earthquakes. Now, the subject of earthquakes can be a little bit confusing, because different people look for different criteria when they measure the number and intensity of earthquakes, so I did a little study for myself.

I went to the geography and seismology section of a big university library and I grabbed every book they had on the subject of earthquakes. Let me share with you what I personally found.

In the first 300 years after Jesus, time, we had one major earthquake. What is a major earthquake? Well personally, I picked the ones that actually brought down lots of houses and destroyed cities.

In the next 200 years (after the first 300), we had two major earthquakes. The next 300 years brought one, and in the next 200 years there were three. In the 1000s we had just two. Skip forward to the 1300s, and there's just one for that century. And in the 1400s and the 1500s, there were one and two earthquakes respectively.

And then something very interesting happened in the 1600s. We jumped to seven major earthquakes in one century. In the 1700s, it nearly doubled and went up to 13. Then in the 1800s, it went up to 26 and in the 1900s I stopped counting when I got to 130 because I didn't need to count anymore.

It is obvious that something is happening, and in December 2004, we discovered it for sure. The tsunami earthquake measured 9.3 on the Richter scale, and it was the first earthquake to be felt by every seismograph on the face of the planet. It was also the longest quake in recorded history, 10 minutes long, and it ripped a gash in the ocean floor 800 miles long. CNN reported that even veteran scientists and seismologists were silenced because they had never seen anything like it.

Jesus said, when all these things begin to happen, you will know. When the contractions get bigger and stronger, then you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that His appearing is getting close. This planet is not going to end in a whimper; it's not going to end in a bang, it's going to end with the appearing of Jesus Christ.

Let me ask you an important question: Right now, what time is it? I've been looking at the headlines from the last few years, and they tell a pretty remarkable story. Let's start with probably the most memorable event in recent history, the attack on the World Trade Center.

Shortly after the twin towers fell, somebody started sending anthrax through the mail. It was pestilence through the U.S. postal service. Then shortly after that, we went to war in Afghanistan. And then a nuclear threat surfaced in North Korea that still has everybody worried.

And then a sniper started shooting people for fun in the Washington, D.C. area, and shortly after that, we went to war in Iraq. That's about when SARS showed up, another brand new disease we don't really know how to deal with.

And then shortly after that, we heard about kids getting kidnapped in unusual numbers. In Canada, Holly Jones went missing. In the United States, a religious nutcase took Elizabeth Smart.

And then there's the smog cloud that is suffocating a lot of Asia, stretching all the way from India to the east coast of China. It's so big that it disrupts the eco-system, ruining life for tens of thousands of farmers. And that's when the mad cow crisis first showed up in North America, followed quickly by the West Nile virus.

Then came the fall of 2003, when two devastating hurricanes made their way all the way up the East coast within a week of each other. And in 2004, four devastating hurricanes hit the Gulf in just six weeks.

But of course, those storms all pale by comparison with the damage done by Katrina and Rita. I don't know if you realize it, but 2005 is the first time in the history of naming storms that we ran out of names, and had to start using letters from the Greek alphabet. And according to a recent edition of TIME Magazine, the number of category four and five hurricanes has nearly doubled in the last few years.

There is no question about it anymore. Everywhere I go, people are asking me, "Pastor, what in the world is going on? Is something changing?"

I think something is changing. Discover Magazine, in January of 2005, called 2004 the "year of calamity," because never in the history of the earth had they seen so many natural disasters in just one year.

Let me ask you, what time is it? Is it time to be worried? Is it time to be afraid? Not if you know Jesus. As a matter of fact, this is a time to start getting excited.

Let me read you something He said in John, chapter 16 (John 16:21-22):

"A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you."

There is no question some painful things are going to happen. Jesus calls them contractions. But one day soon, you are going to forget the pain, Jesus says. Because He's coming back, and it's all going to be different.

You see, Jesus knows what we are like. So many people are hanging onto the guardrail of life with white knuckles, afraid of what might happen next. So Jesus, in His love for us tells us. He gives us a heads-up so we don't lose hope when the storms begin to blow. And He gives us a light to watch for at the end of the tunnel so we can put the pain of living in this sinful world in its proper perspective.

A million years from now, as you walk the streets in an earth made new, you are not even going to remember what this old world was like. And so maybe, just maybe, God is allowing all these contractions to take place now so we don't put our confidence in all the wrong places.

Maybe He is trying to tell us something. Maybe He's trying to tell us that this world is not our home and that something better is coming.

And if there is one thing I know for sure, it's that He is trying to tell us to lift up our heads, because the appearing is just about here.

Jesus has always promised that He would come back. And when He makes a promise, you can count on it.

PRAYER:
Father in heaven, You have given us a remarkable picture of the future that leaves some people a little worried. But today we have faith that you are still in control, and that Jesus is coming. Teach us to place our faith in you, and to count on our Savior's appearing. And above all, come quickly, Lord Jesus, so that we can stay in your presence forever, in the earth made new. For we ask it in Jesus' name, Amen.

Scriptures Used in “A Planet in Upheaval”

"Now as He [that's Jesus] sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, 'Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?"'
—Matthew 24:3

"And Jesus answered and said to them: 'Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, "I am the Christ," and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet."'
—Matthew 24:4-6

"For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places."
—Matthew 24:7

"All these are the beginning of sorrows."
—Matthew 24:8

"For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom."
—Matthew 24:7

"A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you."
—John 16:21-22