We were looking at this last hour and the preparation for the coming of the Lord.  Come quickly, Lord Jesus.  Amen?  How many of you are ready to go home?  It has been quite a journey that we have been on as we enter the last days.  The Scriptures say iniquity will be abounding, and the love of many…  He is speaking of those in the church.  They will wax cold.  It is going to be a day of false prophets.  It will be a church that is raising to themselves teachers, having itching ears and wanting to hear smooth things, the prophet said.  They are being told that they are right with God when in fact, they still sit upon the throne of their own lives.  They are creating a Jesus in their own image.  In that hour, Scripture says, He is going to be purifying for Himself a church, a holy bride, and a chaste virgin.  He is paralleling that to our relationship with the world and the apostate religious system.  We must keep pure; amen?  In this hour, we must stay pure in our doctrine.  Because that is going to be one of the major attacks of Satan.  The false prophet will arise. giving authority and power to the man of sin, the Antichrist.  That apostate church, the great whore, is what the Bible speaks of that will lift him into power.  According to Thessalonians, we know that the true church is restraining that power until we are taken out of the way.  Come and get us, Lord; amen?

You say, “Well, surely there are souls to be saved.”  Scripture makes it clear that our God is a God of justice and mercy.  Let me remind you of one thing that many of us fail to remember.  I am off course already, but we will get there, to prayer.  Many of us almost have a kind of mindset.  I cannot see how anybody would, but it is this: “Well, I don’t know if I really want the Lord to come back.  I have loved ones that still need to be saved.”  If you love anybody more than Him, you are not worthy of Him.  There should be a longing and a desire in our hearts to see Him, to know Him, and to be known as we are known.  This surpasses any other passion in our lives.

Let me remind you of another thing, lest you forget about the good mercy of God.  The Tribulation is not only going to be a time of Jacob’s trouble, where damnation and judgment come upon the covenant people who have rejected Him for millennia.  They killed His prophets.  They are stiff-necked people.  He called them that over and over again.  The Scripture says that this Great Tribulation will be a time of God’s wrath poured out upon Israel and all those that dwell upon the face of the whole Earth.  Remember what else happens at that time.  There are going to be great witnesses that are going to stand up and proclaim the resurrection of Jesus.  There are going to be people that are martyred for His name’s sake.  They are preaching this gospel.  There are going to be angels flying to and fro in the heavens, proclaiming the gospel so every person who lives will hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.

God is merciful.  God is loving.  God is just.  Many will be saved in the Great Tribulation but not those who are apostate in this hour.  Those who are backslidden, those who are apostates, and those who once knew Him will be given over to strong delusion.  There will be no chance for their reconciliation with God.  We need to believe that God will reconcile them now.  The apostates...  We need to believe that God will bring them home.  But we cannot take upon ourselves any condemnation for those who are not ready.  In and of ourselves we do not love them to the degree that God loves them.  We cannot make or persuade anyone to come to Jesus.  They cannot come unless Father draws them by the Holy Spirit, but we can love them.  We can pray for them.  We can apply biblical principles of God’s judgment to the destruction of the flesh so that their souls might be saved, praise God.  That is where we find ourselves in this hour, and that is why it is an hour of prayer.