For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many.” (Matthew 24:4) “Jesus answered and said to them: ‘Take heed that no one deceives you. The End-Times Church is Undeceived by Pretenders: A Church of Truth about God As the world shakes, this is the church we should be shaken into building. Thankfully, in Matthew 24, God’s already given us a blueprint of how the End-Times Church should look. And so, even as we try to transition to church life in the endemic New Normal, we need to get the scope of the task at hand right. If He’s coming again, these are the End-Times. With every report of war, earthquake and false Messiahs, and with every survey hinting that the love of many is indeed growing cold, Jesus’ return feels closer than ever before. We should be building the End-Times Church. We should not merely be looking to build the post-pandemic church. Even on that last note, progress is being made, as we’re down to 28% of the world not yet having heard the Gospel – down from 54.3% in 1900, according to the Status of Global Christianity 2022 report. ❓ The Gospel will be preached to the ends of the Earth (Matthew 24:14)īy our estimation: 6 out of 7. ☑️ The love of many will grow cold (Matthew 24:12) ☑️ Increase in wickedness (Matthew 24:12) ☑️ Many will turn from the faith betrayal and hate (Matthew 24:11) ☑️ Famines and earthquakes (Matthew 24:7) ☑️ Wars and rumours of wars (Matthew 24:6) ☑️ False Messiahs (Matthew 24:5) and false prophets (Matthew 24:11) He listed out some indicators that would foreshadow that day: Jesus, of course, knew that it could only refer to His Second Coming. It is unlikely that they were thinking of Jesus’ Second Coming, given that their foreknowledge of the Lord’s impending death, resurrection and ascension, and His future return someday as Judge. In Matthew 24-25 – sometimes known as the Olivet Discourse – the disciples ask Jesus: “What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” It feels like something bigger is in the works. This does not feel like business as usual. Since then, it’s been almost two years of incremental adaptation, technological adoption, occasional rays of hope and setbacks, all set against the continuous beat of institutional soul-searching (such as here, here, here and here). It is a situation so volatile and unprecedented that even the health authorities in Singapore had to backtrack on their planned relaxation of measures, with cases in the tens of thousands for many consecutive days.Ĭhurch life has not quite resumed to the same degree since March 2020, when – with the Circuit Breaker looming – all congregational services in Singapore were suspended, at first till end-April, then extended till June. It is almost two years ago to the day now when COVID-19 first got its name from the World Health Organisation in February 2020. This was set against a backdrop of geopolitical anxiety caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine the day before, which left hundreds dead.Īll this, against the wider context of a world turned upside down by a pandemic, to a degree that few could have anticipated. The tremors, stemming from a 6.0-magnitude earthquake about 500km away in Northern Sumatra, were felt by people in all corners of Singapore. At about 9.40am this morning (February 25), people across Singapore felt the Earth move under their feet.
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