In this sermon, the preacher discusses the importance of recognizing and repenting for our sins. He references Romans 2:5, which asks if we despise the riches of God's goodness and forbearance, not realizing that it is His goodness that leads us to repentance. The preacher also speaks about the hardness of people's hearts and the consequences of treasuring up wrath against the day of judgment. He shares a personal story of a tragic accident involving a young man from his church, highlighting the need for prioritizing time with God. The sermon emphasizes the need to watch and pray always, in order to escape the trials and tribulations of life and stand before the Son of Man. The preacher also discusses God's anger towards the world for rejecting the gospel and the increase in diseases as a result of sin.

This is Bill McLeod speaking from Winnipeg, Canada. I want to speak first of all about tribulation and the Great Tribulation. I want to speak on God and what has been called the Judgment Day. John 5 says that man is born of recovery as a spot-throng of women. John 14 says that man is born of a woman as a few days and is full of government. John 16 says that through Jesus in the world we shall have tribulation. Acts 14, 22, Paul says that we must see much tribulation in Herod's kingdom. In 2 Kings 2, 8 and 9, Paul asks us to remember that Jesus Christ is the seed of David, raised from the dead, according to my gospel. And he says, when I suffer trouble, as it even doeth, even under bonds. And in Revelation 1, 9, John says that he was a companion in the tribulation. A different article is there in the original. Alright, so tribulation is the common lot of man. And then, for Christians, many are the afflictions of the righteous. But, thank God, the Lord delivers him out of them all. Now, apart from this kind of tribulation which we all experience and go through, we have what the Bible calls the great tribulation. Daniel spoke of it in chapter 12, verse 1. He said there would be a time of trouble such as never was to that time. And in Matthew 24, 21, Christ said there shall be great tribulation such as was not, nor would ever again be. Luke 21, 25-27, in clear language, Christ said, And upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity the seeing of ways of war, and men's hearts failing for fear. And for looking after those things which are coming on the earth for the powers of heaven, it shall be shaken. Alright, in the last days, Paul, 2 Timothy 3, 1. He said that in the last days perilous times would come. Perilous, sometimes they can say dangerous, difficult, hard. Perilous times, dangerous times. The reason being, he says, in the context, the men shall be lovers of their own selves. And again, he says in the context, men will be lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, or instead of lovers of God. John speaks in Revelation 12, 7-9 about there being war in heaven. That seems very strange. War in heaven? How can there be war in heaven where God rules and reigns? Well, that's exactly what he said there in Revelation 12, beginning at verse 7. Michael and his angels fought against the devil and his angels. And the devil was cast out and his angels came to the earth. And so he has great wrath because he knows he only has a short time. Christ described those last days, Matthew 24, 12, Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many, literally the love of THE many, shall get cold. So, in Revelation 11, 18 we read, we have an angry world and an angry God in place of course. It's exactly what it says, So we have an angry devil because he knows he only has a short time, Revelation 12, 12. Was he cast out? Has he already been cast out? What was the difference of opinion among Bible scholars? I'll tell you what I think. Revelation 2, 13 speaks about pergamosis twice it says, that that's where Satan's throne is. Well, his throne was in heaven, it's gone, so I take it for granted that Satan has been cast out of heaven already. Then we want to talk about God and the judgment mode, which I think as a world we have already entered into to some extent. Israel, Amos 3, 2, God said, You only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore I will punish you for your iniquities. And in Matthew 27, 24, and 5 you'll recall, Get them to release Christ, and he took a basin of water and washed his hands, and they said, His blood be on us and on our children. Now, in Luke 21, 23 it says, speaking not of the future but of the past, at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, he said, There shall be great distress in the land on wrath upon this people. And in 1 Thessalonians 2, 15 and 16, Paul said, That the wrath of God has come on Israel to the uttermost. And that phrase, I understand, means in point of time. There is no way you can understand the history of this nation without understanding They persecuted the prophets, the Old Testament prophets. They killed some of them. And in the New Testament days now they persecuted the apostles. Christ said, Some of you, speaking to the twelve, It was people and wrath from God. Those Christian people must love them, pray for them, and encourage them to think of their Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, the true Messiah of God. Great distress, wrath on this people. And Gentile nations, too, under the judgment of God. Jeremiah 1, 10, when Jeremiah was called by God to be, He was called to be a prophet to the nations, not just to Israel. And so he was told to root out and tear down and throw down. He is speaking here of nations of the world. And of course he did that in a very, very clear way. If you recall, in Jeremiah 25, there are 27 nations that he spoke of as being under the judgment. Now, Proverbs 26, 2 says, The curse will never come without a cause. They made a special study of that one time, marking in the margin every verse in the Bible that deals with this thing, this truth. So it will never come without a cause. Ezekiel 14, 23, God said, I have not done without cause, nor have I done. So God is taking responsibility for what he has done, and he hasn't done anything without a cause. He's been given to do it because of certain evil things that nations, because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God. And so God brings changes, changes in the weather, changes in many ways, many different ways, economic downturns and changes in pestilences. He does this because they won't listen to the soft tones of the gospel of Christ. So he speaks to them in judgment, helping them, hoping that they'll listen to what he says. Ezekiel 14, 21 speaks of four sore judgments that God uses in judging the nations of the world. The sword, the famine, pestilence, and beasts, hurtful beasts. There was no fear among these people who came from Babylon and other areas to live in the cities of Israel were now empty because they had been carried into captivity. There was no fear of God among the sources of God sent lions among them. And men began to fear God, and they asked for help to understand who this God of Israel was. First Chronicles 5.11 says there fell down many slain because there were two great world wars and millions of people died. It's been computed that probably more civilians died than soldiers died because of the indiscriminate bombing of cities. And, of course, added to these four sore judgments, there's floods and fires and earthquakes and tornadoes and hurricanes and volcanoes. After during the reign of that particular political system, it's computed that around 30 million people died who opposed, in any way refused to go back, plagued with communism and showing what a role that they had assumed. On the set of phrase they used, said, that is what was done. What about today? Are we into a judgment moment? I think we are. This is a terrible thing, this reign. Job 37.13 says, oh, three or four blizzards that were so heavy that people, some people talk about just hibernating until it's done. Then in the province of Ontario, we have a terrible life story. We've had it, too, here in Canada, I'm saying. Then in the province I was in, Manitoba for two years. Then Alberta had a drought for several years and British made serious fires and had no people there. So we've had it all across Canada. Then if you remember the four sore judgments, one of them was what is called hurtful beasts, that is beasts that attack people. Well, we've had that, too, you know, because here in North America, both in the States and Canada, we've had the cougars and bears attacking. We've had in the province I live in, that is, two cases where bears, not being hunted, not being molested in any way, no cubs around. The bears were suddenly sore judgments. All right, this is what has happened. Then when it comes to the fish, you know, in the West Coast, ox are being depleted and they don't know what's happened. They're just sort of fading away to some extent. Depleted, they just disappeared. We don't know where they are. God does it sometimes as a judgment. And then, of course, you remember the tsunami waves where maybe 200,000 people died. And then this year in the United States after the tornadoes, we had many, many tornadoes. And then these tsunami waves of maybe 200,000 people losing their lives and billions of dollars. Now in Naaman, chapter 1, verse 3, called whirlwinds. In Amos 5, verse 3 and verse 9 are the same. That's repeating chapter 1. Psalm 148, verse 8 says, stormy wind, he's angry with the world. Now the Jew, he's angry with the Jew because they rejected him. Totally ignored. Then pestilence, that's one of the four sore judgments. That's disease. There used to be just two sections of disease called AIDS. Millions affected. Now listen carefully to what I'm saying. Don't misquote me on this. It's basically a sin problem. Then it is a sin problem. You can't blame the children. The real problem, people, is this. That it's a political problem instead of a medical problem. You know what I mean by that? Exactly what I said. There's maybe 130 men there. They have less AIDS in Japan than they have in Canada. And why is that? Well, in Japan, if a doctor discovers you have AIDS, he has to report you immediately. He can be severely chastised if he doesn't report you. And you will be quarantined immediately. Certain people are screaming, if I have AIDS, you have no right to know that. You can't betray this. It's a trust thing. I have a right to secrecy. No, they don't have a right. This is a political problem. And so because it's not a medical problem, people are not being quarantined. And so it's spreading much faster in the population. As a matter of fact, there are probably hundreds, maybe thousands of people who would not have died of AIDS in North America had it been treated as a medical problem. People with this particular disease, they need to be quarantined, taken care of. Both Japan and Cuba are treating it as a medical problem. But basically, a far smaller percentage of the people are afflicted with this particular disease, or in the USA. I wonder, I sometimes am amazed that the medical profession caved in to the demands of some people who wanted to have left, just totally left alone. Then other diseases are making a comeback. Malaria, they thought they had it completely beaten around the world. Now they find it's resisting, certainly. There are other diseases besides, but this is happening too. And so this new flu carried by birds and so on, right now in Turkey, there's numbers of cases. They're so afraid it's going to get out into the world as a whole. He said, remember, I have not done without cause all that I have done. I have a reason for it, a cause for it. We may not know what that cause is, but if we stop and think and look around, we can see. Another problem we're facing is, you know, when you hear and keep talking about the American dream, well, it's the Canadian dream too. You know, having a two-car garage and a number of vehicles. We're trying to make the kind of, our money is not earned over. Now, among Christians, we have the prosperity syndrome, as it has been called, as a child of the king, that is a child in the bank. And the saying among these people is, grab it and grab it. If you see something you really want, then you grab it. You pray about it. God will give it to you. You don't have to worry about this at all. This, in my opinion, is an extremely dangerous and unbiblical. All right, Jesus said, foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man, that's himself, has not where to lay his head. We find references in the Gospel of John to, every man went to his own house. Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. If you study the last verse, and the soul, Jesus had no place to stay. And people are saying, oh, no, he was wealthy, he was wealthy. What about Peter? Well, he said to the lame man, he was just going to heal, silver and gold have I none. So Jane says, how come I'd rather have change? And I asked her, she'd never read James 2.5. God chosen the poor of this world. She said, I will never, ever say that again. I said, I didn't know this was in the Bible. Why are poor people rich in faith? Well, it is because they have to be in order to survive. And so we were considerably short. How did we handle it? Let anybody know if we had it. Who else needs to know? God knows. And so we stayed that way. There were times we had no money, and maybe had no food in the house, but it never lasted long. We could never say we were starving in some way. I'm a wantor of this world, we're rich in faith. And if I say again, it's not bad to be poor, it can be a real blessing to us. The Bible says, having food and rain, let us be there with content. Godliness with contentment is great gain, for we want nothing into this world. I can give you your total biography in just two statements, nothing in, nothing out. That's what Paul said there in 1 Timothy 6. They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare into many foolish and hurtful lest we should drown men in destruction and perdition. And the man of God is asked to flee from this love. It doesn't mean anything. Those who suppose it gain his godliness in 1 Timothy 6 also. Hebrews 13, 5 says, Let your conduct be without covetousness, and be content with such things as you have. For he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you, so that we may boldly say the Lord is mine. Well, we read about in Ezekiel 33, 31, Israel with their mouth they show much love, but their heart grows after their covetousness. After Israel was spanked by God and sent into captivity for 70 years, they didn't fall into worshipping idols made of wood and stone again. But in Ezekiel 14, God said to the prophet Ezekiel, Son of man, these men have set up idols in their hearts. Now they were covetous. And covetousness is idolatry, and the covetous man is an idolater. And so we read in Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3, verse 5. Okay. Let your conduct be without covetousness. Keep that in mind. Israel and the world are under God's judgment because of the fact that we're chasing a piece of paper, a dollar bill. Do you know that in our world there are 75 countries where the average annual income is 5% of what it is in Canada's states? I talked to some men, and they were working for a tailor. I asked what they were making, and it worked out to about $2 a week. People listen, not $2 an hour. Recently I heard somebody on a TV program, and they were, all right, so God is angry with the world because of this. And we've made money out of it. When we're an idolater in the eyes of God, no wonder that things are happening the way that they are. Then there's something else we need to consider, and that is the fact that God is shaking the nations, but the dayspring taking hold of the earth. Jesus is the dayspring. It means that there is a day coming in which Christ will remove the wicked from the earth, and it's spelled out in clear terms in Matthew 13. Isaiah 219, people hide in rocks and caves when God arises in the day of his. Isaiah 24, 18 to 21, exceedingly, utter his voice from Jerusalem, the heavens and the sea and the dry land. He's the one we all need. We may not understand that and know that, but he is the one that we all need, and he's the one. The powers of the heavens shall be shaken. Then shall appear the sign of the sun, roaring, speaking of unsettled conditions, glitter to one's men hearts, failing for fear. The powers of heaven shall be shaken. 12, 25 to 9, has something to say to us, something that speaks. For if they did not escape her, who is he who spoke on earth? The reference is to Moses. Much more, should we not escape, we turn away from him who speaks. God spoke in Old Testament days by the prophets and his son, Jehovah. His voice then shall appear, but now he is promised, saying, yet once more, I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, yet once more, signifies a removing, let us have grace, a mark, a consuming fire. Now, the question is asked, will the church be raptured before the great tribulation begins? Oswald Smith felt that the church would go through the tribulation, and here's what he said. It's just a point on which great and godly men disagree, so I would advise all just to be ready. Romans 2, 4 and 5 asks this question, do you despise the riches of God? The goodness and forbearance and long-suffering of God leads us to repentance. Then he speaks about people's hardness and unrepentant heart, treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. One of my churches years ago had been a bad accident, and one of the young men from my church had been killed along the way. This man from my church was the only child that he and his wife had, and they never did have another child. And so Luke 21 says, take heed, lest at any time your heart be weighted down with intemperate indulgence and drunkenness and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unaware of it. So how do we handle it? He says, watch therefore and pray always, that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass. Now he's referring there to the rapture, then of course those in the rapture will be only those who are walking with God and counted worthy. So this puts the whole thing on the basis of works and not on the basis of the grace of God, which it has to be. This would mean a partial rapture, only those Christians who were really walking with God. I think if you study the context in Luke 21, he's talking about what happened at the destruction of Jerusalem A.D. 70. Christ had warned his people that this was coming. We're told by Christ also that those days would get so severe that unless God intervened and shortened the days, no flesh would be saved. You and me, if you're a Christian, he's going to shorten those days. Otherwise, he said, there would be no flesh saved alive. They used to laugh about that when they fought with nobody left today. And democratic nations are very much afraid of some rogue nation getting atomic weapons and using them. That can very easily happen. All right, so we have to be very careful here. I think he was referring... You see, when he told his disciples, when you see the city surrounded by armies, get out. Get out. Don't enter into the city. Get out if you're there. Well, the armies came and surrounded the city. How could they get out? Historically, here's what happened. The Roman armies came, surrounded the city, and this alerted all the Christians in the city to what Christ had said. Then the armies departed for a short period of time in the area walking with God and got out. I suppose there were some Christians that were cold and backslidden and broke in. And thousands, tens of thousands of people gathered in the temple. They were so sure that the armies, the soldiers, had been given... Apparently a soldier running by with a flaming torch threw it into their boards and the temple burned. People came years later to find the gold that had been... In any case, it was a horrible, horrible time during that particular time. He was talking about that all night. 1 Thessalonians 5, 9 is being used to suggest that we will be clearly, anywhere clearly stated. 1 Thessalonians 5, 9 says, God is not a pointless... Do you know that the word wrath occurs 195... Most of those references are to be assumed that every time this phrase is used, sometimes Enoch is appealed to as being a person who was translated. But he was translated 669 years. Had he lived those 669 years, he would have been over a thousand years old. He would have been older than Methuselah. No, it had nothing to do with him being transferred. It has nothing to do with the fact that... There's an old saying that when people no longer recognize the nature of God as evil, when a nation reaches that state of depravity, judgment is a certainty. Just in closing, if you think of the water bath just in the days... Yes, it really meant mental fabrications. Everything you own is going to be burned up. Why are you placing so much faith in this? Are you going to say, hey, Joe, look, my fire is higher than your fire is? Seeing then that all these things should be dissolved, Peter says, what manner of person... What can we do as Christian believers? A great deal on revival of the past and people today in North America, you know, there was a past favoring him and not favoring them. He said, we fasted, we applied, we have conferences, some great men come together, they're concerned to pray, but you wouldn't believe what it meant. And we ended all our struggle waking you through the night. He told us in one of these what happened. He said, we used to, and then what's the case of going around and please God. In Zephaniah 2, verse 3, he reads, it may be you shall be hid in the day. God's promises will be exactly the same if we do go through the tribulation. If we do, well, people, this is the conclusion of my message of what's really going on. God hasn't done, without cause anything that he said. Yes, God the Father sent the Son to be the personal Savior forever. And Jesus had no problem with the abundance of the things which he sent. He said, you know, we have so many labor-saving devices in our homes to be able to feed and give quality time. Oh, may he grant us grace to see this.