In this sermon, the speaker acknowledges that as humans, we tend to ignore parts of the Bible that we don't like and focus on the parts we enjoy. However, the speaker emphasizes that God has given us His word to guide and encourage us, not to crush or frighten us. The sermon also highlights the need for Jesus to bring true peace and happiness, as human efforts for peace often fall short due to the sin in our hearts. The speaker references a prophecy from the book of Haggai, where God promises to shake the heavens and the earth and bring glory to His house. Ultimately, the sermon reminds listeners that only Jesus can bring lasting peace and fulfillment.

We're going to need our Bibles because I always feel very worried when basically somebody stands up and talks on a serious subject and then brings in a few scriptures to support them. And I think we do need to start the other way around. So let's begin in the book of Haggai. So if you open up the New Testament and then go three books back you get to the book of Haggai. And I'll begin to read in verse one. Book of Haggai chapter two and verse one. In the seventh month in the one and twentieth day of the month came the word of the Lord by the prophet Haggai saying speak now to Zerubbabel the son of Shaltiel governor of Judah and to Joshua the son of Yotzadak the high priest and to the residue of the people saying who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? Now how do you see it now? Is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing? Yet now be strong oh Zerubbabel says the Lord and be strong oh Joshua the son of Yotzadak the high priest and be strong all you people of the land says the Lord and work for I am with you says the Lord of hosts. According to the word that I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt so my spirit remaineth among you fear ye not. Now that's the the first part of what he's saying and basically that relates to what was going on in Jerusalem when the prophet Haggai was there he was encouraging the exiles who'd returned from Babylon to rebuild the house of God to rebuild the temple but then then like many of these prophets did he his focus kind of moved off the direct present and it went right through many hundreds of years in fact thousands of years into the future well at least two thousand years into the future and he says in from verse six for thus says the Lord of hosts yet once it is a little while and I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land and I will shake all nations and the desire of all nations shall come and I will fill this house with glory says the Lord of hosts the silver is mine and the gold is mine says the Lord of hosts the glory of this latter house shall be greater than that of the former says the Lord of hosts and in this place will I give peace says the Lord of hosts. Now I want to turn over to the New Testament to the book of Hebrews and chapter 12 and I'm going to read the whole of that chapter. Chapter 12 wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us and let us run with patience the race that is set before us looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God for consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds you haven't yet resisted unto blood striving against sin and you've forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as unto children my son despise not thou the chastening of the Lord nor faint when thou art rebuked by him for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth if you endure chastening God dealeth with you as with sons for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not but if ye be without chastisement whereof all are partakers then are ye bastards and not sons furthermore we've had fathers of our flesh who corrected us and we gave them reverence shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the father of spirits and live for they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure but he for our profit that we might be partakers of his holiness now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous nevertheless afterwards it yields the peaceful peaceable fruit of righteousness to them which are exercised thereby wherefore lift up the hands which hang down and the feeble knees and make straight paths for your feet lest that which is lame be turned out of the way but rather let it be healed follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God lest any root of bitterness bringing up trouble you and thereby many be defiled lest there be any fornicator or profane person as Esau who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright for you know that afterwards when he would have inherited the blessing he was rejected for he found no place of repentance though he sought it carefully with tears by the way if you read it in the Greek it makes it perfectly clear that he wasn't seeking a place of repentance he was seeking the blessing he sought the blessing not the repentance that's why he didn't find it for you're not come unto the mount that might be touched and that burned with fire nor unto blackness and darkness and tempest and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words which voice they that heard entreated that the word should not be spoken to them anymore for they couldn't endure that which was commanded and if so much as a beast touched the mountain it shall be stoned or thrust through with a dart and so terrible was the sight that Moses said I exceeding fear and quake but you are come unto mount Zion unto the city of the living God the heavenly Jerusalem to an innumerable company of angels to the general assembly and church of the firstborn which are written in heaven and to God the judge of all and to the spirits of just men made perfect and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel see that you refuse not him who speaketh for if they escape not who refused him that spoke on earth much more shall not we escape if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven whose voice then shook the earth but now he has promised saying yet once more will I shake not the earth only but also heaven and this word yet once more signifyeth the removing of those things that are shaken as of things that are made that those things which cannot be shaken may remain wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear for our God is a consuming fire now then in that passage we've just read from Hebrews Paul actually quotes the book of Haggai when he says he has promised saying yet once more will I shake not the earth only but also heaven so just turning back there into the book of Haggai I hope you keep your finger in both of those passages particularly the Haggai passage the Lord says in verse 6 of Haggai 2 for thus says the Lord of hosts yet once it is a little while and I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land and I'll shake all nations and the desire of all nations shall come and I'll fill this house with glory says the Lord of hosts now I believe the whole point of this prophecy of Haggai was to talk about the house of God being filled with glory and the desire of all nations coming what would you say the desire of all nations was what do the nations really desire today as you look out around the world in all the problems that the nations have what do they really desire you are allowed to speak peace that's one of the big ones isn't it they want peace anything else food clothing and shelter very practical of course we're we're we're favored aren't we in in our country at the moment but many people are crying out for food and shelter and clothing just on the food thing it's interesting that we're paying our farmers now not to plant the land one wonders how long it'll be before you know there could be a man-made shortage of food even in our favored part of the world yes they they want that anything else you think they want pardon life without trouble they certainly want that don't they they want prosperity and I suppose really most people would say with prosperity well I don't I don't want to be you know dripping with money I just want to have enough to to work so that I can you know be reasonably comfortable and and everything's okay now that that I believe is what the nations desire ultimately the only person who's going to fill that desire is the Lord Jesus Christ however imperfect that desire is and however selfish it may be because it's spoiled by sin in the hearts of men ultimately it's only the Lord Jesus can meet all that desire it's only he that can that can provide a world where everybody gets a fair share you know you can try and you can try and have a have a political system that is fair shares for all and it finishes up fair shares for some and more shares for others you know it always finishes up that way because of the sin of the human heart you can I suppose all the world is saying we're struggling for peace but we're we're not getting peace are we I know we're not we're not actually firing guns in Great Britain although I read in the paper today that last night another car bomb went off within 200 yards of 10 Downing Street I mean we're beginning to see even these kind of things in our own land aren't we and first of all they were quite a shock to us now we sort of think oh another car bomb gone off near 10 Downing Street because we're we're we are beginning to get hardened to it and it's surprising uh how this happens only the Lord Jesus can ever bring peace only the Lord Jesus can ever bring that situation where people just have enough and where people are happy now in order for that to happen certain other things have got to happen our title this evening is Israel and the shaking of the nations now later on today I'll get more on to Israel but at the moment I'm going to concentrate on the shaking of the nations because uh keep your finger in Haggai too but uh but go back to Hebrews 12 I want to make it perfectly clear that that what I'm saying to you I'm not trying to find scriptures to fit in with what I'm saying um let's read from verse 26 part way through but now he that's God has promised saying yet once more I shake not the earth but also heaven and this word yet once more signifies the removing of those things that are shaken as of things that cannot that are made so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved or cannot be shaken let's have grace and so on so the Lord is preparing the way for the visible kingdom on earth of the Lord Jesus Christ there's already an invisible kingdom it's within our hearts as believers but on the earth the the kingdom of God is not yet established not in a visible sense and it for in order for the Lord to establish the kingdom of God on the earth in a visible sense he's going to have to take away an awful lot of rubbish that's on the earth now and God says the way I'm going to do it is I'm going to shake what there is so that everything that wasn't built by me will come tumbling down in ruins and also he's going to clear the ground so that so that he can put up more of the things that he wants to have on the earth in place of the things that he shakes down now I've I've been thinking over the last few months I've been meditating on this subject of Israel and the shaking of the nations and I would like to share with you something which I'm sure you actually know but I wonder whether you really think about it and that is I've worked out that so far this century no less than eight empires have been shaken to the ground in the world now I would have thought that you know in a in any previous century of the earth's history maybe they might have one empire go down but certainly not eight but I'll go through them and the first one is actually the Chinese empire you perhaps don't think about that one but you remember that they had the their emperors in China and that fell right very early on in this century and that that empire had lasted probably for thousands of years and God brought it down don't think that any empire ever falls just because of you know conditions because it's God who brings about the conditions and here's the second the Ottoman Empire now to most of us an Ottoman means something that you sit on but it used to mean the Turkish Empire and the Turkish Empire at its height was a really powerful thing you know at one time the Turkish Empire extended right the way through what we call Yugoslavia incidentally that's why we have the Muslim problem in Bosnia because during the time of the Turkish Empire a lot of Slavic people were converted to Islam became Muslims and that's why we have the problem today but anyway that the the empire of the of the Turks at one time reached right up to the doors of Vienna took it took in the the whole of Romania all of what we used to call Yugoslavia, Greece, I think most of of Bulgaria, bits of Romania and it was it was vast and it reached down the other way it reached right down into what we call Iraq today it included Kuwait it included most of Saudi Arabia it went right down into through the holy land through what today we we call Israel and that was all part of that Ottoman Empire and it went at its widest extent it went right down into Egypt as well and yet after the 1418 war at the end of that time in 1919 suddenly there was no Ottoman Empire anymore the emperor just I don't know what happened to him but he disappeared off the scene and Turkey finished up that smallish country that you now see on the map and yet it had once been a great big empire and here's another one that disappeared was called the German Empire and actually the German Empire you actually only started in 1870 when the father of some of you are older will know all about Kaiser Bill from First World War fame but Kaiser Bill's dad was actually made the emperor of Germany and he was crowned in France incidentally in 1870 and he had been the king of Prussia but now they were they were making a big empire and Germany became very very large it extended out to the east taking great chunks of what is now Poland and even into what became the Soviet Union and in the west it took took chunks of France and and in the north it took bits of Denmark and it seemed to be growing and growing and growing in size and power and in 1918 at the end of the war that vast empire it just disappeared the the emperor Kaiser Bill he just got up and he he fled to Holland where in a few years later he died and and it seemed like it would have been impossible to overthrow that empire because it was so strong and so powerful here's another one the Austrian Empire now you may think of Austria as some places where where people occasionally go for a holiday and you know they they wear these short leather trousers and and funny little hats and you know and and they have cuckoo clocks like they do in in Switzerland and and it's just a small mountainous country but at one time you know it was it was vast was Austria, Austria was the Holy Roman Empire and the man who sat on the throne in Vienna was the Holy Roman Emperor and his forefathers for generations and generations and generations back had sat on that throne they owned the whole of what today is Czechoslovakia they owned a good deal of what is today Yugoslavia they owned the whole of Hungary they owned vast swathes of northern Italy they were a they were a really big concern and at the end of the 1418 war they disappeared it's interesting they the Turks Turkish Empire the German Empire and the Austrian Empire all fell together just like a pack of cards nobody could have believed it but it happened but then another empire fell actually in the middle of the 1418 war in 1917 and that was the Russian Empire you remember they used to have an emperor they called him a Tsar and the Tsars had ruled Russia for hundreds of years and it seemed like their power and their authority could never ever be shaken they were so strong and yet in 1917 the whole of that Russian Empire fell and it wasn't long before the Communists had taken off the Tsar and all his family and just shot them all threw them into a pit and another empire had gone but we haven't finished yet that just makes us five empires here's number six on top of the ruins of the German Empire came another one they called it the Third Reich we call it the Nazi thing when Hitler took over in 1933 and he said he was beginning a thousand year Reich now that that sounds like you know just something German to us but actually he took the phrase out of the book of Revelation where it says the Lord would have a kingdom on the earth for a thousand years and he was specifically taking the idea of the millennium where Christ would rule and he said it's going to be a German Empire and it will be for a thousand years he was basically claiming you see in a way to be Christ that's why Hitler was an Antichrist he wasn't Antichrist the Antichrist but he was an Antichrist there have been many actually who have arisen in the world who have almost put themselves in the place of Christ but yet that from 1933 to 1935 that's how long it lasted that came down again in ruins and you know when when Hitler finished with this with his Third Reich I mean he was controlling practically the whole of Europe except for our little islands and God brought him down that's number six empire but here's number seven you ever hear of the British Empire some of us remember there was a thing called the British Empire and when I was a boy and for many of you who are older here you'll remember it but you went into school and on the school wall was always a map of the world and the bits that were British were marked red and we had a kind of a map projection which made the bits of territory that Britain owned bigger than they should have been and so that Canada you know looked really really big and it wasn't as big as all that but and Australia looked exceptionally big as well so the British Empire looked even bigger than it really was but we used to say it's an empire on which the sun never sets and it was true the sun never set on the British Empire and some people looked at the British Empire and they said it's a marvel surely it's a modern marvel of the world that one little nation should build such an amazing empire around the world and what's more we did in many ways we'd used our empire to spread the gospel many missionaries had gone out wherever the British flag had gone they'd gone out and preached the gospel but after that second world war it wasn't very long before the empire had gone well I suppose we've still got one I mean there's Hong Kong and there's Gibraltar I think that's probably about the lot there may be another crown colony I don't know but it could be three but it's not much of an empire left now and I have to say that I don't believe that the British Empire ended just because the British came to their senses it was because God shook it down God's doing a shaking and he is going to establish the empire of his son and he has no room for other empires not even if they're the British Empire and he shook it down there were other reasons why that why our empire came down I believe one of the principal reasons was the the attitude that Britain eventually took towards the Jewish people and the emergent state of Israel that we basically we took the position that the enemies of Israel had oil and the Israelis didn't so you want to be friends with the people who can give you the oil and I think that to be honest was much of what lay behind it and God shook that empire down the eighth empire to come down of course is the Soviet Empire that they had one Russian Empire and then they built another one on top of that on top of the ruins of the first Russian Empire was built that Soviet Empire and you remember it was even bigger than the previous one it really took in the whole of Eastern Europe didn't it they were they were really almost just colonies of the Soviet Empire and yet within the last few years that thing has come down and I suppose most of us in this country we don't realise the the absolute disaster that has happened with the Soviet Empire I mean you go to the Soviet Union now and people are shooting at one another in many places around the Soviet Union they weren't doing that when the when the communists were in power there was a forced peace upon the whole thing but now it is disastrous and the economies of the Eastern Bloc have fallen apart so that means that you know if you want to go and buy eggs in the shop you know you can't buy eggs a rouble three years ago a Russian rouble was the same value as a pound now I understand now you'll get probably about three roubles for 10p or something like that wouldn't you say that was a bit of a disaster a terrible disaster and and it's happened and listen it didn't just happen by chance God did it because the the Soviet Union was an organisation that particularly hated the Christian church and Christians were badly badly persecuted in that country as many of us well know and indeed in many of the Eastern European countries they were persecuted and I believe God just said well I'm shaking them down because I want to put up something in place of that which is going to which is going to be better now then you say well that's a that's a pretty comprehensive thing eight empires fallen but let me tell you I don't think we've seen the the whole of it yet I believe we'll see more because you see what with this shaking that God is doing in the world it seems like you have kind of phases of shaking and and a lot of things will shake things will come down and then then there'll be a time of relative quiet and everybody thinks oh you know this is great you know now now we're going to have freedom in all the communist the ex-communist countries it's going to be marvellous and then you sort of think what perhaps it's not working out as well as we thought it would but never mind things will be better later on now let me just tell you and this isn't to make you miserable but I don't believe that things will be better later on they'll only be better at the very end of the process because God has got a lot to shake I mean if you think that what we've got in our country is wonderful godliness that God wants to set up as the image of his kingdom I think you've got another thing coming and I mean I don't think any of us would would say that would we now you know I'm not I'm not a political animal particularly but but I have to say that I believe communism was a was a an evil force that it seemed to offer good things but in fact it destroyed people but then on the other hand I it looks to me like western capitalism isn't that good now if with the with the communists it was just raw power but with us it's money and isn't it true that if we've any weakness here in the west it's love of money isn't it and it's touched probably it's touched us all even those who are believers in one way or another the love of money has touched us God says that it's not good enough that all is going to come down and brothers and sisters I don't think I may be proved to be wrong in which case I shall be very happy but I don't think we've seen the end of the shaking of our economy and our money system I would I would be very much surprised if you know if everything just started to improve it may improve for a short period but then God will start the shaking again because he wants to bring down everything that is not of his sum here's another thing that I believe God is shaking in these days shaking the church now when I say the church I'm talking about overall everything that professes to be the Christian church I'm not talking I'm not judging whether whether it's heretical or whether it's whether they're born again or not I'm talking about the whole thing that professes to be the church which would include the born again people and I believe God is shaking the church and let me tell you various ways I believe the church has been shaken well no before we come on to that let's just go on to uh let's just looking at the church and the shaking of the church I just want to read and our gathering together unto him now he's talking there about when the Lord returns and and receives his church unto himself he says now concerning this he says that you be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled either by spirit or by word or by letter as from us that the day of Christ is at hand he said let no man deceive you by any means for he says that day shall not come in other words Jesus won't come back unless there come a falling away first now I believe that we are seeing the beginning of that falling away in the church and I should say it's been happening maybe for a century but people haven't noticed it very much but we're going to notice it much more it's going to be much more real to us um there'll be a falling away and even the man of sin should be revealed the son of perdition uh the other title that's given to him in the bible is the antichrist okay well we're not I don't want to get onto the antichrist particularly at this point but what I want to the point I want to make is that God has actually foretold that there will be a falling away or an apostasy from the truth and he was talking about the christian church see the christian church in another place Paul calls the church the pillar and ground of the truth now a wonderful expression to describe the church the pillar and ground of the truth and yet the same man who said the church is the pillar and ground of the truth says look boys Jesus will not come back unless first of all there is an apostasy I don't believe Paul was laughing or happy when he said those words but I believe he was telling them to us because he is a faithful or he was a faithful apostle and he knew that he must not tell the people of God a soft lie to make them happy he must tell them the unvarnished truth and there there is going to be a falling away now let this is I believe the shaking of the church he said what does God want to shake the church for surely that's established by him that's something that's meant to be standing until the Lord Jesus comes but hang on a minute there's a lot of things that have got into the church which are not of God's building and they've got to come down brothers and sisters and so that's why God's shaking them now here's I believe one of the main things that the Lord has allowed to shake the church and it's the denial of the scriptures the denial of the scriptures oh that's that's the devil listen God could have stopped that if he wanted to but God allowed that to happen the denial of the scriptures now I was brought up in a liberal denomination but I was born again Christian I was trained for the ministry in that denomination it took me maybe about 10 years to get over my theological training when I came out I didn't come out as a as an apostate but I came out as somebody who'd been badly bashed by the system and it took me 10 years to get over it but I'm over it now praise God at least I think I am hope so now that though the denial of the scriptures is so amazing that you know that you go to you go to Muslim people and they say the Quran is word for word in Arabic right now exactly what God gave Muhammad on the mountain you know they really said they really believe it and they say they really believe it's the infallible word of God and the Christian church who have the real infallible word of God we you see within the Christian church it's well you know we have this book it's a very interesting book it's a library of books of course and many different people wrote it and they all come from different backgrounds and and some of it's true and some of it probably isn't you know and this is the kind of thing that's that's said and the scriptures have been denied listen this has shaken the Christian church to its foundations really and those who really do not know the Lord and are determined to go on with him come what may will fall away now I let me say I don't I'm not at all happy in saying this but I believe that the the message of that to each one of us is make sure you don't fall away from the truth because it's easy to do when everybody around you is saying something different if you're anything like me you'll probably you can easily say well who am I to to go against these people you know what why should I be right and they all be wrong you know perhaps that perhaps perhaps I did get it wrong you know and and we of course we're only human brothers and sisters we can be shaken we've got to be quite sure that we're founded on the rock of Christ Jesus and on the rock of scripture then we'll stand within the church of course now people are saying there may be many ways to God perhaps the Muslims have a way to God and there and Judaism is a way to God and Hinduism is a way to God Buddhism is a way to God I remember I went I went after I finished my theological training I went to a summer school and there in the summer school alongside me as a sort of recipient was a dear Indian brother and a lovely lovely saved man from India and he'd been in college with me and and one of these these main church sort of chaps you know was was up there saying that that Buddhism was um as relevant as Christianity and uh I mean I was only a young lad just you know still wet behind the ears but I thought this is a bit bad and I said to my friend I said Santosh what do you think about that and he just smiled and he said well he said we hear all these things but we just go on in what we really believe to be the word of God you know he'd he'd gone through it and he'd come from a country where that kind of thing was going on and and he knew it wasn't the truth but uh interfaith is going to become more and more uh the acceptable thing and I tell you there'll come a time that when you question if you stand up in public and question the you know whether all religions lead to God you will be shot down in flames I mean there was a time when when the the other people kept themselves fairly quiet didn't say too much and that you know we were allowed to freely say what we wanted but um but then there came a time when it was more or less on a balance but I think we're going to come to the time when when you will be shot down in flames um overthrow of moral norms this has happened in the Christian church not outside the Christian church now you you all know that the other day a new prayer book for homosexuals was unveiled in the most prestigious of all the Methodist churches in the country Westminster Central Hall. I was a Methodist and I I just I I love the Methodist people I really do but it may it makes me sad to think of what's going on I think of old John John Wesley well he's up with the Lord now I don't suppose he'll be he'll be bothered about that he'll be too much taken up in the hallelujah chorus but but if he could if he could come back and see this thing he will be furious with righteous anger I tell you it's terrible but then the people who actually did it were not the Methodist is the Anglicans our established church I let me say I love the Anglican church too I was brought up in it as a boy though later on I became a Methodist and I've so much to thank the Church of England for the Book of Common Prayer and and the the fact that we used to read the Bible out the whole of the Bible through the year that was how they used to do it in the C of E and and I was brought up under that as a little boy I mean I didn't a lot of things I didn't learn but I did learn the Bible you know because it was read out all the time two lessons in the morning two lessons at night you know right the way around the year wonderful but now from the Church of England you you get this this book coming forth and and a bishop from North America you know giving the key keynote address at the unveiling of this book and you know and then all these homosexual couples come out to have their unions blessed and so on and brothers and sisters what's happening is that moral norms are being overthrown and I guarantee that there are a lot of real Christians a lot of real Christians who um who occasionally will think well maybe it's okay so long as they don't affect anybody else but you know God's attitude to the whole thing is he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of that stuff and and what's more he brought down Israel because they allowed a lot of that stuff you know at the time of of the destruction of the temple at the time of Nebuchadnezzar is because there there was a widespread breaking of the law of God and particularly an overthrow of moral norms things that God had said should should characterize our lives if we are following the Lord and listen this is happening just not in the world it's happening in the church um there's the blurring of male-female distinction that comes out of the the problem with homosexuality you see because see in the end if you say there's no difference between men and women in the church then there is really no reason why two women shouldn't marry or two men if there's no difference see and the script they say well but the scripture says there is neither male nor female well that's funny because i'm looking around this room and i have no problem whatsoever picking out that there are male and female in this room so it can't mean that these distinctions have gone can it and indeed the scripture actually teaches there's a difference in function between male and female within the church there are certain jobs for the men to do certain jobs for women to do i know it's really sexist to say that today but you see we could have said it freely a few years ago but now it's going to be harder and harder you know you're going to get all the all the uh the feminist and with it groups you know coming against you and saying you you were we hear you said in your church so and so and so and so you've no right to say that you see those things are going to happen um of course if you blur the male-female distinction you finish up that you call God Mother and it's only this year that one of the major denominations in this in the historic churches in this country authorized their adherents to call God Mother and i tell you that won't be the first of those denominations now listen you say the devil's having a field day here listen this is God is allowing this it's to shake you see the trouble is if you only have your faith in the organization that you're in no matter how godly its origins it's not the same as having your faith in God is it and in his word and uh so God is shaking all of that because he he wants basically to get rid of it now talking about all that all that i believe that this will actually get worse and not better this all has to happen in order for Jesus to come the desire of all nations shall come says in that passage now let me just read you a little thing that um uh was written by um a saint who's now going to be with the Lord but he said this without doubt world conditions will deteriorate there'll be a falling away on the part of many and there'll be an increase in the conflict between light and darkness but as the darkness gets deeper the light will get brighter see it's not a question of it's either doom or boom you know everything is awful or everything is marvelous see some some people are saying it's going to be boom you know everything's going to be marvelous you know the church is going to get better we're going to capture the world and you know and then eventually we're going to say Jesus it's safe for you to come back we've got everything sorted out down here and then Jesus comes back you see that's that's one extreme view the other extreme view is what you could pick up from what i've just been saying everything's going to get worse and worse and it's going to get awful and that you know there'll hardly be any of us left and then you know but you see that the real truth is i believe that two of those things go together see the Lord the Lord Jesus said on the one hand you know when the Son of Man comes will there be faith on the earth didn't say there wouldn't be but he said there'll be a lot of unbelief but if you read the bible carefully you'll also see that at the end of the age there'll be a great harvest that's the whole point of the uh the parables of the of the seed and the sower and all that the end of the age Jesus says there'll be a great harvest and the angels will come and gather it all in so at the same time as all this stuff going on God is establishing something God isn't just destroying things he's actually putting things in the place and he but but it won't it won't be like the things we see now it won't be humanly organized really it'll be something really from God we shall come on to a lot more of this tonight um now i believe that all these things have to happen in order for the Lord Jesus Christ to come now just turn back with me to um to the Haggai passage because this is quite an interesting point i'm going to raise with you now um Haggai 2 and verse 7 and he says there i'll shake all nations and the desire of all nations shall come now um i studied that a bit and the word for desire there in hebrew is hemda just get just blinding you with a bit of science you see but um it's it's hemda and it's a word that um that the root is often used in modern hebrew to mean an evil desire can mean a good desire but it can mean an evil desire can mean a lust and listen there is somebody who's going to turn up on the world scene who'll say i can give you all your desire i'll give you peace i'll give you prosperity i'll give you enough to eat i'll give you clothing i'll give you a roof over your head i'll give you social justice i'll put everything right that was wrong and uh you see the the nations will will desire anybody who says they can do that now this is what the bible calls the antichrist of the man of sin i believe and um the whole truth of that is something which which very often we do not preach very much from our pulpits i think you can go over the top with just talking about you know awful things you can go over the top with it but you have to say that this is in the word of god and i believe before the lord jesus comes who is the true desire of all nations somebody else will come who'll be the false desire he'll he'll say he'll give us all these things but he'll give none of them and uh we we need to see that the reason the lord tells us these things is so that we ourselves can be ready for whatever may come uh but at the end of the time the lord jesus is going to return and uh basically what what we're going to come on to this evening is how the lord jesus will uh establish his earthly kingdom what he's going to put in the place of what he's shaking down now if any of you are like me and i expect a lot of you are you look around on the christian church today and you you sometimes say lord whatever are you doing you know why is all this like it is why and you even look within the churches that that uh say they believe the word of god and you look amongst them and you say lord what a mess we're in isn't it awful what what's going on within the within the you know the fundamentalist bible believing whatever you like to call it church and there's not even purity in there there's it's a mixture right the way around now the lord's gonna gonna have to shake all of that but out of that he's going to bring forth something which will be powerful in these end days i believe he'll bring forth something really powerful in the church and he'll also bring something forth really powerful in israel and that's what we uh i want us to um get on to uh this evening so um i feel now it'd be a good time just to to knock off um to let you uh just consider the things we've been looking at really we've been doing ground clearing this afternoon we've been talking about god's clearing of the ground but then we're going to start talking about the positive stuff that god is going to put in place of that which was negative can we pray father we thank you for your wonderful word and um lord we're we're sorry that sometimes because simply because we're people who like to hear a good message lord we um we sometimes have a tendency to ignore the bits that we don't like and we we love to read the bits that we enjoy but lord thank you that you are a good and righteous god who has told your people everything that we need to know and thank you lord it's not uh something that you've told us in order to crush us in order to to uh disappoint us in order to frighten us but lord it's something you've told us to solemnize us and then to encourage us and then to envision us lord that we may live for you in these last days and we may not be sucked down by the spirit of this world lord we're sorry for the ways in which sometimes we have been sucked down by the spirit of this world we admit it father but we ask you that you would help us lord as we look at your word and as we seek to follow you in jesus name amen