Jentezen Franklin - The End Times In Our Time
If you have your Bibles, I wanna just highlight several scriptures for the sake of time. This is the story of Esther, chapter one starts out in a beauty contest. The king is a bachelor, and he wants a wife and there's 127 provinces and they send the most beautiful girl in their area to win the bachelor. That's not a new television series, it's in the Bible. And the one that wins the beauty contest is a girl named Esther. But then troubles comes, and Haman, a killer, and evil, evil wicked man devises a plan to destroy all the Jews. We pick up the story in verse four, "When Mordecai learned all that had happened, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and ashes, when out into the midst of the city". Listen, "He cried out with a loud and bitter cry. He went from the front of the king's gate, no one might enter the king's gate clothed in sackcloth. And in every province where the king's and decree arrived, there was fasting, weeping, and wailing and many lay in sackcloth and ashes".
Notice verse four, something I'd not seen before and, "Esther's maids and eunuchs came and told her, and the queen was deeply distressed. Then she sent garments to clothe Mordecai". "She sent garments to clothe Mordecai and take his sackcloth away from him, but he would not accept them". Quickly move to verse 11 and there it says, she said, "There's a law that says I can't go in and fight for our lives, I can't go in and fight for the Jewish people because I'll be put to death unless the king extends his scepter". And then, that powerful verse, verse 13. "Mordecai told them to answer Esther: 'Do not think in your heart that you will escape in the king's palace any more than any of the other Jews. For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise from the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?'"
It's amazing that this story starts out with a beauty contest. I think Esther is a type of the church, I believe she's the type of the Last Day Church. I believe she's a type of the church and the culture of the church in the time when Christ, the king, will come again. And notice what she's consumed with. She's involved in a beauty contest, she's all dressed up, she's playing the role of queen, she's taken beauty baths if you read it. She's relaxed, she doesn't want to get involved, she doesn't want to get into controversy, she doesn't want to use her voice. She's silent. There's treacherous, dangerous things happening in the nation and she is in a beauty contest. Sounds like the church, the modern-day church has beautiful buildings and beautiful music, beautiful people.
There's the steeple, and there's the doors, open up the doors and there's all the hot people, the good-looking people, the well dressed, fit people. They come to church, and they leave, it's a beauty contest. Culture is unaffected, the whole week is unaffected. There's a beauty contest. But there comes a time in a nation and there comes a time in the kingdom when God says, "The beauty contest is over". I believe we're living in that day where no longer can the church just be a beauty contest. Of beautiful buildings, and beautiful music but nothing changes. What amazed me is Mordecai gets a burden and tears his clothes and he challenges Esther to come out of the beauty contest and get into the fight. The fight for the nation, the fight for the sons and the daughters, the children and the grandchildren. The generations to come that would perish.
"You cannot remain silent". He began to cry out. And I believe that there are thousands of pastors in America who need, I'm one of you, I don't put down and criticize pastors, but I'm giving a call today. I feel like I'm an old man for a reason, I feel like I'm 59 and about to turn 60 this year and I have the right. I've been pastoring the same church for 34 years, I have a right to speak like a father now. And if ever pastors needed direction, it is now. If we don't get involved, we're gonna lose our children and our children's children. We're gonna lose freedom of speech, we gonna lose freedom of religion, we gonna lose freedom of worship, we going to lose it. It's not something you can just go through like a beauty contest and say, "That's not my problem, we don't mix our faith with nothing, it's just, we're just here".
What did Mordecai say to Esther? He said, "You have come to the kingdom for such a time as this. Not to be a beauty contestant". And you know that when she heard that he had torn his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes, the next part of the verse amazed me. The scripture said, "And she sent to him garments". "She sent to him garments". New garments, she said, "Just put on some glad rags. Just cover it up. Just let the church kind of do their thing and sing the songs and preach the little message and everybody have burnt some candles and do whatever you wanna do and then just go home. Put on new garments, put on some glad rags, just put a smile on your face, just get up and preach the messages of seven ways to enjoy your vacation". We need more than that.
The end times are happening in our times. If you can't see it, if you can't see the threat of the freedom, if you can't see what is going on in the world and it's like the church is totally disconnected. Family's falling apart, marriages falling apart, culture changing, redefining of genders and all kinds of things happening. And people like Elon Musk, who's not even claims to be a Christian, he's fighting for freedom of speech while the church is quiet and doesn't want to offend and doesn't want anybody, may we might lose people. You came to the wrong church. We are not that silent church, we have come to the kingdom. God has given us this to affect this nation and this world. We're not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's real and I'm not preaching today to get you whipped up.
I'm preaching today to get you woke up. Real wokeness needs to hit the church. I love it when Billy Graham used to get up, when he was alive and he would say one thing over and over if you watch any of his old clips of sermons he would say, "And the Bible says"! And it doesn't matter what my opinion is of gay marriage or transgender. I don't have an opinion, my opinion is what the Bible says. The Bible says. The Bible says, "I'm not gonna be mean, I'm not gonna be ugly, I'm not gonna harass". But you have a right to live like you live, post anything you want to post but you don't have a right to cancel me and say I can't say, "The Bible says". It's called freedom of speech and it ought to unite every American to say, "We will fight for this".
Live any way you want to live, live in and let live but don't say, "You can't have a voice, but I can". And I won't say, "I can and you can't". That's called freedom. But what touched me was Esther arose and I saw something else I'd not seen because the scripture said she said, "But you don't understand Mordecai, I can't go in to the king because they passed a law". You ever read that? She says, "There's a law that says I can't go in to the king". And I love Mordecai's response. He says, "You need to test that law if it's out of line with what's God's telling you". And it's time to test some laws. When grown men want to get in your teenagers, girls locker room and bathroom, it's time to test that law. I don't understand, I don't understand. Those, I'm not against the jab, I'm not against the needle, I'm not against the shot, I've had it twice. People in my family, my daughter, some of my people have had the shot. It's not an issue for me, I don't care.
What I don't understand is apparently Covid can be spread and all over the place except at the border. If we would just go to the border apparently you don't need a jab, you don't need a mask, you can come in great numbers by the millions illegally into the nation. You can bring drugs, you can bring criminals, you can bring gang members, nobody will get Covid. Something is crazy going on and while we sit back and in one month an entire... I'm not against my precious Hispanic people, I love the people and some of them are precious and some of them should come legally to this nation. But what I don't understand is how is this happening. How can a whole city, the city a size of Atlanta comes in illegally, we don't know who's coming in. They know of 50 on the terrorist list that are in this nation and if they blow up your kids' high school, then maybe we will wake up.
Then maybe we will realize, and the church is just in a beauty contest and we're just quiet. And we don't know how to pray, and we don't need prayer meetings and we don't need preachers to get up and, we just want you to be non-controversial. I am non-controversial. There's one way, there's one truth, there's one life, his name is Jesus, and all must repent. But even the Bible said, "Put watchmen on the walls and make sure you don't let just anything come into your nation". Well, I'm a watchman and you're a watchman and it's time to get on the walls and realize what's happening to our educational system. What's happening in our law system, what's happening when you go on mdweb.com. If there's anywhere you ought to feel safe is medicaldoctorweb.com and you see something that people with great intelligence and know the human body.
One of the first forms, if you want information, check your gender, male, female, neutral. And I'm not against the shot, but the same voices that scream, "My body, my choice". When it comes to abortion, say, "No. But if you don't get my body, my choice and if you don't take the shot". If you're a nurse and a doctor, a hero who save lives during the pandemic, you are fired. And you say, "That's not happening". We had two nurses, a man and his wife, both registered nurses in our campus in OC. Both of them fired from Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, fired because they worked all the way through the pandemic, received the highest accreditations at one of the most reputable hospitals in the nation but fired because they would not take the shot in their body.
All I'm saying is this, that is a precursor of the mark of the beast. If you won't take, "It was a trial run, it was just will they go along with it". And if you don't, we don't care about your family nurse, we don't care about whether you put food on the table, we don't care if you don't get out and end up in a tent outside homeless. We want you to lose your salary, we want you to not be able to buy and eat and take care of your family even though you've been a hero and you've been working on sick people while we were sitting home watching Netflix.
Come on folks, I'm preaching the truth. Something is wrong and we're getting more and more muzzled, this is not China yet. This is not Russia yet and we refuse to sit silent, we have come to the kingdom for such a time as this. And it's time for the church to speak up. Speak up. I just want to say today that the censorship that is starting small, but it always takes more ground and more ground and more ground. While its people just sit back and let it happen. What they really hate is not the church as a historical building in their city, they hate the preaching of the word of God. And when you understand what he said to them, this is what he said, he said, "I need you now to unite, we no longer have the luxury of disunity, we no longer can be left wing, right wing, democrat, republican, Black, White, Asian, Indian, we can't do that. We must come under one thing and understand our very existence is on the line".
If we're going to preserve this nation, if we're going to preserve the constitution, if we're going to preserve the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom of whatever it is. The justice that we desire, even though it's not a perfect system, it is the most close thing to perfection of any government on the planet and in human history. The nation that you live in is a great nation, the nation that you live in still says, "You can dream, and you can do". And I realize there are disadvantages, I'm not blind to that, understand that but somewhere we have allowed teachers, unions and leaders of those unions to erase the good history of America. And they said, "If you don't get in this fight and we don't create the war machine of freedom, we'll lose it all".
And the same applies to the pastors that will not stand against the lies of censorship. I love what Mordecai told Esther, he said, "There's a decree to kill all the Jews". And she said, "Well, the law says I'll die if I go in without permission". And Mordecai just kind of looks at her and says, "You gonna die, 'cause you're a Jew. Now if you go in, you got a chance that he might hear you. But if you don't go in, you gonna die". I wanna say it's coming to your family. It's coming to your home, it's coming to our state, we are watching things before us and we just sit quiet, and nobody says anything, and we come to church and we hear another thing and blah, blah, blah.
And I don't know, I just feel like if I've got any influence, I'm so old I don't care anymore. I don't care, I don't care. And Covid's so wrecked the church that I used to preach to empty seats, every week for almost two years. In this place, we just recorded, and nobody came, you didn't need to come. And I've I guess I've been there and now it's full again and this is awesome but I don't preach for crowds, I preach because I really that I'mma stand before the Lord one of these days and I cannot look my children and my grandchildren in the eye and say, "I left you a nation without freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom of prayer, freedom to speak up and say, 'The Bible says.'" The Bible says.
Turn to somebody and say, "The Bible says". "Thou shalt not commit adultery". "Thou shalt not steal". "Thou shalt not lie". "Thou shalt not have no other God's before thee". The Bible says! "Thou shalt honor thy father and they mother". "Thou shalt remember the Sabbath and keep it holy"! Playing games, right? Just like Jesus said, "They'll be going, giving in marriage, taken in marriage, having entertainment, going down to the mountains, going to the beach when suddenly in an hour that you think not the son of man cometh". He's coming just like he said, we're on the verge, the Russian bear is on the move just like Ezekiel 38 and 39 said, it would happen just like China has become a prominent force. He said, "The kings of the east will unite with the kings of the north".
Directly from Jerusalem, if you look on a map, totally north, is Russia. Russia. Iran is mentioned in the Ezekiel 38 when Russia starts moving, China will come alongside them. They have not been silent since the Soviet Union has been dismantled. They've been pulling together their extreme Muslim nations like Syria.
Did you know that Russia has an airport with their fighter jets in Syria? Do you understand that Syria is bordered right up to Israel and that is the battle of Gog and Magog? And is it gon' happen... is this the one? No, I don't believe this is the one, but I believe that the Anti-Christ, spirit stirring President Putin of Russia to get the armies ready, to keep moving, to start the march because they're really not fighting and hating the Ukraine. They don't know that there's a demon that hates Israel. I gotta quit, y'all. But you gotta understand, the end times are happening in our times and the church is in a beauty contest.