{"id":5949,"date":"2023-10-28T17:44:27","date_gmt":"2023-10-28T22:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/?p=5949"},"modified":"2023-10-28T17:44:28","modified_gmt":"2023-10-28T22:44:28","slug":"birth-pains-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/?p=5949","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;BIRTH PAINS&#8221; &#8211; &#8211; &#8211; TODAY ?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Recent saturation of end times teaching&#8212;seems to force Christians to pick a position and follow a teacher (or ignore and forget it, and find a church that does).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read Revelation.<br>Read Daniel.<br>Read Jesus.<br>Read for yourself.<br>Ask God for wisdom to apply what you understand.<br>Trust God and wait, for what you don&#8217;t understand.<br>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<br>Everybody&#8217;s in a hurry, teaching on end times&#8212;why ?<br>Seems like they have to review and run through details quickly to make up for uncertainty in some of the details.<br>Since you can&#8217;t prove everything definitively, they have to state some things as given, and move on&#8212;or they&#8217;ll never get through their teaching lesson.<br>It takes too long to go back to the basics, back through the basics, only from the Bible.<br>So they have to assume the listener already understands the basics (as they understand the basics).<br>Then they have to add details to make their timeline fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sometimes honest teachers at least say, &#8220;I think . . .&#8221; on certain points&#8212;so should I follow the rest of their teaching as &#8216;gospel truth&#8217; ?<br>(Read PROMISES OR INFERENCES on this site.)<br>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<br>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<br>What is the goal in teaching Bible prophecy on the end times ?<br>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<br>What should be the goal in teaching Bible prophecy on the end times ?<br>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<br>What should be the goal in teaching the Bible ?<br>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<br>What should be our goal in reading the Bible ?<br>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<br>&#8212; First, no hurry.<br>&#8212; First, salvation, the Gospel message for each person to receive Jesus.<br>&#8212; First, salvation, repent from my sin, accept Jesus who paid for my sin, to not go to hell but heaven.<br>&#8212; First things First, so end times teaching never overshadows making disciples&#8212;faithfulness&#8212;living for Jesus now.<br>&#8212; Don&#8217;t be afraid of end times, but be comforted as well as warned by what the Bible says.<br>&#8212; The coming hairy, scarey stuff described graphically, is all under God&#8217;s control, just like the hairy, scarey stuff we face now, that&#8217;s getting worse (birth pains), is under God&#8217;s control, and we are safe in His hand.<br>&#8212; All of it&#8212;now\/future&#8212;present times\/end times&#8212;can be turned over to Him, cast on Him, because He really cares for us.<br>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<br>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<br>Surprises ?<br>&#8212; What surprises at THE END can one afford ?<br>&#8212; What surprises, what could I be wrong about and still be okay ?<br>&#8212; What surprises, what could I be wrong about and not be okay&#8212;totally lose it&#8212;lose faith&#8212;panic&#8212;give in to . . . just to survive&#8212;and go to hell ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Surprise . . . ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Surprise . . . ?<br>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<br>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<br>So, after we study, and we dig, and we wonder, and we get scared out of our wits when growing evil hits home, and we pray&#8212;<br>What&#8217;s the bottom line ?<br>What&#8217;s the last word ?<br>What can we say to ourself, when others say it&#8217;ll all work out and the pendulum will swing back to normal&#8212;<br>What do we say when that doesn&#8217;t cut it ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>ONE&#8212;There will be THE MOMENT at THE END when we will see things happen, and we &#8220;lift up our eyes, for our Redemption (Jesus) draws near&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TWO&#8212;Until then, I could give you Bible verse after Bible verse&#8212;and I do all over this site&#8212;but there is no substitute for you getting desperately deep in your own Bible every morning, every night, and in between.<br>Find verses that God gives you for wisdom, for comfort, for direction, for sharing&#8212;mark them in your Bible, date them with notes, write some down to take with you.<br>You&#8217;ll end up memorizing one that made a difference to you, and then another.<br>Leave your Bible open where you will pass it during the day and read again the verse you just highlighted, underlined, circled, and thanked God for.<br>NEVER STOP !<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You&#8217;ll be safe through these troubled times, through the end times, to the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Remember . . .<br>Then, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">THE BEGINNING&#8212;WITH JESUS, IN PERSON !<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ed Vitagliano, on American Family Radio, summarized my thoughts when he said,<br>&#8220;I don&#8217;t understand everything about the end times, but I know two things&#8212;He&#8217;s coming, and I&#8217;m going.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recent saturation of end times teaching&#8212;seems to force Christians to pick a position and follow a teacher (or ignore and forget it, and find a church that does). Read Revelation.Read Daniel.Read Jesus.Read for yourself.Ask God for wisdom to apply what you understand.Trust God and wait, for what you don&#8217;t understand.&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;Everybody&#8217;s in a hurry, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2,7,9,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-educational","category-faith_based","category-inspire_lifter","category-political-cultural","category-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5949"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5950,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5949\/revisions\/5950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}