The Official Journal of the Ensign Trust, London

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THE ENSIGN MESSAGE

WORLD AFFAIRS

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THE HOUR AND THE DAY: The year 2006 is nearly at an end, none of us know how long this dispensation is yet going to last. But one thing we can know for sure and that is that there is very definitely not only a day but an hourdetermined in the counsels of God in which all things as we know them today will come to a sudden end, and that there will come a completely new era of which the world has never yet dreamt. Jesus himself said these words in Matthew 24:29-39:

“Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth moum, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the douds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. Now leam a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: so likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”

AN EVERLASTING KINGDOM: Then the words of the angel Gabriel to Mary shall finally be fulfilled. Luke 1:31-33:

“And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest,. and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.”

This of course links on with the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream which Daniel gave to him in Daniel 2:31-35:

“Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was temble. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and break them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth. (Verse 44): And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.”

We have now come to the final fulfilment of his prophecies, and we are now awaiting the day and the hour of which we know not when they will be, but they are determined. But what we do know, is that we can see before our very eyes how a battle is raging between life and death. It is raging between two groups of nations; on the one side there are the nations of heathen origin and on the other side there are the nations of divine origin as we find them in the Christian Nations of the West.

It is this struggle out of which only a very few human beings shall come alive. The Bible speaks of a total collapse of the economy in Revelation 18, of the total destruction of the kingdoms of this world in Daniel 2, so much so that there would not even be a trace found of them anywhere, like the chaff that is blown away by the winds of heaven.

THINGS TO COME: We see very clearly two future expectations in the Bible. In the time of the Lord Jesus the scribes and the Pharisees expected the great King and Messiah of the prophets, who will come and set his kingdom here upon this earth, as it was prophesied in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. They never saw that He first had to come to die for our sins and to reconcile Israel with God, and to give them a new heart and a new understanding. Jesus said to the Pharisees in Matthew 22:29:

“Ye do err; not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God”.

Can this not also be said of our people today? Can it not be said that we have Bibles but do not really know what is written therein? This is a terrible accusation against the people of our time. Today we make the opposite mistake by expecting only a Saviour and Redeemer, but not the great King of Israel to come back and destroy the present world system and set up the everlasting Kingdom of righteousness on earth. That Kingdom which is to come, is not just in our hearts but is a real and literal Kingdom as the angel said to Mary:

“And he shall reign over the house of Jacob,”– which is literally the Twelve Tribes of Israel. “And he shall reign for ever and of his kingdom there shall be no end “

That same Kingdom of which the “stone” became a great “mountain” after crushing and pulverizing all those kingdoms. This Kingdom consist of God’s Israel Nations of which the present Western Nations are the descendants. It is they who spread the Word of God and who are known as the Christian West. No other nation or group of nations are known as the Christian Nations. And this is what God promised Israel. Nowhere is it stated that all these promises of God belong to the Jews only, and in any case nine tenths of the Jews of today do not have a drop of Israel blood in their veins. Foreign elements streamed into the house of Judah during the early ages and completely changed and corrupted the character of Judah. They have claimed all of those wonderful promises that God made to Israel for themselves. That is why they now also claim the whole of Palestine or the land of Canaan as their property. This is the source to which all wars can be traced. My dear reader, may the Lord give you grace to understand these things,because we are really living in the end of time. Long ago our Father has fIxed the appointed day and hour – this will not change. By observing the signs around us it is evident that the time is near. Therefore we must be ready, because the Lord said in Matthew24:37 that it shall be as in the days of Noah before the flood.They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage and knew not until the flood carne. Have you ever wondered why it is taking so long? God is merciful.We who look at the signs of the times have been expecting the day of the Lord for a long time, but as it is written in 2 Peter 3:9,

“The Lord is not slack conceming his promise as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering to usward, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”

That is why it appears as if the days are being drawn out,but the coming of the Lord is really at the door. Just as we can see here in South Africa, here in the southern hemisphere, how the trees are budding, we know from the blossoms on the trees that spring has arrived. May the Lord give us eyes to see, and ears to hear, and a heart to understand, because the time has arrived. The world cannot go on for much longer like this: where murder, insecurity, uncertainty, corruption and dishonesty prevail. People are flooding the earth, the East is penetrating the West and it appears that they are on the verge of destroying the Christian faith. Let us return to the God of our Fathers and cleanse our hearts. Let us make Jesus the King of our lives and let us be ready. I believe that we are about to enter the greatest period that the world has ever seen, and that is the Kingdom of God on earth. When God shall create new heavens and a new earth wherein righteousness shall prevail, where He shall wipe away all the tears, where there shall no longer be murder, or fear or anything of that kind. But in that Kingdom there shall be only those who have made Jesus the Lord and Saviour of their lives during this dispensation.This is your opportunity and perhaps it is by the grace of God that you are reading these few words, so that you can repent We know not the day, nor the hour, but we are warned repeatedly that when it comes, it will be sudden and unexpected. May the Lord give you grace to be ready on that day.

Written and distributed by: Pastor F.W.C. Neser,
P.O.Box 31571, Wonderboompoort, 0033. South Africa.

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