THESE ARE NOT NORMAL TIMES

To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: Ecclesiastes 3:1
In peaceful times only unbalanced people will be obsessed with disasters. 

• There are people who cannot be happy without extreme drama. There are fire fighters who start fires to create excitement and pose as heroes.

The Old Testament prophets warned Israel and Judah about their sins. They warned of disaster to come if they did not repent. 

• They were ridiculed as mad trouble makers but they were right.

In the 1930's Winston Churchill was warning Britain of the threat from Nazi Germany. He urged Britain to prepare for war. 

• It was not long before he was proved right but for several years he was seen as a dangerous extremist. 

The Prime Minister of Britain from 1937 to 1940 was Neville Chamberlain, a religious idealist who believed in human goodness. 

• He was a man of peace who believed he could keep peace with Hitler by diplomacy. 
• The doctrine of Neville Chamberlain from 1937 to 1939 was “land for peace”. It didn’t work.

When Chamberlain was finally forced to declare war in 1939, Britain was not prepared and Hitler succeeded in conquering most of Europe. Britain came dangerously close to defeat.

Events proved Churchill right and in May 1940 Winston Churchill became the Prime Minister of Britain, the leader of the British Empire and the champion Christian civilization’s resistance against the evil coming from Berlin.

Business as usual can be a good policy in peaceful times but a very dangerous policy in an emergency.

• We must be ready to respond urgently in a crisis. Like Winston Churchill we must  recognise emergencies before it is too late.

It is very good to learn from history but we must also live in the present, not in the past.

• There are some people who still see Germany as a bad nation and a potential enemy. This is quite wrong and very unjust! The enemy today is not Germany. 
• The Nazi spirit is alive and menacingly powerful in militant Islam, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but in fanatical groups in Europe and America. 

But the enemy is not only fanatical Islam. 

The enemy is also in our own society, in the decline of our own culture, in the indifference to the love and truth of God all around us and sometimes in our own hearts. 

These are not normal times. Moral corruption and extreme violence are increasing alarmingly around the world. 

• The news is full of terrorism, random brutality and civil wars. 
• It seems strange that so many people today do not believe in a real personal devil, the Prince of Darkness and his legions of demons. 
• Your Muslim neighbours are not the enemy but rather the spirits of darkness.

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

• For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 

• and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. 

• That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Matthew 24:37-39 (NIV)

In the book of Genesis, the days or Noah are described rather differently.

The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. Genesis 6:11-12 (NKJV) 

We see the same opposite trends in today’s world. We see horrific crisis and complacent business as usual. 

Will you listen to the voice of Jesus?

• Will you hear the urgent call of His Spirit and enter into His presence, so He can use us as His messengers.

And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.

• But he who endures to the end shall be saved. 

• And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. Matthew 24:12-14 (NKJV)