God’s People Are Not Prepared

God’s People Are Not Prepared

➤I want to start this article by making it clear that God will not forsake His own. He is not going to suddenly throw us to the lions, so to speak. God has many millions of people in America (I trust) and throughout the world who love Him sincerely and seek Him daily to become more like Him.

But even the best of us can be caught off-guard if we fail to recognize the many signs He has already given to us through His written Word – signs that are lining up right now in real time.

That He will never forsake us does not mean that we will not enter into very difficult days where our faith is tested like never before.

One way that He protects and strengthens us for what lies ahead is to prepare us now by revealing His plan, which was left for us to read, and by giving us discernment of our times accordingly.

Preparing the Way

It was around 2009 that I began preaching a message to churches called “God’s People are Not Prepared.”

I had been preaching and teaching that theme to countless churches and their leaders around the world for about ten years, but I sensed an urgency to be even more direct. Several concerns had emerged on the American front.

America’s Great Recession was more than a year along, leading to the 2008 banking debacle that shocked the financial world. All that was followed by America electing a Chicago activist, Barack Hussein Obama, as president, not exactly typical mainstream America, to say the least.

On top of that, I had been in and out of the Middle East more than half a dozen times recently, so the newly emerging Muslim world was at the forefront of my mind, too.

All this and more, while in my opinion and supported by Bible truth, American churches were still sleepwalking spiritually.

All that said, today is worse, exponentially worse, it seems. Only God knows the full depth of our waywardness. Most of us can’t even see it.

We’re so far off the path of His way for us that sometimes it’s hard to even find a reference point from where we are. We must go all the way back to the Benchmark He set for us, the Bible, and the way of His Spirit, and begin again.

In April of 2004, we started a house church in our home, along with about a dozen other adults. The first thing I asked everyone to do was to forget everything they had ever learned about church. We were starting all over again – from scratch.

We stand at a sobering crossroads, of which most are not even aware. Especially now that President Trump is leading the way, for multitudes who count themselves among the Christian community, it’s full steam ahead. Onward to “America’s Golden Age!”

As global tensions rise and biblical prophecies come into sharper focus, many believers here and around much of the world are kept asleep by the false comforts of assumptions.

• “No worries, God only has good things in store”
• “The rapture’s going to happen at any moment”
• “Serious trials will never come our way”

There are many more examples of false-comfort assumptions that I could give, but nothing that is said speaks quite as loudly to our slumbering state than what is not said.

While the teaching pastor’s role is certainly to teach and feed the flock, scripture does not support him in avoiding the urgency of the hour.

A Few False Comfort Assumptions

A large segment of evangelicals believes that anyone who professes Jesus Christ will be raptured before the judgments seen in the Book of Revelation begin.

Yet the Bible repeatedly links the hope of Jesus’ coming with a call to endurance, not an escape from all tribulation.

The Apostle Paul warned that “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).

Yes, true followers of Jesus Christ are promised salvation before God’s wrath judgments begin, but not exemption from Satan’s rage or the world’s hatred.

When believers are taught that no serious end-time trial can touch them before the rapture, they are left spiritually unprepared.

In addition to this, many Christians have renewed confidence in:

• America’s President
• Government leadership
• Military strength
• The stability of the dollar

But for all the good that is, we cannot remake God’s providential work in the world.

Scripture paints a very different picture of the end of the age than most modern teaching does.

Prophecy describes a global system where nations fall, economies collapse, and the Antichrist rises.

To imagine that America will remain untouched is to ignore the Bible’s clear testimony.

Finally, many pastors neglect to teach about the prophetic significance of events in the Middle East.

While we should avoid sensationalism, we must also avoid silence.

Today, millions of believers are left without a framework to interpret the times, to intercede intelligently, or to prepare their hearts.

Now is the time for sober teaching, deeper scriptural grounding, and earnest watchfulness.

The church in America must trade false comforts and interpretive assumptions for biblical truth that prepares God’s people for this late hour.

Watching His plan unfold,

Mark S. Case