Would God be displeased with me if I committed suicide during the tribulation?
Hi, welcome to today's lesson, and thank you so very much for joining me.
Periodically, we try to answer some questions from our viewers, and I try to pick ones that
we haven't answered yet because we've done this quite a lot.
This one comes to us, it's kind of an unusual question.
He writes, "I've been wondering ever since I saw your video about suicide on what your
thoughts on whether God would forgive someone who killed themselves during the revelation?"
Or I think he means the tribulation.
He's talking about what's revealed in the Book of Revelation.
" ... instead of seeing it through," trying to endure to the end.
"Would God not forgive someone who ended their own life during the end of the world?"
Well, that's a doozy right there.
A doozy of a question, and I'm never ceased to amaze at the questions that people have.
This person sounds like a young believer.
Young believers, for some reason, are often drawn to the Book of Revelation, and what
a mysterious book that is, and what a scary book that is.
If you've been a Christian very long, you know that there's a huge spectrum of Christian
thought on the end times and what's going to happen.
Of course, everyone's trying to figure out the Book of Revelation, and I've got plenty
of books in my library, some I've read, some I have not read, that try to help us understand
what's so hard to understand.
But one thing is clear I think in everybody's understanding of Revelation, and that is times
get really tough on the earth.
Some folks are looking at some of the present things that are happening with the coronavirus
as perhaps a foreshadowing of some of the plagues that are going to face the earth during
the tribulation period.
A lot of Christians believe that we're going to be raptured out of here before the tribulation
or, in some cases, they'll say before the tribulation really gets bad.
One thing I'm certain of is that if God's wrath is falling on the earth, Christians
should not be concerned about suffering God's wrath, real Christians.
Now phony Christians, well, you're not even a Christian.
But real Christians, you don't have to worry about suffering God's wrath.
Jesus endured what we deserved on the cross, and he suffered.
Through him, we escape the wrath of God.
God can be pouring out his wrath on the earth, and God can protect single individuals anywhere
he wants, if God is all powerful.
We have examples of this.
When the plagues that God was sending on Egypt during the time of Moses, he kept Israel from
those plagues in every case, right up until the final plague of the death of all the firstborn
in Egypt.
Nobody in Israel who put the blood of the Passover lamb over their doorposts, they didn't
suffer the loss of the firstborn in their household.
So God's able to differentiate.
That being said, I think that everyone agrees that the Book of Revelation talks about a
guy by the name of the Antichrist.
Paul talks about him, and he's yet to come, and he's going to be a great persecutor of
the people of God.
Although we are exempt from the wrath of God, suffering that, we're not exempt from persecution,
even to the forfeiture of our lives.
Every year around the world, there are literally hundreds, in some cases thousands, of Christians
who pay the ultimate price for their faith who are martyrs.
If you're living in a relatively free country, like the United States or Canada or Australia
or Western Europe, these things are not so familiar to us.
But if you're living in a nation where they hate Christians and it's against the law to
be a Christian, well, then you could suffer the ultimate penalty.
But there's also a great reward for those who suffer martyrdom.
The Lord makes it up to every single one of us.
We reap what we sow.
He repays us according to our deeds.
You have nothing to worry about when it comes to the fairness of God and God repaying us
fairly.
The question is, now, would it be okay if I committed suicide during the tribulation?
I've actually thought about that myself.
True confessions here.
Because if they're coming to get you and you know it's inevitable that the minions of the
Antichrist have surrounded your house and so forth and they're going to take you and
they're going to execute you, would it be wrong then to take your own life, and would
God forgive you if you did?
My understanding from reading the accounts of some martyrs in the past who were facing
imminent death, execution for their faith, that God gave them special grace to endure
it.
Because I get it, you'd want to find an escape hatch, and maybe overdosing on sleeping pills
would be a better way to get out of here.
But I wouldn't try to figure that out right now, if I was you, or make any plans for it.
I would just trust that if the Lord's going to allow you to face such circumstances as
that, that he'll give you the grace to get through it and to be brave and to also boldly
testify before those who are persecuting you, and even who are about to execute you, to
tell them about Jesus and to show them how you're not afraid of death.
In fact, you're actually looking forward to it because Jesus is waiting for you.
He's been preparing a place for you in heaven for about 2000 years now.
All right, so don't try to figure it out now and stock up a bunch of sleeping pills just
in case your house is surrounded by the minions of the Antichrist.
A lot of Christians, of course, don't even believe we're going to go through the tribulation,
and I'm not one of those ones.
I was one for a long time, but I kept reading these verses in the Bible that made me question
my theology.
I was finally able to admit that my theology was based on my desires more than what the
Bible said, because who wants to go through the tribulation?
Not me.
But remember when the apostles were first incarcerated and in prison for their faith
and then they were disciplined, I think they were scourged, and they went away rejoicing
that they had been counted worthy to suffer for the kingdom of God.
Something supernatural happens.
Remember when Stephen was being stoned?
He had a vision, and he saw Jesus standing at the right hand of the throne of God.
What a way to go.
If he had taken his own life and taken an overdose of sleeping pills, he might've missed
out on a great, glorious vision.
He also was able to let his light shine until his final breath.
Because he prayed, he said, "Lord, don't hold this sin against them."
Can you imagine the impact that prayer had on those people?
One of the people who was holding the coats of the people who were stoning him was the
future apostle Paul.
I bet he never forgot that.
All right, I'm out of time for today.
Thanks so much for joining me.
If you've never been to davidservant.org, I'm just going to encourage you to check out
all the biblical resources that we have there, free books, free daily devotionals, family
devotionals videos, and so forth, and a lot of good stuff there.
It's all free just for your edification, davidservant.org.
Until next time, may the Lord bless you.