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The Bible does not give us an exact date of the end times.
And it says that no one will know except God the Father.
[Matthew 24: 36]
So please don't listen to these false preachers who say, well,
I just got a prophecy of the exact date and time.
Don't believe it. They are false prophets.
No one will know. But what we will know is the signs.
So we can discern when the end times are coming close by looking at the signs.
[Matthew 24:3]
So the first thing that Jesus says will happen is that there will be many people
who will claim to be Him. The Christ, the Messiah.
And there's been a lot of them already. We even know in the 19th century of six:
John Nichols Thom, Arnold Potter, Jones Very, Baha u'llah, William W. Davies, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.
And then in the 20th century, these people who claim to be Jesus or the reincarnation
of Jesus or the Messiah grew to around 30 and right now we hear about it all over the world
like the cult leader who was arrested in Russia. The one in Brazil and even here in South Africa,
a man claimed to be the black Jesus. It's crazy.
What's even more crazier is that people actually - some of them believe them.
And follow them. Anyway let's continue.
[Matthew 24:6]
You will hear of war, and rumors of war. We humans, our sinful nature.
Pride, lust, greed ... all of these things will always lead to war.
And according to the New York Times, out of the past 3,400 years,
we have only been at peace for 268 of them. That's just eight percent of recorded history.
And at least 108 million people were killed in wars in the 20th century
and an estimated 150 million to 1 billion died in wars throughout all human history.
Think about this. The first world war,
the second world war, and then there are many wars that you don't even know about.
At the beginning of 2003 there were not just one or two wars,
but 30 wars going on around the world. These included conflicts in Afghanistan,
Algeria, Burundi, China, Colombia, the Congo, India, Indonesia, Israel, Iraq, Liberia,
Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda.
And do you know that Christians - we are the most persecuted religion in the world.
More than 70 million Christians have been murdered because of their faith. Since the time of Jesus.
And when I speak to some people today it shocks me that they
believe that it doesn't happen today anymore. That is just something that happened in the past.
But it will actually shock some of you that there are many Christians
who are still being murdered today. Eleven Christians are killed for their
faith in the top 50 countries ranked on the World Watch List according to Open Doors.
And apart from this, Apart from all the wars,
take a look at the crime rate. All over the world, war is defined as an active
conflict that has claimed more than a thousand lives, and in my country, in South Africa, over
21,000 people were murdered in 2020 and it is getting worse, according to News 24.
It can be scary when you truly look at the world for what it is.
But remember, Jesus said, do not be alarmed.
[Matthew 24:6]
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