Chronicles of the End Times
Chronicles of the End Times
The Battle for Your Faith
Can a tiny spark of faith truly move mountains in today's complex world? In this episode, we promise to uncover the transformative power of faith amidst our modern political and societal upheavals. Drawing upon the timeless wisdom found in the parables of Jesus and the poignant passages of Isaiah, we explore how even the smallest bit of faith can lead to monumental shifts. We'll delve into the necessity of patience, the pursuit of a deeper relationship with God, and the importance of seeking wisdom from the Word of God rather than settling for superficial answers. Amidst the growing challenges to the Bible's relevance and attempts to ban or alter it, we'll underscore the critical role scripture plays as our enduring standard for truth and morality.
In the second chapter, we confront common obstacles to faith, such as skepticism about the Bible’s origins, and stress the importance of standing firm in God’s Word. Inspired by Joshua 1:9, we call on listeners to embrace strength and courage, confident in God’s presence. Through unwavering faith, not only can we fortify our spiritual foundations but also inspire others to begin their own journeys with Christ. You'll find practical advice and spiritual encouragement to help strengthen your faith, enabling you to better reach out and impact others. Join us as we embark on this enlightening journey together, discovering the profound power of faith and its ability to navigate and transform our lives.
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00:07
Welcome everyone. This is Russ Scalzo. Chronicles of the End Times. Thank you for being with me today.
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00:14
Today, we're going to talk about faith. Faith is an interesting subject. How much faith do you need? Jesus said, if we have the faith of a mustard seed, we could move mountains. What does that mean, and what kind of faith do you think we're going to need in the coming years? I believe that we are accountable for what happens in this country and in this world. When I say we, I mean the people of God. We can't expect those who don't know the Lord Jesus Christ to do anything else than what they're doing, because without the Holy Spirit, who gives wisdom and the scripture clearly tells us ask God for wisdom, for God is generous and loving and kind. He doesn't want us walking around bumping into walls. He wants us to have wisdom and, like we always say, wisdom comes from the Word of God.
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01:20
People go to a lot of places to get answers. We won't call that wisdom right now. I guess we could, but I believe they go around looking for answers, and sometimes we're looking for the quick answer. Right, we're so used to Googling things who sang this song, or what part did this person play in that movie? Or what's the best time for me to plant grass seed, or whatever the case may be. We're used to instant answers. And why doesn't God give us instant answers? The reason for that is he wants to draw us closer. If we use him as we use a Google search, then we're not going to get to know him, and sometimes he wants us to seek him and that requires time and he draws us in. It's like he throws out a line and he keeps reeling it in slowly and slowly, because he wants to draw us in. Each time we go to prayer, he's drawn us in a little further. If He gives us the answer we want immediately, that would be the end of our prayer time. I mean, this is who we are.
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02:25
Granted, there are exceptions to that rule, and you may be one of them. You might pray on anyway. That's what we all should do, but most of us want quick answers. We pray, we expect God to answer and in our minds we say, well; I have the faith. God should just answer boom. That should be it. That's the equation. I have the faith, I prayed, the answer comes.
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02:48
But sometimes we don't understand faith. We don't understand how God wants us to see faith. That is faith in him. And faith in him sometimes takes patience, and that's agonizing, I know. I don't like to wait. I don't know anybody who does. I don't like to wait in line for gas or at the store or anywhere, but we do it because we don't have a choice.
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03:12
But in this case, God is drawing us closer. He's asking us to keep praying. That's right, keep seeking my face, keep coming closer. And then what happens is he begins to change us. We get a different perspective and maybe the things we're praying for we're not supposed to have, even though they seem like really great ideas and good things. Our relationship with him is the most important thing and once that relationship is tight, then your faith will grow and it will be all that you need, because you will know him like you know yourself, and you will learn to trust him, because faith is trust in Jesus Christ. It's trust in God, trust in his word.
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03:57
Well, like I said, many people go to different places for information. And some of those places are dark. There's a scripture in Isaiah, chapter 8, verse 19 to the end of the chapter that really spoke to me. It says when men tell you to consult mediums and spiritualists who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living to the law and to the testimony? If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light or dawn. The Bible, the Word of God, is where we get our wisdom from, where we get our laws, our morality, how we should live in every part of our lives. You can find wisdom in the Word of God. How to answer people, how to do business. You would be amazed at how much wisdom God has given us, on how we should live our lives.
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04:49
There's a movement going on, especially in England, unfortunately, to ban the Bible because they say the Bible contains hate speech. You can kind of see where this is going. We're changing the rules. This is what we're doing now. We're changing the rules on how things should go, what should be said, what should not be said, what is truth, what is not truth, what is fact and fiction, and on and on. In the scripture we just read, Isaiah is shouting, "To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn."
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05:27
The Bible is our guiding light. How we should live our lives and the laws that we make and how we treat people, and on and on and on. Line it up against the word of God and see if it fits, if it does, fine, if it doesn't, we have to toss it out. So instead, some have decided to toss the Bible out because it doesn't work in our society. They're tossing it out or rewriting it as in China. You can look at that on YouTube. There's lots of videos on what's happening in China on how they're rewriting the Bible. They can't stop the people in China from reading the Bible because God has put a thirst in their souls for it. There's a movement of God going on in China under great persecution, imprisonment and sometimes execution. So they rewrote it and plan on redistributing it free to all the people in China. The devils on the move everywhere, trying to thwart the plan of God. And of course we read in Job that no one can thwart the plan of God. So back to faith. So it takes faith to believe this and it takes an encounter with Jesus Christ to start that ball rolling.
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06:34
Those of us who read the Word of God I'm sure are familiar with Hebrews chapter 11, titled by some as the faith chapter. The opening that Paul uses in chapter 11 is about faith. He says, Now, faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith, we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
07:06
Wow, so those who believe in the Big Bang Theory or the gaseous cloud, there are so many avenues that people take on how we got here all but they all lack one thing, an origin. Because the human mind says oh, wait a minute, you have to have something in order to create something else. There has to be something, a gaseous cloud, some type of explosion, something. Something has to happen, and then from that things will grow, and things will happen over millions and millions of years. But Paul tells us here that part of faith is believing that God created everything out of nothing. Do you know that it is to God's glory that he is able to create something out of nothing?
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07:55
And that's the first truth the enemy decided to attack hundreds of years ago in what we now call the age of enlightenment. First, it was that God didn't create the earth. God didn't create all this stuff. Science has the answer. This is how it really happened. So here's the next front the enemy attacked. Since God didn't create the earth. He didn't create men and women. Now we can let our imaginations run wild. We can create other genders. Some say there's a hundred of them. What does this do? It adds to the confusion. We've talked about that before. So it erodes our faith.
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08:31
Faith, according to Paul in chapter 11, is really based on the fact that the universe was formed on God's command. That's step one. So if we take that building block out, then whoa, where are we standing? We have no firm ground to stand on. And if we have the option to pick our gender, then we are truly in control. We are our own gods. It all really makes sense. This is what the Bible calls the spirit of Antichrist, which John tells us was already in the world back in his day. Why do we say that?
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09:06
In Daniel, chapter 7, the angel is telling Daniel about this fourth beast which will give birth to ten kingdoms and eventually, the little horn which is the Antichrist himself. This is a whole study on its own, of course, and we've done this before, but I just want to reference this scripture in chapter 7, beginning in verse 23,. As the angel gives him the vision of this fourth beast. He tells him that this fourth beast is a fourth kingdom that will appear on the earth. It will be different from all the other kingdoms and will devour the whole earth, trampling it down and crushing it. That's the Roman Empire. Now, in the end times which we are in right now, this kingdom, this old Roman Empire, will be reinstated. How that's going to happen, we're not altogether sure, but many believe it's going to be through the one world currency and a one world unified government which everybody's talking about today. And from this, 10 kings will rise up who will have power to govern over this new kingdom. But from the 10 kings, another king will come up, and that's where we're going to pick up the scripture, verse 23. He gave me this explanation.
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10:23
The fourth beast is a fourth kingdom that will appear on the earth. It'll be different from all the other kingdoms and will devour the whole earth, trampling it down and crushing it. The ten horns are ten kings who will come from this kingdom. After them, another king will arise, different from the earlier ones. He will subdue three kings. He will speak against the Most High and oppress his saints and try to change the set times and laws. The saints will be handed over to him for times, times and half a time. So here he is obviously, talking about the tribulation period, or half the tribulation period, three and a half years. So what we're talking about today is our trust in God, our faith in God that what the Word of God says is true, and those who come against it, to attack it, are inspired by the spirit of Antichrist, because he will try to change set laws and times. He will try to change set laws and times and once the people of God begin to move away from the truth, then we fall into his trap.
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11:29
Satan is a master thief and the thing he wishes to steal is your faith. He wants to steal your faith, crush you. That's what he wants to do. He comes after me all the time. I feel the oppression trying to tear down our faith. For if he can tear our hearts out, he has won. But if we trust in God, God will protect us. We won't go skipping down the road like it's a great day, and the sun is shining all the time.
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11:59
We all know that there are tests involved and they can be severe and they can be trying. That's what tests are. But a love that's not tested is not love. We can't just say with our mouths that we love God. Our faith is going to be tested. You know that; I know that. But it makes it even stronger, and it blesses the Lord when we stick with him and do not turn our backs on him.
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12:26
So don't allow the master thief to steal your faith. You're praying for someone. You're praying for this country or for your friends, your neighbors, your family. You do what David did. He grabbed onto the horns of the altar and he didn't let go. That's determination. If you have that type of determination in your prayer life, you'll put a smile on God's face and he will never, ever let you down. But if we allow ourselves to walk away and have our faith torn down to the point where we start following the wrong voice, then we become selfish, we become self-centered and we begin to drift away. We start drinking the Kool-Aid that the devil's handing out and I'm talking about to the church, not only to the world and we start drinking it and we believe it and we're hook, line and sinker. We're ready to die for this cause. Then the power that belongs to the church gets unplugged. We're no longer connected to the vine, we're not lining up with the word of God anymore. And we still want miracles, we still want God to do this, we still want God to do that, but we're unplugged.
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13:36
It was like last week's podcast when we talked about Joshua trying to figure out why they got beat so bad in the war with AI. It's funny, right? It says AI but not with a computer, but with a group of people. Because there was sin in the camp, God couldn't bless it. Because they had done things that God didn't want them to do and the major thing they did is they began to take these other gods. What a slap in the face to the Lord.
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14:04
So if we start relying on other gods which could be ourselves, science, society, our own lusts and wants, whatever gods we're creating, then we've walked away from the only true God and we've become unplugged and our power is gone. And that's exactly what Satan wants. He wants us unplugged. Then we are no threat. Satan is not afraid of a hydrogen bomb. He's not afraid of fast flying jets, our latest technology, for that's in a realm that he doesn't even care about, but the realm that he cares about is the spiritual realm. He's looking to disarm us. He's not afraid of us. When we're not plugged into Jesus, he'll roll over us like a steamroller, just like we weren't even there. Our only hope is in the blood of Jesus Christ and being connected and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Without that, we have nothing.
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15:00
So faith is important. The very basics of faith are important. It's our building blocks. We can go from faith to faith, but first we have to believe the basics that God exists. The scripture tells us we cannot please God unless we acknowledge that he exists. We call him a liar. The favorite one is oh, the book is written by a bunch of men. Another way of attacking our faith.
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15:25
So stand firm in the word of God, stand firm in who you are. I've said this before, but it's the key. Do I want to reach people for Christ? Yes, how am I going to do that? I need to be confident, so confident in God that it makes people wonder and makes them curious and they will want to know more. So, like the Lord told Joshua in chapter 1, verse 9, "Have I not commanded you, be strong and courageous, do not be terrified or dismayed for the Lord, your God, is with you wherever you go."
If you enjoy the podcasts, please share them. Go to http://www.russscalzo.com and support the show. God bless, this is Russ Scalzo for Chronicles of the End Times. Keep looking up. The King is coming.