0:00:00 - 0:00:22 How much time do we have left? I'd say that this is a question I get. But actually, I'll tell you much more often what I get instead is a presumption of the answer to that question and some question or comment about what follows that presumption. So let me start with a story. Some time ago, I got an 0:00:22 - 0:00:42 email from a military man who said that he was leaving the military after about 18 years because he didn't think that there was much time left and he wanted to spend it in other pursuits. I was shocked by this because this was after the, the question wasn't whether he should stay in or not to avoid the 0:00:42 - 0:01:04 COVID shot. He already got the shot and he, he had been in for about 18 years. He had a really nice high rank. Um And I said, you're being idiotic for walking away from full and instant retirement for the rest of your life. At 40. I said, um you're, you're vastly undervaluing what that could provide 0:01:03 - 0:01:26 for you and for others through the time it will give you to help them. And he said, he was surprised given quote, what I've said about the end times. And that in turn surprised me. I, I'm always shocked. I, I think I'm far less clear than I'd like to be about many things because if people come away with 0:01:25 - 0:01:54 the impressions, they get about certain things, I feel like I need to do a much better job. This, all of a sudden thinking I've talked about it before forcing a situation into a binary all at once. Catastrophe for lack of a better word. It's an emotional cop out. It's used by weak people to avoid the 0:01:54 - 0:02:27 need to construct and execute a long term plan. Our life, our modern world has made us so weak when it comes to, to execution, to leadership. And I don't mean management. I mean moral leadership being an emotionally strong person, being the kind of person that you can give any challenge. And the only 0:02:27 - 0:02:48 question is how long it'll take, can, can you be handed a boulder in a sledgehammer and be told your task is to crush it? And the only question is how long it will take? Or do you see a boulder? And if it's big enough, you just fall on the ground and cry and become a little, little flesh, puddle melted 0:02:48 - 0:03:29 on the ground. God needs us to be the kinds of people who just say the difficult I can do right now. The impossible might take a little while. It's an old song lyric, the courage that Christ has that he so willingly gives all who will love him. It cannot be described. But if you think about the hardest 0:03:29 - 0:04:03 things you're aware of in its life and you imagine them concentrated on to the shoulders of one person at one time. So afflictions much greater than job, even job suffered, the courage of Christ crushes even that. And what he did for us in his life was so much more than what you're imagining that to 0:04:03 - 0:04:23 be. Uh I mean, what you imagine his suffering to be. But also the thing you just imagined that super bowl of pain, that what he went through was so much worse than that. What he went through. You can't understand, you can't even begin to understand without going through uh something similar. It's the 0:04:23 - 0:04:52 only way you can understand that is by going through it. That's how terrible it is. We have to learn to be better at these things and not just take the, the binary, all of a sudden um catastrophic route. It's just a cop out. The thing that all of those people have in common is that they never actually 0:04:51 - 0:05:15 prepare for the thing they say they're preparing for. It's just a procrastination for what is immediately at hand. One thing I see in every single person who comes to me with this problem is that there are glaringly obvious things wrong with their present lives and they refuse to fix them. They won't 0:05:14 - 0:05:39 even look at them instead, they look beyond the mark at uh an imagined future catastrophe and they do it to avoid the guilt. They would otherwise feel about their present choices. How much time do we have left? Is the wrong question. The urgent rush shouldn't be to flee in your present state. It, it 0:05:39 - 0:06:04 should be to fix what's at hand right now in your present state. The only thing that fleeing would accomplish is the privilege of dying and suffering and dying somewhere else. You have to understand this. You don't have any promise from God except destruction. That's the default state. That's what the 0:06:04 - 0:06:32 natural man deserves. And the few who do have promises from God, they're extremely rare and they operate according to laws that you don't know yet that you have to know and live before you can receive the same promises. I want to very briefly just lightly touch on a few verses from revelation chapter 0:06:31 - 0:06:52 seven and I'm just gonna use them to make a specific point. Verses one through three read. And after these things, I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth holding the four winds of the earth that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree. Now, without 0:06:52 - 0:07:18 going into all the details about what these things mean or why you should believe me. I hope it's clear that these four angels are holding back bad things that could happen, whatever those are. It doesn't matter right now for this purpose. Verse two, and I saw another angel ascending from the east having 0:07:18 - 0:07:35 the seal of the living God. And he cried with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea saying hurt, not the earth, neither the sea nor the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads. Now, without telling you what the seal of the living 0:07:35 - 0:08:05 God is or who this person is or who the four angels were or why it is that this guy could tell the others what to do or what it means to seal the servants of our God in their foreheads. I hope it's clear and indisputable that these are five people, beings who are able to hold back bad things that would 0:08:05 - 0:08:36 otherwise happen. This is not a common thing in the scriptures. It's not common even among uncommon people. And that's the point I want to make to think that you a person who's likely willfully sinning against God every single day were pretty close to that just according to the level at which you understand 0:08:35 - 0:09:04 Him now, which is very little compared to how he actually is to think that a person like you could somehow hold back the four winds of the earth. I don't know why you would believe that if you think that the righteousness of these five individuals can be simulated by you going out and buying a covered 0:09:04 - 0:09:29 trailer with some solar panels and a battery pack or buying four years of Chef Boyardee and sealing them up on a pallet for some airlift into the wilderness or whatever, you buying a cabin out in a vacation spot where there are 20,000 other people that go there. Why you would believe that somehow this 0:09:29 - 0:10:10 same outcome is available to you a wholly unrepentant person. I don't understand why you would believe that. So how much time is left? Why does it matter to you? The reason people raise this question is because they're really asking, when do I really have to repent? The answer is now the end could be 0:10:09 - 0:10:34 in 1000 years and it still wouldn't matter because you're gonna die before that, the end could be in 100 years and it still wouldn't matter because you're gonna die before that. The end could be in 50 years. And it still wouldn't matter because for many of you, because many of you are gonna die, die 0:10:33 - 0:11:07 before then. But when is your end? That's a better question. Why? Because it doesn't matter how old you are, you could die today. And if you die in your sins, I tell you solemnly and categorically, you will go to hell. So you need to repent today. It doesn't matter when the end is, it doesn't buy you 0:11:06 - 0:11:32 more time. You're under condemnation until you aren't, every day is a gift, but it's not one you should count on. You don't know when your end will be. So how do you best prepare no matter how much time there is? Well, step one is to repent. And what I mean by that is you reconcile your life in every 0:11:31 - 0:11:56 way, in every moment to what the you sincerely believe the Lord would do in your place. And as you do that, he's gonna teach you more and more about how he is. You just keep on maintaining that alignment. You stay reconciled to him no matter what he shows you. So let's suppose that you're already there 0:11:55 - 0:12:16 . And wouldn't it be great if everyone watching this video was already there? Well, what comes after that, could you say then? Well, ok, I've got myself sorted out now. I need to know how much time there is so I can watch for the signs after all. Why do you give the signs if we shouldn't watch for them 0:12:16 - 0:12:42 ? You should watch for them. You should understand them. But there's a reason for the order of things as they are revealed. There's a reason repentance comes first because it's necessary, it's required for anything else to matter. But as far as the timeline goes, the best way to look at this, maybe I'll 0:12:42 - 0:13:02 , I'll share this with an analogy. They say, I'm not sure this is the best advice. I'm not saying it is. But they say that the best way to invest is through making a month, regular monthly contribution to an S and P 500 index fund. A lot of people believe this. Ok. They say if you try to time the market 0:13:01 - 0:13:23 or you get specific with stocks, you, you just subject yourself to an awful lot of risk and you could roll it all up by just making a regular monthly payment into your index fund and you just forget it until you need it. Well, why would that be a better strategy than say, piling up the money in your 0:13:23 - 0:13:42 checking account? Uh and waiting for some opportunity to come. That's kind of like this approach of, well, if I knew the time, I'd know when I needed to get serious and actually repent. Here's the thing. If you do that, if you stockpile the money in your checking account, it's not that an opportunity 0:13:41 - 0:14:00 is not gonna come. There are opportunities that come all the time. They're really hard to plan. The problem is that if you just check that money in the checking account without really knowing what you're saving for or when it's gonna happen, that the problem is that you're almost su uh sure to spend 0:14:00 - 0:14:18 it on other things. And so you won't have it when the opportunity comes. But even if you do, even if you do happen to save it up and, and you're able to recognize when you need it, you would have had a lot more money if you just put in the S and P 500 so you can take it out and spend it on a better opportunity 0:14:18 - 0:14:45 . So you can kind of see your treasure in heaven this way, the point of end times disasters, it's not so that you can calculate when you really have to repent. It's to give you the motivation to repent today and to continue to get better and better after that as God teaches you more things. So how does 0:14:45 - 0:15:08 this convert over to uh comments I've made about getting into a good career or earning money saving up for two years to move? Um I, I think I told this story of someone who adopted the all of the sudden thinking to say I can't move. How could I do that? I don't have enough money for a down payment on 0:15:08 - 0:15:26 a new place and yada, yada yada. Yeah. Well, uh how long would it take you to get there? Have you written up a budget? Do you have all of your expenses that you currently have written down? Do you even know where the money's going start there? See if there's any surplus, go down the list and see what 0:15:26 - 0:15:49 things you're spending money on that don't have the value to justify the dollars, ask why you're doing it and see if there's a better way to do the same thing and maybe the better way doesn't cost as much or maybe it provides better benefits. So, go down the line. A specific example, I have a friend 0:15:48 - 0:16:08 whose kids are in sports because he thinks it's a great way to keep them in shape. Ok. Is there a better way that they can stay in shape to do? Does staying in shape require spending money and driving time and having kids away from home and having kids and things that they won't be able to continue after 0:16:08 - 0:16:29 they're married. Uh, that's a big problem. You've got a lot of people out there, mostly women who are really depressed because their parents set them up with his fairy tale childhood and their husbands can't offer them the same or having kids doesn't coexist with being in after school sports for the 0:16:29 - 0:16:45 rest of your life. You know, and, and they're gonna resent that they're gonna, they're going to, uh, even if it's not better, they're just acclimatized, they're used to this thing and now they don't have it and they feel lost anyway. So go down the list and ask what you're doing and why, why you're doing 0:16:45 - 0:17:05 it and see if there's a better way to do it. And if, even if there isn't, you can carve out a chunk of your budget for the future move you want to make because now you have a list of how you're spending your time and money. And you could say this is something we want to do in the future and it's very 0:17:05 - 0:17:22 valuable to us. Let's go down the list and find the things that have less value to us. You can do this with a vacation. You don't have to just do this with uh you know, end times planning of where do I wanna live when the grid goes down, go down the list and say like, you know, what would be really nice 0:17:22 - 0:17:38 is to have a car that doesn't break down every five minutes because we're spending, look how much money we're spending on repairs on this car. You look at it, you see it in your budget. You say, well, we don't have money for a newer car. And uh you can go down the list and say, well, what would be more 0:17:38 - 0:17:58 valuable? What would a new car be more valuable than, and you say like, oh, well, right now we get Uber eats twice a week. That's not really as valuable to us as having a functioning car that doesn't cost a fortune to maintain. And then on the other side, you can look at, well, it's not just any new 0:17:58 - 0:18:16 car we want. We want a specific model with a specific range of miles. We know this car gets a high MPG. It's got a low insurance cost. I called the insurance company and asked them how much our insurance would go up with these three different cars and this one is way lower. These are the sorts of things 0:18:16 - 0:18:45 that you can do, right? So what's this an example of, it's an example of this principle that we're given in DNC 51. These are, these are verses 15 through 17, I gotta remember these folks, they were, they were getting kicked out from place to place, moving to different places and a lot of the places 0:18:45 - 0:19:09 they moved, there wasn't anything there, they had to build houses and in, in very non ideal places, OK? This is what the Lord said. And thus I grant unto this people a privilege of organizing themselves according to my laws. And I consecrate unto them this land for a little season until I, the Lord shall 0:19:09 - 0:19:32 provide for them otherwise and command them to go hence and the hour and the day is not given unto them wherefore let them act upon this land as for years and this shall turn unto them for their good. You don't have to speculate about God what God wants us to do for the end times because the pattern 0:19:31 - 0:20:02 already exists. If you don't know when the end will be and you don't, the hour and day is not given unto you. So act upon the land as for four years and it will turn for your good. So what do you do? He says it right here, organize yourself according to his laws and then wait for, for new instructions 0:20:01 - 0:20:21 till I the Lord shall provide for them otherwise. And command them to go. Hence. So on the one hand, you can bet for sure that there will be changes and on the other that should not stop you from doing the best that you know, right now with what you know, right now don't say, well, there are gonna be 0:20:21 - 0:20:43 changes. So I just have to sit on my butt until I know all the details. You will absolutely, 100% be left behind if that's your attitude because you're not gonna accept the new information when it comes. And you're still gonna say, well, I don't have enough. I still have to wait. God's character already 0:20:42 - 0:21:09 exists right now. You can work day by day while the sun shines on learning more about him and becoming more like Him. That's what matters. And as you do this, you'll gain trust in God, in life and in death, in peace and in tribulation, you'll rise above the reach of spiritual death and hell in this life 0:21:09 - 0:21:29 . And also after this life and that's what really matters. You'll be better equipped to help the ones you love because you could die at any moment, they could die at any moment. They could be in some great tragedy at any moment. Or you could too, you have to become worth saving and you don't do that 0:21:29 - 0:21:48 in the moment when you finally recognize that. Yeah, you actually need God. You need to understand that all of these limitations are manifestations of your lack of trust in God. When you say, well, I need to know more. I need to know all about the end times before I'm willing to do anything. That's a 0:21:48 - 0:22:15 manifestation of lack of trust in God. Faith is acting according to what's obvious, already obvious. A faithful person will act right now in ways that a foolish person will act later. Just like this phrase in the scriptures. This passage indicates you're going to have to move, not just from the place 0:22:15 - 0:22:39 you live now, like you're probably struggling to wrap your head around that one. You're gonna have to move again and again and again. And you don't have the ability to figure out where to be on the last move. Because moving to these places is the thing that's gonna help you among other things, learn 0:22:38 - 0:23:05 that and learn to value that. But the Lord will bless you as you make the moves according to your best present understanding, you're judged by what you presently know and don't know. And another thing that we struggle to wrap our heads around is this idea of preserving wealth. It's a hidden constraint 0:23:04 - 0:23:24 that you need to put your finger on and realize you're doing it. People say, well, I don't, I, I can't move because I can't move into a house that's as nice as the house that I live in. They don't say that, but that's what they're doing. They say I can't move. I can't afford to. No, you can't afford 0:23:24 - 0:23:45 to move into a house that's at least as nice as your present house. The problem is how you define nice is right now, you're doing it by square footage the, the year of the build or whether or not it has a furnace, but you need to do it in the space of the writing on the wall. Do you know where that phrase 0:23:45 - 0:24:05 comes from? It comes from the Old Testament when Nebuchadnezzar's son was in charge, I believe, and he was having a feast with all the vessels that were stolen from the temple and the finger of the Lord wrote on the wall. You've been weighed and found wanting the Lord judged him and removed him from 0:24:04 - 0:24:33 his seat as king, the writing is on the wall. You're not going to preserve your wealth. Everyone will lose everything because the system that your wealth is built on is an illusion. It's false. It can't continue. The question is how can you use your wealth to the greatest advantage while you still have 0:24:33 - 0:24:55 it? I've made videos about this. I'll talk more about it. You have to find the things of greatest value now and exchange your wealth for those things. Those things could be things like time with your family. And I don't mean time like going on a picnic or going to a show or something. I mean time where 0:24:55 - 0:00:00 you help them, you impart to them. The reasons. You have to believe in God and what you believe about Him, you help them become better people. Maybe the things of greater value are taking whatever time you need to convert your heart to the Lord. Maybe it's helping others convert their hearts to Him. 0:00:00 - 0:25:44 Maybe it's serving those who need your help. Maybe it's serving those who serve others who give help that you can't give. How can you use it to the greatest advantage while you still have it? Because it will be taken away, the time will come where people throw their treasures to the what does it say 0:25:43 - 0:26:06 in Isaiah? To the bats and to the moles, the time will come when all of those things are worthless and you will deeply wish that you had spent it better. Finally, you're not going to preserve your independence. You could just let that go. I'm gonna share with you uh a little, a little phrase here that 0:26:05 - 0:26:31 you're really not gonna like. But I don't care. It's the truth and someone's got to tell you you will either willingly serve a man with more wisdom than you or involuntarily be enslaved to a man with more power than you that is going to happen. Do you get to pick which? And I'll tell you the wisest one 0:26:30 - 0:26:57 is Christ. And the best thing you can do is as early as you can decide to willingly serve him with your whole heart, might, mind and strength because if you don't, you will eventually be enslaved to someone who's enslaved to Satan. And that's not a fun place to be. And as the scales fall from your eyes 0:26:57 - 0:27:24 , you will increasingly realize that you are already a slave to that, to Satan's kingdom. It's time to come out from that to be freed from that slavery to have your bonds cut by willingly serving Christ who can remove you from that matrix. So let's stop asking how much time do we have left? Let's stop 0:27:24 - 0:27:51 making these timelines with all these terrible things on them created by people who still haven't repented from their sins and therefore have no idea what they're talking about. Going back to this passage, let them act upon this land as for years and this shall turn unto them for their good find and 0:27:51 - 0:00:00 live God's laws and thats the best you can do.