What Time Are We Living In?

We are surely living in an unusual time. I am not talking about the recession. I am talking about something far more significant. We live in a time of unprecedented immorality. Now, for example premarital sex is norm. One who wants to keep pure before marriage feel they must defend their choice philosophically! Otherwise, they would be viewed as strange. Young teenagers regularly send their nude pictures through their cell phone and hook up with strangers for sex via internet. In order to join the European Union, a country must accept same-sex marriage. This is the time we live in. A time of unprecedented flood of immorality.

At the same time, we live in a time of unusual manifestation of God's glory. I grew up seeing supernatural healings, but we are seeing continual increase of more and more extraordinary miracles. Extraordinary healings take place. People receive gold fillings in their teeth; I saw one man in person who received a gold filling in his mouth in early 2000s and had no reason to believe otherwise. Some are covered in gold dust during worship service, or even receive gems. Just two weekends of ago, about 8 people from JOY went to a conference in Baltimore and saw people get healed not only of cancer and other incurable diseases, but people who had metal pieces in their body, like screws, received healing, and then the metal pieces disappeared! In Mozambique under Heidi and Rolland Baker, foods multiply with great frequency, feeding hundreds of people. Hundreds of people have been raised from the dead. These are miracles, greater than those of Jesus (John 14:12).

So, we live in the days of extremes: extreme sins and extreme manifestations of God, unlike any other time in global history. What does it mean? One thing is sure: the return of Jesus Christ is closer today than it was at any other time. Jesus told people what time it would be like when He returns: "Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed." (Luke 17:26-30). What time are we living in? We are living in a time when we need to be awake spiritually, and not get caught up with the earthly affairs as though they are the most important.

Trickle into a Stream into a Mighty River

Once Mahatma Gandhi said, "There go my people. I must go ahead of them, for I am their leader." At some point in his leadership, he felt that his people not only understood where he was pointing them to, but they were running ahead of him.

I feel the same way these days. I see a number of people running ahead of me. I see people who run more zealously after God and love others more sacrificially than I. They are changing lives through their ministries, and getting God's vision in their work, fasting and praying that God will reign in their field. Many are gathering in small prayer groups, ministering to one another, praying for the City. It is a great feeling, at the time sobering. I'd better stay vigilant! I must try to stay ahead of them, for I am their leader.

At the same time, I see others still sitting back, not living with purpose and excitement. They still have not caught the great vision God has for them. They still live for the tiny and temporal dreams than the great and glorious dreams for which God created them.... But God will move them also. The trickle has turned into a stream, and it will become a mighty river that takes up people and changes our nation and the world. I am full of hope.