Replies

“there will be a revival prior to the end”— spacejunkie2001

“Please show us in Scripture where a revival occurs prior to the end of the age. There isn’t one. It says that ‘evil men will wax worse and worse’”— fwdude

“Too many scriptures that say that the world will continue to slide into chaos until the Anti-Christ arrives, which takes place after the Rapture... The Bible expresses implicitly that a great falling away from the faith will occur, not a revival.” — ducttape45

Acts 2:17-18 (NKJV)
“And it shall come to pass in the last days,” says God,
“That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh;
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
Your young men shall see visions,
Your old men shall dream dreams.
And on My menservants and on My maidservants
I will pour out My Spirit in those days;
And they shall prophesy.”

This is Peter on the day of Pentecost quoting Joel’s prophecy concerning the Day of the Lord. It is also the same passage quoted about calling on the name of the Lord to be saved which is referenced many times in the New Testament to confirm that the New Testament message of the Gospel was prophesied in the Old Testament. The Day of the Lord is the time period of Christ’s second coming.

Habakkuk 2:3, 4c, 14 (NKJV)
For the vision is yet for an appointed time;
But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie.
Though it tarries, wait for it;
Because it will surely come,
It will not tarry...
But the just shall live by his faith...
For the earth will be filled
With the knowledge of the glory of the Lord,
As the waters cover the sea.

Again, knowledge of God will be spread worldwide. When? In the End. This is another passage quoted by Paul to proclaim the Gospel and demonstrate that it was ordained by God before the world and is confirmed to be true by Old Testament prophecy.

Matthew 24:14 (NKJV)
And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.

Again, the context is the End or Day of the Lord. The Gospel was ordained by God to be proclaimed to the world in order to save the elect who have been chosen by God to hear, believe, and bear fruit unto salvation. The Olivet discourse cited here describes the end-times scenario of apostasy: “many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another”. He is talking about “Christians” here.

There will be an apostasy and a false, worldwide “Christianity” headed by the Antichrist. The “revival” or worldwide proclamation of the Gospel will NOT be complete before this time. Let me repeat and be clear: the mission of the Church to spread the Gospel to the world will NOT be complete BEFORE the church faces the Antichrist. But the Antichrist will be defeated by the followers of Christ as we carry out the Great Commission:

Mark 16:15 (NKJV)
And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”

Revelation 12:11 (NKJV)
And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.

The arguments against an end-time “revival” or “awakening” could have been made prior to the Reformation and the founding of our nation based on Biblical and Christian principles. But such arguments would have been wrong and false.

We cannot know with a certainty whether America will turn back to God, but God has not finished His work with this nation. He has many people here. If the nation repents, it can be saved. If it does not repent, God will possibly raise up a remnant to begin something new as this nation experiences the same judgment that scripture warns all nations about.

2 Thessalonians 2:1-4 (NKJV)
Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.

Clearly the Day of Christ will not come BEFORE the apostasy or the revealing of the Antichrist at the abomination of desolation. The rapture must follow these events, along with the other signs of Christ’s coming mentioned in the Olivet Discourse.

Revelation 7 describes an uncountable multitude that “comes out of the Great Tribulation” and enters Heaven. Who are these followers of Christ and how do they get to Heaven? These are often described as “tribulation saints” but the question is whether they are part of the Church or some other group of believers. These believers can only have arrived in Heaven by one of two ways: death or rapture. There is no other way. The passage does not explicitly say which. However, this multitude of believers will inevitably have been converted either during the tribulation period or earlier because it is out of the Great Tribulation (see verse 14) from which they enter Heaven. How can a worldwide multitude be converted to become faithful followers of Christ, enduring the greatest persecution of Christ’s followers, and seeing through the greatest spiritual delusion in the history of mankind, without the outpouring of God’s Spirit on the earth?