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“What is Happening?” Conclusion
Broadcast #1497
June 13, 2021

Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 1497 -- taken from Closed Captioning Text

— Brother Phil Enlow: I had made a lot of notes and I just was back and forth in my mind…I’m gonna go ahead and pull out just part of it, because you could go on and on talking about it. But, I don’t want to do that, I don’t think it’s necessary.

But if you want to know what’s happening, men are being turned over to darkness and Satan is working out his final plan to rule the world. And God’s going to allow him to seemingly accomplish that before it’s over. And we need to find our place in all of that.

( congregational amens ).

And recognize what’s happening. So, what do you do? Well, in the first place, don’t be afraid! Nothing that is coming is meant to cause the child of God to live in fear!

( congregational amens ).

There’s no place for that! His promises are too great! He said, I’ll be with you until the end of the age! Even though there will be times it will be difficult, there will be valleys of the shadow of death…there are martyrdoms that are happening in many places of the world. God has promised to be with His people ‘til the end and I believe it!

This would be a good place…I didn’t put this in my note, but this would be a good place to say, to remind us of this thing that we call ‘normalcy bias.’ Most everybody here has lived within the postwar period. There are a few people that were young and could remember a little bit before that. But since the end of World War II, we have had, with some interruptions along the way, some crises here and there, we have had a way of life evolve in this country that is unprecedented.

Generally speaking, there has been prosperity, there has been freedom, there has been opportunity. The stores are always full, right? Whatever we need we can always just pop in the car and get whatever we need — until you need toilet paper and there’s a virus hitting! We need to get over that mentality that this, the way we have seen, the way we have learned how to live, is normal and it’s just gonna go on. Yeah, we’ll get through this little bump in the road and it’ll go right back to normal. Well, I hope in some respects that it does. But, don’t you count on that.

I’m going to throw in one thing that I have wrestled with saying something about all along, and it has to do with some practical wisdom. And I’ll relate it to this, do you remember a few years ago, we had that course called “Financial Peace.” And the essence of that was to train people to handle their money sensibly, responsibly.

And the author of that particular series laid out a bunch of practical baby steps to get people to a place where number one, they were out of debt, number two, they had three to six months’ worth of living costs in an emergency fund. Those were two main things, there were other particulars, but those were the main things. If you’re living hand to mouth…and I realize there are all kinds of circumstances, but I mean, if that’s a choice to live that way, that’s not very smart.

But I’ll tell you, there are other things. There are things that we need to operate our households that everybody knows we need, from food to personal care items, to you name it. Does it make any sense to have one on your shelf…to be using one, say, oh, it’s about to run out, run to the store and get another one. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have two or three, to build up at least a reserve?

Didn’t our parents used to live that way? We used to have pantries. We used to have…I mean, I realize a lot of people still do. We used to have a reserve. We used to have a sense that things will not always be…I need to be self-sufficient. I mean, you don’t have to be a doomsday prepper. That’s going to the other extreme and I…bless people that do that, that’s all right.

But, you don’t have to be stupid, and just assume that everything’s always gonna be like it is and we can always go and just run to the store any time we need something. We need to have a little bit of practical, common sense in some of these things. All right, enough said about that, because I’m not gonna get into, well, we need a bug out location. You know, there are a whole lot of things that God can lead us about some of the practical things. We’ll never get to the point where we’re beyond needing to trust God.

( congregational amens ).

But trusting God doesn’t mean taking no personal responsibility. I mean, should I trust God…does trusting God mean that He’s going to pick me up out of bed in the morning, dress me, sit me at the table, and then…then He’s gonna put food in my mouth. Or, do I have a little bit of personal responsibility there?

You see, I don’t have to live in fear, I don’t have to build my life around, oh, I need this, I’ve got to have that. Jesus spoke about that, and we don’t live in that kind of anxious state. But to say, I have no personal responsibility to take, to work, and to take care of myself. That’s an extreme, that’s not right. So, we need to be wise in those things.

Jesus talked about some of the terrible things that were coming. What did He say, when you see all these things, do what? Hide and put your head between your legs and…no, lift up your heads, your redemption is getting close. And that’s what we need to be doing. Man, we don’t need to be looking around and being distressed. We need to say, God, You’re on the throne.

( congregational amens ).

You’re letting things play out. There are things going on…we need to lift up our heads. We’ve spoken many times about that prophecy in Daniel, where he told about a time when a heathen emperor was gonna come in and defile the temple and take over and it was just gonna be a bad time. But he dropped this in there. He said, “…but the people who do know their God shall be strong…” and take action. (KJV).

Now when do you suppose those people got to know their God? You see, this has to do with preparedness in every area. The folks that didn’t have toilet paper, when the problem hit, it was too late. You think about things ahead of time. The people that knew their God, they already had an experience with God. They already had a history with Him. They knew to trust Him in all kinds of circumstances. God had prepared them. And so, when the crisis hit, they weren’t paralyzed by it. They didn’t stop and say, oh I got to get serious…they were already serious.

I believe God wants to work in His people right now, so that He can have a people who can stand in this hour. And so, you have expressions like, wake up, be alert, don’t be drunk like the world. Be ready…it has that sense of being ready. You know, so many people talk about being ready, as though I’m ready to vanish into thin air. We need to be ready to stand in an hour…

( congregational amens ).

…That’s coming. You know, Paul, in Philippians, chapter 3, we have the place where he’s talking about pressing forward and what his life was all about. But down toward the end of that chapter, he talks about people who are living for this world, their focus was on satisfying the needs, their earthly needs, this was… their whole attention was down here, and he said, but you’re citizens of heaven, live as citizens of heaven. There’s something coming, there’s a victory, there is a glory that’s coming to your life. That’s what you should be focused on. That’s what you should be living for, not just gratifying earthly desires. Live as citizens of heaven.

Obviously, pray! You know, Paul’s words, in Ephesians 6…they remind us we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood. See, our warfare is not against points of view and political movements and all that kind of stuff. Our warfare is against the devil, against his kingdom.

And we need to see past people. Wouldn’t it be something if we could see somebody who is hateful and has an opinion with which we disagree, and we don’t hate back. We could actually pray and love them. I believe that there is, that we need the Lord more than we ever have. And we need to be looking to Him.

We need to have a heart that says, God, we need you to lead us! We are not here to be the custodians of a hand-me-down religion! We are here to walk with a living Head, a living Savior, who has promised to lead us in paths that we have not walked in before! We’re not here to simply carry on the traditions handed to us by Brother Thomas. But to do what he said, to seek God and do what He says.

( congregational amens ).

Because this isn’t that day, this is this day. And we need Him. And if time goes on, and my generation has to go off the scene and hand everything over, the next generation is going to need to do the same thing.

( congregational amens ).

You’re gonna need Him! And He’s gonna be faithful. But we need to pray. I shared something along this line with the men the other day because I know I’ve heard a lot of people say, oh, don’t watch the news. Well, I can understand it. If you’re just glued to the news and letting it have a negative effect on your, letting it ruin your whole day because it’s so stupid, then, yeah, you might want to not do that.

But, I read something interesting recently, and it was a little booklet on prayer by Brother Andrew, “God’s Smuggler.” And, it was written in conjunction with Al Jansen, who apparently works with him, at Open Doors. And I don’t know which one wrote this…it might have been Al. But the point he made was, that he deliberately watched the news.

But when he did it, he did it in order to pray, in order to intervene in things he read about, in order to pray concerning the powers that were at work, the people that were involved, the people that were affected. There were opportunities to pray out of all of that…to actually make a difference.

Do we believe prayer is just throwing up wishes into the air? Or does prayer actually change things? Can we have an effect upon what’s happening in our world?

(congregational response ).

Yes, in prayer. Because we’re invoking the real power, the name that’s above every name, the One who rules in heaven and on earth. Praise God!

Boy, Nebuchadnezzar found that out, didn’t he? The Lord had a way of letting His fame spread through the whole world in that day, by allowing Nebuchadnezzar to experience all that he went through until he came and said, there is only One that rules “…in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?” And he made sure everybody heard that. Do you see how God has always gotten His witness out? Yes!

What about…there’s a verse, I’m not gonna to turn to all of these, but if you want to write them down and look later. Philippians 2, we have the passage about how we’re supposed to walk in unity and treat one another as more important than ourselves, be like Jesus who left heaven to do what He did for us and now He’s exalted. And he goes on to talk about the fact that we need to live out the salvation that we have for it is God who works in us.

You have that wonderful balance between our responsibility to live something out, but the fact that the power comes from Him, not us…not a matter of legalism and trying to do something in your own strength.

But what is the result of that? The result of it is that we live as shining lights in a dark world. You get somebody that has God living in and through them, and you’re gonna have a tremendous contrast with the darkness that’s happening in this world, that’s taking over people’s lives, because God is still doing His work, too.

I don’t want to just paint this as a terrible, oh my God, the darkness is taking over, what’s gonna happen? God is doing His thing too! And we have the opportunity, not to just go hide in a cave and say, tell me when it’s over. We have an opportunity to be a participant in what God is doing, whatever that is in this hour. He’s the only one who knows. As I say, I don’t know His time table, but He does.

And if we will agree to walk with Him, that’s all Noah did. Noah walked with God. When something needed to be done, God told him and he did it. Real complicated. But God help us, to be just that simple in our faith, and really trust Him. But God wants us to let our light shine.

And what we talked about the other night…I appreciate the spirit that was here, on Wednesday night. I appreciate the…everybody has their thoughts and feelings, but the central theme came back to this, we need to be united. We need to guard the unity of the spirit. One of the things that we see more than…perhaps, the greatest expression of what Satan is trying to accomplish in the world today is the division that he has created.

( congregational amens ).

I mean, I saw one poll the other day where something like fifty percent of the people think civil war is a very real possibility in this country. You have militant groups on one side that want to overthrow everything. You’ve got so-called patriot groups on the other side that are ready to take up arms and say, you ain’t gonna do that, we’re going to defend the Constitution. You think it’s impossible that there’s not gonna be some real chaos coming? We need the Lord!

( congregational response ).

We don’t need to be afraid, but we need to be alert and aware and walking together in unity and not let the fights from this world percolate into us and put us one against another. We need to love one another and say, God, give us the discernment, give us the wisdom to see past what’s going on, understand it. We see men being turned over to darkness. We see Satan coming down, what he feels, is the home stretch, to establish his kingdom over the world.

One way or another, I’ll say it again, he’s got to bring this country down and change it from what it has ever been. So, if you’re sitting here and expecting life to go on, American life to go, not forever. I don’t know.

You know, a few years ago we thought it was headed south a whole lot quicker. And the Lord put the brakes on just a little bit. But now you have a huge backlog of power and anger, and it’s all focused on just tearing everything down. One way or another, it’s coming down.

But God’s going up, too. God’s purpose is going up. Guard unity, walk in the light. God is gonna give us what we need. One of the things that we saw years ago was not simply that darkness was gonna get worse and worse, but light was gonna get more and more. God is going to have light for those who want it.

( congregational response ).

There will always be a word from heaven that will strengthen and encourage the hearts of those who want that word.

(congregational amens ).

Do we? Are we content to just practice our religion or do we need to hear from Heaven? We need Him! But there are two things going on. Yes, the darkness is growing greater but so is the light!

( congregational amens ).

God is finishing His purpose. There are two harvests that are maturing, there was a harvest of evil, and there are reapers that are gonna go forth, and they’re gonna cast all of that, and they’re gonna harvest that and then cast it into the fire.

But there’s another harvest that’s going on. God is going to use the things that are coming on the earth at the end of time to finish the work that He has promised in His people. He has promised to finish the work until the day of Jesus Christ.

Whether we’re here, whatever our personal place is in that, God is going to present us together on that day when He unveils what He has been doing to the devil and all the world, it’s gonna be an amazing picture of God’s grace.

Can you imagine when we don’t have to deal with these bodies anymore, with this nature that wants its way. When we’re set free to live out the life that He has birthed in us. That’s why we need to be born again, folks. Flesh and blood cannot inherit what God has purposed.

( congregational amens ).

You need to have a brand-new life born in you of God’s Spirit. When you have that, God will bring that to fruition. It will grow up in Him to be something amazing. We will leave this behind. But if your heart is here, if this is what you want, you’re gonna perish with this world.

But I’ll tell you, our eyes need to be on the fact that God has promised. What God has told us is absolutely going to happen. There is going to be a harvest time when He will send forth His angels and they will gather His harvest into His barn. In Matthew, chapter 11, is it, somewhere along in there…13 maybe, the one about the parables.

He talks about the fact that there is going to be a time when the harvest is gathered in, then the saints, “…will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father.” (NIV). He’s the only One that can do that. Ain’t nothing that shining about me. I need a Savior, don’t you?

( congregational response ).

But I’ve got one. I’ve got one who’s already won the victory! And He’s going to allow the devil, as we’ve said so many times, He is going to allow the devil to seemingly achieve his objective. And at just the right time, He’s gonna intervene and say, that’s enough. It’s over. He’s gonna show up in the air. Angels are gonna come forth and gather His elect, and everybody’s gonna see it. And wrath will be poured out upon this world. There won’t be any joy in heaven over that except that it’s over, except evil has been put down and it’s forever behind us.

So, I don’t know. I just trust God to help us with all of this. But do you understand what’s happening? When you turn on the news, and you see the stuff that’s going on, I hope we can see it through His eyes. Recognize the condition of people who say the insane things that they do…and then mainstream media just laps it up and doesn’t want to listen to anything else. It’s insane.

But it’s a fruit of a people who have said, no, to God, until God finally said, all right, I’m taking my hands off, you have made your choice. Do you realize that happens?

Now, I want to be careful in saying that, because the devil loves to take that truth and oppress people with it. There will be some sensitive saint who feels their own need and sees their own shortcomings, and they’ll hear about God turning people over to darkness and say, maybe that’s my problem.

And the devil will say, you’re not really saved. If you were, this would be the case and that would be the case. Folks, if you have got a heart that cares, if you care about knowing the Lord and being His, trust me, you wouldn’t care if God wasn’t working.

( congregational amens ).

Don’t you listen to the lies of the enemy! The people that turn their back on God and walk away, they’re happy in it, they’re comfortable, they’ve been set free in their own deluded minds. They’ve been set free from all that restraint, about all that God stuff. And they’re as blind as bats and headed for catastrophe.

But I’ll tell you, we’re headed for glory because of the One who went to the cross in our place. To Him be the glory for all eternity! Oh, praise God! Even so, come Lord Jesus!

But I’ll tell you, we’re gonna see a lot more. I’ll agree with the statement, we ain’t seen nothing yet. There are gonna be a lot of things that are gonna happen in this world. And we just need to wake up and be ready, practically, spiritually, loving one another, looking to God, and God is going to bring His people through.

And not only that, we can be instruments of the things that He is doing. I’ll tell you, this Gospel of the Kingdom is gonna be preached in all the world and then the end will come. There’s still some preaching going on. There are still people that the Lord is calling. I’d like to be an instrument, to be a part of what God’s doing in that…in reaching them. May God help us. I believe He is, don’t you?

So, we need to walk with a sense of what’s going on. We don’t need to be looking at it from this political point of view, that political point of view, and what we want to happen. We don’t need to get involved so much in the world’s battles. But say, what is God doing in this? What’s really behind all of what’s happening and what is my place in it? And God is gonna be with us. And He is gonna get the glory.

Praise God, I don’t know of anything else that needs to be added to this necessarily. But, I just praise God for His faithfulness. I praise Him that He hasn’t left us without a witness. I praise Him that He hasn’t just left us in the darkness to wonder what’s going on, and to be afraid! But He’s given us every reason to lift up our heads and say, God, You’re on the throne and we’re Yours, and we’re trusting You! Praise God!

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