Throughout Christian history, as you read Christian history, you find that faithful, true, genuine

believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, throughout church history, they have waited for the day of

the return of the Lord. All have looked forward with anticipation of our Lord's coming back.

True, genuine, faithful believers in every generation were motivated to live righteously

and look forward to the day of his return.

Here is an interesting observation, at least on my part.

While the whole world come to a stand still and celebrate his first coming, just about everywhere in the world come to stand still to celebrate Christmas, there are very, very, very few people, very few of his children, faithful believers in the Lord Jesus Christ

who truly look forward to celebrating his second coming. That shouldn't surprise us. And in just three

verses, that's verses 29, 30, and 31 of Matthew 24, our Lord gives us the supreme

signs of his return. The sun will darken. The moon will not give its light. The stars literally

will fall from the sky and the powers of the heaven will be shaken.

In a parallel account to this one in Matthew 24, there is a parallel account in Luke's

gospel, Luke 21, verses 25 and 26. And there, it says, there will be dismay among the nations. That means the whole globe. It tells us

that the whole world is going to be in chaos of utter confusion. People will be perplexed at the

size of the tsunamis and the earthquakes. Men's heart, the Bible said, will faint out of fear.

Now, the Greek word for faint here is that strong man literally will stop breathing out of fright.

As you heard me say this throughout the series of messages, we've always had things like this happen. We've had earthquakes,

we had floods, and we had all these things have happened throughout history. But at the end times,

what our Lord is saying about the birth pains is that the end times, from the understanding of the labor pain, is that the

expected mom knows this labor pain when they come in greater intensity, and when they come in greater

frequency, you know that the baby is about to arrive. Don't ever forget that God our God is not only the creator of the

universe, but he's also the sustainer of the universe. In Hebrews chapter 1, verse 3, Jesus is the one

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