WHO WILL HELP US THEN?
Anne Frank Remembers: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family recounts the WW II years in Holland. Author Miep Gies chronicles how she helped hide and support the Frank family, who were Jews. Nazis occupied Holland during much of the war. They stripped the country of food stuffs and sent them to Germany. It grew increasingly difficult to find enough to eat and feed even one's immediate family. Thus, many Hollanders starved to death before the war ended and thereafter. Time and again Gies expressed the same hope that kept all Hollanders encouraged: The Allies will come, defeat the Nazis and set our country and the Jews free...and come they did!
Martin Niemoller, a German Lutheran pastor during WW II, penned a well-circulated and familiar poem that reads:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--because I was not a unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.
No one was left to help Niemoller, who spent time in German concentration camps before he was liberated. He spent the rest of his life making amends for his not helping victims of the Nazis during the war. Fortunately, he could do that in a post-WW II Europe helped by the Marshall Plan.
In these Last Days before Jesus comes to rule the world, civilization is crumbling at a rapid pace. The world is plunging into turmoil and chaos as never seen before. The last bastion of freedom and open declaration of God's word is deteriorating. America is being destroyed from within.
The difference between Gies' expressed hope of the Allies' coming to free Holland, the desperation of Niemoller in having no rescuer, and America today is that when America goes down, there will be no Allies to come to the rescue, no world power to down the enemy. The only help believers can look to and cry out for is God alone. Perhaps that urgency will usher in the End Times revival so many prophesy is yet to come.
On the other hand, the savior that the world will seek in its abject suffering and overwhelming desperation will come in the form of deception: The Antichrist. Willingly, people will accept his terms for assistance that will be proffered by accepting an identifying 'mark of the beast' that will allow them to buy and sell. That mark will forever seal their fate!
What that mark will be or what it will look like isn't clear yet. It will distinguish its bearers as being those who opposed God's truth when it was presented to them. Willfully they denied God and rejected Him and His people. Then, in their hour of futility, God will deny them, too. He will give them over to believe a lie that reserves a place for them in hell!
The future of each person on earth is based on a decision, a choice. If it's hard to stand up for God and truth today, how much more difficult will it be to withstand opposition and persecution of the worst kind later on? How serious are we now in our total consecration to God and His Holy Spirit? We need to knuckle down while there's time to build our character against what's coming. If we don't do it now, we run the risk of not having the moral and spiritual resolve to stand when the way gets hard and our lives and eternal destiny are on the line.
Each of us has been graced with a free will...God's gift to us. How are we using it? For God or against Him? That decision belongs to us!