On my 40th birthday, I awoke, sat up, and winced in pain as my right ankle hit the floor. The pain was sharp. Walking felt like stomping on sharp nails. What could it be? A quick online search told me that I had plantar fasciitis, which (according to the website) men aged 40 and over are particularly prone to get. Remarkable accuracy! Intrigued, I began to scour the internet about what other ailments men aged 40 are particularly prone to.

Shortly thereafter, I visited my physician for a checkup. “At a certain age,” she said, “you need annual checkups and certain procedures are performed. That time has now come.” Cue more wincing. Last year I turned 50, and my physician informed me that I now needed a certain invasive procedure done every five years because I had reached “a certain age.” Once again, the time had come. Last month, the nurse administering my shingles vaccination explained that this was necessary because I had experienced chickenpox as a child and had now reached “a certain age.” Once again, a certain age. The time had come.

The same can be said for planet Earth. Our sin-cursed planet has reached a certain age. Since 1798 we have been living in what Scripture calls “The Time of the End” (Daniel 11:40). The time (of the end) has come . . . but for what? Until Jesus stands up to deliver His people (Daniel 12:1-2) at His Second Coming, the time has come for the final chapters of The Great Controversy to take place. Evil will flourish and achieve a full flowering among the unregenerate, as will righteousness among the saints of God.

The social polarization between evil and good will grow into a vast chasm. Compelled by the love of Christ, the earth will be lit by a manifestation of God’s character among the saints, while the lost, driven by hatred of the sin-bearing and soon-coming Savior, will visit their wrath on the saints. All around, we are witnessing social and civilizational collapse, accompanied by moral confusion, and the existential pain and desperate search for meaning and identity caused by modern society’s underlying philosophy of despair.

With the collapse of fiat currencies and the roll-out of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), digital IDs and vaccine passports in our immediate future, the infrastructure for the global implementation of Revelation 13:16-17 is taking shape before our eyes. In this age of Christ-hating intolerance, the gloom of global persecution will only darken. Therefore the time has come for the saints of God to shine ever brighter—our witness will be recorded in the annals of eternity.

Yes, the time has come! As never before, we must:

Cast off the meaningless froth of popular culture
Pray for grace, truth and strength
Put down deeper roots in Scripture
Love our neighbors
Ask for the grace to overcome besetting sin
Ask for the anointing of the Holy Spirit
Exhibit a holy boldness for God
Consecrate our whole beings to God and His service
And use our last remaining economic freedoms and evaporating resources to further the gospel in our home communities, our nations, and among the unreached.

The time that prophets wrote about has come. The time has come for God’s final remnant to unapologetically and unashamedly bear God’s last message of mercy to our dying world before the end of time. The time when heaven girds her strength and the new world step forth for the liberation of our dying world has come. Yes, that time has come.

The time has come for you and me to choose courage over fear, faith over doubt, and boldness over timidity. And we were born for this time. You were born for this time. God has shaped each of us for this time. Our time has come. Yes, there may be short-term pain, but “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared” for those who survive this time (1 Corinthians 2:9).

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