You can prepare now for whatever may come. Hear Billy Graham talk about the end times in this 1986 message from Washington, D.C. Watch more #MondayNightClassics every Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern.
From our archives,
The Billy Graham Classics.
[applause]
I want you to turn with me
to Luke, the 21st chapter,
verses 25 through 28.
Luke 21.
“And there shall be signs
in the sun,
“and in the moon,
and in the stars;
“and upon the earth distress
of nations, with perplexity;
“the sea and the waves roaring.
“Men’s hearts failing them
for fear,
“and for looking after
those things
“which are coming
on the earth:
“for the powers of heaven
shall be shaken.
“And then shall they see
the Son of man coming in a cloud
“with power and great glory.
“And when these things
begin to come to pass,
“then look up,
and lift up your heads;
“for your redemption
draweth nigh.”
I want to call your attention to
two words in that 25th verse.
“And there shall be
signs in the sun,
“and in the moon,
and the stars.”
In other words,
signs in outer space.
“And upon the earth,
at the same time,
“there’ll be distress.”
That word distress means
pressed from all sides.
“of the nations
with perplexity.”
That means no way out.
Pressures will be so great that
no one sees any way out.
Is there any hope as we look at
the future of our world?
Think of the things that have
happened in the last 150 years,
130 years ago,
man could not travel any faster
than a horse could run.
That’s all.
Look at the world today.
When I was born.
I was born on
November the seventh, 1918,
and four days later,
they heard it in Europe
and stopped the war.
(laughter)
That’s what
my father used to say.
And another one started
in North Carolina.
But be that as it may,
look at the things that
have happened in my lifetime.
When I was born, there was
no such thing as radio.
I can remember
the first set we had.
It was a crystal set that
my father had made,
and there was only one station
on the air, KDKA in Pittsburgh.
And my father would
fix that thing up
and hear something saying,
woo, woo, woo, woo.
He said, “That’s it.”
Now that was radio
in my lifetime.
Automobiles hadn’t been
on the scene too long,
and a freeway was
unheard of.
The only freeway we had
was two ruts.
And you had to fight the fellow
coming towards you
to see which rut
you were going to use.
And up in the mountains
where we lived,
there wasn’t
any paved roads,
or where we went
to visit
because we were born in
the Piedmont section.
And television.
I remember
the New York World’s Fair.
I was already preaching
at that time in 1939,
1 year before—
Well, just a few months before
the war was to break out.
And you see this was called
the Christian century,
when we would have peace
and utopia upon the world
with social justice.
What happened?
In just a few years,
we had two world wars
that slaughtered millions
and millions of people
and disrupted the life of
the whole planet.
It looks like we’re building up
toward another war, God forbid,
because if we ever have
another one
that could be the last war,
because it could be Armageddon,
the last war of history.
But in this passage, they were
pressed from all sides,
and it seemingly
there was no hope.
That’s the question that
is haunting people
everywhere today.
People pick up
their morning newspapers,
and see the headlines, and
they’re asking the question,
“What is the world coming to?”
Millions of people
all over the world today
are desperate to know
what the future holds.
And it’s interesting to me that
the scientists are telling us
and they’re speculating,
and the sociologists
are speculating,
and psychologists and
psychiatrists are speculating,
the farmers out in Minnesota
and Iowa are speculating.
Everybody is speculating,
“What does the future hold?”
But somehow,
the church is almost silent
And yet there’s so much
in the Bible about the future.
What the future holds.
God has a plan
for the future.
Computers are used
on a massive scale
to predict the future.
In the midst of pessimism,
gloom and frustration
of the present hour,
I want to tell you today,
there is a hope
and that hope is
in the fact that
Jesus Christ is going to
come again.
(applause)
Yes, there is hope.
Jesus said, “If I go and
prepare a place for you,
“I will come again.”
Now He had been to the cross
and shed His blood for our sins
because the Bible says,
“We’ve all sinned and come short
of the glory of God.”
We’re all under
condemnation.
We’re all facing
judgment.
We’re all sitting under
the sword of Damocles
and we all need redemption.
We all need forgiveness.
Billy Graham needs forgiveness.
I don’t want justice
in my life with God.
I want mercy,
forgiveness.
I don’t deserve heaven.
I don’t deserve to have
my sins forgiven,
but God is a God of grace
and love and mercy.
And grace means
something you don’t deserve.
And He offers His grace
to every one of us,
whatever the color of our skin,
whatever our background.
And he says, I love you.
I love you. I love you.
I love you so much that
I was willing to give My Son
on the cross to die for you
and Jesus Christ died for us.
And God laid upon him
all of our sins.
And we’re going to go to heaven
because of what Christ did
on that cross.
But He rose,
but He also rose again.
And then, after He had died
on the cross
and risen from the dead
and ascended
back to the Father,
the disciples stood there,
looking at Him,
as He was ascending.
And I believe that the cloud
that the Bible describes
is really a cloud of angels
that had come to take Him back
and escort him back,
as they escorted Him
that first Christmas night.
And He ascended
and the disciples were standing
there with tears in their eyes.
Their Master was going,
Jesus was going away from them
back to the heavenly Father.
And two men in white apparel
stood beside them.
Two great angels
and said to them,
”You men of Galilee,
why do you stand here,
“gazing into heaven?
“This same Jesus that
you see going into heaven
“shall so come
in like manner.”
He’s coming back.
And it was the fact of
the resurrection
and the coming again
of Christ,
that they went out
to turn the world upside down.
That was their motivation.
They had within them
the hope
that death and hell
had been conquered.
And that someday
there was going to be
peace and justice
in the world.
Without hope
the world could not go on.
Emil Brunner was a great
theologian in Switzerland
and a wonderful friend of ours,
and a great encourager to me
as a preacher.
And he once said,
“What oxygen is to the lungs,
“such is hope to
the meaning of life.”
Nobody can live
without hope.
John F. Kennedy once said,
“It remains to be seen
“whether civilization would be
mended before it’s ended.”
Winston Churchill’s favorite
American song was
“Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory
of The Coming of The Lord,”
that we heard a moment ago.
And the great creeds of
the church teaching.
The Nicene Creed that I heard
over and over again
in the Soviet Union said in
those great Orthodox cathedrals
and the people would be standing
and they would say
the Nicene Creed.
And it says in
the Nicene Creed,
“He shall come again
with glory to judge
both the living
and the dead.”
He’s coming again.
Then secondly, Jesus left signs
of His coming.
People are always asking me
at press conferences.
They say, “Do you believe
Jesus Christ is coming again?”
And I say,
“Yes.”
They say,
“Do you know when?”
No, I don’t know when.
I tell them Jesus warned
against speculating on dates.
It could be tonight.
It could be
a million years from now.
I don’t know.
I only know one thing.
I’m to be faithful in the job
He’s called me to do now.
I’ll talk about that
in a minute.
But in Matthew 24,
the disciples were sitting at
the Mount of Olives.
And Peter, James,
John, and Andrew.
And they asked three questions
of Jesus recorded in Matthew 24.
They said,
“When shall these things be?”
“What shall be the sign of
your coming?”
and “What shall be the sign of
the end of the age?”
Not the end of the world,
just the end of an age.
An age that’s dominated
by evil.
That will come to an end.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke
differ slightly,
but a condensation of
a much longer discussion
is found in Matthew 16 and
in Luke 21 and so forth.
And in Matthew 16 it says,
“When it’s evening,
“you say it’ll be fair weather,
for the sky is red.
“And in the morning,
“it will be foul weather today,
for the sky is red and lowring.
“Oh, you hypocrites, you can
discern the face of the sky,
“but you cannot discern
the signs of the times.”
And in that brilliant
little parable,
what Jesus was saying
was this:
in the realm of
scientific observation,
man is
tremendously brilliant;
but in the realm of
spiritual awareness,
he’s astoundingly ignorant.
We live in a world of
maddening complexity,
in an age of
doubt and upheaval,
in a generation which has lost
its bearings and lost its way.
As we scan the face of
the contemporary skies,
what do we see?
Another missile blows up
yesterday?
I wrote a book on
the four horsemen
of the apocalypse.
And during the study and
preparation for that book,
I learned a great many things.
Those four horsemen are
predicted by
the Lord Jesus Christ in this
24th chapter of Matthew,
because the first horse
has to do with false Christs,
false religion.
The devil never seems to
run out of counterfeits,
counterfeit Christ today.
Do you know that I read in
a paper some time ago
that there are over 400 people
in Los Angeles alone
that claim to be
the messiah.
False religion
everywhere.
You can find that I’m sure
here in Washington.
And then the second thing
was the red horse.
Wars and rumors of wars.
And certainly, I don’t have to
emphasize that.
Rumors of war
are everywhere.
And then the third horse is
the black horse,
and that stands for famine.
And in this century,
think of it in
this century of plenty
and all the wealth of
this century,
more people are starving
than probably any other period
in the history
of the world.
Millions of people
starved to death last year
in Africa alone.
Thank God for
those organizations
and those groups that were
helping those people.
And then there was
the pale horse.
In spite of
all the advantages
of modern medicine
and pesticides,
the 20th century has had
tremendous epidemics.
The prospect of
man-made diseases
for which we do not have
any resistance
is a horrible prospect.
AIDS is only the beginning.
And we keep reading
in the paper
that maybe they’re on
the verge of discovering
something to help AIDS.
I hope so.
I pray so.
I feel sorry for those people
that have it,
but if we don’t find
an answer to it,
we’re told that millions
of people will have it
in the next five years.
It’s spreading like wildfire.
But that’s just one.
Think of others we haven’t
even heard of yet
that are on the way.
That’s the pale horse.
So, we see
these horses galloping.
Riding toward us
with all their devastation,
with all their ability
to destroy the world
that we know.
And it all comes as
the judgment of God.
But it’s also God’s speaking
to us in love and saying
turn to the cross.
Like those people that had been
bitten by snakes
out in the desert.
Those Israelites.
It said turn to the serpent of
brass and be saved.
Those that turned were saved.
Those that did not were lost.
There’s nothing about a brass
serpent that could heal them.
It was by faith,
doing what God said do,
and that’s something
man doesn’t want to do
because man is
a rebellious person.
We don’t want to obey
God’s laws.
We don’t want to do
what God says.
We don’t want to act
like the good Samaritan
and go out and help
our neighbors
that are suffering.
We don’t want to love
certain people.
We consider them beneath us,
or inferior to us,
or something else.
We don’t want to love them.
And yet the Scripture teaches
that we’re to love.
And that love is to be
the dominant feature,
if you’re to follow Christ.
Now, the Scripture has
a great deal to say
about signs,
many more signs;
like the loss of fervent love
in the church.
That’s the reason we need
revival in the church today,
because iniquity shall abound,
the love of many will grow cold,
the Bible says.
“And then,
as in the days of Noah,
“they were eating
and drinking
“and marrying and
giving in marriage.”
In other words,
there was immorality,
and break up of marriages,
and homes breaking up.
And Jesus said, it’s going
to be that way again,
just before my coming.
And then the proclamation of
the gospel.
He says,
“This gospel of the kingdom
“shall be preached
into all the world
“for a witness
to all nations.
“Then shall
the end come.”
For the first time in history,
we have the ability now
by radio, by television,
by the printed page,
to carry the gospel
to every person
in the whole world
and it’s being done.
Jesus said that would happen
just before He returns.
That’s one of the signs
we’re to look for.
I never dreamed
in 1960, 1959,
Grady Wilson and I sat
in Lenin stadium in Moscow,
beautiful stadium,
and they were cleaning it up
and there was music playing
and the music playing was
Rosemary Clooney singing.
And we prayed, “Oh God,
if it be Thy will
help us to come someday
to the Soviet Union
and preach the gospel.
I prayed it,
but I didn’t believe it.
I never dreamed that God had
a plan that someday
we would preach
the gospel
in various parts of
the Soviet Union.
But God, in His own providence,
worked it out.
The gospel of the kingdom shall
be preached in all the world.
You know, when Mao Zedong
took over China,
there were about
two or three million Christians,
according to Time Magazine.
Do you know how many believers
there are there today,
without any missionaries?
Between 30 and 50 million.
God has been working mightily.
He’s not dependent on us,
us Americans.
God works through
all the people.
And we’re going to have a—
(applause)
Now, what is
going to be
the results of
the coming of Christ?
Well, first of all,
there’s going to be
an examination.
Man will be accountable to God
at the judgment.
Exam time.
Like the old grandmother
and the little boy who said
to his friend, said,
“What in the world
is your grandmother doing?
She was reading her Bible.
He said,
“She’s cramming for exams.”
And one of these days,
a lot of us are
going to be cramming,
but it may be too late.
The Bible says
in Isaiah 51,
“And everlasting joy shall be
upon their heads:
“they shall obtain
gladness and joy;
“and sorrow and mourning
shall flee away.“
Is there any hope?
Yes, there’s tremendous hope
for those that put that trust
and their faith in Jesus Christ.
Do you know Him?
Are you sure
that you know Him?
Have you received Him
into your heart?
There’s a challenge to the fact
that He’s coming again.
First, we’re to be pure.
In 1 John 3, it says,
“Every man that hath this hope
in Him purifieth himself.”
And then secondly,
we can be patient watching.
To watch implies not only
to believe that He will come,
but to desire that
He would come,
to be often thinking of
His coming,
and to be
always looking for it.
Paul wrote, “Looking for
that blessed hope,
and the glorious appearing
of the great God and
our Savior Jesus Christ.
And then we’re to be prepared.
“Therefore be ye ready, for in
such an hour as ye think not,
“the Son of man cometh.”
And then we are to be occupied.
The greatest motivation for
service among believers today
is the fact that
Jesus Christ is coming again,
and did we have hope.
And we’re living in
a world without hope.
Are you ready?
You say,
“Well, Billy,
“what would I have to do
to get ready?”
Because I want
to tell you something.
We talk about
the end of the world.
Do you know when
the end of the world
can come for you?
It might not be
the coming of Christ,
like I’ve just explained.
The moment you die, that’s
the end of the world for you.
That’s the end of
the world for you
You enter another world:
heaven or hell.
And you travel to one of
those two places
by a broad road
that leads to destruction
and the narrow road
that leads to heaven.
Which road are you on?
Jesus said, “Behold,
I stand at the door, and knock;
“if any man hear My voice,
and open the door,
“I will come in to him,
and will sup with him,
and he with Me.”
In other words, come in and eat
with Me,” He said.
He has his arms
out-stretched.
And He says, I want you
to come to me.
I want to forgive
your sins.
I want you to know
that you’re going to heaven
when you die.
Are you sure of that?
Are you certain of that?
What do you have to do?
First, first repent
of your sins.
It’s very simple and
yet very difficult too.
It means that you say to God,
“I have sinned.
“I’m sorry for my sin.”
Will you say that?
And then you say
“God, with your help,
“I can’t do it alone,
“but with your help,
I’ll turn from my sins.
“I’ll quit.
“I’ll change courses.
“I’ll change roads, but
I’ve got to have your help.
“I can’t do it alone.”
He’ll help you,
if you mean it.
And then you turn by faith.
Now, notice, I said by faith.
Now faith means commitment
and it means that
you’re willing to follow Him
and serve Him
in total commitment to Him.
Everything else in your life
become secondary.
Christ is first.
Jesus demands that you believe
enough to come to the cross
and say, “Lord, I need you, and
I believe you’re my only hope.”
You come,
and make your commitment
to Christ today.
You see this crusade,
in which thousands of people
that you don’t even know,
all over the world
have prayed for you.
They didn’t know your name.
They didn’t know your problem.
They didn’t know your need,
but they’d been praying.
Many countries have been praying
for this Washington crusade.
You may be
a member of the church.
You may be a good member
of the church.
You may be an officer
in the church,
but deep in your heart,
you’re not sure that you are
ready to meet God.
You’re not sure that
you know Christ as
your Lord and Master
and Savior.
You’re not sure that you’re
totally committed to Him.
I’m going to ask you today
to take that first step and say,
“I do want to be committed.”
because you see,
after you come to Christ,
there’s a lot more
to following Christ
than I’m able to tell you
this afternoon.
It’s a lifetime of learning,
growing, doing.
And it’s an exciting time.
Even in the midst of suffering,
there can be joy.
In the midst of tears,
there can be a smile,
with Christ in your heart
and your name written
on the book of life.
If I didn’t know that my name
was written on the book of life,
I don’t believe
you could drag me
out of this stadium
this afternoon
till I was sure.
I’m going to ask you
to do something
that you’re going to be
a little timid about.
It’s going to be easy,
but it’s going to be hard.
I’m glad it’s hard
because it was hard,
when you look at Jesus
on the cross for you,
I’m going to ask you to get up
out of your seat right now
and come and stand here
on the field
and just say by coming,
“I open my heart to Christ.
“I want Him to come in and
forgive me and change me.
“I want to be ready
for that moment
“when I must meet Him.“
Everyone in prayer, as people
are making this great decision,
♪ Just as I am,
without one plea. ♪
♪ But that Thy blood
was shed for me. ♪
♪ And that Thou bidst me
come to Thee ♪
♪ O Lamb of God,
I come, I come. ♪
(Cliff Barrows)
There’s still time for you to
make your decision for Christ.
And as Mr. Graham
has just told you,
call the number
on your television screen
and talk with
one of our counselors.
If the line is busy,
just wait a few moments
and call again.
We’ll be there as long as
the calls keep coming in.
If you just prayed that prayer
with my father,
or if you have any questions
about a relationship
with Jesus Christ,
why don’t you just
call that number
that is on the screen.
There’ll be someone there
to talk with you,
pray with you and
answer those questions.
And remember,
God loves you.
If you would like to commit
your life to Jesus Christ,
please call us right now,
toll free at 1-877-772-4559.
That’s 1-877-772-4559.
Or you can write to us at:
Billy Graham
One Billy Graham Parkway,
Department C
Charlotte, NC 28201.
Or you can contact us on
the web 24/7 at PeaceWithGod.tv.
We’ll get the same helps to you
that we give to everyone
who responds at the invitation.
On behalf of Franklin Graham,
and the Billy Graham
Evangelistic Association,
thank you for watching,
and thank you for your prayers.
(Billy Graham)
Tonight, I’m glad to tell you,
as we close,
that the Lord Jesus Christ
can be received.
Your sins forgiven.
(narrator)
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