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I have watched with interest the events leading to America's current war with Iraq not because I am adamantly for it or against it but because I realize the result of this war can have extreme prophetical significance. I am curious to see if this war will be the fulfillment of the fifth trumpet in Revelation chapter 9 or if it will only result in the set up for the future fulfillment of this prophecy. I am curious to see if Sadaam is the human fulfillment of the leader in verse 11 called "Abaddon" or "destroyer." I am fascinated by the role of America in end time prophecy and that interest is heightened when I realize that the area which we are attacking is the location of such great Biblical and prophetical areas such as the Euphrates river, ancient Babylon, Persia, and Assyria. Before this war began we received many reports of a great revival of Iraqis receiving the Holy Ghost and being baptized in Jesus' name, and it gave me "goose bumps" when I heard that the revival had begun from an underground church in the city of Nineveh! The city that God had mercy upon so long ago, is once again experiencing the visitation of God!

The preacher in Ecclesiastes said that to everything there is a season or a time appointed by God. God has a plan for this world, and despite what man's philosophy may say, God's appointments will be kept! As human beings we do not know every one of God's appointments, but we do know from scripture that God has made some divine appointments and that every appointment that He has ever scheduled, He has kept!

Scripture tells us that He appointed for Israel to enter into the promised land, and even though man's sin and unbelief caused God to have to wait until He had a people that would trust Him completely, God kept His appointment! Israel entered into the promised place that God had given them. When they later lost their land, the Jewish people were comforted by the fact that the prophets of old had prophesied that even though the Jewish people might be scattered throughout the face of the earth, God had appointed a time where they would be brought back together in that promised land. When the dark clouds of persecution rose up throughout the Crusades and more recently, during the Holocaust and World War II, the Jewish people held out on the hope that when God makes an appointment, He will forever keep it! God had ordained that there would be a second time of visitation to the Jewish people and that they would be able to live in their own land once again. And so in 1948, the world watched in awe as almost by a miracle, Israel once again became a sovereign nation and were given back the land that God had given them so long ago! Israel had a date with destiny! They had an appointment with God, and God kept that appointment!

I want you to realize that God has some divine visitations scheduled. They are written down in the Word of God and you and I may not know the exact time in which they will come to pass, but they will come to pass, because God keeps His appointments! The book of Revelation is full of events that God has said will come to past. Whatever your interpretation of these events and whether you understand them or not, you can get one important principle out of reading them and that is that God has divine appointments set for this earth and those who dwell upon it! The God of Glory is still in control of this world! He is still Lord of Lords!

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I know that I have some different beliefs than the mainstream of prophecy but I try to let scripture interpret scripture and not base my beliefs on a preconceived idea. In Revelation chapters 8-11 we find the blowing of seven trumpets which signal seven events that God has appointed for mankind. They are not judgments but are events and most of them are described as wars. The first trumpet is a war that involves a third part of the vegetation of the area involved being destroyed. I personally believe that this was fulfilled during the first World War which involved miles of trenches and battle fronts of cleared land even though there is no way to prove that conclusively.

The second trumpet is a war in which a third part of the ships involved are destroyed and also involved a "burning mountain cast into the sea." This is a little easier to prove and a little research reveals that there were a total of 105,000 ships involved in World War II and 36,000 were sunk. That is almost exactly a third even using rounded numbers! And the other major characteristic of the second World War was that the atomic bomb was used for the first time and it's mushroom cloud was described in many newspapers as a "burning mountain of fire." In studying the attacks on Japan, I found that the wind blew most of the radiation over the ocean where the majority fell into the sea!

The third trumpet is a burning star falling from the sky named "Wormwood" and it caused a third of all of the waters in the region to become "bitter" and many people to die. In April 26, 1986 the Russians had a nuclear experiment go wrong at the Nuclear reactor in Chernobyl and the top of the reactor was blown into the sky and released the greatest amount of radiation that had ever been released in the environment. The effect of this nuclear disaster are still being calculated because immediately after the accident, it began to rain heavily and continued so for weeks. The radiation was washed into the major waterways and resources of the area and literally millions of people have been killed from drinking the water that was made "bitter" by the radiation. Even more interesting is that the name "Chernobyl" in Ukrainian means "Wormwood" which is a common plant to the region.

The fourth trumpet is an event in heaven to shorten the time before the remaining events so there is no way to prove whether or not is has yet happened. The fifth trumpet is another war in which involves armored locust which are a perfect description of a modern day helicopter. It involves an evil leader which will "open the bottomless pit" so that "the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit." (Rev 9:2) From out of the smoke, the locusts would come and have power for five months. The evil leader would be known as "Abaddon" or in English, "destroyer." It is interesting to realize that the war with Iraq involves the burning of oil wells which is releasing a great smoke in the air and that the helicopters of America are swarming through the smoke toward Baghdad and that "Sadaam" is a nickname which means "destroyer." Are we in the fifth trumpet war? Or is this simply the conflict that will set up the fifth trumpet war? I don't know, but one thing is clear God has some appointments set for this earth, and when God sets a time of visitation, He will keep it. When I heard President Bush suddenly give Hussein an ultimatum and announced that his time was over! I wondered if the President's feelings and planning is being directed by the angels of God and that this is the time of God's appointment and visitation as scheduled by the fifth trumpet! We will have to wait and see, but without a doubt we are living in the last days! If there was ever a time to get serious about living for God it is now!

The start of the sixth trumpet is God loosening four angels who are bound in the great river Euphrates! Do you realize that those angels are there right now bound up waiting until the time of this divine appointment?! Do you realize that the Euphrates river flows through Iraq and right beside Baghdad? Do you realize that as our troops cross this river, they probably do not even realize it, but in the water there are four angels bound waiting to be loosed at the time of God's appointment!? Their loosening will cause a horrible war with a country that has an army of 200 million men! The only country in the world that has an army that size is modern day China! And in this future war, a third of the people involved are killed! These are not the judgments of God because the wrath of God and His judgment does not begin until the seventh and last trumpet (Rev 11:15-19). These are divine appointments that God has with the world!

I'm not trying to scare you, because this is just the beginning of the end! I can't tell you exactly where we are in prophecy and we will just have to wait and see. But I can tell you that we are closer than we ever have been before! There's something arising in this preacher that wants to scream out a message to America: wake up! Now is not the time fall asleep spiritually! Now is not the time to grow cold in the Lord! Now is the time to seek His face like never before! Now is the time to call upon the Lord while He may be found! Now is the time to clean your life up like you have never before and live righteously and holy before God and men! Now is not the time to allow bitterness or rebellion to steal your relationship with God! Now is the time to make church more priority than we ever have before to make living for God and drawing closer to Him our focus! Whether you are ready or not, there are some divine appointments that God has for this world, and they will happen! Now is time to get things right with God! I feel like echoing the words of God that He spoke through Isaiah in our text:

Who are you going to turn to for help when the divine visitation of God comes to pass!? Where will you run? In verse 4 God makes a powerful statement: "without me" they will be lost! "Without me" they will be prisoners. "Without me" they will be slain and the recipients of His anger! Without Him you will not make it either physically or spiritually! Some people have the attitude that they can make it back to God at the very end whenever they see the last events unfold! But I'm here to tell you that God is asking you a question today: what are you going to do in the day of visitation? If you do not have God already, you will not make it! If you have not developed a relationship with Him and drawing closer to Him, you will not have faith in that day! If you can't live for God in times of peace, you certainly will not live for Him in times of judgment! You say, "how do you know that preacher?" Because after the awful sixth trumpet war the scriptures make this horrible statement:

They did not repent even though the plagues came upon them! They did not repent even though they saw the hand of God's divine appointments coming upon them! Those who were unrighteous were unrighteous still! Those who had chosen to live unholy still chose to live unholy! You cannot choose to come to God at your own choosing for no man cometh to him "unless the Spirit draws Him!" Too many Christians are content to live with a "little sin" because they think that they have a second chance to make things right! "I'll get things right on my death-bed, preacher." But you may not have that chance, in fact the majority of people will not!

But Isaiah went on to say the word of the Lord with this statement: "but His hand is stretched out still!" Today is the day of salvation! The merciful, forgiving hand is still outstretched! You can still have your sins forgiven today! We have not yet reached the cut off! But you cannot wait until too late! The day of God's divine visitation is near!

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In our other text, we read the sermon of Paul as he was on trial before a Greek High court. In it he preached boldly that God did not live in building but in our bodies and that God had determined a time where a church would be formed out of His blood:

Paul said that God has an appointment with man right now that they should seek the Lord and find Him! And that right now God has made an appointment with man that He can be easily found by those who will search for Him and seek Him!

Paul said that God has now established two other appointments with man. They are of much more importance than the appointments outlined in the trumpets of Revelation. For you and I they are much more serious than God's appointments with Israel. The two most important divine appointments that we need to be concerned with is first of all an appointment of repentance and an appointment of judgment.

You have an appointment with death and then a judgment! Whether you want to keep your appointment or not, you will be there, because you are not the one that has made the appointment, but rather it is a divine visitation scheduled by God! He will one day meet with every sinner personally at a judgment seat and your unrepented sins will brought before you! Every sin that has not been brought under the power of the blood of Jesus through repentance and being baptized in His name and receiving His precious Holy Spirit will be judged! It is a divine appointment of God and you will keep it whether you realize it or not! Whether you are ready of not!

But that time is yet in the future today. And there is another appointment that is even more important. There is a divinely scheduled visit of God even today: a visitation of God to the repentant! There is a call from God to repent! Paul said that God has appointed a day of judgment but first, in His mercy, He is commanding everyone to repent! To tell God you are sorry and weep for your sins. To search your heart and get everything with God right. To literally "turn away" from your lifestyle of sin and begin a fresh life in God! There is a divine call to repentance! God is commanding everyone to REPENT!

Sadly, most churches shy away from preaching repentance. Some churches today do not even mention sin or take a stand against anything. It is not popular with people today to repent or to hear a sermon and a call to repentance! People view a sermon on repentance as judgmental by the preacher and the church and condescending. But I don't mind preaching that every one of us need to repent and make sure everything in our life is right with God because it is not my appointment today, but is the divine appointment of God! It is not my call to repentance but the call of Almighty God! He's not mean for taking a stand against sin and calling for you to make a change in your life, but is actually showing His great mercy, because He wants you to be ready for the appointed day of judgment! He wants to be able to say, "you are forgiven!"

Repentance is a privilege! It is a favor given by God.

Paul told Timothy that a man of God must instruct in meekness those that oppose themselves and pray that God will GIVE THEM REPENTANCE! You do not come to God on your own terms at your own choosing. The Spirit of the Lord will not always strive with man! There may come a day that you want to get things right but God is not drawing you! Repentance is a gift from God. A preacher preaching you a sermon on a call to repentance is not judgment but is actually the best thing that you can hear because God is saying "my hand is still outstretched!" Repentance is still available! Today forgiveness can be had by everyone in this room! You can leave today a changed person! You can leave with a new start! You can be born again today, but you must heed the call to repentance!

God GIVES repentance! It is not owed to you! This sermon is not a judgmental sermon, but a call to repentance by a man of God is the gift of God reaching out to you and offering you forgiveness. If you choose to leave this place today still cold in God with sin still in your life, it is your choosing eternal damnation. You are choosing to go to hell and you are rejecting the merciful loving hand of God! We must change our view of repentance! It is not a horrible thing to be dreaded but a lovely gift of God to be embraced! It is the most positive sermon that you can hear today because it means that God is still keeping His divine appointment to give men repentance! He can still be found! He will still respond to those who are seeking Him with all of their heart! He can still hear your cry today!

We need to get our lives right now! Now is the divine visitation of a call to repentance! Now is the time to get our lives right with God: not when the day of divine judgment comes!

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Not only is this a divine time of repentance but this is also a divine time of an outpouring of the Holy Ghost! The Holy Ghost rain is falling today; it is harvest season! You can have the Holy Ghost just as they did on the Day of Pentecost! But the reason that the rain had not come was because of sins that had not been repented of! If you will heed the appointment to repent of your sins today, God will also let you partake of the rain of the Holy Ghost! It is time! It is a divine visitation of God!

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I close with this: When Jesus came to save Israel, they rejected Him. And the scriptures say that as He approached Jerusalem knowing that they were about to crucify Him, He wept over the city. I find Jesus only wept twice in scripture and both times it was at a lack of faith! He wept at the tomb of Lazarus because of Mary and Martha's bitterness and lack of faith in Him. He wept over Jerusalem because they would not repent of their ways and allow Him to be Lord of all in their life!

Jesus prophesied that the horrible judgment would come because they "knew not the time of their visitation!" They had a divinely appointed visit from God and they did not even realize the importance of it!

Could it be that God has stirred this preacher today to preach you a message because this is your time of visitation. Could it be that someone here today that this will be the last message that they ever hear before eternity and their divine appointment with judgment? Even worse, could this be the sermon that would be the last time that God would reach out to you and deal with a certain area of your life?! Judgment is coming but today God has ordained a divine visitation of an appointment to repentance. His hand is still outstretched! Don't walk away from here until you have checked yourself to make sure that everything in your life is right with God! Check your motive, attitude, and lifestyle! Ask God to forgive you and help you to change to meet His Word of God! Whatever you do, don't miss the time of God's appointed visitation!