In this sermon, Kevin Swanson argues that COVID-19 is an indication of God's judgement upon the nations and possibly a harbinger of what is to come. He cites Hebrews 12:26-30 as a relevant message for the present day and suggests eight ways for Christians to address the current challenges: being humble before God, increasing faith amidst trials, enhancing the prayer life of churches, maintaining an optimistic view of Christ's church, experiencing the power of the Gospel, removing facades and hypocrisies, differentiating between the world and Christ while cultivating ecumenicity, and asserting family and church jurisdictions. Swanson emphasizes the importance of discipleship over intellectualism and encourages believers to be prepared for the future, focusing on evangelism and discipleship ministries.

I'm Kevin Swanson from Reformation Church in Elizabeth, Colorado. And what's burning in my soul is what Brian just said. Thank you, Brian. And what Carlton said And what Josh said and what my other brothers have said. So there's a lot burning in my soul right now.

So I'm not going to repeat what they said, but I am going to share just a bit from Hebrews chapter 12. So if you have your Bibles, let me read this to you. Hebrews chapter 12 verses 26 through 30. These verses are so applicable to where we are today, brothers and sisters. So hear the Word of God.

He has promised saying, yet once more I shake not only the earth but also heaven. Now this yet once more indicates the removal of those things which are being shaken as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken. Let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear for our God is a consuming fire. Amen.

These are our marching orders for the present day. I know they have been for 2000 years but they apply as much today as they ever have. Especially as we come out of the COVID 19 years and we head on to more things. We have a Sunday evening service now that we've been running for a year in our church. I encourage you to include a Sunday evening service And we would love to have a Monday through Sunday every day of the week service.

But on Sunday this last I preached on Luke chapter 11 where Jesus said, This is an evil generation. And I couldn't think of a more applicable message from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ than this as applied to our situation today. We live in an evil generation. Nineveh repented, Assyria repented. The first century Jews did not repent.

God gave them 40 years. And the question I have is, what will God give us? COVID-19 I see as another indication of God's judgment upon the nations. It was a worldwide catastrophe, but very possibly only a harbinger of what is to come. Have the nations repented?

Did our nation repent? I don't think so. The hardness of heart in this nation is astounding. We are now in a second nuclear age. The vulnerability and fragility of the nation's sociopolitically and economically beyond anything we have ever seen.

As those who believe in the depravity of men with access to the most devastating weapons possible, we should never doubt the ability of these men to push those buttons. If God would destroy a third of Europe with a bubonic plague to prepare for the first reformation, what might he do for us to prepare the world for a reformation? God shakes the world so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain and so that we will go forth and serve God in reverence and godly fear. What we need is to continue that service of God in reverence and godly fear that's our focus in our schooling that's our focus in our homes that's our focus in our churches that's every day for us serving God with fear with with reverence and godly fear So we're facing the second nuclear age. We're facing the breakdown of the West, the severe loss of Christian influence, the rejection of God and his law, and the judgment that follows.

I just finished a 700 page book called Epoch, The Rise and Fall of the West, in which I chronicle how it happened. World powers moving from west to east and to some extent north to south, God is bringing the west to its knees. We are facing severe economic disruptions and whatever U.S. Catalogical perspective, we are facing the largest Christian persecution by geographical distribution in the history of the world. Open Doors reports 360 million Christians in 76 countries, that's 40 percent of the world, experiencing quote high levels of persecution in 2022.

The world has not witnessed this level of persecution since the Roman persecutions sixteen hundred years earlier. Neither have there been such a universal opposition to Christ and his followers on the part of all of our major institutions as well as widespread global proliferation of the persecuting force. Most concerning of all for the purposes of what we're talking about, persecution is returning to the Western world against those Christians who decry sexual sins advanced by men like Nero and Herod. Universities, schools, corporate businesses, and political states almost universally endorse homosexuality and transgenderism and they persecute Christians who refuse support for these sins. So that's where we are today.

So Given these scenarios, I just want to give you eight ways in which we can address these things as the people of God. Number one, brothers and sisters, we need to be humble before God. The theme of my book Epoch is Romans chapter 11 that the Gentiles have boasted and God has clipped the Gentiles in Europe and America as well and he is clipping us now. Church attendance in America has dropped off from 48% to 20% in the last 10 years And the bloodshed or the bloodletting is not over yet. So we are under the judgment or the chastisement of God because of the pride of the Western world.

Our pride is bringing us down as an entire civilization. And we certainly need to be sure that we are humbling ourselves in the in our in our assemblies our assemblies should be marked by humility and those who say there is no church good enough for me we run into these people from time to time There's no church good enough for me. What I say to them, there is four square feet in our church service in which you may throw yourself on the ground and cry out, God have mercy on me, a sinner. And if there is four square feet in any church in which a person may do that friends that church is good enough for you. So humility to me is the first thing we need to remember the last shall be first and the first shall be last and that is what is happening to the European Gentile church.

I think this viewpoint needs to affect our mission strategy. Number two, let us experience an increase in faith through all of our trials. God is sending trials through the churches. He certainly has in our lives. We have never confronted such such intense trials than we have in the last two or three years, especially the elders, the leaders in our our church.

And yet God is growing our faith in the process. And so that's what we need to be focusing on is as we walk into the fires of the trials that he will bring in the next few years, let us be sure that we are steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord and developing in faith. Let us see our faith grow. We should not respond in fear of these things, but in faith with each successive trial that God gives to us. And to experience joy in the fire.

I commented to somebody recently that yes, we've been through serious trials and yet God is increasing our joy unlike anything I've seen before in our home so praise God for this this is a miracle of God this the most astounding thing in the world that we can rejoice in the fire of trial thirdly let us increase the prayer life of our churches. We absolutely need to be in prayer, brothers and sisters. We are in desperate need of this. Our eldership meetings should not be long and drawn out meetings about how we need to fix this or that in the body, but really we need to be on our knees. We need to have prayer meetings instead of eldership meetings in our homes and in our churches.

So let us increase prayer life of the church. Fourthly, we cannot, we must not approach the future with an escapist mentality. We must not approach the future with a depressed view of Christ's church in his kingdom. Now this is one reason we put together a new curriculum for homeschoolers, first through 12th grade, is because we want an outrageously optimistic curriculum concerning what Jesus has done over 2000 years around the entire globe. Yes, we're seeing a breakdown of the Western faith.

But if we have a mirror centric or Western centric view of what is going on, we're going to be depressed and we're not going to be impressed with what Christ has done throughout the throughout history. We need a Christ centric view of history and optimistic view of what he has done to build his church with every tribe and nation. By the way this vision is materializing unlike any other century in the last 20 centuries. Every tribe and nation vision is materializing big time around the world and we should be celebrating this and shouting the praises of Jesus for what he is doing. I've also calculated what I call the internationality ratio for the Christian church and for all the different religions around the world and found that the Christian church is a thousand times better at crossing borders and cultural boundaries than Hinduism.

And between 20 and 100 times better at crossing cultural boundaries than the Islam religion. Hallelujah, Jesus is bringing a cross cultural discipleship vision to the entire world and it's happening right before our eyes we should be praising his name for this happening right now. So the challenges we face are always attended by a rising confidence in the gospel. We need to continue to respond with a sense of the power of the gospel in transforming lives. As we see difficult things happening around us, we're bringing the gospel into some of the most complicated situations you could ever imagine.

There should be a rising sense of significance and urgency for getting the gospel out, shouting the message from the mountain tops, and we should not curtail the gospel message as we enter into the worst case scenarios in any way shape or form. And when we approach the problem of homosexuality we need to see the power of the gospel re constructing giving entire new life and a new identity and a new orientation so that we do not have the gay Christian. We need to have such a belief in the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ that we would find the term gay Christian the ultimate apostasy. And then sixthly, the facades must come down. The apocrisies the thin coated religion with a bit of religious language the lack of transparency in the leadership of the church the congregation these things have to go the facades are going to have to come down.

Typically, an apostate nation, what you're going to find is a lot of self-righteousness, a lot of facades, a lot of depreciation of the gospel message. We need to preach right through all of that in a day like this. The church at the core of the core of the core of it must be defined as those who walk in the light and the blood of Jesus Christ is really cleansing them from their sins. The church is not made up of those who confess other people's sins, but our own sins, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us of our sins. Okay, and then seventhly, we must maintain a strong antithesis between the world and Christ, this has been touched on already, to know where those boundaries lie between the man-centeredness of the day and the God-centeredness in doctrine and practice in the church.

And I add, in terms of ethics as well, this is the problem with wokeism. This is the problem with all of this stuff that is undermining the PCA and the SBC and others. It is a fight is an ignoring of God's law. It's a rejection of God's law. Churches are not singing the song.

Oh how love I thy law very much anymore and shame on the churches. The law of God is sufficient to equip the man of God for every good work, whether it be the issue of transgenderism, wokeism, or whatever it happens to be. In Revelation 14, the true believers are characterized as those who what? Keep the faith of Jesus and keep the commandments of God. And therefore we bring the gospel message in, we bring the law of God in to equip the man of God for every good work.

So let's be sure that we're maintaining a strong antithesis between the world and Christ in these areas while at the same time cultivating a healthy ecumenicity. Evangelical churches in our little valley have come together especially after the COVID-19 crisis. Very first week I called together the evangelical pastors and we agreed with each other, we'll either hang together or hang separately, so let's hang together. And six to eight pastors have been praying together every Friday for the last two and a half years and it has worked wonders. It has been the most amazing experience of spirit-filled ecumenicity I have ever experienced in any of my denominations.

It is phenomenal what happens when we cross our denominational boundaries. In fact, one of the pastors recently said, why don't we just start a new denomination, call it the Pastors or the Churches in Elizabeth, Colorado. You know, there will be seven of us. But we have such fellowship, it's incredible. I think during a period of intense persecution, as we're seeing, brothers and sisters, we're going to have to hang together or we'll be hanging separately so let's be sure that we draw a line of antithesis between the world and Christ and then find good solid ecumenicity on this side.

And then finally, let's continue to assert the family and church jurisdictions. As we bring education back into the family, let's bring medical care back into the churches. We're not trusting the CDC and the hospitals and the socialist medical systems as much as we used to. But brothers and sisters, you know, this is the function of the church to take care of the medical care of the people. Let's bring it back in.

We're looking at putting a medical clinic in our church, in our little county. And I would encourage others to consider the same thing. We've got to bring medical care back out of the hands of the state back under the church. I believe this is something we need to do quickly. The future holds tremendous opportunities for us for the reformation of the church for the spreading of the gospel message, for the renewed reception of the gospel message.

So let's get ready. Let's be sure that we turn on even more evangelism and discipleship ministries in our churches. And discipleship will be key. We must get back to discipling the nations. Discipleship must replace schooling or what we call the Aquinas distinction between sacred doctrine and that knowledge build up on human reason.

And above all our future pastors must not be educated. They must be discipled in the boat on the Sea of Galilee with Jesus he didn't have a white boat there because whiteboard because it would get too jiggly and the water would smear it was a very informal form of discipleship but he was focused on the faith of these men more than he was on their intellectual capacity, although the sharing of ideas, the sharing of his doctrine is just as important as the discipleship focus upon faith and character, but we've got to replace the intellectualism of the modern university and seminary with the faithful discipleship ministries of Jesus in our local churches. This is the future for healthy churches in America. That is what is burning in my soul.