“Just as crisis reveals character, intensity determines resolve and confirms character choices. In the Time of the End the crisis is so intense that the choice and the character are permanent.”

  “Just as crisis reveals character, intensity determines resolve and confirms character choices. In the Time of the End the crisis is so intense that the choice and the character are permanent.”

TEXT:

Chapter 14, Page 141 –

Those who move toward the Light are “Becoming Like” their Father. They are “sealed . . . on their foreheads” with “the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God . . . and My new name” (Revelation 3:12). Their compassionate behavior toward their fellow man and their faith in God demonstrate the results of their sealed empowerment by the mighty Angel of Revelation 18. (I’ll let you investigate this Angel’s identity and His work on your own. Compare Romans 4:11 and 2:29 with Ezekiel 36:26-27; Ephesians 1:13-14 with Revelation 7:3; and Joel 2:28 with Revelation 18:1.) “Here is the perseverance of the saints who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus” (Revelation 14:12).

Those who move away from the Light – share a different experience. For convenience, because of coercion, or out of genuine commitment, “they worship the dragon” and his minions (Revelation 13:4). They are marked “on their right hand or on their forehead” (Revelation 13:16) by intolerance and persecution of the People of God, indifference toward their fellow man, and independence from God. They are tormented and tortured by the deluding influences of Babylon (compare Revelation 17:4, 6 with 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10). “And it set him aflame all around, yet he did not recognize it; and it burned him, but he paid no attention” (Isaiah 42:25).

They have no reconciliation and, as a result, they “have no rest day and night” (Revelation 14:11). “Was it not the Lord against whom [they] have sinned, and in whose ways they were not willing to walk, and whose laws they did not obey? (Isaiah 42:24). “Therefore, I have brought fire from the midst of you; it has consumed you” (Ezekiel 28:18). In their rebellion, they are consumed by the fires they have lit themselves. 

As we noted in an earlier conversation, crisis does not change character. Crisis reveals character. Just as crisis reveals character, intensity determines resolve and confirms character choices. In the Time of the End the crisis is so intense that the choice and the character become permanent.