Luke 21:36 ‘Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man’.

DAILY READING; Acts 19:21-41; Judges 11:34-12:15; Job 40

Many believers in China are facing a bitter winter of tribulation. The level of persecution in China is at its worst level since the cultural revolution in the 1960’s and 70’s. The Chinese government is going as far as installing facial recognition cameras to monitor those coming to Church.
In 2018, new regulations governing religious affairs took effect, which led to the arrest of many pastors and the demolition and shutting down of their Churches.
Pastor Xiang En is a pastor of a Chinese underground Church who recently had their Church closed by the government.
His story of persecution was featured by some Christian News outlets.
In March 2018, the Chinese government had installed facial recognition cameras in the lobby of Pastor Xiang En’s Church building. The purpose was to gather the private data of his Church members. Through the cameras, government officers could identify the Church goers and gather information about them. With the collected data, they were able to hunt down every single church member to threaten and intimidate them to give up their Christian belief.
Six months after installing the cameras, on September 9, 2018, hundreds of policemen raided the Church, smashed the building and put the fulltime ministers, and senior pastor under custody, and took away all ministry equipment and shut down the Church.

While such a scenario may seem strange to some of us, we must understand that a day is coming when such persecutions will be the norm all over the world.
A time is coming when all manner of monitoring systems will be put in place to identify and fish out Christians. There will be a massive worldwide hunt for believers, and everyone who refuses to take the mark of the beast.
The fulfillment of Revelation 13:14–15, would include a massive information-retrieval-and-storage system that would track and manipulate the billions of people on planet Earth.
Facial recognition is not the only way technology can trace people, Voice recognition systems can identify a person through their speech patterns. Security operatives will use biometric technology to match people on the street and identify them in seconds. The monitoring systems existing today are tools that would be easily exploited by the antichrist.
All this should make us determined not to miss the rapture. Anyone who gets left behind will face unprecedented persecution. The Bible says that the tribulation will be such that except the Lord shortens those days, no flesh would be saved.
Let us therefore utilize the time we still have left to live ready and stay prepared, for no man knows the day or the hour.

In Luke 21:36 Jesus gave us the guideline for preparation. He said ‘Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man’.

Watching in the Word and praying always is a crucial requirement to escape what is coming upon the earth. Let us indeed do all we can to abide in the center of God’s Will, because that is the safest place to be at this time.
By the mercies of God, none of us will miss Heaven. May we today, receive the grace for renewed fire on our prayer altar, diligent study of God’s Word and unbroken fellowship with the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ Name.

PRAYER; Lord, please help me to understand the times and seasons. Please grant me the grace to watch and pray always. Thank You Lord for renewed appetite for Your Word and fresh fire on my prayer altar in Jesus Name.
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The treasures of God are never on the shallow end, but are always buried in the depth of God’s Word. It takes a personal discovery to get there. – WORDBITE 222.