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Part II—Asia–Pacific Rim 65 parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), including the thousands of people who die every day from a lack of fresh, safe water. True worship also involves being lost in awe and wonder as one contemplates these verses. Jesus is both God and man; He satisfies the human search, longings, and brokenness; and He is coming again to restore all things. Amen. Come Lord Jesus now into our hearts, minds, and community . Amen. Come Lord Jesus. Let our years of faith never allow us to become blasé about the awe and wonder of Jesus. In one Sydney church the pulpit is so designed that as the preacher looks out across the congregation a wooden panel is also in their gaze. Upon the panel is engraved the words, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” True worship focuses on the risen Lord. Conclusion In conclusion, Revelation 22:8-21 is not God’s last page by chance. And as one reads one is caught up in the excitement, challenge, and grandeur of God’s climactic word to us. For our community, which is open to the spiritual things, but confused, it says so much. To a church finding its way in a community seduced by secularism, New Atheism, and New Spirituality, it is a blueprint for our message, focus, and response. In fact, I suggest, just with this last page any person could find an eternal relationship with Christ and priorities for living. Will we commit ourselves to the message of God’s last page? 8 Christian Identity in a turbulent world (Matthew 24:4-14) John Kok Kuala Lumpur Baptist Church Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia BIOGRAPHY John Kok has served as senior pastor of Kuala Lumpur Baptist Church in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, since 1982. He was educated at Emmaus Bible College in Australia (diploma in Christian doctrine) and has received both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Malaysia Baptist Theological Seminary in Penang. Kok formerly served as president of the Malaysia Baptist Convention, vice president of Asia Pacific Baptist Federation (APBF), and 66 Baptist Preaching vice president of the BWA. In his spare time, he watches football and plays badminton. Kok is married to Grace Kok (Lee Bee Lin), and they have two sons (Alvin Kok Eu Leong and Kelvin Kok Eu Weng) and one daughter (Kok Sue Ann). SERMON COMMENTARY John Kok’s sermon arrests the listener with a redoubtable and daunting survey of the global threats that create a turbulent world. Approximately the first one-third of the sermon confronts the listener with an array of assorted threats to stability and predictability and a panorama of threats to human existence. The narrative provides details and statistics of such global ubiquity that no thoughtful reader could feel immune from the reality of the tentative existence of fragile humanity. The sermon moves from trouble to help, or from the law to grace in the wider sense of the law, meaning everything that contributes to or reflects human fragility, mortality, weakness, sin, and angst. Kok confronts his listeners with a sustained emphasis upon the theological anthropology of a generation closer to the eschaton than any before it. Yet Kok’s eschatology makes no claims of knowing when that omega point may be. He leaves the sermon balanced in the tension between trouble and help, the now and the not yet. After his extended statistical presentation of global turbulence, Kok softens the sermon with a confessional episode that humanizes him and personalizes the existential tension produced during the delivery of the first part of the sermon. He is in it and with us in it. At this point of the message, it feels like resolving a diminished chord in a piece of music. Before turning to the exposition of the text, Kok makes it clear that we should understand not only what he wishes the sermon to say but also what he desires the sermon to do: “Lord, please show me my place, and show me what you want me to do in my world.” With that he enters the expository section of the message. The prelude to the exposition is not without a clear statement of his own eschatological interpretation, which suggests a pretribulation, premillennial rapture of the church. Yet he insists that Christians must not live at ease in Zion in light of this expected leave-taking. The tensive quality of his language suggests a constant watchful vigilance on the part of...

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