January 23, 2025 | Silver Spring, Maryland, United States | Ted N.C. Wilson, President, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
Greetings, friends. As you know, we are continuing our journey through the book, The Great Controversy, and are currently looking at some of the highlights in Chapter 39, titled “The Time of Trouble.” If you have not yet had opportunity to download your free copy of this marvelous book, I encourage you to do so now at thegreatcontroversyproject.org [Insert: thegreatcontroversyproject.org].
The time of trouble is a very serious time that takes place just before Jesus comes, and after everyone has made their final decision either for or against God. Because God allows everyone to have freedom of choice, once their final decision has been made, there is nothing more that He can do for them.
Of this time, we read, “God’s long-suffering has ended. The world has rejected His mercy, despised His love, and trampled upon His law. The wicked have passed the boundary of their probation; the Spirit of God, persistently resisted, has been at last withdrawn. Unsheltered by divine grace, they have no protection from the wicked one. Satan will then plunge the inhabitants of the earth into one great, final trouble” (The Great Controversy, p. 614).
It is at this time, we are told, when terrible calamities will take place around the world, and God’s people will be blamed as the cause of it all. It will be urged that they should be destroyed in order to save the world from destruction.
This is not the first time Satan has used such an argument. Nearly 2,000 years ago this same argument was used against Christ Himself. “It is expedient for us,” said the wily Caiaphas, “that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not” (John 11:50, KJV).
Then God’s people will be plunged into what is known as “Jacob’s trouble,” described in Jeremiah 30, verses 5 and 7—“For thus says the Lord: ‘We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace. . .Alas! For that day is great, so that none is like it; And it is the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it” (NKJV)
The term, “Jacob’s trouble,” refers to Jacob’s night of anguish, described in Genesis 32, when he wrestled in prayer for deliverance from the hand of his twin brother, Esau. It represents the experience of God’s people during this final time of trouble.
Notice, however, that at the end of the night of wrestling with the angel, who in fact, was Jesus Himself, Jacob prevailed and exclaimed, “For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved” (Gen. 32:30, NKJV).
And so will it be with God’s people during their time of trouble—as it says in the text we read from Jeremiah 30:7—“And it is the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.”
My dear brothers and sisters, when we are in God’s hands, we have nothing to fear. We may wrestle with Him in prayer, and when we make a full surrender to Him, we shall indeed live.
Let’s pray together just now.
Father, thank you that you have assured us that as we go through the time of trouble, through Jacob’s trouble, that our hand can rest firmly in your hand, and that we can come through victorious, not because of our own strength, but because we have accessed the strength from heaven. So bless us as we face the future and the time of trouble. Help us not to be afraid. Help us to lean completely on you. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.