Chronicles of the End Times
Occasionally, people say, are we really in the last days? How do we know? Does it matter one way or another? We will try to answer these questions and many others in this study. But the most important question may be, how can we reach others with hope in these changing times? One part of prophecy is often emphasized over another, causing us to lose perspective and miss the blessing and beauty of prophecy in scripture. I have taken the information in this study from many authors and teachers who have their lives studying God's word. I have added some insight that the Holy Spirit taught me. With God's help, I have endeavored to keep the whole counsel of the word of God in full view to give us an accurate picture of Christ and His great love for a lost world. I pray that this will challenge you and cause you to grow in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, as it has me preparing it. Let's begin!
Chronicles of the End Times
Why Jesus Warned The Religious And Freed The Oppressed
A scroll rolls open, the room stills, and one sentence rearranges the air: today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. We walk through Luke 4 and the jolting moment Jesus declares freedom for captives, sight for the blind, and the year of the Lord’s favor—not as a distant hope but as a present reality that confronts our comfort. From there we trace His hard word to the religious heart, the reminder that God’s mercy landed on a widow in Zarephath and on Naaman the Syrian, and why that same mercy still leaps beyond our circles to reach people we tend to overlook.
We share firsthand memories of revival in the sixties and seventies, when the Spirit visited beaches and back alleys more readily than polished sanctuaries. That history becomes a mirror: are we open to the hungry or protecting our preferences? The conversation then turns to spiritual warfare in plain sight. A demon screams in a synagogue, and the shock is not the manifestation but the location. Evil doesn’t only lurk in graveyards; it sits in pews. We talk candidly about oppression, possession, discernment, and the calm, commanding authority of Jesus that silences torment and restores without harm.
Throughout, the call is practical and hopeful. Stand on Scripture. Pray with persistence, whether thirty seconds or ten minutes, and let resistance push you to your knees, not into despair. Remember where grace found you, refuse to label anyone a lost cause, and expect Christ to demolish strongholds rather than manage them. If you’re longing for renewal that reaches the streets and reshapes the church, this conversation will steady your heart and sharpen your focus. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs courage today, and leave a review to help more people find these conversations.
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Welcome everyone. This is Russ Scalzo Chronicles of the End Times. Good to be with you today. This is episode 260. Today we're going to look into Luke chapter 4. It's interesting that Jesus came to the Jews first. He came to Israel first, and then the Gentiles. He mentions that a couple of times in the Gospels. And then Paul goes on to write about it some more as the one chosen to reach out to the Gentiles. But there is a deep message to the church in this portion of scripture we're going to read today that we need to be aware. Jesus points out a few things when he's talking to the Jews in the synagogues. Jesus' ministry began not out on the streets, but to the religious people. To the churches, as we would call it today. He would go to each synagogue. Now each area had their own synagogue. Some were very primitive, and others were a little more lavished. And Jesus would go from town to town in the beginning of his ministry and speak to the religious people of his day. Let's pick it up here in Luke chapter four, verse eighteen. I'm sure that for many of you this would be a familiar scripture. It is also an extremely powerful and revealing scripture. Let's read it. The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. After that he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. But then he said, Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. And they were all amazed at what came out of his mouth. But then he gave them a warning, and we can take this warning as Christians, to those of us who go to church and maybe have gotten lost in the church culture, and have forgot about our first love, more concerned about the status of the church or what our position might be in the church. Jesus said to them, Surely you will quote the proverb to me. Physician, heal thyself. Do hear in your hometown what we have heard that you have done in Capernaum. I tell you the truth, no prophet is accepted in his own town. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years, and there was severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. There were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elijah the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed, only Nahum the Syrian. And of course, at this they got so mad at him that they took him to the edge of a cliff, and they were going to throw him over that cliff. But of course, the Lord just walked through the crowd. And those two examples that he gave, the miracles weren't done to the religious people, but to Gentiles, to those outside of the Jewish faith. So he was warning them and they didn't like it because it actually pierced their hearts. And we have to be careful. I remember the revivals of the sixties and seventies that I got saved in. It seemed like the Lord was bypassing some of the churches who didn't really want anything to do with us hippie types, but he visited us on the streets, on the beaches here at the shore. Salvation was happening everywhere. God was speaking to young people. And they were looking for a place to go to church. There weren't that many churches that would take us in. But the ones who did flourished and grew. We have to keep that in mind today. We are to go to the highways and the byways, Jesus said. When I give my testimony many times I say, you know what? God comes to the back alleys. Because spiritually that's where he found me in the back alleys. When the devil was done leading me on, I felt like I was in the garbage can with my feet sticking up when Jesus came walking by and pulled me out. We have to be careful that we don't become self-righteous, but we remember where we came from and what God has done for us. And that will compel us and inspire us to reach out to those that we feel are never going to get saved. These people that are hardheaded and nasty, they will never come to Christ. But that's a terrible thought to have because we were there. There's something else I want to address in this podcast. We were talking about it in the last one and it's called Demons and how it affects people and the oppression that they can put on people. We have to remember that the spiritual warfare is real, and there are plenty of people oppressed by demons, and a number of people that are possessed by demons and don't even know it. Let's move it up to verse thirty-one. So, Jesus left there, and he went down to Capernaum in a town in Galilee, and on the Sabbath began to teach the people. They were amazed at his teaching because his message had authority. In a synagogue there was a man possessed by a demon, an evil spirit. He cried out at the top of his voice, Ha! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the holy one of God. Be quiet, Jesus said sternly. Come out of him. Then the demon threw the man down before them all and came out without injuring him. I wonder if you're seeing the same thing I'm seeing. Where was this demon? He wasn't some of the ones that Jesus ran into, in the graveyards and in the hills, who appeared as insane and deranged. Verse thirty-three says it all. In the synagogue there was a man possessed by a demon. I've been in church work for a long time, and I've seen a lot of stuff. And I can tell you that the devil goes to church too. We have to be careful. We have to have discernment. We have to be in touch with Jesus. We can't close our eyes to these things. Whoever you're praying for today, believe God. Stand on the word. Don't be discouraged. No matter how bleak it looks, no matter how that person may be acting, God is bigger than that. And if we stand on his word, he will break through. You may have someone that's miles away from you, that's in desperate need, and you've been praying, and still things haven't turned around. Don't let the devil push you to the ground. Let him push you to your knees, and that's where your power comes from. Paul told us that we have the authority to demolish strongholds, not to slap them on the hand, but to demolish them. Crush them to dust that the Holy Spirit wind will blow away. I hope you will be encouraged today. Stand on the word of God. Believe it. Pray. A small prayer, a 30-second prayer, a ten-minute prayer, whatever it is, if it comes from your heart and you sense the presence of God when you're praying it. That will give you courage, that will strengthen you. And as King David said many times when he was on the run, he said, I strengthen myself in the Lord, and that's what we need to do. Next podcast, we're going to talk about some of the crazy stuff that's going on in this world, which never ceases to amaze and always gives us more than enough to talk about. This is Russ Scalzo for Chronicles of the End Times. Keep looking up.
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