Are we living during the last days?

pestilence
1: a contagious or infectious epidemic disease that is virulent and devastating

Matthew 24: 4 …Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.

False Christs 5 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. 6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. 8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

According to the predictions of Jesus and the book of Revelation, I believe we are at the point where Jesus says that “these are the beginning of sorrows”. The last days can last for a few years before any of the other signs begin to be fulfilled and there are no dates or indications in the Bible that point to a certain year or anything that we can use as a specific sign. We don’t know the day or the hour. It could happen tonight or next year or in six months. The timing is up to God and He knows the exact time that He will send His angels to gather the church from the Earth.

Will this happen in our lifetime? Yes, I do believe that it will because the signs that we can see and read from God’s Word all point toward a time when news videos can be transmitted all over the world as they happen. We are living in that time.

God has provided a way for every person who is seeking salvation to have it through belief in Jesus for their salvation. He is the only way and if you want to be a part of the church that He began with His disciples, I would ask you to seek Him out as your Savior soon. The clock is ticking closer to that time but once the church is taken away it will be even harder for anyone to accept Him as their Savior. Read the chapter that I have highlighted above in the link and also the book of Revelation and Daniel chapter 9 and following.

Don’t turn away from His call on your life and in your heart. If you have felt it please turn to Him even on your bed at night and ask Him to be your Savior and Lord. A child can do it and you can too.

Have you heard His voice?

Like Mary at the tomb knew that it was her Lord and Savior when He spoke her name because no other person could express their love for her like Jesus. She felt it, she knew it was her Lord. Jesus calls us to become adopted into the family of God as His adopted brothers and sisters. God loves the world’s population regardless of country or ideology or skin color which is why Jesus came to pay the penalty for ALL of our sins and that penalty was not only His death but complete separation from His Father which He had never known before!

Jesus, our Savior, did this because of His love for humanity, for all of mankind, and yet He was rejected and still is in many countries. This begs the question, “Why is Jesus still rejected today?”. Is it because of the exclusive nature of His offer of salvation? My personal opinion is “Yes, that is the reason people of other faiths reject Him”.

Why? Because they don’t like being convicted of their sinful nature and their daily lives reflecting that. They live as if there is no tomorrow and mostly do whatever they feel like doing as long as they don’t hurt anyone. In some cultures, it doesn’t matter if they hurt someone because of their faith, especially if it is different or contrary to the dominant faith in that place. But, have you ever wondered how they would feel if they were the ones being ridiculed and spat upon because their faith was not the socially or politically acceptable faith?

God’s voice brought the cosmos into being at His command. Isn’t it a wonderful privilege and an honor to be able to study God’s Word in order to learn more about Him and His requirements for us? I do believe that having a written record of His statutes and laws and all of the poetry and wisdom that is contained in this Book is actually the best education that anyone can have. Reading it and studying it helps us to know His voice and how He sounds so that we will know for sure when He does speak to our spirit. We will know that it isn’t our ideas or our voice but His!

Coming to know Jesus as your Lord is one of the easiest and hardest decisions that a person can make. But it is also the best decision because it directly affects your eternity. Many people think that there are many rules and regulations to follow if you want to be a Christian but there is really only one requirement and that is to believe in Jesus for your salvation. Because unless you have been convicted of your need for a Savior, you won’t seek Him at all. But when you do feel that you need Him there are no hoops to jump through in order to be ready for it. Just believe that He died and rose again to pay for your sins and the penalty for them. Once you do that, your heart will change and you won’t be the same person that you were before.

You will do the same things which the apostles did or you will be able to do them and you will want to do them. Tell others how He changed your life and made you into a new creation with a heart that wants to do what He did and what Peter and John and Paul did. Tell others about this wonderful person that has saved you from the pit of hell and changed you so that you can say with confidence that “Jesus is my Lord and my Savior”. The thief which asked Him to remember him when He came into His Kingdom believed in his hour of need and he knew that he deserved the punishment that he got, but he asked Jesus for His forgiveness anyway…and he got it! Don’t turn away from the only Person who can save your soul.

Who are you trusting in today?

Are you trusting the government to “fix this pandemic”? Does anyone in our government even know or have an idea what this really is? Yes, it is a disease with similarities to the flu but no one knows the period of infection or the transmission vector other than through the air by droplets or possibly by touching a surface that may be contaminated. As far as we know it wasn’t engineered by anyone it just started infecting people but the strangest part of this virus is that it can cross over to animals like dogs, cats, even tigers. There aren’t many viruses which can do this. Did it catch us by surprise? I think it did. It began in China last fall and it is contagious enough that with our mobile population it has spread all around the world in about six months.

When will this virus go away? Nobody knows for sure. It may level off for a while during the summer months, but it may come back this fall or during the winter, we just don’t know. But…God does. Is He responsible for sending this virus into the world? I don’t know, but it’s possible. He could be using it to get our attention and get us to turn back to Him. We’ve pushed Him and most of His laws and His Word out of education and from most of our public places like courtrooms. When Israel did that, God used the Babylonians and the Syrians to come and enslave them until they turned to God and begged Him to send them a savior.

Sometimes this would work for a while, but usually in a short period of time they would be right back to worshiping other “gods” and He would have to get their attention again. Why are we so hard headed when it comes to following and worshiping God? We will do it for a while and do it faithfully, but when the hard times ease up we usually move to the point of, “We’ve got this, God you can go back to your house until we need you again”. God provides the air that we breathe and the water that we drink and every bite of food that we eat. Where in that sentence do you see a place where we DON’T NEED GOD!?

I know that many of you think that all of those things which I listed have been available to us for thousands of years so why should you thank God for them now? Okay, hypothetically, lets say tomorrow you wake up and you are having a really hard time breathing or getting enough air to let you be able to move. Would you blame God or would you seek Him out and beg Him to help you? If the doctors can’t find a reason for it and can’t really help you except by putting you on a respirator, don’t you think you should be talking really seriously to the Creator Who formed you in the womb? Since He is the only One that can help you at this point? Now how wonderful does that air feel when you take a breath?

God does love each of us deeply and He has provided everything that we need to live. He also provided a Savior to atone for all of your sins and mine so that we could be with Him in Heaven one day. You don’t know when your appointment will come to meet Him but it is coming. It could be tomorrow or next week, are you ready to meet Him? Do you know Him? Does He know you as a friend and an apostle? If you can’t answer those questions positively and without doubt, then you need to be seeking Him in His Word and through honest, heartfelt prayer too.

If you meet Him before I do, I pray that you will be known by Him as a “faithful servant” even if it was for a day or two or twenty years even. You need to make sure while you can in this life.

What is your motivation?

For Christians who have given their hearts and their lives to Jesus the Christ it is His sacrifice and His death on the cross so many years ago. What motivates you to do the things which Jesus commanded his apostles to do? It was the resurrection of Jesus from the tomb after three days. He fulfilled His own prophecy. He is our motivation. Jesus is the Son of God and it was His willing sacrifice which paid the price for your soul and for mine.

His humanity, the frail body of flesh and the knowledge of the pain and suffering which He was about to go through…it was all of that and more that caused Him to pray so fervently and deeply that He was sweating drops of blood. He was shedding blood during His prayer before He was arrested to go through a mock trial. He was asking His Father for the strength to go through the ordeal that He knew was about to come upon Him.

Eternity was paid for by the blood of Jesus. He paid that price for all of humanity, not just the Jewish people or the Syrians, or those in Africa or China or in a country which didn’t exist at the time…America. He could see down through time that each of our lives would mean so much. Not just because we would give our hearts to Him as new followers but because of those that each of us may have some influence in some way to bring them to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. We are His ambassadors in the place where we work and live and even on the Internet if we will carry His message to them.

Blood was shed in the Garden to cover the sin of Adam and Eve. God provided the lamb which gave its life to provide its skin to cover them and their nakedness. When Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, God provided a ram to be the sacrifice instead. There are many other examples in the Old Testament where God provided food and water for people who didn’t believe in Him and didn’t want to follow Him. But when they got into trouble or in captivity by a conqueror from another land, they cried out to God for help. When He delivered them they would follow Him faithfully for a while but then they would drift away from His love and His purpose. This pattern happened over and over again but God never really left them alone. He was always there even when He would tell them that He wasn’t going to hear their prayers.

Why am I writing this today? Because there are many people who need to hear it. Jesus loves you. God loves you and if you read His Word you can find His love in almost every book of it. He came in the form of Jesus His Son so that you and I could be redeemed and our sins would be forgiven so that we would be able to stand in His Presence and tell Him one day that Jesus’ blood has covered our sins and have Jesus stand with us saying that “This person belongs to Me”. That will be the most wonderful feeling that all believers will ever have. To know that the Creator loves you and He gave His Son as the perfect sacrifice for each of us so that we can be made in the likeness of Jesus.

The Creator came into Creation as the perfect lamb, without blemish or spot so that each of us have a chance to be saved from our sins and our sinful nature. He changes each of us inside all the way down to our soul so that we will be a new person. Not the same person that we were but a forgiven and redeemed person clothed in the righteousness of Jesus. Seek Him while there is time because without Jesus there is no salvation and there is no way to enter in Heaven without Him.

Sin forgiven in Eden

It seems that many of our preachers and those who have been in church have forgotten that the Son was present from the very beginning. The Spirit and the Living Word were both present during the week of creation.

When God gave Adam the first commandment or rule it wasn’t long before it was broken. Since sin could not be covered by anything but the shedding of blood, God had to kill a couple of animals, likely sheep, to atone or cover their sin and their nakedness before He cast them from the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were very much like children or babes in Christ at this time. They knew God personally and had walked with Him and yet they sinned by disobeying His commandment about the tree of knowledge.

A few chapters later in Genesis, God commands Abraham to take his son and sacrifice him on Mt. Moriah. While they were going, Isaac asked his father about the sacrifice that they would use. Abraham told him that God would provide a sacrifice for them. Abraham’s faith in God was such that he reasoned that even if he sacrificed his son, God would raise him up again so that God’s promise would not fail. He was right about God providing the sacrifice because even when he had bound Isaac and was about to bring the knife down, an angel stopped him and told him to look about and a ram was caught in a bush.

All of these salvation precursors are placed in God’s Word because He has wanted us to see that we have a choice to follow Him. We are chosen from before the foundation of the world to become His children.

Even when the Israelites walked into Egypt to live because of the famine which had gripped the entire Middle East, God had a plan. Joseph who had been sold into slavery by his brothers prophesied about their release from slavery and told them to carry his bones into the promised land when they saved from their slavery one day. They didn’t know it would be over 400 years before that time would come, yet they hoped and prayed for a deliverer all of that time. God heard their prayer and raised up Moses in the palace of Pharaoh, the son of a Hebrew slave but raised as a prince in Egypt. In time, he would be their savior from the oppression of their slavery and their subjugation of over four centuries.

Although it was not Moses who actually saved them and brought them out of Egypt, it was God and His signs and wonders that caused them to be cast from their slavery to a nation in order for them to become a nation. This is also a precursor or a type which shows how we are saved from our bondage to sin. Some of us spend many years in bondage to sin although we look at it as “living the life”. What life is there without God in it? There is no life in reality without God’s Presence. You are like a zombie before you come to realize that you need Jesus as your Savior. He calls you and me as “the dead” because without the Holy Spirit coming into our life, we are dead to Him and His influence in our life.

God has a plan for each of us and in His timing He will bring us out of that dead world into His world of Life everlasting. When you feel His touch in your heart and you know that you are a sinner without Jesus in your life, you will come to Him. All of the Old Testament “types” which I have outlined here point us toward salvation because each of them are a picture of how we are before knowing Jesus and when we are set free because of our faith in Jesus. These are but a few of the types which point us toward our Savior and they are in the Old Testament, all the way back to the very beginning of the book of Genesis.

I pray that you will give your heart to Jesus and ask His forgiveness for your prior sinful ways so that you can enjoy the gift of eternal life with Him one day.

Salvation is through faith in Jesus alone and when you are brought to that cross you must make a choice, follow Jesus or go back the way you came. Salvation isn’t forced on you, but you have to be willing to give your life to Him for it.

Wisdom from an old Master…

We use his wisdom more than we do the wisdom of God. What does that say about our society?

I realize that he is an imaginary and fictional being but many people say that God is too. So why do we listen more to Yoda’s advice and try to live by it rather than the wisdom which is found in God’s Word?

I believe that it has to do with belief and the truth. We know that the movie which Yoda is in is just fictional therefore it was a figment of someone’s imagination before it became a movie and a part of our society and our vocabulary. So why can’t we give God’s Word the same weight of truth that we tend to give to the creations which come from Hollywood? Because we are afraid of the absolute Truth found in God’s Word, even if we don’t really believe in Him. We are afraid of finding the real Person of Jesus and finding out about God Himself and His love for us.

Fear and pride keep us from seeking Him and learning from His Word. We are afraid that when we find the real Savior, Jesus, we will be convicted of our sins and the fact that we need Him as our Savior. Pride gets in our way because we think that we are good enough to walk the pathway which brings us to the gate of Heaven, yet no person is able to walk that pathway without repenting of your sins and asking Jesus into your heart. Then follow His example during your life and learn about the life that God has for His own. Will you be able to live this life perfectly? No, but with the Holy Spirit guiding you and teaching you, it will be a bit easier to walk it. It won’t be without problems but with Him teaching you and strengthening you, you will make it through anything.

We are not controlled by the media

That is a good statement but if you’ve been shopping lately you know it isn’t true. Our country is in panic mode because of a virus which is less deadly than the flu! Some doctors have said as much in the media but no one seems to be listening. God is still in control and this virus and the mania, which has been brought on by a media which is out of control, will pass and we will forget about it in a few months. The problem is that since this is a world-wide hysteria it is causing the economy of the entire world to grind to a screeching halt. Everyone is afraid of everyone else. Pray for each other, go to church (regardless of the ban on crowds), seek His guidance in this situation because He is in control. God can take care of all of this if we will seek Him for our comfort and our healing.

The media, even on the Internet, has too much power these days. I pray for everyone who has a cold or the flu to just stay at home and take care of yourself. Pray and read God’s Word because He can and will heal in His time and in His way. Pray for those around you and for our nation and it’s leaders. In Jesus’ mighty name, Amen.

Be useful in the world around you

Many of us seem to be stuck in a rut of some kind. We live our lives from one week to the next, day by day doing things which seem to be useful, but would God see your life that way? The letters to the Middle East churches which are found in the first chapters of the book of Revelation tell a story much different from what we see in our world today. But, if you read these letters carefully, those churches mirror our churches too. Some of the letters even remind you and me of people we’ve known as well. They were saved at a revival and baptized and for a while they were on fire for the Lord. But now their zeal has tempered and cooled. The worship may still be there but they don’t volunteer for projects in the church. They rarely come to church now. Some have become “holiday Christians” by only showing up during the holidays.

The letters to the churches in the book of Revelation reflect this “loss of the spark” and even sliding into a prideful type of worship as if God should be thankful to have us! So what does that say about the church in our time, in the 21st century? To me and to a lot of other people who have moved away from worship in the church it says that religion has taken the place of the message of Jesus the Christ. People who have been in the church for many years have lost their “first love” of Christ. Not because He has lost His love for us, because He hasn’t, but because of how much the world around us has crept into the church and with it the “outward show” has been diminished.

The church that the world sees today is very different from the church of sixty years ago. Things which would’ve caused our grandparents to blush because of the nature of the sin, are commonplace today and these behaviors are not taught in church as being sinful anymore. The original message of Jesus about believing in Him for salvation and laying aside our old way of living to follow Him daily has been watered down to something far less demanding and socially acceptable. Jesus and His disciples did not water down the good news and they didn’t change the message so that others were not offended.

The message which Jesus taught did stir up controversy, and He made it a point to tell the priests exactly what they were doing wrong. He also pointed out to them that He was the Messiah which Isaiah has prophesied about over seven hundred years before. The Holy Spirit even revealed to David, when he was writing the Psalms, the way by which the Messiah would be crucified in details which you can readily see. At the time that David wrote Psalm 22, crucifixion had not been used as a form of punishment for crimes deserving death.

Your life, as a follower of Jesus, is given to God through the grace of God and by the power of God because of the sacrifice which Jesus made on the cross to pay the penalty for ALL of our sins. If He had not been obedient to the point of death, we would have no hope of eternity in Heaven. It is because of Jesus’ obedience through the arrest, conviction, scourging and His death on the cross and His burial in the tomb and His resurrection three days later that we have the Hope of seeing Him one day in our resurrected bodies! Was He afraid of the agony that He was about to go through? Yes, He was! The human part of Jesus knew the torture that He would have to endure along with the pain and suffering. His nature of being God in human form knew that it was necessary so that many would come to know Him as Savior and Lord.

We wrestle with our own natures every day after we give our lives to Christ and repent of our old ways. This is what makes the life of a Christian so difficult. Your life and mine are at odds with our “old nature” and Satan slings darts of temptation at us constantly, because he knows which sins you enjoyed so much. Walk with Jesus, read the Bible and pray for the Wisdom of God through the word that you read every day, even if it is only a verse or two. Ask Him for strength and wisdom so that you can withstand the temptations of the world around you.

Walking in His Presence

I had a dream or a vision one day but don’t ask me to elaborate on the sights and textures of it. I was reading and meditating on part of the book of Matthew, I think, and I could see myself walking on streets of gold. Matthew doesn’t speak of this but heaven is described this way in the book of Revelation. Why would I see gold under my feet? I don’t know. Maybe God was giving me a glimpse of His home? Just a small “blink and you miss it” types of glimpses? I don’t know for sure.

Don’t you think that is what Jesus meant by living a life more abundantly here? It’s possible I suppose. But if you are so spiritually-minded you are no Earthly good then what is the point of being a child of God? If we aren’t going to take our faith and the message that we should be living by out into the world at large, then what good are we doing for God? Jesus told His disciples to take the gospel out into the whole Earth and that means to our workplace and to the dog park or the market and to the mall as well. But if we don’t meditate on His Word and learn from it enough to tell others about it, what are we telling people?

Do you feel as if something is missing in your life? Do you want more than you have or do you want to be useful to God and His Kingdom? We should realize that we don’t have to be missionaries or preachers or even teachers in order to be useful to God’s Kingdom. God does give each of us a gift or a talent. Sometimes it takes us years to find out what our talent or our gift is. Many times it is because we are not searching in the right place. The only place that we can find the truth about us and what He has given us is in God’s Word and by prayerfully reading it and asking God to show you what He has for you.

God can and will show you. It won’t jump out of the Bible and it won’t be plainly on a page or in a certain book but by learning about God’s requirements for our lives. Obedience to His commandments is part of it, even though we can’t perfectly follow them. Obedience to God and the surrendering of our life and everything in it to Him is the truth of our lives in Jesus Christ. Not giving Him some of your life or some of your money but giving Him all of it. Does that mean that we are to live in poverty? Absolutely not. You were given so many blessings such as your life and your money and your job or business by God. None of it is yours. Your home, your family, your career, your very life belongs to God but until you realize this and truly give it all to Him…your life will never be as satisfying as it could be.

Your life in Christ is in heavenly places. Your soul inhabits your dwelling place in heaven even if your physical body does not. God’s Word says that we are seated with Him in heavenly places if we truly belong to Him. We are there, in Christ, in Heaven with Him and we must dwell in Him and live our lives as if we are in Him until that day when we are translated from this world to the next. We are saved by His Grace not through any vain thing that we may do but by our belief in Jesus Christ for our salvation, it is this which brings our soul into His presence at the day in which we move from this place to His home.

When you are in a storm…

Remember that you, as a Christian, are related to the One Who created rain and wind and the seas. He commands the elements and the universe itself has to obey. There are some storms which come upon us unexpectedly and there are some which we helped to create, but God is with us in all of them. He is still in control regardless of the news or the numbers which you hear on TV or radio. Whether the storm is natural or caused by mankind, God is still in control and those who doubt this will one day find out for sure. Though one day it will be apparent that He is in control, they will still cry and complain about it until they find that it is too late to change.

The storm that you are in could be financial or just a problem with your health. It could be that you are worrying about your child or how you are going to pay some bills this month. A storm in your life can happen at any time and in an instant your life will change forever. What do you do then? If you don’t know Jesus as your Savior you can call on friends or family to help you but they could be going through their own storm. Jesus is the only Person Who can take care of spiritual problems and health problems and financial problems too. When you give your heart to Him and sincerely repent of your sinful life to follow Him, He will be with you through all of the storms.

Your family and friends won’t be so close during those times of joblessness and cancer diagnosis. They will be with you every day if you win the lottery but when the money is gone, they will be too. God loves you so much that He sent Jesus to take our sins and our burdens and our problems to the cross and nail them to it forever. All that you need to do is believe in Him as your Savior and Lord and your life will be forever changed. I’m not promising that all of your troubles will go away, sometimes they get worse because of your faith in Jesus, but He will provide for you in His time and in His way.