Category: Religion

Life…and death


In our world today, we see this played out all of the time. Life and death in the city streets of America and in areas in the Middle East where they are fighting each other because of ideology and religious differences. Why? It is hard to understand from an American perspective what causes such division and hatred.

I mean, churches split because someone doesn’t like the way the preacher is teaching but that is no reason to begin shooting at each other. Sometimes, churches split because of different opinions about the way the church is decorated, but these are petty, childish differences. Why would Christians get so upset and angry over petty things like this? In today’s culture it seems that everything gets on people’s nerves to the point that “we don’t feel safe” is a common theme in news stories today.

Seek your wisdom from the Word of God and trust in Him! He is the One that gives wisdom and strength, so pray about it and seek Him out. He will not leave you, especially if you are seeking Him. God loves us and if we can just get past our own problems and prejudices and hangups about the Bible and following Jesus, our world would be much a better place!

God has given to each of us a measure of wisdom. Some of us have to go through troubles and trials to gain this wisdom and some of us seem to have it available even in grade school. My point is this: God knows which of us will listen and which will not and we need to be attentive to His voice, small though it may be, to do His will for us daily.

I pray that all who read this will seek Him out in His Word and in prayer in order to get to know Him better. I have a son who is out on his first trip, alone in a car. I am asking all of you to be in prayer for his safety please. He is my only child. Thank you.

Games


ArcadegavesIf you know a teenager or have one still hanging out at home, then you know about their fascination with games. Mostly electronic games like the ones played on portable devices, cell phones, game consoles, etc. If you can get one to try a game of Magic the Gathering cards and sit down and play it, then good for you as long as they have their own money to put into this.

I played video games back in the days of arcades, early ’80’s and late ’70’s. Yes, I am old. The thing is, I liked playing those old arcade games because they were challenging even then. You were trying to get as many points as possible in the time allotted for your quarter. Some of us were pretty good, some of us just lost money depending on when game we were playing. Some of the games I played at an arcade in the Metro-Center, I didn’t care how much money I played out…it was FUN!

Why bring up games on a site which normally has posts about Jesus and His love for us? Because, it doesn’t matter if you play games in the real world or if you are playing in a virtual world, He still loves you and He wants you to know about it. Games, for the most part, are not going to point you in the direction of Jesus or the Bible. They show you how to use fictional weapons in fantastic battles or something like that. But…consider the battles that are mentioned in the Bible.

Samson killed a lion with his bare hands and carried of the doors of a walled city on his shoulders. He even killed one thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass! Then there is David when he went to fight Goliath and he did it with five smooth stones from the river. He only needed one to kill Goliath, so I guess the other four would have been for his brothers. So, what is my point in bringing games into a Bible study website? My point is this: if you have to use a game to get someone interested in the Word of God, then do it!

God does have a sense of humor after all. Consider the look on the Philistine’s faces when Goliath fell and that Hebrew boy took his sword and removed his head from his body! Some preachers have said that the other four stones that David was carrying were for Goliath’s brothers…maybe but then again maybe not.

There are too many people in our country and our nation, not just in Mississippi, who don’t know Jesus. This is unacceptable! Why? Because it has been almost two thousand years since Jesus gave the order to go and tell all of creation about the gospel. What happened? It shouldn’t take two thousand years to tell the whole world about the Love of God and salvation through Jesus!!

Everyone should know about Him, but many don’t want to hear the story with their spiritual ears and take Him into their hearts. The Truth of God’s love is offensive to some people and its Truth is too because they can’t refute it and they can’t really ignore it. It is the offense which pushes some people away from the church.

Sometimes, it is because of our hypocrisy as sinners, even though we are forgiven by the blood of Jesus, that many will refuse to even come to church. Being judged by those outside the church is a very hard thing. Just as someone deciding that a game is “bad” or “good” is a judgement of one kind or another, we shouldn’t hold a grudge or some other judgement against a church because of one or two people in a church, but many do this at times.

God holds us as Christians responsible for the knowledge and the Light that we have been given by our study in His Word and in learning about Him. The more we have, the more we are responsible for. Knowing about Jesus and living your life the way He taught us to is how we are to live. If you are doing anything other than this after professing that you know Jesus and you have Him in your heart, then you may want to look in the Bible for proof that you are a Christian.

I pray that I am not standing near the throne of Grace one day and one of my friends or one of those that I preached to is standing there and Jesus says “Depart from Me, I never knew you!”.

What happened?


I often wonder this very thing some days. Recently and many years in the past, I have wondered exactly what happened. Sometimes it has something to do with daily life, sometimes I wonder this in the context of reading my Bible. Why did this happen this way or why would God do this or allow this to happen?

There are times when we get up and begin our day, wondering what happened. Some days it seems that this is an all too common theme of our lives. How can we get around it or keep these moments from becoming the norm rather than the exception? Well…that is where the answer gets a little more complicated. I don’t mean that you or I have to change our lives or our addresses to move beyond those moments of being “blindsided” by…well, life itself.

God does care about these areas of your life, whether you think He does or not. He cares about all of the tiny details of your life and mine, but many times that is where we fail to let Him in. Why do we sabotage that relationship? Because we don’t think that the Creator could possibly care about how our house looks or where the car keys happen to be hiding! But…He does care!

It is hard for us to imagine God caring about every detail in our lives, no matter how small or insignificant those details may be. But the truth is that He does care, about all of the details of our lives IF we will allow Him into those areas of our lives. Many people ask Jesus to be their Savior, but when they feel that He wants in on all of the areas of their lives they close the door on some part that they want to keep for themselves.

Those personal areas are not just yours, God gave you those hobbies and abilities and He likes to see you use them…for Him. For His purposes and His Kingdom come before anything else and those purposes, His purposes, don’t have to be things which we don’t like. God can use a fisherman or a tent-maker or a poet and a musician. He can use a shepherd boy or a young man with a coat of many colors to accomplish His purposes.

All of those people, including you and me, have been used by God to do wonderful things for His Kingdom. Some of us have been used in ways that we don’t even know about until much later and some of us may not find out about something which we said or did until we meet a person in Heaven and they tell us about it. Maybe even something which I write here will influence someone to make a change in their life toward God and His purposes.

Even playing pool or basketball or any number of other sports can lead to one of you opening up about your faith or lack of faith, which opens a door for telling them your story, your witness for Jesus. Riding a motorcycle or a horse can also bring Jesus into the conversation. A “what happened?” moment can come out of many things, but the answer to that is: Jesus.

In all things, big or small, Jesus, the Son of God, the Living Word has had an influence whether you realize it or not. Every little decision or discovery that has ever happened, especially if you happen to be a Christian, He has had a part in it. The discovery of the vaccine for small pox or the discovery of the polio vaccine may have been looked at as accidents or just something which just happened. But His Spirit was likely the One that pushed them in the right direction.

What happened in your world today? The same that happened in many other people’s world. You and I woke up, got out of bed and began the day. It may have been a totally different day for me than it was for you, but mostly everyone has a similar day in many respects. Some of us have more money, some of us have less. Some of us have enough food and water, some of us don’t. My point is this: as long as we are working for Jesus and His Kingdom, it doesn’t matter what we have or don’t have!

Why did you bring me back?


I have read some books from doctors about patients who have asked this question. Patients who had experienced death or as it is called in the media a near death experience. That is not exactly the right name for it, it is death but with a spiritual twist. If God had wanted that person dead then nothing that the doctors or anyone else did for them would matter. God allowed them to return because their story needed to be told, the feelings and experiences which they had in a few minutes or seconds needed to be told.

Many people experience peace and joy and a feeling that everything is fine. Some experience a horrifying and agony-filled few minutes which may change their beliefs after they return for their second chance. The point of this is that the veil which separates this life from the next is very thin spiritually speaking. We can’t see through it, although at times we feel things or see glimpses of someone or some place. We just brush it off as “it’s because I am tired” or “I didn’t really see that, did I?”.

Most of us forget those glimpses through the veil after a day or two, but for those who have crossed through the veil during a heart episode in the hospital or died on the operating room table and are brought back, the experience is too real to forget.

Is there life after death? YES! Jesus said so and He was and is alive now to prove it! He also told His disciples that He would return to take His church to be with Him. The veil which separates our earthly bodies from that eternity is thin and we are surrounded by spiritual beings all of the time. Do I have proof of this? No, I just have faith in God’s Word and it seems that the realm of the spirit was always there, even when Elisha was facing an army in the Old Testament. He asked God to show his disciple that they had more protection than the ones coming against him and he saw them!

The demons were and are everywhere in our world, yet thankfully we can’t see their form and their actions as we go about our daily lives. In Jesus’ day, a whole legion of them had taken over one man and when He told them to get out, they entered into a herd of pigs and the pigs drowned themselves in the lake.

My point is this: don’t discount the words of someone who has come near to death or has been brought back. They have seen something which few people see and live to tell of it. Does life continue after this shell of our bodies dies? Yes, it does. The enjoyment of life with Jesus is there but there is also a place without Him and it is a terrifying place without Jesus.

Our minds can barely imagine a few hundred years forward or back from our point of reference. One thousand years is a long time, but if you begin to think of one million or try to consider it then you can’t take it in. Any amount of time beyond one thousand is just a number to us, our minds can’t process it.

Why would someone who has been brought back to life be angry about having another chance at life? Because, for a believer the other side of the veil is so much more than we can comprehend now! Even a few seconds of life with Jesus away from the pain and mental anguish in this life would make you long to be with Him even more! But, when God sends a person back to this life, it is for a reason…His reason. Others need to know about the spiritual life that waits for them whether it is a life with Jesus or not!

john317Please, read God’s Word prayerfully. Seek Him out and His Son’s Life which is in His Word. Ask Jesus to come into your life and open your eyes so that you can experience His Life for eternity. God doesn’t want you to go to a dark place where He is not, because it is your choice if you refuse to allow Him into your life.

What do you see?


When you look at the world today and the news and all of the terrible things that are happening in it…what do you see? Is it evidence of how corrupt and perverted humanity has become? Is it prophecy coming true on a daily basis or is it just our evil and corrupt world and the people in it who are doing all of these things?

Actually, it is prophecy coming true AND it is the people in the world who haven’t accepted Jesus as their Savior who are fulfilling those prophecies. The evil and corruption and violence in our world are part of those prophecies which are coming true.

Yes, they are coming true every day and it seems with more frequency. The signs from the heavens like the solar eclipse this year and the next one in seven years, both of which will be seen in America. Then another pair of eclipses which will be seen in northern Egypt and Arabia beginning seven years after the two in America and the second seven years later. Both of the pair of eclipses are total and will make an “X” in the countries where they are seen.

The signs are showing up and are increasing. Please, don’t ignore God’s Word and the signs which He is using to bring attention to His Creation and Himself. God loves each of us and has provided atonement for each of us but if we don’t accept it and live according to His Word then it is as if the provision is refused and you are on your own. Just like someone telling you that you have an inheritance that you can claim but they won’t tell you what it is or how much. If you don’t claim it for yourself, then it is given to someone who will claim it.

Salvation through Jesus blood is the same. If you don’t claim it and live according to His Word, then it does you no good at all and it is the same as not having it at all. God knows who has taken His offer of forgiveness and who hasn’t or won’t, whether you believe it or not, He will judge you….not someone on Earth. Your own decision about what to do with Jesus’ gift is the very decision which will condemn you or bring salvation to you. The choice is yours.

In truth, the very person who decides that they will wait until later to get saved, “when I have got my life on track”, is the one person that will end up dead far sooner than they ever thought. They will be standing in front of God and that question will come up: What did you do with your knowledge of Jesus? So…what will be your answer?

Anything besides, He is my Savior, will not be enough and will not get you inside the gates of Heaven. If Jesus doesn’t step forward and claim you as His own, then your eternity will be without God, without His Love being expressed in your eternal home. That is just a taste of what hell will be like. Then, there is the heat and the flame and the pain of separation which will haunt you throughout eternity. God did not send you to hell. Jesus did not condemn you to hell…you did. It was your decision…it is your decision today.

The signs are all around us today that the age is coming to an end. So, what will you do with Jesus? Is He your Savior or will you continue on your own?

Truth or Consequences


Living the life of a Christian has never been easy. From the time of Jesus’ departure, the apostles and disciples were persecuted by the local priests and by Rome and the Roman government. This has never really stopped, but the face of persecution is different today.

We sometimes hear it from friends who believe that we are judging them when we aren’t. We see the persecution from groups of radicals in other countries and in our own country of America.

Now, it seems to be coming home because if you preach or tell someone a Truth from the Bible, it is labeled as hate speech and you could be put in jail. Can anything be done to stop this? I don’t think that it will get better before Jesus comes back or at least until those who belong to Jesus are taken up to be with Him.

Yet, many Christians in other countries are being killed or put into “work camps” or into prison and much of their suffering doesn’t reach the news outlets. So, unless the Voice of the Martyrs or some other organization brings it to our attention, we don’t hear about it unless it is a bombing that kills many in a church or an open area. If it happens in a jungle or in the mountains of Nepal or North Korea, the country controls the news media, so it doesn’t get out.

Life in “developed” countries like England or Europe or America hasn’t gotten to the point of people dying for their beliefs…yet. We do hear of isolated cases of “radicalized people” killing others who don’t believe like they do, but those are few right now. How will our Christian nation react when violence against Christians gets worse? What will be done to help us? Or will our so-called “leaders” in Congress turn away and deny that it is a problem?

Christians in the past, like five or six centuries in the past, did some horrible things in the name of the Church or even in God’s name. I won’t deny that. But, making all Christians pay the price with their lives today for something which was done during the Crusades in the 12th century is ridiculous. God will punish those who have done things like killing witches who were NOT witches or killing people in the Middle East because they wouldn’t convert to Christianity. That is just as appalling as 9/11 or any of the other atrocities that are happening because of ISIS now!

Seek out the One, true God in the Bible, not one in a book of made up “holy words” by a pedophile who hated Jews and Christians. I promise, God will avenge His own and it doesn’t involve bombs or cutting their heads off!

God has provided a way for eternal life through belief in Jesus and His atoning work on the cross. Seek Him out in His Word for it is the true Word of God. Pray about what He says in it and learn from Him because in the end, all of us will bow and say that Jesus is Lord and King of all!

Our Risen Savior!!


empty_tomb11Christian holidays are not meant to bring shame to other religions, but to bring hope! This holiday is about our Savior, Who gave His life on a Roman cross so long ago. He gave it in order to be the sacrifice which was able to cover all of humanity’s sins. Not just for those who believe in Him now, but all the way back to Adam and Eve. So that salvation could be offered to those who looked for the Promised Seed of the woman, but who died in faith knowing that He would come one day!

Christmas is the celebration of His birth, even though He was born at least three months before we celebrate it because we don’t know the exact date of His birth. Anyway, He came to Earth in order to bring salvation to all people. The Jewish people were offered this gift first, but their high priests didn’t recognize Him as the Messiah. So, the gift was offered to the gentiles, everyone else in the world, who gladly accepted Him because of His offer of salvation and because none of us can be righteous enough on our own!

When you accept Jesus as your Savior, His righteousness is imputed or given to you at no cost. It is by God’s grace that we have this gift and all that we have to do is believe in Him and in His atonement for us. It is that belief, even without evidence through faith, that we have our salvation!

It is God’s gift to us, which none of us could possibly afford, that we have eternal life through Jesus and His atonement for us by His blood.

There is no other explanation of Easter’s importance other than His resurrection and His appearance to His disciples to prove that what He had told them about had come to pass! He had told them that He would be crucified and die, be buried and then rise to Life on the third day and HE did just that and more!

It is true that there are many disputes about which day He was crucified on or if there was a High Holy Day (another Sabbath) prior to the weekly Sabbath. It could’ve been, in any case, He spent three days and nights in the tomb before being resurrected, period. Jesus didn’t lie or make anything up, much of the squabbling and error has been introduced by human interpretation and superstition.

Most of us can barely keep up with a work schedule or school schedule let alone figure out which day the actual crucifixion took place on! It is Jesus’ resurrection which gives us a hope of eternity and forgiveness, so to me it doesn’t matter what day or how many days it was, just that He came out of that tomb and He is coming back one day!

Consider this…


We are living in a time of wonder and amazing technology, but it is also a dangerous time with many pathogens and bombs and all sorts of natural as well as man-made problems. What can we do about this? Is it possible for us to fix most of our problems or not?

Consider this:

timeline

 

In the past, life on Earth was segregated. We didn’t have the technology to be close, regardless of where we lived. Even if it was just a few hundred miles away, that was a week or more of travel by horse or camel or carriage. In the past 130 years we began with trains then came automobiles and airplanes and motorcycles, not exactly in that order but you get my meaning.

Most of our “problems” began to be real worldwide problems when we began to have transportation which could move us faster and farther to places that we couldn’t get to in a reasonable time before. Now, I’m not saying that advancing in technology and transportation is a bad thing but it does seem that when we began moving into each other’s back yard more easily, that is when we began to have more and more problems.

Besides, God’s Word predicted that knowledge would increase and with that knowledge our technology increased, just as the timeline shows. Yes, we are nearing the “end of the age”, and it is getting nearer all the time. How soon will the “catching away of the Bride” be, I don’t know. We may see a “new messiah” appear on the stage of the world, who will begin to “fix” things in miraculous ways so as to fool even those who believe themselves to be the elect.

In the days and weeks and months that we have left, I suggest that many of you who read this should be studying the Word of God. It is our most powerful link to the Creator and He knows when and how things will turn out for all of us. Seek His Wisdom, not the so-called wisdom of man because man’s “wisdom” is foolishness to God and God’s wisdom is foolish to mankind because without faith it can’t be understood.

Look up all of the signs that have been foretold in the Bible. See if the “fig tree” hasn’t bloomed again. This is the prophecy of the nation of Israel coming back into its own country after nearly two thousand years. Also, which nation on Earth has been scattered all over the Earth and brought back into its own country which God gave to them thousands of years ago and they are still speaking the language that their forefathers spoke and wrote down? Only the Hebrews and their nation and language have survived so long and it isn’t by accident, it is by God’s grace!

That is evidence of God and His miracle-working power because no other people and their language has ever survived so long as the Hebrews and their language to be brought back into the land which was promised to their father, Abraham over four thousand years ago!

Acts of kindness


No matter how small they may be or what they may cost, any act of kindness is a blessing. If the world could experience more real acts of kindness, especially in places where even the smallest act of kindness would mean a lot… it could mean living just one more day for a child and we could change the world!

But…what do we see today? Murder, bombings, shootings, suicide bombings killing twenty or more people, wars, famine, diseases…can we do any act of kindnesses to help with these?

Other than prayer, I am not sure what can be done until Jesus comes back.

You hear about these in the news and on social media about “random acts of kindness”, but why do they have to be random? Do we as people, who were created in the image of God, have to be kind on a random basis? I think we could be kind and caring to each other on a regular basis, if we had the Holy Spirit living in our hearts and we were truly living the way that Jesus told us to be!

I know, it is corny and a pathetic way of being in our world today, but why do we have to hate each other so much? Can’t we show the love of God to others like Jesus did? You know, love isn’t deadly and it won’t cause cancer, as a matter of fact love and laughter makes most healing processes move along faster.

Life comes from God through His love for all of His Creation. Every being on this planet was created with a purpose, many of the more disgusting ones we don’t know their purpose but God knows why He created them. He is still creating because every year science finds some new creature which has never been discovered before. Some of these live in places where we thought that there was no way for life to be, yet it is.

It is likely that the moons of Jupiter and Saturn have some form of life. I don’t know if we would recognize it as life if we saw it. But I feel sure that God didn’t put those moons and planets out there just to look pretty and make us wonder about the universe that we live in.

God’s act of kindness toward us is this: we are still here. He shows His grace toward us every day that we are alive and we have another day to live for Him. If we aren’t, then we should be. When your life is over, do you think that you are good enough or righteous enough to merit stepping through the gates of Heaven? God’s grace toward each of us is His kindness and love allowing us enough time to hear His voice and to understand that each of us NEEDS Jesus in our heart and in our life!

It doesn’t matter if you have had ten years, twenty or fifty or even one hundred years on this Earth. If you have lived here and have heard His Word preached or read the Bible, then you know about His love for you. All He is asking for you to do is to return some of your love to Him by following Him and doing His will in your daily walk with Him. It doesn’t cost you anything, but in return you will have eternity with Him to do even more!

Study time!


You know, I hated to hear those words when I was in high school. Whether we were in study hour at the library or at home and I needed to study for a test, I just didn’t like that time.

Why? Usually it was because the subject that I “needed” to study was not a favorite or I was just being a teenager and didn’t want to. I didn’t have the “luxury” of getting on a video game at home like they do today. The study time that we should be concentrating on now is of God’s Word!

If you are a Christian and you do study His Word at least once or twice a week, then you need to study a bit more. Why? Because, you need to learn more about the times in which we are living. What better way to understand prophecy than to read it and see it unfold in the news almost every day!?

While it is true that we won’t see demons or armored flying insects, but many of the things which are happening are very different from their descriptions in Ezekiel or Revelation. But, we need to be able to recognize those things which are happening today as part of prophecy. Why is that? Because we are living in what is believed to be the last Jubilee year that will occur before the appearance of the Messiah.

This doesn’t give us an exact date or day, but we should treat the signs as what they are…signs! The four Blood Moons during 2014-2015, 2017 being the last Jubilee year, a full eclipse later this year in August in America and another seven years later also visible in America. There are also double full eclipses which are going to happen in the northern part of Egypt seven years apart in 2024 and 2031.

God is sending these signs to the Earth for us to notice and interpret through prophecy in His Word. If we don’t do that or if we just ignore it, then we are setting ourselves up to be deceived by what may come next. When does the Tribulation begin? I haven’t got a clue, but it looks like it may happen in the next fifteen years or so, according to the signs. Then again, God may have another plan altogether. That is up to Him and His timing.

My main concern is the fate of those reading these words. Your eternity depends upon what you do with the knowledge of Christ and whether you accept His atonement for your sins and believe in Him or not. If it is just like any other sunny day and you decide that I will do that tomorrow, then what will you do if many of your Christian friends disappear tonight or in front of your eyes?

What then? This is a blog written by a preacher, but I would classify that instance as an “oh shit!” moment! If you were at a Bible study or at a gathering somewhere and all of a sudden, there were piles of clothes and watches and shoes but most of your friends who were Christians just vanished, what would you feel? Anger, fear, regret…probably all of these and knowing that many people all over the world feel just as you do right now!

Make sure of where your heart is concerning your relationship with Jesus, BEFORE this happens! I don’t mean that you can’t become a Christian afterwards, but it will become far more dangerous, but as long as you belong to Him, your eternity is sealed. Amen.