I need to tell you a story. It’s kinda sad but it turns out good in the end.
I heard this story from a good preacher friend of mine. No names but it could make a real difference.
This couple was really strong in their faith and they dated for a number of years before finally tying the knot. When they finally did, they were riding to their honeymoon on a motorcycle. Just outside of town they passed an 18 wheeler and for some reason the driver decided to move into their lane, I suppose in the process of passing someone else. The driver didn’t see them and rolled right over them.
Somehow the girl lost both of her legs and bled out at the scene before help could arrive. The husband lost a leg and an arm. He died on the scene as well but there was a good Samaritan following behind them that had stopped to see if he could help. Since the girl was already dead, he went to the guy and asked if there was anything that he could do for him.
The guy told him that “I’m going to die soon but I need to ask you something. Do you know Jesus as your Savior?” Then…he passed.
Seven words.
A few months later the good Samaritan came to their church on a Sunday morning and came down front to join the church. The preacher asked him to give his testamony and the story that I just relayed above is the story that he told. But…he didn’t know Jesus as his Savior prior to those seven words. He came to their church to find out about this Savior that they had because he wanted to know Him too.
There were and are many stories like this in the Book of Martyrs that I’ve read most of. This one isn’t in there but the sentiment is the same. The last words of a believer made a difference in someone’s life…an eternal difference.
Every chapter in the Bible points toward Jesus and salvation through Him. I’m not going to place the scripture references here except to give you a general idea of those crumbs of wisdom found in nearly every chapter of God’s Word. I know I changed from every chapter to “nearly every chapter” and that was intentional too.
While it is true that the Bible points toward our Savior from the beginning to the end, every chapter doesn’t explicitly say it that way. Some are just allusions to Him. Some of the crumbs are very subtle and easy to overlook but they are there. As God told Abraham that he would be the father of many nations, He also told him that his people would be in slavery in another land for over four hundred years, but there would be a savior. That savior was Moses, who was a type of Christ, who came along at the right time to deliver Israel from bondage.
In many other books of the Bible other saviors have shown up. Some have come as kings, some came as judges, some came as prophets but God used each of them to teach and to deliver Israel from their enemies. But even after being delivered they would soon go back to disobeying God’s commands and his laws. Their prophets repeatedly told the people what was needed to get out of and stay out of being captured by their enemies. Sometimes they listened and sometimes they didn’t. Occasionally they would obey for a while and then fall right back into the same rebellious behavior that got them in trouble before.
Kinda sounds like the way most of the world, especially America, is today doesn’t it?
Is it any wonder that this virus came so suddenly on the world last year? Is it God punishing us? Could be, but I’m not going to be the one to say so. God can use China or Russia or Iran or even a tiny virus to get the world’s attention but if they don’t look to Him for help or guidance then they will die in their sins and without Jesus. I know, nobody wants to hear that there is only one way to be saved or gain entrance into heaven but it is God’s law and He is the only One Whose opinion that I count as being true. Like it or not, God’s Word and His promises have all come true except for those prophecies that are in the book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ.
I believe that His Word is true from the beginning to the end and one day soon the whole world will notice it. They may not want to believe it, but when all of the Christians who believe in Jesus for their salvation are taken up in the clouds to meet Him in the air…those who see it will believe and they will be sorrowful like losing their first-born son or daughter.
Read the book of the Revelation for yourself. It is the only book of the Bible that has a blessing for those who read it and believe.
In our country and in our communities and in our homes we need the answer to this question. Many of us don’t even know how to finish the sentence though. How can we feed the homeless? How can we get our country back to belief in God and His Word? How can we be a light to the world when we are in the process of turning the lights out in our country?
America has had a responsibility for over two hundred years as a Christian nation and now we are denying that it was ever built on His principles. We are pushing hard to get any mention of God out of our education systems and even out of the public square. So…why would God bless America today when we are pointing fingers and shouting so loudly that we want nothing to do with your religion!
I realize that the last few posts here have had a lot of my opinion in them but if you look around in America and listen to our media outlets all that I’m doing is pointing out the obvious. There will come a time, likely sooner than most think it will happen, when God will withdraw His Spirit from the whole world, not just from America. He will do this because we are rapidly becoming a world like Noah’s world was. The hearts and minds of people are evil, in God’s eyes, continually. We are calling good things evil and evil things good.
So many young people have turned their backs on religion, especially Christianity. Why? Because of its claim of Truth and what they see as restrictions on their lives. No one wants to be told that they shouldn’t do this or that because it is sinful. Everyone sees that their friends are doing these things and they seem to be having a good time so why can’t I do them as well? The only way that I can get most young people or anyone else to realize what they are asking is by asking another question: would you take your Mother or your grandmother with you to see what you are doing? Would you be comfortable if Jesus was there? If the answer to either of those is no, then why would you do these things?
Most would answer: Because I want to do them! It is my life and you can’t tell me what to do!
While it is true that I am not your father or your preacher, God can still see what you are doing. He knows the words that you’ve said during your “fun”. He can see every thought and every action that you are doing which is against what you learned in Bible school or Sunday school. The point I’m making here is that most of you have likely been in church at least once in your lifetime and you’ve heard the good news about Jesus taking your sins to the cross and paying your penalty for them. All that you have to do is believe that He did this for you and know that unless you ask Him to be your Savior and repent of those sinful actions and turn away from them to follow Him you will be lost.
Many of us…in fact most of us shook our fists at God in our youth saying that we were going to do what we wanted and there was no way that He was going to stop us! Some of us were smart enough to not really mean it but only God knows who meant to repent from their sins one day and which of us would not and only He knows your heart’s direction from this point on. God loves His creation, each of us is a part of His creation and He knows your heart and the path that you will take. I pray that you will seek Him out as your Savior and lay aside your sins and your selfishness and turn toward Him and give Him your heart from this point on. Read the books of Romans and John in the New Testament so that you can come to know Jesus as your Savior.
Your life is very precious to God because He knows each of us before we are born. Yet…it takes us many years to understand and know that we truly need God in our lives. We grow through our childhood and if we are fortunate enough to have parents and grandparents who teach us about Him, we may come to know Him early in our lives. If not, then He may have to get our attention in some other way and sometimes it isn’t very much fun at all.
God came to the prophets and to Mary and Joseph by sending His angel, Gabriel, to them personally or in a dream. In this way He told them what He needed from them and how they could do His will. This, of course, hinged upon their willingness to obey God and the word that He sent to them. They had the choice, just as we have a choice, to believe Him and actually do what He asked of them. In the case of His prophets and the Earthly parents of Jesus, they did choose to do His will.
Many people today don’t even believe that the Bible is true and that it is God’s Word. “It is just some old dusty book written by a bunch of crazy old men”; this is a quote from some of the “pastors” of what is being called the “emerging church movement” today. These false teachers do n’t even believe that Heaven is a real place! As crazy as this sounds, they are drawing young people and many others away from Bible-teaching churches today. This was foretold in the book of Revelation.
I pray that all who read this will seek out a true Bible-believing church and pastor and stay there. Get into God’s Word and study it and then read it and study it some more because He is coming soon and unless the relationship is real, you will be left behind to go through the Tribulation.
Whichever one is prominent at the moment, I’ve lost count. Some have been born in the last forty years or the last ten or twenty years but what is their belief system or their moral compass? Have they learned anything from their parents or grandparents about what it means to have a belief in God or any “higher being”? Mostly due to the removal of prayer and the Bible from the public schools of America we have at least two generations who have never read from or heard any Bible verses while in school. Unless you were able to attend a private school the use of God’s Word in education was taken away in the early sixties.
Of course after graduating from a private school and beginning your college years, you get back into the public school area and you are slapped with mostly liberal views and no chance of a Christian viewpoint unless you read and study the Bible on your own. Our country was founded by Christians regardless of the “history” that is taught today. Even the “ivy league” schools in the northeast were founded to be seminaries for religious training in their beginning years.
Why has it changed so much in the two centuries plus forty-five years? Mostly because of science and the liberal bent that our leaders in Washington, DC have pushed in their lawmaking in the past 130 years or so. It has become more socialist than Democratic in the past sixty years or so but still God is being pushed out of any mention on the news or in public office except in derision. It seems that a Christian perspective is looked down upon and ANY other religion is pushed forward to be seen as a better alternative…even no religion at all!
Why should is strike anyone as odd that America or some mention of it is not found in the book of Revelation or during the Tribulation? It is very likely that we are not a country which has enough power to be seen as a nation at that time. God has not taken His hand off of our country yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it happened during the next few decades. Be praying for our leaders both in the military and in office, whether you agree with them or not because they truly NEED our prayers and God’s wisdom whether they will acknowledge it or not.
Just my two cents.
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Matthew 5:14 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/mat.5.14.KJV
Is your church teaching it’s members directly from the Word of God? If not then there’s something terribly wrong. Jesus Christ told the disciples to go and preach the Gospel, the Good News, to all who would hear. This was done in the early church before the crusades.
Ever since then, the “church” has been through many changes. Some were good but most were not. The original church tried to live peacefully with those who did not believe. Then, there was the Roman Catholic church that incorporated many pagan beliefs into it’s services to attract the pagans. Later, the church began to break up into denominations. After the Reformation happened, the church became…the best term for it would be fragmented.
Different teachings of doctrine and differing interpretations of the Bible’s message. The “big national churches” wanted to keep people from reading the Bible which was written in Latin and so the service was also done in Latin until Tyndale and a few others began to translate the Bible into English so that a common man could read it and come to Christ. So in many ways, the church has spread the message of Jesus Christ and it has also hurt the message as well.
We are supposed to study and learn from God’s Word so that we can take His message to the world around us. At work, at school, on the street, at a restaurant or anywhere else you come into contact with someone who is searching for the Truth of Jesus and His message of a loving God Who is willing to forgive you and save your soul from the punishment that we deserve for turning away from Him. Jesus came to bring that message to all who would listen and embrace the salvation that is offered by His sacrifice on the cross and His resurrection too.
That is our blessed hope. He said that He would come again and take us to His home in heaven and we are closer to that now than we have ever been. I pray that you will seek Him out as your Savior soon because we are not guaranteed tomorrow. God loves you and if you have felt Him touch your heart don’t turn Him away.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was asking His Father if there was another way but then He said “nevertheless, not My will but Yours be done”. I know, it sounds as if I am giving a talk/sermon/post on giving your life to Jesus and in a way I am. But in our time, in the 21st century, giving your life to someone or for something means a lot more. Consider it this way: Jesus was living in the first century. He was a carpenter Who also happened to be the Savior of the world and the Son of God. His parents who raised Him were not rich in wealth. He wore very simple, home-spun cloth for His clothes. In our world today, His condition would be looked on as a man living in a very poor state of being.
God’s Word asks us to give our life to Him, surrendering everything that we have to have all of His riches in glory. We can’t imagine how Heaven is going to be. Even the prophets in the Old Testament and John the apostle didn’t have the words to describe what they saw in their visions of heaven. Any description that we can come up with today would fall very far from the reality that is there. Why do I go to such detail to tell about what we can’t describe? Because when we are asked to give our life and surrender everything to Jesus…are we able to truly give it all to Him?
For most people, the answer would be a very loud “NO!”. God cannot have my business or my family or my home! The reality from God’s perspective is that those things that we don’t want to give up are really His anyway, He is just blessing us with them while we are here. But, many of us don’t want to admit that what we see as our possessions are actually on loan from God, including our family.
Surrendering your life means far more than most of us consider but the giving of our life to Christ is necessary for our eternal home. Asking Him to take everything in your life is not telling God to take your family or your business or your home away from you. It means that you aren’t holding anything back! You aren’t telling him that “this box of goodies is mine but you can have the rest”. That is not how it works. God either has ALL of you and your life or He has nothing. Just as some people today believe either ALL of the Bible as God’s Word or they don’t believe any of it, you can’t pick and choose this part but not that one. It is the same with your life, you cannot choose to give Jesus part of your life and heart…He either has all of it or none.
Make the decision to give Him everything so that He can return the favor and the blessing to you.
I know that some of you who read this will say “Yes, I believe in Him. What kind of question is that?” That isn’t the belief that I am speaking of. Satan knows Jesus and all of the demons in hell know Him in their minds. They know He exists and that He is real but that is where the difference between knowledge of Jesus and belief in Jesus for salvation branch off from each other. You see, Satan was an archangel at one time before the creation of mankind but he like to look at himself in the mirror too much. God had created him to be the cherub that led the worship of God in heaven. Yet he was proud and became arrogant and persuaded one third of the host of angels in heaven to follow him. He wanted to sit on the throne of God.
What a silly idea. A creation of God was going to war with God in order to supplant Him from the throne. God the Father Who stretched out the heavens and flung the stars into their places with His voice and His hands. God could’ve wiped his entire army away with one command but in His mercy He didn’t. God allowed Satan to live and be a stumbling block to the human race not because God is cruel but because He knew that there would be many nations and many people all over the world. He knew that all of us would need a Savior because He knew that we were going to sin against Him and His laws. God knows your thoughts and mine and He knows that on our own we cannot be perfectly sinless because it is not in our nature.
Jesus came to live in human form but He had the nature of God not man, so even though He was tempted (and He could’ve given in to those temptations) just as we are He did not sin because He knew what His mission was. He had to stay pure and sinless to be the sacrifice for ALL of mankind. That is why He was in a constant state of prayerful communication with His Father. We can do something similar but we can’t live sinless lives. Living in a state of prayerful communication is not as hard as it seems but it does take a lot of practice. I’ve been doing it for almost ten years but there are times when I slip or rather my nature slips in and I will think or say something (hopefully out of earshot) that could damage my witness.
Human nature aside, if you truly belong to Jesus and the Holy Spirit has come in and changed your heart then you can be His faithful witness everywhere you go. If you make a mistake or slip up in any way, ask His forgiveness and move on to a better place or into a place where you can be more effective. God wants us to be His witnesses in this world so that others will want to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior. I pray that all who read this will understand that I am not bragging because I do slip up more than I care to admit but our Father in Heaven loves me and He sees Jesus living in me and not the flawed human being that I am. Even so, come Lord Jesus.
Does he know you? That’s the question that must be answered with a positive YES! Why do you need to know Him? For the salvation of your soul. God has loved you since the beginning of time and He doesn’t want you to be separated from Him.
But… when you go through life thinking that you have plenty of time to make an eternal decision you are walking on very thin ice. Not one of us has a clue when our last day is, so you need to make sure while today is still today.
The Living Message of Christ 