Category: Salvation

Torture and anguish


IMG_20150417_213008I thought that might get your attention. Yes, I am speaking of what Jesus went through during His Passion week, although I don’t like that term. He was tried unjustly, whipped mercilessly even though only thirty-nine times, and then crowned with a crown of thorns and crucified with six-inch iron nails in His arms and ten inch iron nails through His feet.

The movie which came out a few years ago tried to show the gruesome details of this, but it would’ve had an X rating for bloody violence alone if it had. I have a copy of a three strand flagellum with the lead tips which have glass and bone and a nail embedded in them. It does a terrific job on a cardboard box, I can’t imagine the damage that it would do to a human body. The damage that you see in the picture is just 1 strike on the box that it came in. Consider that cardboard is a bit tougher than human skin and use your imagination a bit and you can imagine a little of the damage that it might do to a body. Jesus was a man and that is the type of tool that was used on His body before He was crucified!

I truly can understand why He was asking the Father about allowing the cup to pass from Him if possible. But, He told the Father “not my will but thine be done”, what an AWESOME Savior we have. I can’t imagine the pain that one full force hit from this would feel like and I don’t want to experience it, but thirty-nine lashes with it? I imagine most of us would pass out well before that point from the pain.

Jesus truly loves us far more than we can ever imagine or know, until we are with Him in Glory! Even then we wouldn’t be able to describe it or how it feels to anyone alive, this was the problem that John had when he was writing the book of Revelation. The sights and the feelings of Heaven and the majesty and glory of God as well as the pure joy of being in His Presence had to be beyond what words can describe to someone who can’t see it or feel it! The difficulty would be like describing a color to someone who has never seen a color or describing a tree to a blind person. If they can’t touch it or feel it, they can’t understand it.

That is how it is with our faith in Jesus and the wisdom and glory of God. You can’t understand it or know of it without faith and if you don’t have faith it is like you are blind. You are spiritually blind because it takes faith to see and to know about these things from God. Consider what Jesus went through for our salvation and that He did it because He loves us, each one of us, far deeper and more real than any emotion that we can know on this side of Heaven.

Read Romans chapter 8 and Psalms 22 which describes in detail the crucifixion of Christ over nine hundred years before crucifixion was even known or used. Please, realize that you are special to God and that He loves you and that you can come to Him now, where you are by prayer and repentance.

We are in between….


What do I mean by that? Simply put, just what I said. We are in between the time of Jesus’ resurrection and His ascension around Pentecost forty days later. Yes, I do realize that we live in the 21st century and it has been about two millennia since He was around, but what other person in history has had such an impact on the world?

The Bible itself has had a tremendous impact because many laws that are in many different countries are actually based upon principles taken from Scripture. Then, Jesus came and changed many things so much that the priests of the day wanted to get rid of Him. Mainly because He was cutting into their profits and His teachings gave power to the people and took it away from them. That kind of change was just blasphemous!

Even today, many who don’t want to change rebel against any sort of teaching that comes from a church. It seems that many people think that they can do it themselves. They think that they are responsible enough to handle all of life’s problems and they don’t need Jesus or God, so they choose not to believe in them and choose science and reason instead.

That is fine for now, but what will you think when you come face to face with Him and instead of welcoming you into eternity, He is your judge showing you why you don’t get to spend it in Heaven. At this point, there will be nothing for you to do except bow and say that you were wrong. Many people even think that they will argue with Him, but you won’t because it was and it is your choice in this life and it is this choice which will condemn you to hell, not God.

So, believing in Him is something that many already do especially the demons and Satan himself. Whether you choose to or not is your choice but don’t blame God for your eternity, because He gave you a choice of believing in Jesus for your salvation. The work of your salvation didn’t and does not depend upon anything that you do except that you must come to Jesus in faith. If you hear the truth of His grace to you and you may have read the words in the Gospels, then the choice is yours.

No one forces you to become a Christian. There may be a feeling in your heart that you need Jesus, but if you interpret it as something else then you might miss it. Seek Him out while you can. There are Bible’s available, there are resources in your library although I am not sure that is the place to look for a Bible.

Read the New Testament, in particular Acts and Romans, because these two books chronicle the beginning of the church itself. Pray about what you read so that God can reveal Himself to you in His Word. Time is growing short, be watchful and pray.

God’s name is in Israel


I have a picture which was taken by a pilot in Israel and the hills close to Jerusalem spell God’s name in Hebrew. This is easy to see, yet I doubt that many people will take this as the warning that it could be. God has claimed this land thousands of years ago fGods name in Israelor the Jewish people and He signed it with His name. This alone should make the world afraid and wondering about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But, of course, many will dismiss this as just a coincidence although I don’t believe that a formation on the hills which forms the name of God is a coincidence!

The land was given by God to Abraham and his descendants as their possession forever, by a covenant which God proclaimed Himself! You know, since the Creator is the One Who gave the land of Israel to the Jews, how can we argue about the ownership of it? How can we possibly act as if we can split the land up and give it to others?

God is God, the Creator of everything and whether we believe it or not. Whether the world will acknowledge Him or not, it is the Truth. He is real just as Satan and his demons are real. Heaven and hell are real and they are places where people will go because of their choices in life, not because of their evil or their sins but because of their choices!

Most will not believe this, but it is only your choices which will condemn you to hell and it is specifically your choice of whether you will follow and believe in Jesus and His atonement for you or if you will follow something or someone else in life. It doesn’t even have to be someone who you worship in a church or mosque or synagogue, you can just choose to not believe or even to place yourself in the position of a god.

How you could do that, I am not sure. The thing is that, when you put anyone or anything in place of Jesus then you are worshipping yourself or whatever may be taking the place of the Messiah! Everyone seems to deny that there is idolatry today, yet it is rampant. Not only in America but all over the world. I will get many reactions from this point of view, but my point is this: we are not gods and cannot be gods! It doesn’t matter how highly you think of yourself or how impressive your body is, if you are a body-builder, you are not a god and never will be! So much hate and cruelty is in our world today because of views on race and violence toward someone who doesn’t believe as you do. Why is that?

We are all part of the HUMAN RACE! Yes, there are different colors of skin, but just because a horse is black and one is brown or black and white, you don’t look at them as a different “race” of horse! Violence toward someone of a different belief system is another stupid way of persecution toward others too. I don’t care who or what you pray to, as long as you don’t push your beliefs on me especially with violence and killings because I choose to worship differently from you! It is true, that I believe that Christianity is true to the Word of God and is the religion which will lead you to Heaven because that is what God’s Word says. But, I am not going to threaten you with a sword or a gun because you want to believe something different!

That is why God gave us all a choice to believe in Him and His Son or not. People always choose what is most comfortable to them. What they have grown up with to one extent or another. Yet, God has a way of getting His Spirit to intervene in your life at times when you least expect it to happen, even if you haven’t been to a church, Christian or otherwise. If God has a plan for your life, then eventually your life and His plan will run into each other especially if it has to do with your being a part of His Kingdom and maybe having an influence on others too!

Consider that the world right now is on the edge of all of the prophecies which point to the “end of the age”. It is getting close, though I don’t know and no one else does either. Seek Him out in God’s Word, learn about the God Who Lives, the Creator, the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace. It is He Who will bring peace to this world after all and to all of those that choose to follow Him.

Easter, the meaning of it…


Today, we look at all holidays as their commercial impacts the world and the economy. But, what about the spiritual impact that the event itself really should have on people? Does anyone really look at Easter today and think about Jesus going to the cross for us, dying for us and then being raised up on the third day in order to complete His work here?

The holiday that we celebrate has nothing to do with Jesus at all. Bunnies and eggs had no meaning to the world at large in Jesus’ day except to pagans which celebrated the coming of spring and the rebirth of life after winter. That celebration has nothing at all to do with Jesus, with the exception of the rebirth which points to the resurrection. We need to look at our Lord as the Creator of all things and believe in His work of redemption on the cross by the shedding of His blood for our sins.

The reason for Easter being the holiday that it is, is because of a pagan spring equinox celebration and that it coincides with the time for passover in late March or early April. This was the time that Jesus was crucified so on that weekend is when we celebrate His death and resurrection. Since the Jewish tradition is to follow a lunar calendar of thirty-day months, dates are never the same from year to year.

So, what is the meaning of Easter, really? The celebration of Life through Jesus Christ and His atoning death and resurrection! That is the true reason for this holiday. If it had not been for this event, we wouldn’t have the hope of a resurrection to eternal life with Him! Our Savior is alive and He is coming back and if the events happening around our world today are any indication of “birth pains”, then it won’t be much longer until the whole world sees Him and knows that our faith and our Savior is real!

We are in dire need


StrengthI placed this picture here because we all need to pray this prayer every day! Yes, we are in dire need of prayers and the strength that comes from Him every day! Why do I say this? Because it is the truth. We, as humans, are weak. We cannot be strong enough to get through the struggle which comes our way every day. Not the little things like getting up and going to work or to get groceries or even just washing the dishes or the clothes. I am talking of the temptations which Satan throws into our minds and our way each and every day. You experience these every day, we all do, even Jesus was tempted but He didn’t give in to it so it didn’t become a sin in His life.

God gives us the strength, IF we ask for it and then depend upon Him for that strength to get through a tempting time or just one temptation today or tomorrow. Depending upon God and His Word and His Wisdom is the smartest thing that you can do. Reading His Word every morning, or every day gives you the strength and wisdom to make it through all of your problems.

I have heard that many people consider going to church on Sunday to be their time with God. That is just the beginning! How would you feel if your family only visited you once every week for about an hour? Not much like a family huh? Pray to God every morning and evening, read His Word morning and evening in order to get to know Him. How can you expect a Father to know you very well if He never sees or hears from you? God knows you better than you or your parents do, but He still wants a relationship with you every day.

God’s love has been flowing to us, all of us, since the beginning of Creation. He knew each of us then, even before He created Adam. We are special and we are loved infinitely more than we can imagine on our own. So, how can we get to know our Creator? By reading His Word and learning of His ways and His love and patience for us. He will give you the strength and the ability to make it past all of the temptations that Satan will toss your way.

We really are in a spiritual war between Satan and God. Satan hates God’s creation with a hatred that we can’t understand and will do anything that it takes to destroy your life or your ministry or both if he has to. Get closer to God through His Word and prayer. Seek Him every day in Scripture and don’t forget to ask for His protection for you and your family because Satan will get to you through them if he can’t get to you.

Addendum: I have received a comment that this post is too short and doesn’t include enough information for a “novice” Christian to follow, I respectfully disagree. While it is true that this is one of my shorter posts, the information about seeking God is the same as it is for everyone. It is true that my particular instructions are brief and low on specifics, but the Bible is not.

Learning about your role in spiritual warfare and how to combat it starts in the book of Romans and then continues through much of the rest of the New Testament. There is also a book or two in the Old Testament that is useful, such as Joshua and Daniel. Though, the entire Bible is best for learning about your responsibilities in Christ and as a Christian.

A daunting task if you are a new Christian, and one which I had some trouble sticking to when I first came into faith in Christ. Today, you have an app for that in the Bible app for your phone or tablet. With it, you can fine a reading plan which will help keep you on track to read the Bible all the way through in a year which will give you plenty of information, if you will pray through it as you go. The best advice I can give after that is….do it again. Each time, praying that God would show you something different and He will. I have read it through about six or seven times, I think, and each time I found something that had more meaning or wisdom than I noticed the time before.

I hope this helps somewhat. It is still a bit early here, so please forgive any terseness that may have crept into my writing.

What do you hear?


From the television and almost all of the news sources, mostly…JUNK! The world is going down the tubes fast, and all anyone seems to care about is their shows on TV or what is happening on Facebook. What difference does it make? Facebook, Twitter, Survivor, and so on are all just there to distract us from what is happening in the world. Yes, there are some on all of those social media sites which are talking about actual news, but what news?

What about our freedom? Freedom to worship ANY way you want to in America! We have that freedom right now, but it seems that there are so many on one side who can’t stand ANY mention of God or Jesus! I am not trying to force anyone, anywhere to worship the way that I do, but it seems that there are many who just can’t stand to read or hear about Jesus at all. If you want to worship a rock, I don’t care! That is your option, even God gave you the choice to do so even if He doesn’t agree with it.

We have a choice and it was given to us by God Himself. You can choose to believe it or not, it doesn’t matter to me. I pray that you will come to Him before your life is over, but it is your choice regardless of where you live, at least as far as I am concerned. Many of the countries in the world are not nearly free enough to have the choice of Who they worship, as we are in America.

Christians, whether you agree with their faith or not, are being killed not just persecuted and yet the Christians there are not converting to Islam. They would rather die for their faith, just as the martyrs have done for hundreds of years. I pray that we in America don’t see this kind of persecution, but it may happen yet.

What can we do? Pray for those in areas where Christians are being persecuted severely like in Iraq and Iran and Turkey. I don’t know what to tell you about things that we could do other than pray. Since God is in control and He can send Angels to comfort and help those people, prayer is powerful because God is able to deliver them by His power.

The world is tearing itself to pieces and it isn’t over, this is just the beginning. It actually hasn’t gotten to the point that most are fearing will come yet. Read your Bible, study the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation, pray about what you are reading. We are at the beginning of those times! Watch and pray that you will have the strength to endure until He comes again to take the church out of this.

Your time and my time…


We sometimes look at a day or an hour and wonder where the time has gone. It seemed to go by so fast at times and then some days, even some hours go by so slow. As your teachers and your parents have said, it is all in your perception of it. So, why does it seem that our time is so short, especially when there are so many things that we would like to do?

Yes, we have children to take care of and jobs to go to, but those things only make the time seem to go by faster. I agree that being at a job seems to slow time to a crawl sometimes, but doesn’t that make you want some time off to be with your family?

Time is part of our existence from the moment that we are born. It is also part of the natural order of things that God created in our universe. We are subject to the so-called “march of time” as we perceive it, God is not. He can see all of your life and everything else from the beginning to end, any time that He wants to. He knows what you are doing now and tomorrow and even next week, so all you need to do is follow His lead in your life.

What can we do with our time? Many things, but the most important is to allow God to lead you through your life so that others can see Him through you and the things which you do every day. It seems that there are so many people who consider their lives to be important only to them and nobody else. Your life and everything that you do is important to God.

The way that you talk is important to Him. Your actions each day are important to Him. The words that you so to others and how you say them are important to Him. Why? Because, if you are a child of His and you are if you are a Christian, everything that you do is to glorify God and your life is supposed to reflect His so that others can see Him through you!

When you are in such a hurry that you endanger your life and the lives of your children just to get home a minute or so earlier, it says something about you. When you don’t have the patience to listen to someone who needs you to listen, that says something about you too. Patience is a virtue that comes from a relationship with God and if your walk with Him hasn’t produced patience in your life then you need to walk a bit closer to Him every day.

Don’t ask God to give you patience because it isn’t something that is handed out, but something that is learned. You won’t like the lesson, trust me! I made that mistake and I am just coming out of the class after a few years of lessons! Wisdom is also learned through patient study of God’s Word and they go hand in hand. Seek God’s Wisdom and His Kingdom through His Word and all of these will be added to you and your life.

Is there punishment in eternity?


I have seen people and I have heard some in churches and magazines claiming that there is no hell. God wouldn’t do that! A loving God wouldn’t do that! That is absurd!

OK, so Satan is going to be admitted back into Heaven and forgiven along with all of his compatriots, is this what that means? The Bible, the Word of God, has been speaking of Sheol and hell for a very long time. It was created for the punishment of Satan and his fallen angels.

But, those who oppose God and His teachings and who do not accept Jesus as their Savior are in the same camp, the same place as Satan. They are unwilling to give their lives and their hearts to Jesus, and they don’t believe in God. At least Satan knows that there is a God, he just doesn’t want to serve Him!

God loves all of humanity and everyone has been given a chance to become Christians and to serve God in whatever capacity that they can. You are not required to become a missionary or a preacher or an evangelist. Just be yourself, but reflect Jesus in all that you do!

There is no grey area where good and evil or black and white is concerned, it is a clear division just the same as the difference between those who believe in and serve God and those who refuse to do so. Anyone who believes that they can be a “casual Christian” on Sunday and then go out and do whatever they want until they come back to church or find that they really need God, is just wrong.

Just as you can’t have a kosher hog or even be “a little bit pregnant”, or have a dark sky with the sun shining, you can’t be a “casual Christian”. You either are or you are not!

Hell is a place just as Heaven is a place. It is not a state of mind. Why would the rich man ask Moses to allow Lazarus to dip his finger in the water to cool his tongue if it were a “state of mind”? It is not God who sends those who choose to refuse Jesus’ offer of forgiveness to hell, it is their choice. Believing that you are not going to hell, but then not accepting Jesus and living your life as you please will get you there just as quickly.

Read and pray your way through the Scriptures and ask God to give you the wisdom to learn and know His will in your life and for your life. Ask God to come into your life and repent of your sins so that you can know the peace of God and live it in your daily life.

If you don’t want to read the Bible or give your life to Jesus, then I suggest a different approach: A sure way to prove that there is a hell would be to refuse the offer of Jesus in your life. Live the way that you want to, do whatever makes you happy and when you can’t find happiness or contentment, seek out a place where you can access “assisted suicide” if you can’t stand to live this way anymore. When your eyes open on the other side of death and you are facing God, you will know but it will be too late.

Please, don’t take the advice in the paragraph above. Learn about Jesus and Who He is. Seek Him out, especially if your life has been or is hard in ways that I can’t imagine! He can save your soul and He will be with you from this point on, no matter what happens! You are valuable and important to God because you are His creation and He considers you His child whether you have yet to give your life to Him or not. You can do things for this world and for God’s Kingdom that nobody else can do! Consider this when the world is piling in on you and things just seem to be too much, God loves you!

 

Fantastic stories and outright lies


To many people, that is exactly what the Bible is, a book of fantastic stories and outright lies made up by a bunch of old men. That is what the book of Genesis sounds like to some, with people living to be over nine hundred years old and the whole population of the world supposedly coming from a single couple? Then you have a world-wide flood, with a man who is five hundred years old when he begins building a boat that God told him to build in the desert because a flood is coming? At a time when, the book tells us, that it had never rained before?

Sounds crazy doesn’t it?

But, you know God can take nothing and make it into something so those life spans and everything that He told Moses to write down don’t sound so crazy when you consider that God is behind it all, right?

Oh, that’s right, you don’t believe in God or any “supreme being”! All of this just clumped together on its own and somehow all of the chemicals and molecules put themselves together to form DNA and then all of life just showed up on our little ball of mud and rock, right??

You have more faith in puzzles accidentally putting themselves together than I do in a man walking on water!

The “evolution” of the cosmos and of the Earth and of life on the Earth is the most fantastic pile of nonsense that I have ever heard. Yes, I believe that God did all that He said in the Bible! He is God after all.

If you wish to keep believing in evolution and not believing in God or Jesus, that is your choice and I am not going to refute it here. I don’t have enough proof for His Creation, other than my faith, any more than you can prove that we evolved from apes. Just because an organism has two arms and two legs will give them the same general DNA as any other mammal on Earth. Neither can be proven nor disproven, at least to the satisfaction of those who hold one belief or the other.

Yes, this post will likely get the ire of those in atheist and evolutionist camps all stirred up. That is the point. Whether you believe my argument one way or the other doesn’t matter. What matters is that you may read it. The Bible, that is. To many people it is confusing and a load of crap, which is your opinion and you have a right to that opinion.

But, to me it is the Word of God, given to Moses on the mountain when they met over three thousand years ago. Moses was told by God how the world was created and how mankind was created and all of the history up to that point. The amazing part of those first few books of the Bible is that they point to a Seed, the Messiah, Jesus, Who would be born much later and He would be the perfect, sinless Lamb of God that would sacrifice His Life so that we might be able to be forgiven. Each book, no matter who wrote it from Moses on down, has a reference to Jesus in some way. Some of the prophetic books like Isaiah and Psalms even tell where He would be born and how He would die.

The most wonderful part is that He rose again on the third day and six weeks later, went to be with the Father until He comes again. His return has been waited for by many for the past two millennia and the amazing part is that everything is in place for His return. It won’t be another thousand years, it will likely be in our life-time. Study your Bible, borrow one and seek Him and prove Him through Scripture and in history.

Romans 8, Psalms 22, and the book of Revelation will give you more proof than you need. Psalm 22 was written over one thousand years before crucifixion was used, yet it describes it very accurately. Consider the truth found in Scripture, ask God to show you the truth of what you are reading, whether you want to believe it or not, He will hear you and show you what you didn’t know was there. He doesn’t want anyone to go to hell, but your choice of believing or not will send you there, not Him.

Why?


If God’s presence has really left our country, why? Well, over the last fifty years we have continually pushed Him away from our children, from our educational institutions, from the public square, from being present at football games and other sports through prayer, even out of political and other bodies of legislative actions where His Presence is sorely needed today.

So, what would you expect Him to do? Granted, His feelings and actions are much different from ours but if your congregation or your spouse were doing this wouldn’t you leave too? I would. We are going to reap exactly what we have sown and I don’t think that this country is going to recover from it. There have been many signs and warnings such as the attack on 9/11, the financial crisis seven years later and now we are seven years past that point. What will happen this time? I don’t know and I am not going to speculate, but the moons that are happening on the Sabbaths this year and the two full solar eclipses could be telling us to wake up and repent of our ways.

God loves each of us, whether we are saved or not because He loved us all before we felt the conviction to repent. We are being given a chance to change and repent of our ways, and come back to Him.

Read the Bible, especially Romans and Revelation, because we need Him now far more than we have ever needed Him before. Please listen to the words from the Old Testament:

“Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14

This is referring to all who call on God, not just the Jewish people. In Romans 9:25 it says: “Concerning the Gentiles, God says in the prophecy of Hosea, “Those who were not my people, I will now call my people. And I will love those whom I did not love before.”

Seek His counsel through the Bible and pray that it isn’t too late for our nation and our world.