Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

_Remember the Lord. Nehemiah 4:14
Apr 30th, 2020
Morning MeditationF. B. Meyer
Categories: Commentary;Inspirational;Book Study

IT was uncommonly good advice. Amid all the wise precautions taken by this man of sanctified common‑sense, he kept bringing the people back to God. God was amongst them. God would fight for them. God was going to bring the counsel of their enemies to nought.

This would make a good motto for daily living. If in all circumstances we would remember the Lord, the way would be brightened; the burdens would fall; our spirits would never droop; and songs of joy would take the place of sadness. Whenever enemies assail and difficulties gather like storm‑clouds, look away from them and remember the Lord. When hemmed in on every side, be sure that He can help you from his holy heaven; remember the Lord. When heart and flesh fail, and you do not know what to do for the best, be sure to remember the Lord, and act as in his most holy presence. What a comfort and strength it is to see a friend, when standing amid a crowd of adversaries intent on your destruction, and to know that he will act and speak for you! But remember that Jesus is always like that.

You say that you forget so soon; that you would remember, though at the critical moment you are betrayed into forgetfulness. But you must recall His precious promise, that the Holy Spirit will bring all to remembrance. If only you will trust the difficulty into his hands, you will find that He will gladly undertake it; and as long as you leave it with Him, you will hear his voice rising in your heart, and saying, "Remember the Lord."

    "Watch with me, Jesus, in my loneliness,

     Though others say me Nay, yet say Thou, Yea;

     Though others pass me by, stop Thou to bless.

The letter to Smyrna - pt. #2 - Exploring Revelation
Apr 30th, 2020
Exploring RevelationArt Sadlier
Categories: Commentary;Prophecy;Book Study

I remind you that the letter to Smyrna represented, prophetically, the period of Church History between approximately 100 AD. - 312 AD.

Let us look at the text, Rev. 2:8 " And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; these things saith the first and the last, which was dead and is alive." I remind you the word ANGEL means MESSENGER, God has divinely appointed a messenger to each church. The pastor is the divinely appointed messenger to bring God's Word to the church. He has no higher standing than others in the church, but he has a divinely given responsibility to feed the flock, by teaching God's Word to the congregation and to lead them in humility.

"The first and the last", a clear statement on the deity of Christ, (See Col. 1:14-18).

"Which was dead and is alive." Among other things we see here the humanity of Christ. We see God became man that He might die for our sins and rise again from the dead to justify us.

"Which was dead and is alive." The Lord gives a wonderful comfort here to those suffering believers. Their lives were in jeopardy, many of their friends and relatives had been slain. In that situation Jesus reminds them, I was dead and now I am alive.

What does that remind them of? It reminds them that men hated Christ, men persecuted Christ, men killed Christ. In the midst of persecution they are reminded that Christ had walked their pathway before them. Christ had been there before them and He is alive, He has overcome.

If He has survived and overcome, they will survive and overcome also! Jesus is saying, look, they did their worst to me and I am alive, I overcame and you will overcome also. You will live again, the sting of death is gone. They needed to hear that! You need to remember that!

"I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are of the synagogue of Satan. Rev. 2:9. "I know thy works, they were a serving church, in spite of all the persecution they had not stopped serving Christ. True service is from the heart and is born out of first love, they had not lost their first love, therefore their works were pleasing to God, and He took note of them.

And tribulation," I know all about your sufferings the Lord reminds them. History tells of a pastor of the church of Smyrna, a man named Polycarp. Polycarp was a convert of John. At 86 years of age he was burned at the stake because he would not renounce Christ. His immortal last words have echoed down through the centuries, "Eighty-six years I have served Christ and He has never done me wrong. How can I blaspheme my king who saved me?"

History tells of a man who at 92 years of age chose death and abuse in a dungeon rather than deny Christ.

History tells us of a 15 year old boy who could not be deterred from confessing Christ and was finally crucified.

History tells of a young woman slave who showed almost superhuman strength under the most cruel tortures. She was finally wrapped in a net and thrown to the hungry wild animals.

What a contradiction, that in our day, some Christians are so indifferent that they only meet with God's people once a week, or even less, something is obviously wrong!

"And thy poverty, " they were a poor church. In the midst of a prosperous city, these christians were fired from their jobs. Christian Business Men were boycotted. But notice, "but thou art rich," in their poverty they were poor in this world's things, but rich spiritually. (see Rev.3:17)

I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are of the Synagogue of Satan." In church history it was the Jews who initiated persecution of christians. Some of those persecuted christians were converted Jews. How it must have grieved those christians to realize that some Jews would go to the Synagogue and read God's Word and pray to Jehovah and then go out and arrange for the death of Christians.

Those jews who refused to come to Christ, became the instruments of Satan to attack and seek to destroy the church.

"Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer," Rev. 2:10. You have suffered and there is more to come, there was no promise of relief from suffering, we are never promised that. (Phil.1:29)

"Behold the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried;" It is a principle in God's Word that faith always has to be tried and tested. All of the saints of the ages have had their faith tried!! You and I are no exception.

Our faith in this Laodicean age is being tried and tested in a different way than the Smyrnian christians were tried. Each church has a different set of trials and testings all down through the Church Age.

As we look at the testings of the Laodicean Age, we can know what kind of testing we can ezpect. The test of the Laodicean Age is basically compromise. To let the world and its wealth and pleasures and its acclaim and appoval compromise our love and commitmnt to Christ until we become lukewarm and indifferent to Christ.

To compromise with the world to win its approval. To compromise the Word of God, watering it down and stripping it of its authority in our lives.

I believe this is the test that the purpose-driven church has utterly failed. They have compromised with the world to the point that they are like the world to such a degree that the world floods into the church and feels at home. The church becomes the world, all the while professing to be the church of Christ. The amazing thing is that they think they have done a good thing, not realizing they have destroyed the church. It seems like our trials and test of faith is more likely to defeat us than the sufferings of Smyrna were to defeat them. I believe we live in the most dangerous hour of trial that a believer can ever be exposed to.

Elect According to the Foreknowledge of God
Apr 30th, 2020
Looking into the WordArt Sadlier
Categories: Bible Salvation

Elect According to the Foreknowledge of God – Contrary to what the Calvinist teaches

“Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied” (1 Peter 1:2).

God deals with man on the basis of man’s free will. Even when God gives a command to a man He allows that man to choose to obey or disobey the command, though a man must bear the consequences of his choice. “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17).

God sees the hearts of men and He deals with them accordingly. We see this in Jeremiah 24:3-7, “Then said the LORD unto me, What seest thou, Jeremiah? And I said, Figs; the good figs, very good; and the evil, very evil, that cannot be eaten, they are so evil. Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel; Like these good figs, so will I acknowledge them that are carried away captive of Judah, whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans for their good. For I will set mine eyes upon them for good, and I will bring them again to this land: and I will build them, and not pull them down; and I will plant them, and not pluck them up. And I will give them an heart to know me, that I am the LORD: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God: for they shall return unto me with their whole heart.”

The Lord looked upon Israel and saw two kinds of hearts, He called one kind “good figs” and the other He called “bad figs.” We know from scripture some things about the heart of every man. We know that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God; all have fallen far short of God’s standard. Jeremiah 17:9 makes this clear, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

Despite man’s depravity God has still endowed man with the capacity to choose to obey Him or to disobey Him. Joshua said to Israel, “And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15). The whole of the Bible record is basically about choice. The gospel record is about choice, “He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:18).

Choice demands a free will to exercise the choice. A part of man being made in the image of God involves a free will. Though all men are sinful in heart and in deeds, yet they still retain the ability to choose, if not, God would not ask him to choose. The same sun that melts the wax hardens the clay. It is not the sun that determines the response but the material on which the sun shines. The Calvinist argues that this exalts the man who responds to the gospel invitation; that is wrong argument, the sinner never has anything to glory in but the grace and mercy of God.

In Leviticus 1:3 we see man’s free will, “If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall offer it of his “own voluntary will” at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD.” This concept of man’s free will is bound up in the warp and woof of the scriptures.

Dr. John Walvoord has stated, “The plan God chose does not force anyone to be saved or lost, but simply means that He knows in advance what each of us will do.” This man is recognized as a great Bible scholar, so do not let the Calvinist put you down by his seemingly intellectual arguments.

Dr. Jack MacArthur senior said, “Predestination is simply God’s foreknowledge facing the future.”

Lehman Strauss stated, "Nowhere does scripture teach that God foreordains a man to hell, nor foreordains a man to be saved against his will. God never predestinates a man's choice."

God doesn't want to crush your will; He wants to bring it into harmony with His.

Acts 2:23 reveals the foreknowledge of God, “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” God knows the end from the beginning and He acts according to that foreknowledge. He knew that, if left to themselves these wicked men would crucify His Son and He allowed it to happen in order to fulfill His purpose.

In Romans 8:29 we learn that God does not predestinate a man’s eternal destiny, but rather the matter of his being conformed to the image of Christ, “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.”

God chose Israel on the basis of His foreknowledge, Romans 11:2, “God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel saying.” God foreknew those Israelites who would be unbelieving and rebellious; He also foreknew those who would be obedient and responsive to His Word. He foreknows the gentiles who would obey the gospel and those who will not. That does not violate the free will of man.

The promise is not in vain that says; “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” (Revelation 22:17).

Beware of those who would destroy the gospel by denying the very basis of the gospel, the denial of the invitation and the opportunity for all men to choose to come to the Saviour. Beware of those who say it is God, not man that chooses life or death for each person.

“The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).