The Blessed Promise

 

The Blessed Promise

 

 The salvation of the righteous comes from the Lord;
    he is their stronghold in time of trouble.

The Lord helps them and delivers them;
    he delivers them from the wicked and saves them,    because they take refuge in him. (Psalms 37:39,40)

Salvation is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8-10). All that is needed for this present life and the life to come has been promised and realised ini Jesus Christ our Lord.  When we choose the righteousness of God as our very own the Lord imputes His righteousness to us and we are counted righteous because of the merits of Jesus Christ.

In the sanctuary of ancient Israel they were required to bring a lamb as an offering for sin. When this was accomplished then the priest took the blood of the innocent lamb into the sanctuary where it woukd remain until the day of final atonement for sin.

On this day the High Priest would make an atonement for all those who by faith and penitence chose to have their sins tranfered to the sanctuary. Then the sins of the finally penitent were place on the scape goat where they were forever removed in symbol from the people of God.

Thus in type of the great and final day we see how Gowill finally and totally set things right in our universe. The righteous are saved because they seek refuge in the Lord Jesus Christ who is their atonement. (Romans 3:25,26)

A Word From God

 But Jehoshaphat asked, “Isn't there another prophet through whom we can consult the Lord?” (2 Chronicles 18:6) 

Jehoshaphat the King of Israel was a righteous man who feared God but he made and allegiance with the King of Israel Ahab the enemy of God. Ahab persuaded Jehoshaphat to join him in battle with his enemies and they were defeated and Ahab died. 

But they were warned by the prophet of God not to go but they went anyway, why? Ahab had many false prophets and Jehoshaphat observed this and called for "a prophet of the Lord." When Micaiah the prophet came he spoke Gods words clearly and the message was clear. Both Jehoshaphat and Ahab rejected this counsel and went anyway to both their tragedy.

What can we learn from this?

Jehoshaphat was married to Ahab's family so he was enticed to join the enemies of God. They rejected the clear word of God and received the consequences at their own choosing not God's. God was exremely merciful with Jehoshaphat. Although the king allied with Ahab and rejected the word of God God still saved him and sustained Him in His later rulership.

What a wonderful picture of God God is always for us and His love is always towards us. In our weakness and bad decisions God is always faithful.

Promise

"The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me;

unto Him ye shall hearken." Deut. 18: 15. See also verse 18.

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ

^25-28 But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God while the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was a great earthquake, big enough to shake the foundations of the prison. Immediately all the doors flew open and everyone’s chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke and saw that the doors of the prison had been opened he drew his sword and was on the point of killing himself, for he imagined that all the prisoners had escaped. But Paul called out to him at the top of his voice, “Don’t hurt yourself—we are all here!”

²⁹ Then the jailer called for lights, rushed in, and trembling all over, fell at the feet of Paul and Silas.

³⁰ He led them outside, and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

³¹ And they replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and then you will be saved, you and your household.”

^32-34 Then they told him and all the members of his household the message of God. There and then in the middle of the night he took them aside and washed their wounds and he himself and all his family were baptised without delay. Then he took them into his house and offered them food, he and his whole household overjoyed at finding faith in God. (Acts 16;25-34 J.B.Philips)

The account of Paul and Silas’s deliverance at midnight brings comfort to many tried and tested saints. Often for our faith we are throw is hard places. They stood fearlessly against the spirit of divination and found themselves falsely accused and imprisoned. But all things work together for good. God brought them out of jail and also through it brought the jailer to Jesus. How often we cannot see past the present dangers but the eye of faith sees God’s omnipotent hand a the wheel controlling events for our eternal good.

Why not trust God today?

 

Never Stay on the Fence

There was a large group of people gathered. On one side of the group stood a man, Jesus. On the other side stood another, Satan. Seperating them was a fence running through the group. The scene set, both Jesus and Satan began calling to people in the group. One by one, each having made up his or her own mind, went to either Jesus or Satan. This kept going for a time. Soon enough, Jesus had gathered around him a group of people from the larger crowd, as did Satan.

One man joined neither group. He climbed the fence that was there and sat on it. Jesus and his people left and disappeared, and so too did Satan and his people. The man on the fence sat alone. As this man sat, Satan came back, looking for something which he appeared to have lost. The man said, "Have you lost something?" Satan looked straight at him and replied, "No, there you are. Come with me." The man said, "But I sat on the fence. I chose neither you nor him." Satan said, "That's okay; I own the fence."

"Whoever is not with me is against me." - Jesus in Matthew 12:30

It's Not Over

Christ's victory on the cross was not the final stage of the battle between the Lamb and the Dragon. The great battle of Armageddon is yet to be fought . We must seek diligently to understand why time has tarried so long since Jesus' victory at Calvary . "Yet Satan was not then destroyed [at Calvary] . The angels did not even then understand all that was involved in the great controversy . The principles at stake were to be more fully revealed ."-Desire of Ages, p . 761 .

Since the cross is the light that comprehends all light, it is apparent that even the angels did not fully understand the greatness of Christ's victory on the cross . Much less did man . Then how would God make "all* . . . see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath *Men is a supplied word. All refers to the entire universe . 12 :13), and seeks to oppose Christ through thwarting His plan for His people . Flattering himself that he may be successful here, he thinks to make of none effect the victory of Calvary . Let us see how he has worked :

"God's love has been expressed in His justice no less than in His mercy . Justice is the foundation of His throne, and the fruit of His love . It had been Satan's purpose to divorce mercy from truth and justice . He sought to prove that the righteousness of God's law is an enemy to peace . But Christ shows that in God's plan they are indissolubly joined together; the one cannot exist without the other.

`Mercy and truth are met together ; righteousness and peace have kissed each other' (Psalm 85 :10). "By His life and His death, Christ proved that God's justice did not destroy His mercy, but that sin could be forgiven, and that the law is righteous, and can be perfectly obeyed . Satan's charges were refuted. God had given man unmistakable evidence of His love .

"Another deception was now to be, brought forward. Satan declared that mercy destroyed justice, that the death of Christ abrogated the Father's law . Had it been possible for the law to be changed or abrogated, then Christ need not have died . But to abrogate the law would be to immortalize transgress- been hid in God"? He would do it through the church! ". . to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Ephesians 3 :9-11) .

The victory of Christ on Calvary must be made effectual in the experience of God's people . The glory of Calvary will be magnified by the product it produces . God called man into existence that through him He would bruise the head of Satan . It is true that God's purpose for humanity is fulfilled in Christ, but we must not imagine that Christ's victory as the Man and the Seed of the woman releases God's people from the privilege and obligation of conquering the powers of darkness . Christ must share His victory with His people . His utter defeat of Satan must be made effectual in the experience of the church. The remnant of the

woman's seed must utterly vanquish the remnant of Satan's seed . This final stage of the war over the law of God is what is called the great battle of Armageddon (See Revelation 16 :16) .

Robert D. Brinsmead.

Wars and rumors of wars

Wars and rumors of wars

Human Design

  

“Scientists can perform an experiment in chemistry or physics again and again, and under similar conditions will get unvarying results. But when a scientist comes to deal with the caprices of a living, self - determining, self-acting thing, he can no more predict its next whim than the most unscientific mortal. The operations of a machine may be accurately forecast, but the wisest of men will have difficulty in predicting the antics of a monkey. An astronomer would have no difficulty in locating on his celestial map the farthest planets and stars, but all his mathematical learning and astronomical wisdom would not help him in locating his boy’s cap the next morning.”-

Does God Exist?

a. The argument from cause (the cosmological argument). Reason teaches that every effect has a cause. The universe, this world, intelligent men, exist; they are effects. For them there must be a cause. The original cause must be a supreme, intelligent being.

b. The argument from design (the teleological argument). The existence of design or plan reasonably presupposes a designer or planner. Man, nature, and the observable interactions between them indicate design. The designer is God.

c. The argument from being (the olltological argument). Man has ideas of an infinite and perfect being, of goodness, truth, and holiness. Such ideas cannot find their source in imperfect beings like ourselves. The very concept of infinite power, truth, and goodness argues that there is an infinite and perfect being.

d. The moral argument (the anthropological argument). Man has a moral nature-a sense of right and wrong, of "ought" and "ought not." This sense is dulled and often ignored, but it persists and implies a being to whom man is responsible and accountable.

e. The argument from congruity. Belief in a personal, self-existent God is in harmony with all we know about our mental and moral nature and about the world, and no other belief furnishes an adequate explanation of these things.

Christian Beliefa by T. H. Jemison

What Delays the Coming of Jesus Christ

"When the character of Christ shall be perfectly reproduced in His people, then He will come to claim them as His own ." COL 69 .

 

"If a brother is teaching error, those who are in responsible positions ought to know it ; and if he is teaching truth, they ought to take their stand at his side . We should all know what is being taught among us ; for if it is truth, we need to know it . . . . We are all under obligation to God to understand what He sends us ."

TM 110 .

 

"There is no such thing now as a neutral position . We are all decidedly for the right or decidedly with the wrong ." 3T 328 . "Indifference and neutrality in a  religious crisis is regarded of God as a grievous crime and equal, to the very worst type of hostility against God ." 3T 281 .