If you sense a touch of sarcasm in the paragraph above, I admit it is ever so slightly tinged with that sentiment; alas, I hope you also detect concern? I write with a desire to bring people to an understanding that heaven and hell are real, and there is a righteous all knowing, all seeing Judge, that is gracious enough to give us plenty of time to repent, whilst being perennially Sovereign enough - read here omnipresence and omnipotent - as to damn people for all eternity, when they do damage to themselves and others by rejecting the Gospel, and thereby rejecting the work God has for them, which is:
Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent (John 6:29)
If your work and mine is to believe in Jesus, then part of our employment includes reading and knowing in our minds and hearts, the instruction manual. Those that profess Christ and do not read his Word, do not ensure knowing who he is, or what is in store for humanity when the day of judgment arrives; they will be as lambs to the slaughter. God is not sugar and spice and everything nice. He does not speak with forked silver tongue, or butter us up with platitudes: anything but. He commands, he insists, he proclaims, and humans scuttle bug around truth that they prefer to ignore, in favour of their own version of who he really is, all for the sake of a soft place to cuddle into that doesn't provoke in the conscience, evidence of a wayward soul. The Bible isn't an easy novel to read: it contain cold hard facts, that drive a person to their knees when they recognize how blessed they are, in the face of realizing how wicked they have been.
What is missing, as far as I can tell, is the discerning of spirits. Do you, dear reader, comprehend that all about you, everywhere you and I turn, there is an invisible world that is thinly veiled, keeping us from seeing all the activity of the spiritual realm? There are angels, and fallen angels, known as demons. The angels are God's messengers and heavenly warriors, fighting battles behind the scenes to preserve and protect God's children; and the demons are Lucifer's frequent flyer foot soldiers, menacing, coercing, cajoling, enticing, manipulating the minds and hearts of humans that know not what they do ... until of course, they see Jesus as the Christ, dying on the cross; Jesus in the tomb, where death could not decay; Jesus resurrected on the third day, reconciling us to the Father after dying for the sins of the world. Once you know him this way, does it not put a fire in your soul to know him completely? It did for me, and yet, I see that first love can fade into non-existence, and that is what has happened to would be believers ...
This is what Matthew Henry has to say, taken from Matthew Henry's Commentary On The Whole Bible, page 649:
They would not see their sins to their humiliation, but cast them behind their backs, covered them, and endeavoured to forget them, nor would they suffer their own consciences to put them in mind of them; but the day is coming when God will make them see their sins to their everlasting shame and terror; he will set them in order, original sin, actual sins, sins against the law, sins against the gospel, against the first table, against the second table, sins of childhood and youth, of ripe age, and old age. He will set them in order, as the witnesses are set in order, and called in order, against the criminal, and asked what they have to say against him.
III. The Judge's patience, and the sinner's abuse of that patience: "I kept silence, did not give thee any disturbance in they sinful ways, but let thee alone to take thy course; sentence against thy evil works was respited, and not executed speedily." Note, The patience of God is very great towards provoking sinners. He sees their sins and hates them; it would be neither difficult nor damage to him to punish them, and yet he waits to be gracious and gives them space to repent, that he may render them inexcusable if they repent not. His patience is the more wonderful because the sinner makes such an ill use of it: "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself, as weak and forgetful as thyself, as false to my word as thyself, nay, as much a friend to sin as thyself." Sinners take God's silence for consent and his patience of connivance; and therefore the longer they are reprieved the more are their hearts hardened; but, if they turn not, they shall be made to see their error when it is too late, and that the God they provoke is just, and holy, and terrible, and not such a one as themselves.
What, dear reader, in the above quote, spoke loudest to your spirit? Here is what I see as the most common of mistakes amongst men:
"Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself, as weak and forgetful as thyself, as false to my word as thyself, nay, as much a friend to sin as thyself."
God does not connive with sinners. God does not collude with us, commend or accommodate our sins, nor does he condone those that openly oppose him. God cannot, will not, does not, bless sin, never will, and neither should we: we must repent and pray for forgiveness for ourselves and others, and in the mean time, keep our hands busy with the work that God hath given, which is to believe in the one he hath sent.
The worldly would have us as partakers in their folly, while The Word, otherwise known as Jesus Christ, harkens us to the time just before he went to the cross. Here are his words to the Father, and his prayer for those his Father gave him:
These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life eternal, that they might know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work thou gavest me to do (John 17:1-4)
And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I have manifested thy name unto men which thou gavest me of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept they word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me (John 17:5-8)
I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are (John 17:9-11)
Dear reader, you either belong to God the Father and God the Son, or you don't. Jesus prayed for those that are his, not for the world. This means not all make it to heaven, and that many, and you can verify this for yourself by reading scripture, will be as Judas, the son of perdition, and be sent to the darkness of hell for eternity: it is really, and truly, that simple. Believe in the one whom God hath sent, live for him and him alone, and you will be with him in eternity when you perish ... otherwise, the future for you doesn't look so good, dear one ...
I pray for you now, to be a discerner of spirits, so that you know the Living God, through Christ our Lord, Amen.
NOTE: When I look up scripture in google searches, I always request the King James Version. When I compare what is on the internet to my actual in the flesh, page turnable Bible, I am shocked to see how the scriptures have been mutilated.
If you have the desire to know God, through his Word, you must get your hands on a Holman, KJV. It's beauty, dear one, is soul winning, and incomparable to the trash that masquerades as the bible. The devil got his hands on the tongues and fingertips of publishers, and twisted them into deformity so that they spew vileness from their mouths, and type wickedness from their keyboards.
Lord help us all, to be discerners of the spirits.
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