Called, chosen, and faithful. When Christ finally drops the hammer on His enemies, He will be accompanied by His army of followers who will be called, chosen, and faithful. [Revelation 17:14] – They will wage war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will triumph over them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings—and with him will be his called, chosen and faithful followers.”
This is where we fit in, fellow believers. Remember, my beloved brothers and sisters who follow these posts in Malaysia, in Kenya, Myanmar, Mexico – all of you from the far reaches of the world and regardless of any former belief system you have held, you who seek to discover your place in the grand scheme in which Jesus Christ will be the Sovereign – this is how we get where we need to go. Isaiah 41:9 – [Isaiah 41:9] I took you from the ends of the earth, from its farthest corners I called you. I said, ‘You are my servant’; I have chosen you and have not rejected you. Therefore, we are called by the Lord to come into His Kingdom. Yes, we have a standing invitation from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself – a calling – which we must not ignore! If we do not give our utmost attention to properly answering this call, we risk the most horrific eventuality that can come upon our souls, which is the dreaded fate of not being chosen for His mighty army.
When we take His invitation lightly, and are careless in our response, we become bound to a horrific and eternal fate. One fellow was observed at a reception who was not properly prepared to be attending, and this was his lot: [Matthew 22:13,14] “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ “For many are invited [called], but few are chosen.”
To be called, and chosen, are great honors bestowed upon us by the Lord Jesus, but the faithful part is all on us. Are we being faithful to the calling to which He beckons us? Are we being faithful to Him? In the big picture, nothing else matters at all. It doesn’t matter if our designated existence in this life requires us to be a woodsman in Bavaria or a rickshaw operated in Mumbai, a hairdresser in some New York salon, or maybe even an old hillbilly blogger in the Ozarks, our number one objective in this life should be to do whatever we can to please our God, our Creator. For by doing so, once He calls and chooses us, we satisfy that “faithful” part of called, chosen, and faithful.
Today is a blessed, rainy day here in the Ozarks. We’ve had hardly any rain for about six weeks or so, and things were getting dry enough around here that everyone was starting to worry about fires, but maybe that fear is allayed for the time being. One of my biggest fears, though, is looking at the state of the world we’re living in and realizing how many people are living with their attention turned to world events and away from the God to Whom we need to bring our cares for His consolation. As the golden hickory leaves become rain-sogged and drop to the ochre ground, so our fellow humans fall to the merciless swords of war, plagues, and all sorts of evil, souls bound for lesser places because they do not answer the call. For how can we be chosen if we do not answer the call?
[Revelation 3:20] – Behold, Istandatthedoor and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opensthe door, Iwill come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. It’s a standing invitation, all you have to do is open the door for Him and He’ll take care of the rest.
Sometimes I find myself battling against frustration over the things that are going on in the world today and I know I’m not alone. There is comfort to be had, though it might not be where we think, where we look. How can a person look at the horrible pictures of butchered children, young children intentionally injured and/or killed? Is this what humanity has become? My own answer to this is a resounding NO! At least for the humanity of humans, this is not who we are, nor who we were created to be, and we do not have to accept any presumption that we are part of the evil we see but cannot stop.
Of course, frustration ensues when we have to witness our whole existence turned upside down. The human psyche was not designed to accommodate this level of evil. Witness the soldiers who take part in it, coming home to live in drug abuse or even suicide! It’s too much for anyone with a shred of conscience to endure, but of course they don’t think about lying awake at night listening to the screams of toddlers being massacred, of mothers begging for their lives to be spared while they’re busy impressing their buddies with their ruthlessness. God did not create people to act like this, and many of the actors who play the roles of butchers of innocent human beings pay a steep price even before this life is over, but surely and forever in the next.
As I’ve written before, and shall continue to remind people of conscience, there will be a reckoning for all of this. The Almighty God sees every detail of what’s going on, and every drop of innocent blood is duly noted for the judgement of those who shed it. There is not, nor can there ever be, any justification or rationalization for the inhumanity of killing innocent people – especially children. I know our ancestors here in America were guilty of the same behavior towards the Indians, and I’d like to think I’d be of the same mind about their treatment as I am about the Palestinians and Lebanese today. In fact, I know I would – I don’t think that as a Christian, a true follower of the Covenant of Jesus Christ, anyone could believe otherwise, murdering innocent people is wrong! it’s a horror wrought by Satan himself, and people who commit such barbarism are undoubtedly possessed by the evilest of demons from the bottomless pit. But therein lies the rub – if we allow ourselves to be overcome by hatred and the desire for vengeance, the same enemy wins against us as the one who is in charge of the atrocities being committed.
Me too, my friend, me too
Frustration at the evil we witness in the world can overcome even the staunchest of believers, so it is imperative that we trust in God who has the power to – and undoubtedly will – bring justice upon the perpetrators. Satan uses this very frustration to serve his purpose – especially against believers – for many are sure to be overcome by hatred. We must not let this happen – the very evil we abhor is a powerful and multifaceted weapon – that hatred, because it ultimately has the same effect on our spirit as the evil itself. No matter how horrific their behavior, we must bear in mind that they are still human beings, even though for the duration of their barbarity they are under the control of Satan.
Jesus warns us of that very danger when He admonishes us to love our enemies, because even the vilest of people can turn away from their evil and repent, and if God can forgive them, then we must be able to do the same. No other religion outside of true Christianity teaches this level of forgiveness and even compassion for one’s enemies and this is one of the end products of Christ’s love for all people. He gives everyone every chance to come into His kingdom, and He sees both the evil of those who slaughter innocents, AND those of us who have allowed hatred to get the better of them, an act of submission to the same devil. He said the Father makes His rain fall on both the good and the wicked, and if we’d like to be in the same mindset as Him, we must learn to love our enemies. Love is the key to being a faithful servant of Jesus, and it is disturbing to hear public speakers from politicians to (even “Christian”) preachers advocating war and violence spurred on by the very hatred they should be condemning.
The Bible says in more than one place that God is love. If we could begin to fathom the depths of His love, we’d certainly have a better understanding – and appreciation – of Him. He is merciful beyond anything we could ever imagine, and when we would like to get close to Him, we must always remember to call on Jesus – no one can serve the Father who rejects the Son. That’s important to know, especially when you take into consideration that Jesus died on the cross of His own free will, so that we could be saved from the damnation of this world and that lake of eternal fire that ultimately awaits all who reject Him. This is as real as it gets, folks. The end is getting close, get to know Jesus and be prepared for what’s coming upon us. You’ll be eternally glad you did.
And don’t ever let the stranger cause you to hate people.
Pervasive helplessness – that seems to be what’s going on. We see injustice, evil in high places, yet we feel powerless to do anything about it. We watch leaders of nations speak out against the unspeakable atrocities of Gaza and now Lebanon and do nothing to stop it. Maybe one more sternly worded letter or one more denunciation of the IOF for bombing hospitals will serve to stop it.
Erdogan of Turkey keeps speaking out against genocide, so does Egypt’s Sisi, and Abdullah of Jordan, but when it comes down to actually doing something, anything, to help, well we just hear a bunch of empty words. The Middle East desperately needs a hero, but alas, none are to be found outside Yemen, Lebanon, and Iran. I guess Erdogan will just live in his Walter Mittyesque daydream of being the heroic sultan of an imagined new Ottoman Empire, though not lifting a finger to help those over whom he would reign.
The Zionist occupation entity has scored a lot of success lately. At least it seems like they think turning the entire world against them with their practice of mass murder is strategic success. I remember some of the WWII propaganda that was still around when I was a kid – we were still immersed in it even in the fifties and sixties. One of the things that stood out about the Nazis, in particular the SS, was one of their founding principles for membership and it went something like this: If a man cannot put a gun to the head of a young child and without mercy kill him/her, then there’s no place in the SS for him. When this was circulating back in the day, we all thought, as any human being would, that this was one of the most atrocious things we had ever heard of. That tidbit alone turned a big part of the world against the Nazis, yet we see the exact same attitudes happening in occupied Palestine with the habit of the IOF soldiers these days of killing Arab children with head shots and laughing about it. What’s the difference? When the Nazis did it, it was total horror, but when the IOF does it, it’s Israel exercising their right to “self defense”.
There’s no doubt some horrific behavior happening, but we’re not totally helpless. We have at our disposal one thing which will ultimately turn the tide of this atrocity, and it is prayer. God hears our prayers, and He will take vengeance on the perpetrators of this murder of innocents when He decides the time is right. Don’t waste your time writing letters to congressmen, they are bought-and-paid for servants of an evil regime and will do nothing to stop even the overt murder of children. Jesus Christ said it would be better for someone to have a millstone tied around their neck and thrown into the ocean than for them to face the wrath of God for harming the little children, so they have theirs coming. That will surely apply to those who support this evil from the safety of their dens of iniquities in the Rayburn and Russell buildings and the white house, et. al.
Or more precisely
No, we must take our petitions to the Almighty God at His throne where our prayers fill the heavenly censers. Above all, we must tell Him we are not a part of this evil and we do not support it, even if we live in the country where the evil comes from. The serpents who purport to run this country are doing so because there’s a lot of money to be made in the service of Satan. That, or their name might just be in a certain little Epstein book. Either way, what they are doing is treason of the highest order against America and against God. Now, I do not for one second believe that they are working against God as a result of treason to America, for I do not think God holds America any higher than He does Somalia or Greenland. He is not a respecter of persons. No, the serpents in Washington just happen to be enemies of America in addition to being enemies of God. They will answer to God in due time.
When we pray for the children of Gaza, for the innocent people who are defenseless to the onslaught of powerful bombs being dropped on their homes, we are showing our compassion for the helpless. Just because He doesn’t act according to the timetable we desire – like right now – doesn’t mean he is ignoring the situation; He most certainly is not. God has an infallible plan, one which is not restricted nor constrained to the limitations or time constraints of this world. He knows of another life, another realm, one in which those children who have been martyred in Gaza and taken out of this world, now are in the care and indescribable comfort of the Lord Jesus Christ and the angels of Heaven. We who are left here shall miss them, but we must keep in mind that they are in good hands now, never to be afraid again.
The pilots who drop those bombs on innocent civilians, as well as the snipers who murder the women and children will face a special place in hell. These are the most cowardly of all – the drone operators who slaughter people as though they are playing video games will especially answer for their atrocities. All the people up the chains of command including to the pentagon and the white house will answer to God for their support and participation. There is no justification or excuse for this evil being perpetrated on defenseless children. This includes intentional starvation and those who shut off the water.
Take whatever comfort you may: [Isaiah 41:17, 18]
“The poor and needy seek water, but there is none, Their tongues fail for thirst. I, the Lord, will hear them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. 18 I will open rivers in desolate heights, And fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, And the dry land springs of water.
God is watching. He’s watching the perpetrators of the evil of Gaza and all who support it. Bot don’t forget – He’s watching you too. How will you react to these days of iniquity? Pray without ceasing.
Rejection. Wow – what a desolate feeling! It’s probably the most damaging blow to human pride of all the many depredations we can experience. Rejection affects different people in different ways, some people deal with rejection by doubling down, working harder, and sometimes this is the correct response, others simply cannot endure it and turn to drugs or booze, and some even take the permanent way out, but most of us learn somehow to cope and thus become able to endure the damage to our psyches. It can have a marked influence on our lives though.
There are examples before us to learn how people have dealt with rejection, such as when a young Adolph Hitler was turned down by the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He was an aspiring young artist and had submitted some of his work for consideration, but the acceptance committee didn’t think he had what it took. Needless to say, he didn’t take it so well, but what if? What if he had been accepted – he was a pretty good artist, and who knows how good he might have turned out to be? Could you imagine walking into an art exhibit with expensive Hitlers for auction? How the history books would be different today! But he was rejected, and that very rejection could have well been the seed of all the death and destruction of WWII.
Painting by Hitler
Consider that beautiful girl back in high school that you would have treated like a princess if only she would have responded to your advances. What a bummer to see her hooked up with some nerd from the debating team who obviously could have never given her half the affection you were prepared to lavish upon her. The fact that they eventually married and had half a dozen kids and stayed together for scores of years notwithstanding, she would have been much better off with you – right?
Rejection takes many forms and none of them are in any way desirable, at least for the time being, but sometimes if we look at things from a different viewpoint, we might see that we’re better off for the way things turned out, even if we had to spend some time buffing out the dings to our pride to get over it. Think about famous people. There’s that human envy in which we often find ourselves immersed that says we’d like to be able to sing like Elvis before adulating mobs in great auditoriums, and it does seem like it’d be quite the trip, but maybe God gave us the voice we have precisely so that we wouldn’t ever get rich or famous because He had other plans for us. Maybe the less than perfect eyesight that prevented us from becoming a fighter pilot was bestowed on us so that we’d never have to give an account of ourselves for mass-murdering innocent people during some “war”.
When I walk out in the woods in the fall and immerse myself in the breathtaking beauty of autumn – an exercise in which I delight more than anything else – I sometimes wonder where else I might have ended up if I had been “successful” in some of my early endeavors. If I had become a famous artist, would I be somewhere I could walk in the woods and enjoy nature like I do now, or would I be ever on the run from unwanted people, ducking for cover when the mobs of newspaper reporters and paparazzi photographers found out where I was, all the more so if I was in some personal setting? I guess most of those folks who have to live like that either enjoy the attention, or at least have learned to tolerate it, but for me, I couldn’t imagine an unhappier lifestyle, never mind the wealth.
I believe that success also comes in many forms or iterations, and most of us don’t have a clue what “success” actually is. We hear the word used a lot when people discuss a person’s financial status, but we only accept it as such because that’s what we’ve been trained to think. When you get to the truth of the matter, success has to be whatever makes a person happy – be it those things which can be experienced or owned in this life, or be it the satisfaction we experience in the knowledge that we are prepared to enter into the next life fully enlightened and that the Lord will approve our conduct in this one. That satisfaction only comes as a result of determining to seek God and live according to His judgements and that of course, will entail an endless stream of “rejections” – both of us and by us.
We will be rejected by the world because our interests are different than those taught by the world – different because there is a Spirit who guides us that does not guide those who reject Jesus Christ. We are rejected by our fellow humans when we write posts they don’t want to read – too much going on for them to bother with learning about Him who created them. We are constantly rejected, as mentioned earlier by those who could inject wealth into our lives, ends up for our own good, although that’s not why they reject us. Those kinds of rejections are normally the result of financial considerations.
There was a funny song by a musician/comic named Jerry Reed about a guy who was a talent scout who rejected this aspiring musician who called himself the Tupelo Mississippi Flash (a reference to Elvis) and the musician went on to become famous and the scout got canned for rejecting him. Sometimes the person doing the rejecting might be making a mistake, but that’s beside the point. The financial consideration was the reason for the rejection, and only through hindsight he learned of his mistake. If the person who suffers whatever rejection for whatever reason were stop feeling sorry for himself long enough to apply hindsight similarly, he might understand how his rejection served to benefit him. Look at all of the folks who became famous in their pursuits living decadent and immoral lifestyles or that came to tragic endings.
Perhaps the most well-known rejection of a human being was that of Jesus Christ. His rejection served to benefit humankind, but it must have been a desperately humiliating experience for Him. How painful it must have been to look out at the people He had been teaching, loving, and healing as they now chanted for Pilate to release Barabbas, a criminal, rather than Himself as they scorned, spat, and beat upon Him. He knew and understood that what He was doing was something that had to be done to save the world, but still the despondence must have been immense. Can you imagine how painful it would be to endure having big nails driven into your hands and feet, watching through tears and blood in His eyes as His “friends” turned away? He died an extraordinarily painful death, hanging on that big, magnificent cross – an incredible act of selflessness during which His concern was not for Himself, but for the souls of the men who were doing this to Him. As His precious life ebbed, He pleaded with God, HIs Father for forgiveness for those men. How is that for responding to rejection?
Now I don’t know about you, my friends, but in my book, Jesus Christ has suffered enough rejection. That horrible day on the cross was enough for all eternity, and no one in their right mind should ever choose to reject Him anymore. From today until the end, however, there are people who still opt to try and live without Him, to their eternal shame and damnation. There is still time, though no one knows how much, to get things right with Jesus; do it, whatever it takes, just get on your knees and let Him know you are sorry for the life you have lived and are willing to hand Him the keys to your life. He knows where you need to go and will gladly take you there.
When and if you decide to accept His generous offer of eternal life, you can expect rejection from the world, but that’s okay – that’s Satan’s doing and it’s worth all the rejection the world can throw at you to know Jesus has your back and that you will ultimately be with Him in paradise for all of eternity. You will also be doing some rejection of your own – you can reject a world in which innocent people continue to be murdered, you can reject immoral lifestyles and those who relish hatred and malevolence. You can reject those who continue to reject our Lord Jesus – you are in no way obligated to conform to their ways. Once you make up your mind to join Christ, you become free with a freedom that the human mind can scarcely imagine!
I don’t think there are many who would argue that time is growing short for us. The world as we know it will never be the same as it was yesterday, last week, last year. This chaos is the new normal. There is still some time though. Time to give a hungry person something to eat. Time to help a child by donating to a reputable charity. Time to walk in the woods, enjoy the colors of fall, and thank Jesus for all He has done for us. If you are not already in touch with Him, I cannot stress enough how important it is for you to find Him – He’s not that far away, right at the very door of your heart. Call on Him before it is too late. No more rejection.
Over the years, over the centuries, Christianity has gotten a bad rap. Our predecessors were fallible human beings, as we all are, and as such were vulnerable to attacks from the enemy. Obviously, they didn’t always win. In order to be able to gain some appreciation for the power of evil that has ever been arrayed against us, it would be prudent to understand that this enemy has a plan – a plan that has been developed and fine-tuned for millennia, and he is wise and cunning. Things that are happening today are not happening by any kind of coincidence, they’ve been planned out for ages. We’re temporary beings who are playing our parts in only one act of the great play. There were others yesterday. There were others in the first millennia, the first century, but the plan was in progress for the whole production.
Satan obviously took control at various times through the years in order to give Christians a bad name. The Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, and other times and efforts were perpetrated so that in the end days there would be people who could point out those eras to disparage Christianity. He’s been working on this for a long time. Although one of the goals of his plan seems to have been to alienate the Islamic faith from the Christian, God has maneuvered events so as to bring believers together, and ironically, if we look closely, we are finding it possible to be able to see God through each other’s eyes. Many of us Christians see the devotion of Moslems with their daily prayers and the way they teach their children in righteousness and wish our fellow Christians would do likewise. Islam also teaches of Jesus Christ, some sects say He was a prophet, but some recognize His Divinity as the Son of God. This is important – we’re not all that far apart. Conversely, Talmudic Judaism teaches that Jesus was an imposter, and His soul is in torment – that’s way apart from what Christian Gospel or Islam teaches. Christianity is no threat to Islam, we believe differently, but neither religion teaches that murder is acceptable, although some of our predecessors on both sides have ignorantly thought it acceptable to kill to “protect” our faith. Come on, y’all – if our God is indeed Almighty, He doesn’t need any of us to kill someone to defend Him. Especially when Jesus Christ Himself teaches us not to harm others.
Today’s iteration of humanity is currently being inured to death and destruction on a scale not witnessed since the last world war, but this time things are different. When people become sufficiently apathetic to this genocide, they will be prepared to accept anything, no matter how evil, although one would be hard-pressed to expect anything any more evil than the murder of children. Today’s Christians are being asked to accept the notion that the deaths of innocent people on this incredible scale is somehow justified so that we can rationalize an acceptance of it taking place. For the Christian who reads and understands the Gospel of the New Covenant, for the few who seek the narrow gate, the murder of innocent people cannot be justified, period.
Those defenseless victims who are undergoing this inhumane slaughter are obviously hard-pressed to connect the barbarism levied against them with the will of God, but as with all things that happen in the course of mankind’s occupation of this earth, God knows what’s happening. It is of utmost importance to understand and believe that the Almighty God who created us has not abandoned us! He is intimately aware of each wound, of each drop of blood of every child, and His wrath on the Day of His vengeance will be a terrible thing to behold! Imagine the very heavens being shaken with His fury, His immeasurable anger at those who have perpetrated this unspeakable evil upon poor and innocent women and children. The “leaders” who send bombs and death shall be horrified, seeking holes in the ground, rocks and mountains to fall on them to hide them from His face, but on that Day, they will face their reckoning.
It is also of utmost importance to bear in mind that there is another life after this one. This is the one concept that can make our suffering bearable so that we may endure the evil that is upon us. Those innocent peasants who are being mercilessly slaughtered will undoubtedly be greeted and welcomed into a magnificent kingdom of peace and joy, unimaginable joy in which the tribulations of this life will be forgotten. Mothers who have lost their children, be comforted in the knowledge that those little ones are in a new home of serenity and that God shall wipe the tears from their precious little eyes. Only God knows the pain and despair you are undergoing, but God does know – believe that! The day of reckoning approaches, and justice will be visited upon those who brought this horror upon you. Jesus Christ will Himself lead an army that will utterly destroy those servants of evil who actually think they are in charge now.
When this conflict is rightly seen as a great battle between good and evil, and when the parties involved are rightly identified as to which is good and which is evil, it is interesting to observe who Satan is going after. He doesn’t seem to be worried about any of the great American megachurches – none of the “faithful” or false prophets of the congregations appear to be having any abnormal conflicts, the government isn’t bothering them. Of course, the wealthy seem to be living high on the hog – no earthly conflicts to deal with. People who profess to be atheists or even Satanists aren’t being bombed and massacred. Why is the devil assailing the poor Palestinians? Could it be that they are the true Semitic peoples? Are they the last ancestors of Abraham and Moses, et. al? Are the few Christians among the Palestinians all that remain of the true Church? After all, some of the oldest Christian churches in the world were in Palestine and Syria. I don’t know the answers to those questions, but anyone can see that for some reason, Satan is intent on destroying all that are left of those people.
Jesus gave us the Beatitudes in Matthew chapter 5. Read them and see if you can see the Palestinians – I can:
3“Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 Blessed arethose who mourn, For they shall be comforted. 5 Blessed arethe meek, For they shall inherit the [a]earth. 6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled. 7 Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy. 8 Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God. 9 Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God. 10 Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Do not give up hope – it’s one of the greatest gifts we have. Trust in the grace and mercy of the Almighty to see us through these troubled times. Allow Jesus Christ into your heart and experience the faith that you need to look forward to a better time. Tears are abundant now, but they will not always be. Christian people who have Jesus in their hearts cry for you – pray for you. There’s a better life beyond us. Do not give up on love – it is the greatest of all gifts, for God is love.
[1 John 4:8] He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
May God bless all whose hearts are broken – may Jesus Christ give us strength to endure.
While strolling through the late-summer countryside yesterday, as I looked over the lustrous patches of early goldenrods, several thoughts simultaneously bombarded my aging senses, not the least of which were things us folks alive regard as certainties. Some of them are indeed certainties, but many we regard as being so may not actually be. As interesting as it would be to hop a ride on that train of thought, maybe for the sake of brevity it’d be better to stay with those we know to be things that will happen. For instance, we have every reason to believe the sun will set this evening, and every other evening for that matter, and as this autumn weather coalesces around the foliage in this holler, we’re going to see some beautiful colors. As most of the readers of this site already know, autumn is an event which stirs the affinity for this aging soul’s eternal attempts to describe nature’s botanical metamorphosis with my own version of insane prose, which as you know will also be forthcoming, although I wouldn’t categorize that obsession with subjects of the degree of certainty to which this post attempts to allude.
As surely as we know the deciduous hardwoods will turn into immaculate subjects of magnificent beauty, some of us also know that an event of even more grandeur, of indescribable splendor will soon grace our senses with an experience we’ve been blessed to KNOW shall transpire. That event will be the glorious return of our Savior, Jesus Christ. We can know this will happen because He has bestowed on us the faith to believe He’s coming back. When folks decide to believe in Him, the process of growing into that very faith begins – and will until we meet Him.
Before I started this post, I prayed that our Marvelous Creator would afford me with words, with thoughts that could accomplish two purposes. The first would be to encourage the brothers and sisters who might, as a result of the horrible, depressing events happening in the world, find themselves becoming discouraged in their own faith, seeing the rampant and overt injustice being perpetrated upon innocent folks, and just generally experiencing the hopelessness with which the stranger visits our souls. To those of you who find your hopes flagging, remember what He told us about having patience. [Rev 14:12] “Here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.“ and [2 Thessalonians 3:5] “Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ.” Patience is therefore important for believers – those who choose to keep the commandments, and as hard as it is to practice, we must remain patient, otherwise we leave open another door to the machinations of Satan.
The second purpose of this post is to speak a truth to nonbelievers, to encourage those who do not know Christ to look into that thing which we believers KNOW to be a certainty. The thing of which I speak is the return of Jesus Christ to gather His children and to take up His sceptre, that symbol of Kingship and justice which we anxiously await. To you I say He was here in human form performing miracles unheard of, both in His day as they would also be in ours today – that history of all the things He accomplished during His appearance alone should be sufficient to pique the curiosity of the staunchest agnostic, and give people cause to look into His teachings. Another aspect of His life’s experience is His unassailable wisdom – the human race could probably continue indefinitely just by practicing the humanity, the love and generosity He taught, as opposed to continuing as we are to the cataclysmic ending we can all see coming.
We plainly see the evil that has overtaken the world – we know it’s evil because one of the few decent human traits we all possess is that conscience that allows us to differentiate between good and evil. While it’s true that we as humans are by nature far short of attributes that separate us from spiritual virtuosity, if we but open our eyes we can still understand that human evil, greed, immorality, ad infinitum, are direct causes for our impending demise. Therefore, we should, simply as a matter of the continuity of our species, be able to comprehend the source(s) of our destruction and avoid those behaviors. But it goes deeper than that – without Jesus Christ in our lives we are forever bound to repeat those accursed things. They are the essence of human behavior – behavior that identifies that which we must strive to overcome, which is impossible without His guidance.
There are things we fear will happen that may or may not come to pass, things like the nuclear holocaust most of us fear that could indeed happen if we stay on this trajectory. Just plain conventional war on the other hand, may be one of the practices we humans can’t avoid, although I hesitate to say it has to be a certainty. This site has proposed before, and I see no reason to change that belief, that Satan is at the pinnacle of his power when there is war in our world. War breeds all kinds of sinful behavior – hatred, greed, immorality, and others. We often hear justifications for war – resources, and other forms of wealth, territorial disputes, etc., but these are incorrect – these excuses are among the many lies birthed to accommodate war. Such justifications get the means and ends of war swapped. The reason for war is war. Satan doesn’t need resources – he needs people to be killing each other. When you understand that people always lie to justify throwing a war, you see what the Lord was talking about because Satan was a liar and a murderer from the beginning. Jesus had some choice words for such followers, [John 8:44] “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.”
War itself may not necessarily be one of the inevitable things this post is about, although in reality because of our human fallibility, it sure seems to be. We hear the old saw about death and taxes and for all practical purposes they may be correct, but one thing is for sure – Jesus is coming back for us. He said He would.
[Revelation 14:14-16]Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and on the cloud sat One like the Son of Man, having on His head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle. 15 And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to Him who sat on the cloud, “Thrust in Your sickle and reap, for the time has come for You to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” 16 So He who sat on the cloud thrust in His sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped.
Some of us are trying hard to stay on the leading edge of that sickle, making sure everyone knows they have an invitation to the Kingdom. To those who see themselves there, keep up the good work. To those who hear the invitation, don’t let it pass. RSVP now! Get to know Jesus, you’ll forever be glad you did.
A lot of folks don’t claim to be spiritual, so one might consider it a waste of time to do posts about Jesus Christ, but I’m beginning to realize that people who don’t know about Jesus are more likely to pay attention to the conversation than those who’ve heard of Him but allow the behavior of hypocrites to influence their opinions, about religion in general, but more specifically, Christianity. This is especially applicable to people who insist on following after the ways of this world.
For a lot of people, the antics of charlatans who, in the name of Christ, set about amassing personal wealth and worldly possessions, has negatively influenced their regard for the spiritual which has a bearing on the fate of their eternal souls. After seeing the sacrilegious behavior of some of the “evangelists” in business today, it’s hard to blame someone who hasn’t experienced first-hand the providence of God if they reject religion outright, but there are other ways to seek Him. In fact, this post has set out to proffer a different view altogether from that which some have become accustomed.
The Almighty God has given us a lot of choices, a lot of forks in the road on this journey we have before us, but one thing that gets overlooked regarding the choices we make is that we are allowed to believe what we want to believe. God gave us, as human beings, the freedom to believe what we will – it is an inalienable right – we believe what we WANT to believe, and disregard that which choose not to believe. That said, whatever choice we might make to believe a thing does not in any way make that thing correct, nor does it make a given belief false, that is beyond the scope of this conversation. We can truly believe the highway ahead is straight and decide to drive 100 miles per hour, but there may be a right-angle turn ahead that we can’t see, so although we are allowed to believe it’s straight, the curve we fly into proves our belief was wrong – the point is that we were allowed to believe what we did, regardless of the veracity of the belief.
In the same vein, we are allowed to believe that God doesn’t exist if that’s what we want to believe. The important thing is that it’s what we want to believe. A person cannot get away with, “Well, I wanted to believe in Jesus, but there just wasn’t enough evidence.” This person did not want to believe at all – the allure of the lusts of the world established in his heart that he did not want to believe, otherwise he’d have to change his lifestyle and become the righteous person Jesus expects His followers to be. If he had truly wanted to believe in Jesus, he could have – as mentioned earlier, God allows us, and has wired us, to be able to believe what we want to believe.
The evidence for God’s existence is at a nominal glance, a reasonable expectation for the rational mind to be able to accept that He is real, but the absence of it is too often used as a justification for not wanting to believe. If we choose to look into the covenant that Jesus has given us, however, we find that essential requirement that God demands, faith, must be exercised in order to find Him. Therefore, if there was evidence of God’s existence, we wouldn’t need faith to believe in Him. So what comes first, faith or desire to believe? I believe it is the “want to”, because when we stand before the judgement seat, we won’t be able to claim we didn’t believe because there was no evidence – if we come to that unenviable point as unbelievers, it is because we wanted to be unbelievers, and God allowed us to be so.
So, if I’m a person who has just stepped into the world and have heard there is a God, what is my motivation for wanting to know more about Him? There’s a reference book that’s several thousand years old that explains what we can expect in the hereafter, after we die, a subject of great interest, which incidentally isn’t understood or explained anywhere else. We live our lives here on earth and watch people die over and over again, never hearing from them anymore, and the staunchest atheists, who practically demand that you don’t believe in God, can’t give you any hint of what happened to them, A big problem for people in this world today is that there are more and more unbelievers, and in our interminable efforts to be like everyone else, we reject the only Truth out there. That person who seeks understanding can listen to the prophets who came before, he can listen to old bloggers on the internet, he can listen to the words of Jesus Christ Himself, but the key to all of this is that he first must want to know the truth. If he wants to believe, God made him so that he can. The first step in the right direction is to decide that believing in Jesus is what you want to do, then let Him do His work. There will come a point where you understand in your heart that you made the correct choice.
The truth of the matter is this: We shall all, each and every soul who has ever lived on this earth, come before the judgement of Jesus Christ. Does our disbelief condemn our souls so that we will hear Him say, “‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”? That ensuing departure from the everlasting glory of His presence will be the most unimaginably painful, heart-wrenching event to ever be endured by a human soul. Or conversely, will He tell us, [Matthew 25:34] “‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. “? I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m opting for the latter!
We got some much-needed rain here in the holler yesterday and last night. Heavy storms around midnight and thunder kept going till the early morning hours. Maybe saying “much needed” is an exaggeration because we’ve actually had a nice, lush spring and summer and we’ve only been low on rain for a few weeks. This old farmhouse needs some work too, because the mud room is starting to flood when we get that kind of downpour, but our situation is not nearly as bad as some places in the world that are getting devastating floods.
Flooding in Africa
The weather is changing everywhere, and it seems like wherever you look, someone has a perfectly reasonable explanation for it. There is undoubtedly some kind of climate change(s) going on, but whenever someone’s theory as to why it’s happening gets into politics, the theory becomes suspect – at least to me. For instance, there’s a sizeable movement that wants to declare war on fossil fuels because they see the increase in CO2 as coming from mankind burning too much of it. Then among the most ardent opposition to that turns out to be folks from the oil and coal producing entities. I’m not going to get into that fight, because I don’t know the particulars, and from so much suspect motivation for their positions, it’s hard to believe that anybody else does either.
The most compelling argument concerning fossil fuels is that they are responsible for way too much death and destruction from peoples and nations fighting over them. Most of the wars and hatred stirred up for the last several decades have been because of the wealth that stands to be obtained over the control of oil and natural gas, so when you take into account the ginormous pollution that occurs as a result of wars, then the dots could reasonably be connected from the burning of fossil fuels to the harm done to the climate.
Is this what the Amazon will look like in a few years?
If someone from one of the excessively wise think tanks were to stand up and say, “Hey, you know what? If we shut down all the wars going on, we wouldn’t need to burn so much fuel for our tanks, jet planes, oil burning ships, and other military vehicles.” Maybe that kind of thinking could lead to, “Since we don’t need as much oil for wars, maybe humanity could stop throwing wars over oil.” Maybe then the oil used for killing each other could be reserved for agricultural equipment and nations blessed with good soil could set to trying to feed hungry people.
With those notions in mind, it might make more sense where the book of Revelation mentions as the seals are being opened where the voice in heaven says, [Revelation 6:6] And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine.” Maybe that verse is talking about crude oil, I’m not sure, and it’s hard to understand how we can harm oil; maybe sinking tankers full of it. Maybe it is warning conquering armies to try and save oil fields and wine stocks when they capture enemy possessions as they enjoy their wars. At any rate, the two items mentioned, food and oil, are among the most fought-over commodities in today’s world.
We know from the scriptures that we will endure wars right up to the end of the world, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if humanity could find it within ourselves to figure out a way to stop killing each other? Of course, we cannot, and a prescient commenter reminded me recently that it’s because we do not struggle against flesh and blood, but other entities: [Ephesians 6:12] For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
If we were left to our own devices and if our struggle for survival was left to us as a species, who knows? Maybe we could figure out a way to exist peacefully, but we are being controlled by monstrous spiritual entities who will not allow us to go in that direction. We have access to Jesus Christ, who is perfectly able to defeat them and lead us in the direction of peace, but for some reason, most folks seem to enjoy lives of sin and debauchery so much that they ignore the One Who is able to save us, both from ourselves and the demons who control some. So, as with many other human defects, we kill each other over the wealth that comes from oil as one of the many lame reasons for our wars.
Jesus said [Matthew 5:9] “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” I don’t know about the reader, but this old man considers being called a son of God to be the highest honor that can be bestowed on a human being, and we should strive to be regarded as such, hence this post espousing and encouraging peace. There are many organizations, people and groups who preach peace and try to make it happen. People with the opportunity to be called children of God.
If a person is a stockholder in any of the multitude of “defense” industries and contractors who are vested in death and destruction, that person is the polar opposite of a peacemaker, and will be in no position to try and justify his financial ties to weapons of death on that Day when he has to give an account of himself before the Almighty God. [Hebrews 10:31] “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”; and the greatest blessing that could come into that person’s life would be to understand what that fear will be like, now while he has a chance to repent and rectify his pursuits. In this day when the weapons from which you make money are being used to slaughter innocent children before your very eyes, you cannot say you didn’t know of the horrific travesty from which you were getting rich. From what we know about the justice of God, ignoring your future recompense ain’t going to make it go away.
As the sun comes out and the humidity monster begins to prowl in the Ozarks, we are reminded that August is in mid stride and the colorful, brisk world of autumn is still a few weeks out, but any time is a good time to consider where we stand with God. If a person chooses to ignore the events taking place in the world that are obvious and ominous signs of the impending end of things, then it’s all the more urgent they be stirred into seeking Jesus, the only One Who is able to bring them to victory over the evils of the times and bestow upon them an everlasting existence of unimaginable joy. For to those who are willing to believe, victory awaits, climate change or no.
