September 11, 2012

• Checked in the Spirit Again

  I started a series about Who Is Ready for the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.  But the Lord has put my writing further on that on hold for awhile.

  So instead I shall tell a short story how I came to be so passionate about that subject:

  I was in Germany in 1990 when Jesus confronted me with the fact my salvation was incomplete.  I had accepted the truth that the Son of God had redeemed me by His substitutionary death on a cross.  But I'd missed the part about Him making it possible that I may become a child of God myself here and now by yielding all of my earthly life to Him.  I was for all practical purposes a god unto myself in those days, doing whatever seemed right to me at the time.  I was, then a "carnal" Christian with little understanding of being "Spirit led" in all things.  Suffice it to say He got my attention and let me know He intended I should be His servant from that day forward.  And I began to seek a Bible college education.

  In Christianity Today I found an advertisement from the Moody Bible College offering correspondence courses.  And one of them was a 2 unit class offered for about $180 I think, which I could afford to write a check for then and there, entitled Biblical Eschatology.  I ordered the correspondence course despite the fact I barely understood what the word Eschatology means.  And before long I received in the mail not just one but three textbooks which would guide my study into what the Bible has to say about "the end times."

  Before very long I had discovered that there are more than a few differing interpretations of what the Bible says about "the end times."  But after an exhaustive time of studying and contemplating and praying for divine guidance, I found that I understood what God was saying.  And I also found that very few living souls, including my fellow Christians, even cared much less knew what God was saying about "the end times."

  Today, twenty some years and much Bible college study later, the Lord is reminding me of those facts and stirring me to preach and teach what He has said about "the end times."  The end of "church" history is near.  Many of us alive today will experience it.  And just a few weeks after the Wednesday Night Bible Class I participate in had already ineffectively skimmed through the prophecies which are known as the Epistles to the Seven Churches, found in Revelation 2 & 3, the Lord led me to find an excellent book on that subject.  And I am now studying it, and wondering again what God is up to in me.

  The man who wrote the text I'm reading died in 1904; so his exposition on The Revelation of Jesus Christ is not new.  The man knew then when he wrote his book (which was actually a series of lectures) what I now know; and that is Jesus Christ is returning to earth soon to commence the long delayed judgement of mankind; and that judgement begins with us, the visible church of Jesus Christ.  How soon?  Only God knows.  But it is imminent, the next prophesied move of God on the earth.   And those of us humans who are not ready to meet Him in the air during the initial resurrection/ translation of the saints will regret it, and this is a gross understatement!  I'm passionate about this because, like my Lord Jesus, I would that everyone would be saved to eternal life in Christ and from the wrath and judgement which is coming.

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  • 8:21 pm
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