Peter's letter to YOU...

There was a global flood, judgment is again coming, and we've been warned:

"This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, "Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation." For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly."       - 1 Peter Chapter 3

A heart for Truth ...

... Is better than "itchy ears".

"For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear."- 2 Timothy 4:3

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This scripture speaks volumes of what is going on today.  The false teachers are everywhere.  You can identify them once you know true doctrine.  Most of the time, false teachers will either alter the character of each member of The Holy Trinity and/or the Gospel.  

But a pure and humble submission to scripture by God's grace is the only protection from "itchy ears".

Pray that God's Holy Spirit may direct you in His Truth through His Word and allow you submit to knowledge of His Word.  Jesus said that He came to give sight to the blind, and taught that the Father is more than willing to give to His children all those good things that are needed.  God is more than willing that we all have His Truth and live by it. 

The ministry of The Holy Spirit among many things is to deliver God's Truth to us, make it known, and have us spread it forward.  

Therefore, seek His Truth with a pure heart, in humility, honestly, and God will graciously provide His Truth through His Word to you. 

Amen!

The anchor of TRUTH -

It's amazing what people without a true foundation to anchor their faith on will believe.  

When you really don't know what you really believe in, you tend to grab here and there in other places for (spiritual or non spiritual) things that you think will support your weight in times of disaster. 

It's common for people to actually invent those anchors. 

But sadly, when you invent a support system, and tragedy strikes, most of the time what you thought you knew and believed, you forget, and you find yourself alone in an echoing darkness with nothing real to grab on to.

Truth is something that we need ALL the time.    It begins with knowing who we really are, what we really need, and most of all, who God is. 

Jesus prayed, "Father sanctify them in Truth; your WORD IS TRUTH".  

"Gone too soon"...

One annual tradition that we have gets us looking back at the icons or "legends" of our entertainment world who have recently died.  Every year, people look back and say about some of them, "They left us too soon".  

But the Bible is the source of all Truth, and it teaches us that there is a day appointed to all of us when we will exit this existence, and move on to eternity.     We don't know how or when but we know why.  Why has been given to us.   But we don't know if we'll ever reach old age, or if we'll leave a lot sooner.    The dates on the grave stones in ever cemetery testify to this fact. 

The Bible teaches that we are ALL eternal souls and throughout the pages of the Bible, we can only extract TWO eternal possibilities - HEAVEN or HELL.  

Despite the myriad of religious, emotional, mystical and foundationless philosophies that explain what happens after death from various cultures and history, The Biblical scriptures describe a real eternal state where our human senses will continue to exist.    Jesus' own account of the rich man and the beggar, Lazarus after death experience illustrates this.   This was an account of an actual person named Lazarus.    Jesus never named anyone in his parables. 

..."And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.  And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.  But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.  And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.  Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house:  For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.  Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.  And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.  And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead".    -  Luke Chapt. 16

We have a number of days set before us.   We don't know how many but surely, we should live every one of them in humbled gratitude towards the ONE who has bestowed them upon us.   How often do we jump out of bed and crawl back in without once acknowledging whether we'll be able to put on our shoes the next day??  God hasn't just granted life in this temporal existence but eternity to each and every soul which He has created. 

"Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be".  - Psalm 139:16 

 

The one who has God now, has LIFE on into eternity.  





"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life".
- John 5:24






Happy New Year!
Let's live every day in 2015 for Him.

The call for a National Police Force....

In the wake of all the civil unrest involving law enforcement in major cities, the President is talking about setting up a "national policing force".  


Hmmm?... What does one think about when you see government powers coming together?
Educational curriculums, law and order, politics, healthcare, economy, education, religion... ??  
We think of Biblical prophesy.


All if not most of these have been in the process of consolidating for decades now and some are coming together faster than expected.
Even the mere talks of this should raise the little hairs in the back of our necks unless of coarse, we take Biblical prophecy as serious as watching "Ironman", the movie part 5. 


I am not ashamed of being that guy ... the one on the corner holding up a "The End is near" sign.   Because Jesus said, "When you see these things, it is the beginning of birth pains".   "The beginning of sorrows". 


I'm knocked down in awe when I see how quickly civil unrest takes place. 
It's not that most people cannot take an issue like these recent protests in major US cities, and find the right balance of what is wrong and what the solution is.   But the fact that it takes a smaller but more passionate one-sided view on each extreme to cause such chaos and disequilibrium over the whole nation. 
And then issues like these push us towards an equally chaotic solution like.... a "national policing force".


Our children aren't learning to read and write well, so the government steps in and starts a whole national "common core" system to try and rectify that issue.
The same with healthcare (Obamacare)...
The environment .... (Agenda 21)
We've heard politicians use the phrase "New World Order" in their speech especially, with respect to a "global" economy.

Our problem with securing the electrical grid, electronic banking systems and personal identifications are now being threatened more than ever.  And the call for "Cyber" security is very much in the news today.     The talks are headed in the direction of combining more than ever national identification systems in all facets of every day life (healthcare, immigration, employment, etc.) ... for our over all security.     In order to secure people and institutions, inevitably you're going to have to shut some doors (preventing access to) and open others (privacy breaching).    It's inevitable.  

How have all of these necessities come upon us? ... Signs of the times. 


And even in religion, we've seen the continuation of systems and ideas coming together teaching pluralism ... where it is said that major religions have more in common than where they differ. 
Recently, because of the anti-Christian devastation in the middle east, Pope Francis visited with the heads of the Eastern Orthodox church to make a pact of peace... something that has never happened before. 



And then there's the extreme purging of Christians all over the Middle East and in various parts of the world as we know it.  Like never before, Christians are being slaughtered.   This is happening right in front of global eyes, and very little is being said or done about it.  The nations of the world do not care.   (This is a good time to read what Christ, Jesus thinks about how the world treats his little brothers - Read Matthew 25).
God is in the process of removing His saints off the face of the earth, and the hour of "sorrows" is upon us.

While we sip our coffees in the morning or channel surf, whole villages of families, women and children are being run out of their homes only with whatever they can carry...
They're losing EVERYTHING they own and their lives are in constant risk of sickness, disease, murder, rape, torture, etc.  


If God's Truth is within us, we can see these things and where they are headed.    Jesus said:  "Unless you are born from above, you cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven".
You won't be able to understand what's going on unless God's Truth (Holy Spirit) is within you.
When Jesus said this, He was talking to an extremely intelligent and religious man who came to Him by night in order to find what he was missing.  And Jesus spoke to him and basically told him that with all his religion, he was missing THE POINT of it all.  (Book of John Chapter 3)
Because after all, there's religion, and then there's TRUTH.
Truly, we're living in perilous times as predicted in scripture.


It's high time to pray for all those many displaced and persecuted people all over the world.   And pray that "Ye be counted worthy to escape these things that are set to come upon the earth". 
It's also a ripe time to deliver that Gospel message to everyone.  Some will hear, most will not but God has already counted which "are His" from the foundation of the world.

God bless you.

"In the beginning, GOD ...

... Created the HEAVENS and the earth". ... And all things consist and are held together by Him.

LIFE FOUND ON MARS!!!..

Psych! No, it hasn't happen.

 But every time we see science programs on TV, we see the desperation to find signs of life in space, signs of habitable planets, etc. And I would even be bold enough to say that much if not, most of the knowledge we now have of the universe has been fueled by this strong desire to find life beyond our planet.

  Every new thing that is discovered or learned about our universe, always seems to be in competition with theism or more so, the Biblical understanding of God and human origin. This is because the secular world is tired of debating the argument for the "Theory of Evolution". Most of Evolution theory honestly points to a creator and contradicts the theory that "everything came out of nothing". And for those who think evolution theory is somehow compatible with the Bible, they are themselves caught in a snare with the clear Biblical language that then challenges their loyalty and faith in God's Word.

  But the natural human knows that there is a creator and can only use a myriad of crafty philosophies and theories to suppress that innate knowledge of God within them (Romans Chapt. 1). And those who want to straddle the fence on the subject will continue losing the debate on both their lack of knowledge of science and their lack of faith in what is written in scripture.

  And this is a VERY serious thing because in 2 Thessalonians Chapter 2, it teaches that we have to have a "love of the Truth" and a curse is placed on those who do not love and pursue truth but instead give themselves over to lies. The chapter discusses many deceptions that will come in the last days and one is heeded to put Truth above all things.

 Romans Chapt. 1 teaches that man is naturally in rebellion to God (Truth), and therefore, it takes humility and submission to Truth in order to attain it. Truth does not come naturally to us, it is itself a gift of God. And what IS the Truth?? God has manifested Himself in Christ (The Word) as Truth, therefore, The Word IS Christ (John Chapt 1). Scripture is The Word. The Gospel is scripture.

 The manifestation of God in His written Word has been given to us in scripture (The Bible). Not to take The Word as God intended it, is to go against The Word  (Jesus says:  "You are either for me or against me"). Because of that natural rebellion and suppression of Truth, many find it easy to go against the authority of God's Word written in scripture. And we see this demonstrated every time people liberalize Biblical doctrine. In many cases, Biblical doctrines are REJECTED even before a crafty and deceptive interpretation of it is erected in their minds.   Rejecting Biblical doctrines is now more of a fad, or the "in" thing to do simply because people follow the cultural norm of adhering to deceptive and irrational anti-Christian secularism. 

  But like mentioned before, these are all natural human reactions to God's Truth outside of a blessed, truly honest, and God - led pursuit of actual Truth. Jesus said:

          

                                     

" If you seek me, you WILL find me".

                                     "My sheep hear my voice"...

It is "life and death" important to believe what has been written (God's revelation).   Because ANYTHING we know OF GOD, we've learned through the Word.   If we know it's wrong to steal, kill and covet, it's because The Word informed us.   The Bible teaches that unless you have Christ (The Word), you cannot have "The Father".      "I and the Father are one".     Jesus was the mouth piece for God, and He stated this countlessly throughout the Gospels.   We can't submit to the knowledge of a deity and ignore His revelation, which is His Word, The Bible.  


Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son.  If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house nor greet him; "...  1 John 9-10

If we reject God's Word (Christ), we reject God. 

" For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart".   -  Hebrews 4:12