OBEDIENCE

Prepared as a Bride adorned for Her Husband

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Prepared as a Bride adorned for her Husband

God’s mission in creation: a Bride for His Son.  Even before creation and in that context, The Father’s heart and over-reaching plan was and is, a Bride for his most beloved Son.  A Bride, so clean, so gloriously fitting, so holy, so submitted in Her equality to Jesus.  So pure, so complete in Her ability to love and be loved by the one who gave His life for Her and who lays down Her life for Him.  So much more than just redemption, we see Jesus as the absolute centre of this story; gifted in the Father’s love with a more beautiful Bride that can be imagined by the human heart.

The Godhead made man in His own image.  I suggest here that Jesus was the pattern to which the human race was created.  This can be seen as the first step by the Father to create a bride completely fitting for His Holy, Almighty, Eternal beloved Son. read more

ENDURANCE

He Who Now Restrains

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2 Thessalonians 2:3-7. Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God. Do you not remember that while I was still with you, I was telling you these things? 6 And you know what restrains him now, so that in his time he will be revealed. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way.

The insight given by the Holy Spirit so long ago to the apostle Paul for the assembly in Thessalonica will shortly be fulfilled. No doubt ‘the man of lawlessness, the son of destruction’ is already somewhere on the world’s stage. As yet he remains hidden, awaiting his oppertunity to come forth as some latter-day saviour. The present great global uncertainty is building up to the crisis that will provide the moment of his revelation widely across the whole world.

Almighty God is the one and only law giver, who formed all created things after His divine will and purpose. Lawlessness is that which denies and opposes to the utmost all that is the truth and reality of God. In this evil being there is no truth, only a deceitful opposition to all that is righteous, all that is Holy, all that testifies to the love and the goodness of God. read more

DIVINE REVELATION

I will Come Again

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“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.” Acts 1:11.

“If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also’. John 14:3. The purpose of this article is to attempt to determine the likely date of the birth of the Lord Jesus and thus establish the year of His death, resurrection and ascension and to use this to anticipate the time of His return to receive His own.

A previous article posted, ‘The Seventy Weeks given to Daniel’ (see below) provides a strong probability of the date of Jesus’ crucifixion as 25 April in A.D. 31. There is every likelihood that the return of Jesus may be precisely two thousand years after His departure into heaven and thus be within a very short time. This post postulates when the tribulation of seven years may commence and looks forward to the possible time (not the day or hour) when the feet of the Lord Jesus may stand once again on the Mount of Olives at His return to ‘reign forever and ever’. read more

ENDURANCE

The Day is at Hand

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Luke 17:26-30. “And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark , and the flood came and destroyed them all. “It was the same as happened in the days of Lot: they were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were building; but on the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all.” It will be just the same on the day that the Son of Man is revealed.”

Hebrews 11:7 By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.

Noah and Lot were both righteous men living in the midst of very evil communities. One was faithfully occupied on a great work of God while the other was simply existing day by day, presumably doing largely much of what those around him were doing. read more

BODY RELATEDNESS

The Precious Produce of the Soil

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Acts 1:13-14. When they had entered the city, they went up to the upper room where they were staying; that is, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas the son of James. These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers.
James 5:7-8. Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains.
Luke 10:2. And He said to them, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few; therefore, beseech the Lord of the harvest that He would thrust out workers into His harvest.” Recovery Version.

The Lord is utterly consistent in all His ways, in the types that represent His truth and in the patterns He has established for mankind to follow. If we examine an event or process that God has set in motion, it will reveal something significant about how He works. Such is the case when we read the account concerning the clothing with power of the around a hundred and twenty on that long ago day of Pentecost. The pattern of Pentecost is a defining one.

Those gathered together, awaiting the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, had been born again when Jesus had breathed into them and said, ‘receive the Holy Spirit’. Prior to that, the faith of each one of them had failed during the time of Jesus’ greatest trial. However, it was through their experiences of failure that they had been prepared and approved by God to receive the outpoured Holy Spirit. They no longer put trust in themselves, and the key was that ‘These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer‘. On the great day of Pentecost, after they had been clothed with power from on high, there was the beginning of a great harvest and the church, the body of Christ came into being. read more

DIVINE REVELATION

A Fresh Look at Genesis 1

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Verses 1-5. First of all we must understand that this account of the creation process, in God’s own words through Moses, is not open to be analyzed, questioned or speculated about by the human mind. We are given as much detail as God wishes to give us and we must rely wholly upon the Holy Spirit to unveil its mysteries.

In the beginning God (‘elohim’, plural) created the heavens and the earth. Exactly when the Father, Son and Holy Spirit performed this immense creative project we are not informed. What we do know from John 1:1-3 is that ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made’. NKJV All that was created was created through the Son of God.

In verse 2 we are informed that ‘the earth was formless and void (empty)*. This begs the question as to why God would start His creative work with a formless and empty object. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. Hebrews 11:3. This formless and empty object is visible. It is the focus of the work during the first three days of creation. Are we being shown that this was not the original earth but had been part of a massive calamity? N.B. On the fourth day the galaxies were brought into being by a spoken command. read more

DIVINE REVELATION

How I became a Berean

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‘Now these [Bereans] were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so’. Acts 17:11.

When exactly I became a ‘Berean’ at heart I don’t recall. I do remember that I, along with many believers in the Lord of my acquaintance often asserted that we believed the Bible to be the truth of God from cover to cover.

However, as time went by and I started to read the whole Bible I found there were passages of Scripture I skipped rather quickly over. They would challenge me and make me feel ill at ease. Sometimes I came across something that appeared to be contrary to one of my cherished beliefs or practices and I found myself avoiding the issue. read more

BODY RELATEDNESS

The Days of Noah and Lot

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Stage 1.

I was on my way to lead a Bible study which would be focusing on the church in Philadelphia described in Revelation 3 verses 7 to 13 when the Lord brought to my mind ‘the days of Noah and the days of Lot’. The Lord showed me that Noah and his family and Lot and his family represent two contrasting categories of Christians. Noah with the support of his family was engaged in constructing an ark designed by God, while Lot and his family were enduring a life of compromise and frustration in a wicked city.

Here are some of the characteristics of Noah as described in the Scriptures

  • Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God. Genesis 6:9.
  • He ‘did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did’. Genesis 6:22.
  • By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. Hebrews 11:7.
  • Noah was a preacher of righteousness. 2 Peter 2:5.

Noah stood apart from the tide of evil all around him. He obeyed the voice of the Lord in building an ark of refuge from the coming judgment of God upon the whole earth. His family united with him to carry out the instructions given by God. They entered together into the protection of the ark and were preserved through the flood to emerge onto a restored earth.

The approval of God over the completed work of Noah and the total security in which he, his family and the animals would be kept is confirmed by the fact that it was God who closed the door of the ark before the devastating flood commenced. read more

BODY RELATEDNESS

When You Meet Together

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1 Corinthians 14:26. Well, my brothers and sisters, let’s summarize what I am saying. When you meet, one will sing, another will teach, another will tell some special revelation God has given, one will speak in an unknown language, while another will interpret what is said. But everything that is done must be useful to all and build them up in the Lord. NLT
Colossians 3:16. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
1 Corinthians 14:31-32. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all may be exhorted….

If these Scriptures don’t describe typical meetings that you or I are attending today it should come as no surprise. Central within almost all church communities today is a leader or leaders to whom others must defer and submit.  This seems to be an essential feature even of meetings conducted in private homes.

The Corinthian believers to whom Paul was writing included many who had come from very loose and unruly backgrounds; see 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. Yet Paul could describe their meetings as permitting and enjoying great freedom in the Spirit. At first sight does that not seem to have been risky? Where was the safeguard against those who were not speaking under the anointing of the Holy Spirit? read more

DIVINE REVELATION

The Seventy Weeks Prophecy given to Daniel

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Daniel 9:24-27. “Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place. “So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress. “Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be *cut off and have nothing,

Philippians 2:5-8. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Rather than search for the very nebulous date of the decree issued by Artaxerxes Longimanus, this article will attempt  to establish the much more verifiable date of Jesus’ crucifixion and work backwards in time from that. It is the hope that not only the year can be established but the likely time of the year and a close approximation of the day when the decree was issued. read more

ENDURANCE

Living in the Will of the Lord

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1 Peter 4:1-2. Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.
Hebrews 4:9-10. So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.
Romans 8:12-14. So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh – for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

Satan is about to make his last massive assault against the kingdom of God before the long expected and hoped for return to the earth of Jesus as Lord of lords and King of kings. Throughout history there will have been no more significant time for those who will stand against him in the mighty overcoming power of the Spirit.

Moses was God’s overcomer who executed His command to stretch out his hand over the waters of the Red Sea so that God could provide a bridge of dry land for the whole company of the Israelites to cross to safety. Today, God is seeking companies of overcomers who will perform His will on earth that His miraculous pathway of salvation in Jesus may be provided through the waters of eternal death for countless numbers of those bound in the oppression and fear of His enemy, Satan. read more

OVERCOMING

The Eyes of the Lord

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2 Chronicles 16:9. For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support

  • Those who are doing their very best to live a Christian life?
  • Those who are always actively involved in their local church?
  • Those who are ordained to be reverends, pastors or priests?
  • Those whose heart is completely His?

‘Those whose heart is completely His’. This is the Lord’s one and only requirement. Jesus made this quite plain to all who have ears to hear. He told the rich young ruler, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” Matthew 19:21. NKJV. The young man chose his ‘great possessions’ rather than parting with them in order to follow Jesus.

If our heart is to be completely the Lord’s then it must be completely empty of everything that competes with Him for our attention – fame, fortune, friends and family, to name but a few. read more

LOVE

Fixing Your Eyes on Jesus

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Matthew 22:36-38. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, “‘you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ “This is the great and foremost commandment.”
1 John 4:16-19. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us.
1 John 2:3-6. By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, ” I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected . By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.
John 14:21,23. “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.”….”If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.”

Why would the Lord God give to fallen mankind ‘the great and foremost commandment’ that He knew no one would be able to keep? Surely it is that He desires above all else from those He created in His own image, that He would receive from them, in like measure, what He freely and unrestrictedly gives to them – love.

It is instructive to note that, had Adam entered into this love relationship with his Creator, neither he nor his wife Eve would have, or could have, disobeyed Him. In a perfect environment the first rule of love is that in everything you will seek to please the one whom you love ‘with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind’, by doing what is pleasing to them. Had Adam and Eve chosen to eat the fruit of the tree of life they would have been filled with the love of God, they would have gladly and willingly obeyed His every word and they would have lived forever. read more

FELLOWSHIP

My Presence shall go with You

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Exodus 33:14-15. And He said, “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest.” Then he said to Him, “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here.”
Exodus 13:21-22. The Lord was going before them in a pillar of cloud by day to lead them on the way, and in a pillar of fire by night to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people.
Deuteronomy 2:7. “For the Lord your God has blessed you in all that you have done; He has known your wanderings through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have not lacked a thing.”‘
Numbers 33:1-2. These are the journeys of the sons of Israel, by which they came out from the land of Egypt by their armies, under the leadership of Moses and Aaron. Moses recorded their starting places according to their journeys by the command of the Lord….
Numbers 33:53. ….and you shall take possession of the land and live in it, for I have given the land to you to possess it.

It is the Lord’s intention to lead His people ‘out of the darkness’, symbolized by Egypt, ‘into His glorious light’, symbolized by Canaan. This promised land is the ultimate place of peace and rest where all human effort has faded away and all is rightfully brought under the mighty power and authority of God.

The Lord desires that the journey of each one of His own be enjoyed in ‘the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension’. Philippians 4:7. This state of peace may only be entered into however as we acknowledge Jesus as Lord within us and among us and as we choose to live in His presence. Moses said to the Lord “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here.” read more

LOVE

The Veil is Taken Away

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2 Corinthians 3:15-18. But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

….but whenever….turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.  In this statement of the apostle Paul, there is nothing to indicate who or what turns to the Lord. Some translations insert ‘it’, meaning the heart; some say ‘a person’. We do know that only beings made in the image of God can realize the person of God so it is quite legitimate to state ‘….but whenever a believer in the Lord or a community of believers turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away’.

This is in fact implied by what Paul writes next. It is the divine Person of the Holy Spirit who removes the veil that lies over our heart and sets us free to behold the glory of God and thereby to be transformed into the image of the Lord Jesus. We who believe need to remain in a constant state of surrender to the will of God so that the Holy Spirit may take the veil away, that we may behold the beauty of Jesus and live continually in His presence. The well-known chorus of a hymn puts it so well. read more

ENDURANCE

That I May Know Him

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Jeremiah 29:13. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
John 1:40-41. One of the two who heard John speak and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He found first his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which translated means Christ).
Philippians 3:7-10. But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;

Countless numbers over the many centuries since the Lord Jesus lived, died and was resurrected have found salvation by grace through faith in Him. For many it has been a truly amazing and life changing experience that they are always ready to recount to others. Many times their testimony to the saving power of Jesus is expressed to others so that these too may be brought to the same glorious state of forgiveness from sin and connection with our Father in heaven. However, sadly, the evidence appears to be that comparatively few press on to find an ongoing deep and intimate relationship with Jesus.

‘You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart’. God in the person of Jesus may become a real living person to us yet, have we discovered who He really is and experienced Him as the resurrected and ascended victorious Lord Jesus Christ? If we have indeed found Him, will not the evidence of it be that we live daily, moment by moment, in His presence? If we have really encountered Jesus shall we not consistently seek to please Him rather than to please ourselves? His Lordship over our life will be the evidence of our discipleship. read more

LOVE

God is Love

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1 John 4:16-19. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us.
Romans 5:5. ….the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

God is the very nature and substance of love. This real and unique quality of ‘agape’ love contains within it no self-interest whatsoever. Self-interest is the antithesis of the love that is expressed  by God. Everything that God is and does is that which perfect love demands.

In contrast, the constant demands of our ‘self’ are expressions of enmity towards God, for self-love is not, nor could it ever be, in harmony with God. It was self-love that caused Satan forever to become the adversary and opponent of God. It was self love that drove Eve and then her husband Adam to disobey God and for sin to afflict all mankind thereafter. read more

ENDURANCE

Fresh Thoughts on the Parable of the Sower

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“Behold, the sower went out to sow; and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up. “Others fell on the rocky places, where they did not have much soil; and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of soil. “But when the sun had risen, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. “Others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out. “And others fell on the good soil and yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.” Matthew 13:3-9.

In His explanation of this parable to His disciples Jesus tells them that ‘the seed is the word’. In John 1:1-3 we are informed that Jesus is the word. So we understand from this that it is Jesus who desires to sow Himself into us us as the living word of God. There are four conditions where this precious seed is sown which represent the response of those who hear the word. The serious question is, “Into which category do we as individuals fit right now”?

  1. Beside the road? These ones don’t understand the gospel.
  2. Rocky places? These ones are fair weather believers.
  3. Among the thorns? These ones are caught up in worldly worries and concerns.
  4. The good soil? These ones are grafted into the true vine which is Jesus.

In categories 1, 2, and 3 it is the ‘self-life’ (wanting our own way) that leads to fruitlessness. read more

ENDURANCE

Work Out Your Salvation

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Romans 5:1-2. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God.
Philippians 2:12-13. So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
John 16:13-14. “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. “He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.”

Believers in the Lord Jesus look back with great joy and appreciation to the date or the time when they first encountered the resurrected Christ as their real and personal Saviour. Many will affirm that it was the greatest day of their life and no wonder. The verses in Romans 5 capture the essence of this life transforming experience so aptly, ‘having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ….and we exult in hope of the glory of God.

Yet so many, through lack of understanding, have camped out on those two verses without comprehending the words ‘we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand’ which informs us  that our life transforming event was the entry point into a lifelong journey of faith. read more

ENDURANCE

It is God Who is at Work in You

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Philippians 2:12-13. So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

James 2:18-20. But someone may well say, “You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?

2 Corinthians 5:9-10. Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. read more

TESTIMONY

Antiphonal Hymn – Our Father’s Plan

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Galatians 3:26-28. For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Our Father’s Plan

Son of God made Son of Man,
Jesus Christ, Thou art “I am”;
Took on You our great disgrace;
Safe in You, our resting place. read more

FELLOWSHIP

Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life

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“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” So said St Augustine  in around the fourth century A.D. We are born into this world with a restlessness that can only be satisfied when we find our ultimate home in God. That is the location in which it was God’s intention that we should live and exist. Until we find the way to this, our home, we are lost and alone.

The Father ordained and set in motion a vast creation, His Son spoke forth every element of what was to come into existence and the Holy Spirit perfectly executed each divine command. At the very centre of that eternal plan was the creation of a man whom God named Adam. From the very beginning of Adam’s location in the Garden of Eden, God and man enjoyed communion and fellowship. Adam had a Father. He had been created in the likeness of His Father’s only begotten Son. In addition to his body and soul Adam’s was created with a spirit that he might receive the Life of God into him, that he might forever become a perfect son of God, Adam must make a choice. Eden was his proving ground. The fruit of every tree in the garden except one was good for food. Only the fruit of one tree was forbidden for him to eat. Had Adam and his wife, Eve, taken of the fruit of the tree of life they would have become spiritually alive and in God they would have found their home, their dwelling place forever.

On that proving ground of Eden man through his disobedience became a slave to sin, so God ‘drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life’. Genesis 3:24. Adam and Eve became orphans without the fatherhood of God and all their descendants became spiritually dead. However, God left a promise of that one of their descendants would bruise the serpent’s head. Many centuries came and went until the promised seed of the woman, the Lord Jesus came and we read that ‘when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons’. Thus, the sons of Adam through faith in the atoning death of Jesus, might again enjoy the fullness of the fatherhood of God. read more

BODY RELATEDNESS

Partakers of the Divine Nature

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2 Peter 1:2-4. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. These verses describe unique blessings bestowed by Almighty God upon those who have come to Jesus in repentance and faith. Yet the high point of ‘His precious and magnificent promises’ is surely ‘that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature’. Jesus partook of human flesh for us so that He might procure for us the right to become sons of God. He as Son of God made Son of man that we as sons of men might be made sons of God.

John 14:16-17. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever – the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. NKJV. We partook of the divine nature when the Holy Spirit came into us at our new birth. The Spirit, who is one and co-equal with the Father and the Son, will abide with us forever.

Genesis 1:26-27. Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Adam was far more than just another creature. He bore the image of God’s one and only Son Jesus. When God created man on the sixth day He ‘saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good’. After that God rested, read more

DIVINE REVELATION

God Raised Him from the Dead

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It is all too easy to leave the narrative of the death and resurrection of Jesus at His burial in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea and pick it up again on the resurrection morning, What information have we been given in the Scriptures of events in between?

  1. The repentant thief besought Jesus, “Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!” Jesus responded, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” Luke 23:42-43. Jesus entered Paradise not long after, then the forgiven thief entered also.
  2. For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah , during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the 1 Peter 3:18-20. While in the grave Jesus visited Hades, the place of the unsaved dead to preach to the ones who had peished in the flood. Did those who responded to His message get transferred to Paradise? Wow!
  3. “But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power….” Sometime after sunset on the Saturday (the start of the first day of the week) God raised Jesus from the dead and the great stone was rolled away from the mouth of the cave. In order for God to raise Jesus from the dead Jesus must be approved by God as His sinless Son. Thus death could not hold Him in ‘its power’.
  4. And so Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself. John 20:6-7. What Peter beheld is a clue to what happened when God raised Jesus. Jesus rose upright. The wrappings that signified death just fell away and lay there. Jesus Himself unwrapped the cloth from His head* and ‘rolled it up in a place by itself’. Then it may be that God directed the two angels that guarded the tomb to roll away the stone. Although in His resurrection body Jesus could have walked through the great stone it must be that God who had raised Him set Jesus forever free – and us in Him.

*When Jesus raised Lazarus from death he came forth from the tomb wearing the head cloth and the linen wrappings and had to be released from them by others. Ultimately Lazarus died and like us will await the final resurrection and his imperishable body when Jesus returns to reign.

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