Unfit to Foster–Christianity and “Infection”?

From the BreakPoint Website
Written by Chuck Colson

For 15 years, Owen and Eunice Johns served as foster parents to British children. Social workers praised them as "kind and hospitable people" who "respond sensitively to" children.

 

But London's High Court has just ruled that the Johnses are unfit to foster.

 

The reason: The Johnses are devout Christians, and their views about homosexuality may harm the children in their care. This opinion echoes that Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission, which, according to the Daily Mail, claimed foster children risked becoming "infected" by the Johnses' Christian beliefs.

 

The case came about when the Johnses re-applied to the Derby City Council to foster children after taking a break. But instead of welcoming them back with open arms, social workers expressed concern that the couple's beliefs were in violation of the new Equality Act Regulations, which protect the rights of homosexuals.

 

The Johnses could not believe that being Christians automatically excluded them from caring for children, and they asked for a clarification of the law. Shockingly, the high court determined that Christian beliefs about homosexuality do indeed make citizens unfit to foster children.

 

Think about what this means. Britain has a huge Muslim population. Muslims, like Christians, believe that homosexual conduct is immoral. So do orthodox Jews. What the court is saying is that Christians, Muslims, and Jews are unfit to care for children simply because of their religious beliefs.

 

In effect, Britain now has a religion test for citizens. How long will it be before Christian citizens who want to coach youth soccer leagues or become scout leaders are told their views make them unwelcome? How long before religious believers are told they will not be hired as school teachers, or allowed to adopt children?

 

Americans may think our First Amendment will protect us from this kind of thing happening here. Think again. In the appeal of Proposition 8, in which California citizens voted to keep marriage between one man and one woman, Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that Christian beliefs "harm gays and lesbians."

 

And in 1996, the Supreme Court overruled Colorado's Amendment Two, in which citizens revised their Constitution to prohibit cities from giving special rights from being given to homosexuals. Justice Anthony Kennedy claimed the law was based in "animus" against homosexuals.

 

These things are happening in a country founded on the principle that citizens should be allowed to hold whatever beliefs they want, regardless of what their fellow citizens think of them. But in recent years Christians have been targeted again and again by activist groups and judges who support their agendas.

 

This is why we must support the efforts of Christian liberties groups like the Alliance Defense Fund and the Becket Fund and others, which defend the rights of all religious believers. I also urge you to sign the Manhattan Declaration to defend traditional marriage, human life, and religious freedom.

If we do nothing, if the church sits on the sidelines, it won't be long before we find out that our religious rights aren't worth the paper the First Amendment was printed on.

The Supremacy of Christ…

 

Take a listen to this marvelous, mind-blowing description of how Jesus Christ is the Supreme Ruler over ALL:

John Piper: The Supremacy of Christ (Symphonic Sermon Jam by Brent Fischer)

Fabulous Testimony From Fukushima Baptist Church

  

A friend sent me a link to an interesting series of blog posts—posts written by Pastor Akira Sato, who is the pastor for the Fukushima First Baptist Church, near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The email included this poignant paragraph:

“Yesterday (Friday, March 18) one member who has been with us since the disaster had received an order from his company and left for work in the nuclear plant. (He is a leader of the plumbing job). As the family of God, knowing the departing pains of his loved ones, in tears we dispatched the brother with prayers. He left here with the Lord. Beside him, there are others, our precious members, who have been working hard at the plant. O, Lord, please protect them with your almighty hand! I beg you, please! ‘Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, ….that thine hand might be with me, and that wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me.’ (1 Chronicles 4:10)”

Here are several other excerpts from the Pastor’s blogs:

[March 13] This has been triple disasters. Because of the quake, some member’s houses were partially destroyed. I still haven’t been able to get in touch with the families who live near the beach. JR Tomioka station has been washed away by the tsunami. The city was utterly destroyed. You have already heard of the accident of Fukushima first nuclear power plant. All the residents were forced to evacuate, and my church members had to get on a bus without any belongings and sent to schools and gyms separately. It’s been hard to find out how they are doing. I heard that there were not enough blankets for everyone, and some couldn’t sleep all night because it was cold in the shelter. In some shelters, no water or food were distributed all day.

I’m very concerned for Bro. Suenaga, a 95-year-old, who was in a hospital due to pneumonia was forced to leave the hospital to evacuate. There are also people who have broken bones, in need of dialysis, with little children or children with disabilities.

[March 14] We have contacted 150 church members and they are safe. Hallelujah! One sister told me that waves approached her but she was able to swim to safety. My eyes fill with tears as I call members from a pay phone - fifty or sixty still need to be contacted.

[March 16] About a third of our 160 church members live close to the Fukushima power plant. They had to go through radiation checks, so we all gathered in the afternoon for a time of worship. I could hear people sobbing and saw that they had been through hardship. In the evening I went to a nearby hot spring. What a relief to have a soak after five days! People are so glad to find each other, which again led me to tears. Our nomad life has started. When I asked people whether they had any laundry, their reply was that there were no clothes to wash. All they have is what they are wearing.

[March 18] The most miraculous thing to me is that I never get asked questions like ‘Why did God allow this?’ or ‘I can’t believe in God. There is no God.’ From the 160 members I have been in touch with, all I hear are words like, ‘God is great. I want to trust Him as I walk with Him from now on.’ I marvel at the strength of their faith in the Lord.

[March 19] Day 3 in Yonezawa. I am grateful for the prayers and support of our brothers and sisters. People around me say they left home thinking they would only be gone for an hour or two. They literally have nothing with them. Brothers and sisters are bringing us food and clothing from all over Japan. I feel like Elijah, sustained by God with food carried by a raven. Our group of 50 is kept well by kind donations. Many of us are tired, and go to see the doctor. I have had a fever.

[March 21] We had a worship service yesterday, the first in two weeks. Yonezawa church let us use their musical instruments, PA and video equipment. I cried, blaming the leader (the assistant pastor) who was also in tears! It seems that if you have to cry, you should do it without embarrassment. I will cry 50 years worth, or a life-time worth of tears.

Living with fifty people, cooking, eating, and sleeping with them is out of the ordinary. It has been ten days now and I can’t even tell what is ordinary and what is not. I am trying to accept it and go with the flow. By doing so, I might be charging my battery for the days to come.

Is. 42:3: ‘A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out‘

May the Great Shepherd embrace this flock and carry them on His wings.

Struggling Toward Holiness…

 

I have not had the rule which I ought to have had over my own spirit, which has therefore been like a city broken into and left without walls. (Proverbs 25:28)

How many different ways are there, Lord, for sin to enter into the spirit and corrupt us? Before we were redeemed, while we were yet a slave to sin, it ruled over us. That bondage was absolute and unyielding; You make that very clear in Your Word. In presenting this dichotomy, Paul said to the Romans in Romans 6 verse 15,

"What then? Shall we sin then because we are not under Law but under Grace?  Do you not know that to whom you present your sales slaves to obey you are that one's slaves you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin unto death or of obedience leading to righteousness?"

There is no middle state presented here. There is no kind of obedience and kind of disobedient.  What Paul is saying is that those who are redeemed characteristically demonstrate that obedience by obeying God. Those who are not redeemed characteristically demonstrate that unredeemed state with disobedience.

 

But beyond that, we must deal with the weakness of the flesh as it shows itself in the redeemed persons everyday life. Certainly, God does not expect His people to live lines of un-sinning perfection.  God is neither unreasonable nor stupid. This sets Him apart from many preachers!

 

The work that Christ accomplished was finished at Calvary, finished once and for all. You and I need to add nothing to it to please God any further.  However, this truth does not let us off the hook with regard to the matter of obedience in submission to the command of God as it is revealed in His scripture.

 

The weakness that is a natural part, a left over part of the flesh that remains with us after redemption, has many ways to plague us.  As Paul observed in Romans six there are numerous ways for sin to enter "our spirit" and call us down to into disobedience. It is important to note that Paul does not intend to portray this "sin" as something external to us. 

 

Rather, we need to remember that he is simply underscoring the truth that, once we are redeemed, God creates in us a new nature! But yet, we have within us the remnants of the old nature. That old nature seeks to draw us to dishonor our Lord. Our flesh, for that is what the Scripture calls these remnants, seeks to lead us to do that which God desires us not to do.  It is aided and abetted by two external sources; the world and the devil.

 

Our resource in this is only, ONLY the Word of God, Prayer and the Armor of God.  It can be nothing else.  We have hope in nothing but these things for our warfare is not a warfare that can be waged in any way other realm other than the spiritual.  If we think that it can be, if we fancy ourselves to be able to fight it in the natural world, we fall into the hands of our enemies.  David did that numerous times. He found himself consumed with the desire to strike back at his enemies using his own power. And thus found himself worse off than when he started. We must believe what God says! We must claim to the truth that is only our heavenly Father that can fight our battles for us.

 

Sometimes, this is easy for us to see and to understand because those battles are far beyond our capacity to wage.  But sadly, many times those battles are conducted in our minds and in our hearts. And those battles go on for a long, long time. We fight them over and over and over again. But they are just as, if not more, unproductive and damaging as the actual battles themselves. We need to learn, as the old saying goes, to "let go and let God". That may be an euphemism, but in this case it really does say what needs to be said.

 

It does us no good whatsoever to "stop fighting" on the outside while we still rage against the thing on the inside. Remember what our Lord Jesus said in the book of Matthew;

"...If we look upon a woman to lost we've already committed adultery with her and her heart?" (Paraphrase). 

Does that not also apply to many of the other destructive things, sinful things that we experience and do?

 

If they are already going on in our head, even if we don't do them on the outside, or have stopped doing them on the outside, if we are still struggling with them on the inside - the matter is still not closed between us and God. Don't get me wrong, struggling toward purity is a very, very good thing! But let's not convince ourselves that we have accomplished what we have not yet accomplished. Likewise, let's not delude ourselves that we are entitled to feel things that we are not entitled to feel! While it is true that we are human and that we are not yet what we will one day be (glory to God, we have much to look forward to) we must still grapple with the command of God "be ye holy as I am holy".

Can It Get Any Worse?

From the “Chairman’s Article”,
Onesimus Ministries, Inc., Oxford, PA
By Vernon Myers

Do you think the political and financial situation we face can get much worse? The short answer is “surely so.” Every generation, I suspect, has thought “things cannot get much worse.” “The Lord's return must be imminent.” Every generation has faced difficult issues and events which have caused angst and concern. We certainly have reason for concern in our times. We have watched the turmoil in Egypt as people stood up in protest against the harsh control of their government. The Egyptian people have high hopes for more freedom and democracy. We pray what fills the vacuum is not a government equally bad or worse. We have seen the unrest spread throughout the Middle East with Libya seemingly “coming apart at the seams.”

We have our own national issues. In Wisconsin the state legislature is in turmoil over Governor Walker's proposal to do what he is constitutionally obligated to do operate under a balanced budget. We have seen the capitol filled with people in protest. It seems so wrong to have teachers “calling in sick” when they are not ill and shutting down the schools, crippling their children's education. What a bad example for teachers to teach their students. Reminds me of the problem the Apostle Paul alludes to in Philippians 2:4. In our selfish world each looks out for his own interest and not the interests of the broader community. In hard economic times, all need to make the sacrifice to meet the need. It is quite likely the budget battles will spread to other states since government has a habit of spending more than it takes in. There will be a “day of reckoning.” Overspending cannot continue “indefinitely”. Our indebtedness cannot be sustained.

We live in uncertain times. Such uncertainty turns our hearts to the Lord. I thought about Psalm 46 as an “anchor of the soul” to which we can hold. We need to “be still and know” that God is God.

1 God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. 2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. 6 Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts.

The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.

8 Come and see the works of the LORD, the desolations he has brought on the earth. 9 He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire. “ “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

11 The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.

[Note by Pastor Bill] It is only this certainty, found not in the things of God, but in God Himself, that life can find any foundation. Without it, life drifts, like a boat without mooring. One cannot stop the sea from moving. It will do what it will do, that is inescapable. But one can see to it that the vessel that one is secured safely to something that is not tossed about at the whim of the tide. God indeed is our fortress. He and his provision for us is the rock upon which we stand.

Unlike the sea and the rocks which border the sea however, the foundation cannot be gradually worn down by the erosion of the impact of the waves, day after day, upon the rocks! Christ has provided for us a secure and eternal foundation for us upon which to stand. It is one that will never change for it is one that rests upon His finished work and not one bit upon ours. Glory to God!

A Message From A 37 Year Veteran Missionary

 

     Russell and Margaret George have been missionaries in Argentina for the past 37 years.  They have started three churches in Argentina.  Ten years ago Russell passed the age when he could have retired but, due to the lack of pastors to replace him, he has continued serving in Argentina.  Because he can't take the winters in Argentina any more, they have returned to the States the last five years to spend the summer in a home they have at Missionary Acres in Southeastern Missouri.

     Three of their six children are full time in the Lord's work.  Their oldest daughter is a single missionary in Argentina.  One son is also a missionary in Argentina and another son is a missionary in Puerto Rico.  Russell enjoys writing.  He has written five books in Spanish and one in English.  When he retires he would like to give more time to writing. 

Christians, Stop And Think
By Russell George

 

     While we slept the enemy sowed tares.  For a long time now Satan, our enemy, has been sowing tares in the minds of our precious young people.  When children came home from school and told their parents, "They are teaching evolution in the school", mom and dad thought, "Ah, it's just a theory."  Yes, that's all it is, but the schools have convinced our children that it's a scientific fact.  It has altered the thinking, attitude and behavior of a generation.  More and more are now thinking that men are just glorified animals.

     We have lost a generation of young people.  They tell us "Christianity isn't relevant."  Why?  because they have been brainwashed to think that evolution is a scientific fact.  They haven't examined the evidence.  After hearing it over and over again they accept it as truth without questioning it.

     Our children and young people have also been indoctrinated in the humanistic philosophy that man can solve all his problems without the need of God.  My question is, if that's true, why aren't they doing it?  We are going from bad to worse.  Instead of seeking wisdom for the Word of God, people are going to psychologists who schedule them for sessions of psychological jargon that doesn't solve their problems.  To the contrary, those who take heed to biblical principles find solutions to their problems.

     Churches are dying because of a lack of leadership.  Mission works are closing for the lack of missionaries. Seminaries are closing for the lack of students.  Christian camps have closed and are up for sale because of the lack of campers.  Fifty years ago we should have foreseen that this day would come but Satan blinded our eyes.  We have a lot of repenting to do. 

     Where do we go from here? What's the solution?  How do we get this trend turned around?  There is no easy answer short of a revival of genuine biblical Christianity.

     Since we have lost our young people, the bulk of the people attending our churches are retired or reaching retirement age.  Sunday school attendance is down.  One solution would be for churches to make a concerted effort to reach young families.  They are the key to getting this trend turned around.  They can rescue their children from the erroneous indoctrination in the public schools.  To do so, they will need to take a more aggressive roll in their children´s education.

     Will it take a generation to retrieve what we have lost?  I hope not.  I would like to challenge pastors to get together to pray and and form "think tanks" to look for solutions.  Bible colleges and seminaries need to give serious consideration to changes they need to make in their curriculums to change the situation.  One area of weakness I have detected is that churches aren't making use of discipleship studies.  Sunday school classes, from children through adults, should be set up as a training class. Perhaps it would be wise to give diplomas to those who pass the course with passing grades.

     It's time for the people who know God to be strong and do exploits (Daniel 11:32).  It's time to abandon self centered, superficial Christianity.  We need to put on the whole armor of God, that is found in Ephesians 6:10-18, and go out to do battle with the enemy.  Our God is all powerful.  He can give us the power to win victories. 

"Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong" (I Corinthians 16:13).

The Signs of Christ’s Coming (Part 3)

 

4.  The Strength and Glory of the Lord

with power and great glory. (24:30b)

As already seen in the cataclysmic events that will shake the heavens and earth at the end time, Christ’s return will be accompanied by incredible demonstrations of His divine power over the universe, including Satan and his demons. He will demonstrate

• His power to protect His chosen people,
• His power to redeem the elect,
• His power to restore the devastated earth, and
• His power to establish His rule on earth.

In His great power the Lord will conquer and destroy all His enemies, including ungodly men who followed and worshiped the beast, by casting them into the lake of fire (Rev. 19:20). He will also “make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness” (Dan. 9:24).

In the restored and purified earth the destructive nature and instincts of wild animals will be radically reversed to make them docile and harmless. No animal will attack or molest another animal or any human being, and the carnivorous will become vegetarian.

The wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little boy will lead them. Also the cow and the bear will graze; their young will be down together; and the lion will eat straw like the ox. And the nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den. They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. (Isa. 11:6-9)

By His power Christ will eliminate drought, floods, crop failures, and starvation.

“And it will come about in that day” declared Zechariah, “that living waters will flow out of Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea and the other half toward the western sea; it will be in summer as well as in winter” (Zech. 14:8).

Along with those overwhelming demonstrations of Christ’s divine power will be equally spectacular manifestations of His great glory.

“When the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne” (Matt. 25:31).

Adam and Eve had a glimpse of God’s glory as they walked and talked with Him in the Garden of Eden.

• The children of Israel had glimpses of it in the pillar of fire that led them through the wilderness, and
• Isaiah had a glimpse of it in his heavenly vision.
• Peter, James, and John had a glimpse of Christ’s glory on the mount of transfiguration, when “His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light” (Matt. 17:2).

Many years later, Peter was still awed by that experience, declaring,

“We were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory ‘This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased’ — and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain” (2 Pet. 1:16-18).

But no human being has yet seen the full unveiled glory of God in Christ, and no one will ever see it until Jesus appears at His second coming and all mankind sees Him at once. At that time no one will have to ask who He is, for He will be perfectly recognized by every human being on earth. There will be no mistaking His identity then as there was when He came in His incarnation. All mankind will see the Son of Man in His full glory and immediately recognize Him as God—though all will not honor Him as God.

5.  The Selection by the Angels

And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other. (24:31)

After the unrepentant ungodly have been judged and destroyed, and the repentant mourners have trusted in Christ and been saved, He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect. Among their other responsibilities, angels are God’s gatherers. In that day they will be used to gather unbelievers for judgment and punishment (Matt. 13:41, 49) and believers for reward and glory.

In ancient Israel, as in many ancient lands, the trumpet was used to announce important convocations, and the sound of the angel’s great trumpet will signal the assembling all of God’s saints on earth, from wherever they might be, from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other. Many of them will doubtless still be hiding in caves, fearful for their lives.

The gathered ones will include the 144,000 Jewish witnesses, their converts, and the converts of the angelic preachers. They will include the Old Testament saints, gathered out of their graves and joined with their redeemed spirits. Those will all be assembled together before Christ and ushered into the glory of His eternal kingdom.

The Signs of Christ’s Coming (Part 2)

 

3.  The Sign in the Sky

and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky; and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky (24:30a)

Next Jesus describes the supreme sign of His “coming, and of the end of the age,” about which the disciples had asked a few moments earlier (v. 3). He had already mentioned a number of lesser, though astounding, signs that would precede His coming, including the sign of the abomination of desolation that would precipitate them (vv. 4-15).

But the sign of signs will be the Son of Man Himself, who will appear in the sky. Many of the early church Fathers, such as Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Origen, imagined that this sign would be an enormous blazing cross, visible to the entire world, which would pierce the total darkness then shrouding the world.

Other interpreters have suggested it will be the Shekinah glory of the Lord’s presence returning to earth. It is likely that the Shekinah glory will be involved, as the unveiled Christ Jesus makes His appearance.

But the sign is not just His glory; it is Christ Himself, the Son of Man, who will appear in the sky. The sign of should be translated as a Greek subjective genitive, indicating that the sign will not simply relate to or point to the Son of Man (as with an objective genitive) but will indeed be the Son of Man.

In other words, Jesus Himself will be the supreme and final sign of His coming.

In the midst of the world’s unrelieved blackness—physical, emotional, and spiritual—Jesus Christ will manifest Himself in His infinite and undiminished glory and righteousness. Just as the destructive catastrophes of the Great Tribulation will be utterly unparalleled (v. 21), so will be this manifestation of the glory and power of Christ. The sight of Him in blazing glory will be so unbearably fearful that rebellious mankind will cry out for the mountains and rocks to fall on them to hide them “from the presence of Him who sits on the throne” (Rev. 6:16).

But instead of being driven to the Lord in reverent repentance, they will flee from Him in continued rejection, cursing and blaspheming His name (16:9). Some people, however, will be brought to their knees in brokenness, acknowledging their need of God’s forgiveness and redemption. When they see the Son of Man in His glory and righteousness, they will finally confess their own wickedness and unrighteousness. There will be some from all the tribes of the earth who will mourn over their rebellion against God and their rejection of His Son. Having heard the gospel proclaimed (v. 14; Rev. 14:6), those people will turn from and mourn over their sin and receive Christ as Lord and Savior. Among the repentant will be all remaining Jews. Through Zechariah the Lord promised His people:

“And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him, like the bitter weeping over a first-born. In that day there will be great mourning in Jerusalem” (Zech. 12:10-11).

Having realized that they have rejected their Messiah, they will turn to Him in faith, casting themselves on His mercy. At that time the

“fullness of the Gentiles [will have] come in; and thus all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, ‘The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob’” (Rom. 11:25-26; cf. Isa. 59:20).

Just as Jesus ascended to heaven in the clouds, He will also return “in just the same way” (Acts 1:11). When He appears at His second coming, the Son of Man will come on the clouds of the sky (cf. Matt. 26:64; Mark 13:26; Luke 21:27). In his night visions Daniel beheld

“with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man… coming, and He came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion, glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve Him” (Dan. 7:13-14).

In his vision on Patmos, John also saw Jesus “coming with the clouds.” Then, he said,

“every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him” (Rev. 1:7).

The clouds into which Jesus ascended and on which He will return seem to be distinctive. The psalmist wrote of God’s using clouds as His chariot (Ps. 104:3), and Isaiah pictures “the Lord… riding on a swift cloud” (Isa. 19:1).

But whether the clouds of the sky on which Jesus appears are natural or supernatural, His use of them at that time will be extraordinary and unique. In the midst of black chaos, He will use those clouds to manifest Himself in His complete divine majesty. Speaking of the end time, Zechariah wrote,

“And it will come about in that day that there will be no light; the luminaries will dwindle. For it will be a unique day which is known to the Lord, neither day nor night, but it will come about that at evening time there will be light” (Zech. 14:6-7; cf. Jer. 30:7).

At the end of that insufferable period of darkness and anguish, the light will come, not by the reillumination of the sun, moon, and stars but by the brilliance of Christ’s own divine glory, which will later light the eternal new heaven and new earth. In that day there will be

“no need of the sun or of the moon to shine upon [the new Jerusalem], for the glory of God [will] illumine it, and its lamp [will be] the Lamb” (Rev. 21:23),

“and there shall no longer be any night; and they shall not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God shall illumine them” (22:5).

Although all believers before the Tribulation will have died or been raptured (1 Thess. 1:10; Rev. 3:10), they will witness Christ’s glorious appearance on earth. They will, in fact, “be revealed with Him in glory” (Col. 3:4), having already been wondrously and appropriately clothed as the bride of Christ for the marriage supper of the Lamb “in fine linen, bright and clean,” which is “the righteous acts of the saints” (Rev. 19:8).

When the church is taken into the presence of the Lord just before the Tribulation, she will fellowship with Him at that supper during the seven-year cataclysm on earth. Also present will be the Old Testament saints, “those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (v. 9).  As Christ’s bride, the church will not need an invitation to the wedding feast; but everyone who believed in God before Christ’s incarnation will be graciously invited to participate. It seems that the church, and perhaps the Old Testament believers as well, will probably be included in

“the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean,” which follow Christ “on white horses” (Rev. 19:14).

Instead of looking up to the sky as Christ appears, as everyone on earth will be doing, the saints of all ages will be looking down from the sky as they return to earth with Him. While unbelievers on earth are dying from fright, disease, or from the Antichrist’s carnage, those who are coming to salvation and who escape being killed during the Tribulation will have great reason to rejoice at Christ’s appearing.

In his account of the Olivet discourse Luke reports that Jesus says to those surviving saints:

“When these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28).

Continued Tommorrow

The Signs Of Christ's Coming

The Sign of the Son Of Man - Matthew 24:29-31

But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky; and the powers of the heavens will be shaken, and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky; and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other. (24:29-31)

In clear, concise, straightforward terms the Lord Himself describes what will be the most momentous event of all time, His return to earth in divine glory. Throughout the history of the church, believers have looked forward with earnest anticipation to the coming again of their Lord Jesus Christ. Paul wrote to Titus,

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus” (Titus 2:11-13).

Believers are continually to live righteous lives, motivated in great part by their continual expectation of the Lord’s return. Much of the world is familiar with the circumstances and features of Christ’s first coming, such as His birth in Bethlehem, the magi guided by the star and bringing Him gifts, and the shepherds in the fields hearing the angel choir. Many people have heard something about His teachings and miracles and His crucifixion and resurrection. But even many professed Christians are little acquainted with what Scripture teaches about His second coming.

In Matthew 24:29-31, Jesus gives a vivid picture of the moment of His appearing, the sign of all signs of His coming again and of the end of the age, about which the disciples had just inquired (v. 3). Within these three verses Jesus presents five key truths about this supreme sign of His appearance:

• The sequence of events (v. 29a),
• The scene in the heavens (v. 29b),
• The sign in the sky (v. 30a),
• The strength and glory of the Lord (v. 30b), and
• The selection by the angels (v. 31).

1.  The Sequence of Events

But immediately after the tribulation of those days (24:29a)

Jesus states unequivocally that the central sign of His return will occur immediately after the tribulation of those days, that is, at the end of the Great Tribulation (v. 21), the second three and a half years of the seven-year Tribulation period.

The context makes clear that those days refer to the preceding days of tribulation that Jesus has just been describing (vv. 4-28). They are the final days of unsurpassed tragedy (v. 21) that will mark the end of the present world age, days during which sin will be unrestrained on the earth, the church will have been raptured, and Satan will have been allowed almost unrestricted freedom in his final but futile attempt to usurp rule of the earth for himself.

With the abomination of desolation (v. 15) Satan will inaugurate the Great Tribulation, desecrating the restored Temple and slaughtering every Jew and Christian he can lay hands on. The Lord’s coming to reign will take place at the conclusion of this time of tribulation. As was noted in the last message, during those days, two out of three Jews in Palestine will be slaughtered, only a third being preserved (Zech. 13:8-9). 144,000 of them will be saved to evangelize the world, 12,000 from each of the twelve tribes of Israel (Rev. 7:4; cf. 14:1-5). Those Jews will be supernaturally sealed and protected by God, and no effort by the Antichrist or his collaborators will be able to destroy them.

2.  The Scene in the Heavens

the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky; and the powers of the heavens will be shaken, (24:29b)

Jesus here describes the heavenly setting of His appearance. The whole universe will begin to disintegrate, apparently with great rapidity. The sun… and the moon will cease to give light, and the stars will even fall from the sky. From Luke’s parallel account we learn that there will be

“dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting from fear and the expectation of the things which are coming upon the world; for the power of the heavens will be shaken” (Luke 21:25-26).

The events will be so calamitous that men will faint from absolute terror. The Greek term behind “faint” means to expire or stop breathing, indicating that people will literally die of fright. No hurricane, tornado, tidal wave, earthquake, volcanic eruption, or combination of those natural disasters in history will have approached the extreme disruption of those end-time days. During that time the powers of the heavens will be shaken by Jesus Christ, the One who “upholds all things by the word of His power” (Heb. 1:3).

Just as He created everything, He also sustains everything, and without His full sustaining power, gravity will weaken and the orbits of the stars and planets will fluctuate. Astronomers can predict coming stellar events centuries in advance only because of the absolute consistency of the divinely ordered and uniform laws that control the operation of the stars and planets. But when the Lord withdraws the least of His power from the universe, nothing in it will function normally, and every aspect of the physical world will be disrupted beyond imagination.

All the forces of energy; here called powers of the heavens, which hold everything in space constant, will be in dysfunction. The heavenly bodies will careen helter-skelter through space, and all navigation, whether stellar, solar, magnetic, or gyroscopic, will be futile because all stable reference points and uniform natural forces will have ceased to exist or else become unreliable. The earth is held together by the power of God, and when that power is diminished, the resulting chaos will be inconceivable.

Speculations such as the one just cited, no matter how scientifically derived, can only remotely approximate what the actual situation will be like. But just as the withdrawal of a small part of God’s sustaining power will cause such pervasive chaos and destruction, so will His supernatural control of that disintegration prevent the total destruction of the earth. His sovereign power will preserve and restore it and its people for the establishing of His millennial kingdom. Some seven centuries before Christ, Isaiah had predicted the end-time devastation:

Wail, for the day of the Lord is near! It will come as destruction from the Almighty. Therefore all hands will fall limp, and every mars’ heart will melt. And they will be terrified, pains and anguish will take hold of them; they will writhe like a woman in labor, they will look at one another in astonishment, their faces aflame. Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, cruel, with fury and burning anger, to make the land a desolation; and He will exterminate its sinners from it. For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light; the sun will be dark when it rises, and the moon will not shed its light. Thus I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud, and abase the haughtiness of the ruthless. I will make mortal man scarcer than pure gold, and mankind than the gold of Ophir. (Isa. 13:6-12)

Although that prophecy applied immediately to the destruction of Babylon (v. 1; cf. Dan. 5:30-31), which occurred in 539 B.C., those events described by Isaiah are obviously far too universal and catastrophic to have related entirely to Babylon. The devastation of ancient Babylon was but a microcosm of what will happen to the whole universe in the end time. Isaiah continues to depict events that could in no way describe the relatively mild and confined judgment on Babylon by the Medo-Persians (v. 17).

Therefore I shall make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken from its place at the fury of the Lord of hosts in the day of His burning anger. And it will be that like a hunted gazelle, or like sheep with none to gather them, they will each turn to his own people, and each one flee to his own land. Anyone who is found will be thrust through, and anyone who is captured will fall by the sword. Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished. (vv. 13-16)

That series of catastrophes is clearly worldwide, affecting all nations and all people. Isaiah later presents still further details of end-time destruction:

Draw near, O nations, to hear; and listen, O peoples! Let the earth and all it contains hear, and the world and all that springs from it. For the Lord’s indignation is against all the nations, and His wrath against all their armies; He has utterly destroyed them, He has given them over to slaughter. So their slain will be thrown out, and their corpses will give off their stench, and the mountains will be drenched with their blood. And all the host of heaven will wear away and the sky will be rolled up like a scroll; all their hosts will also wither away as a leaf withers from the vine, or as one withers from the fig tree. For My sword is satiated in heaven, behold it shall descend for judgment upon Edom, and upon the people whom I have devoted to destruction. (34:1-5)

It is from those passages in Isaiah that Jesus’ teaching and John’s vision were drawn. Edom is the southernmost region to which the great battle of Armageddon will extend. The total area involved will be two hundred miles long (Rev. 14:20), stretching from Bozrah, the capital of Edom, in the south (see Isa. 34:6) to the hills of Lebanon, just north of the Valley of Armageddon.

About a hundred years before Isaiah, the prophet Joel wrote of a vast, incredibly devastating locust plague that foreshadowed the disasters of the end time, the coming “day of the Lord” (Joel 2:1). The locusts marched across the land like a destroying army

“Before them the earth quakes, the heavens tremble, the sun and the moon grow dark, and the stars lose their brightness. And the Lord utters His voice before His army; surely His camp is very great, for strong is He who carries out His word. The day of the Lord is indeed great and very awesome, and who can endure it?” (vv. 10-11; cf. vv. 4-5).

The blotting out of natural light by those billions of insects illustrates the vastly greater darkening of the heavens by the direct intervention of God in the end time. The Lord continued to declare through Joel;

“And I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth, blood, fire, and columns of smoke. The sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes” (vv. 30-31; cf. Rev. 6:12-13).

The prophet Haggai wrote,

“For thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Once more in a little while, I am going to shake the heavens and the earth, the sea also and the dry land. And I will shake all the nations; and they will come with the wealth of all nations; and I will fill this house with glory’” (Hag. 2:6-7).

That is the time, Paul says, that the cursed universe is anxiously awaiting.

“For the creation was subjected to futility not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now” (Rom. 8:19-22).

Continued Tomorrow

Breathing after the Holy Spirit; or Fervency of Devotion Desired

Isaac Watts (1674–1748)
Taken From “In the Nick of Time”

Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove,
With all Thy quick’ning powers;
Kindle a flame of sacred love
In these cold hearts of ours.

Look how we grovel here below,
Fond of these trifling toys;
Our souls can neither fly nor go
To reach eternal joys.

In vain we tune our formal songs,
In vain we strive to rise;
Hosannas languish on our tongues,
And our devotion dies.

Dear Lord! and shall we ever live
At this poor dying rate?
Our love so faint, so cold to Thee,
And Thine to us so great?

Come, Holy Spirit, heav’nly Dove,
With all Thy quick’ning powers;
Come, shed abroad the Savior’s love
And that shall kindle ours.

Poll–Most In U.S., Except Evangelicals, See No Divine Sign In Disasters

We spoke yesterday about the poll mentioned by the USA Today newspaper that said that “most Americans ‘except evangelicals’ don’t see divine punishment in the March 11 quake and tsunami in Japan.” It went on to cite a study conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute done in partnership with the Religion News Service. This study was conducted just a week after the March 11 earthquake that triggered the horrible events in Japan. It said:

Nearly six in 10 evangelicals believe God can use natural disasters to send messages - nearly twice the number of Catholics (31%) or mainline Protestants (34%). Evangelicals (53%) are also more than twice as likely as the one in five Catholics or mainline Protestants to believe God punishes nations for the sins of some citizens.

The poll found that a majority (56%) of Americans believe God is in control of the earth, but the idea of God employing Mother Nature to dispense judgment (38% of all Americans) or God punishing entire nations for the sins of a few (29%) has less support.

Note the next year on its yield to God as being “in control of the earth” and the idea of “Mother Nature”; two very contradictory ideas, that is except in the mind of those who know little or nothing about the one, true and living God as He is revealed in the Scripture.

Interestingly, it went on to say:

From Noah's fabled flood to 21st-century disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, some people blame incomprehensible calamities on human sinfulness.

This is certainly true, however mistaken it is. There are some who have a very skewed understanding of how God deals with the world now that Christ has fulfilled the Law. It is surely true that there were times in the Old Testament when God punished all of Israel because of one man sin. We are reminded of Achan and his failure to obey god that brought judgment on the people as they were entering the land; not to mention King David and his sin that brought judgment on all of Israel on more than one occasion.

However, those occasions were all manifestations of the Law of God unfulfilled. Remember that the Law of Moses was but a subset of the greater Law of God. Our Lord came in due time and did what man could never do, and would never do…He fulfilled the Law of Moses and the Law of God and thus was able to present to God, on the behalf of all who would believe, a sacrifice that satisfied His wrath once and for all.

Once the New Testament era arrived, the issue is no longer the Law and the wrath of God, but the Gospel of Christ, now presented to mankind in all of its fullness. Of course, were we in a theological class, we would argue that Christ was always present, in all of the Old Testament sacrifices and other types and pictures. But that is not our purpose today. We will simply affirm that our Lord fulfilled the Law, both passively and actively and then presented Himself as a Lamb, ready for the sacrifice as required by the Law of the offering in the first chapters of the Book of Leviticus.

His crucifixion, with all the brutality and horror that it entailed, allowed Him to fulfilled the type and picture of those offerings in the Levitical Law; all of which were intended to cause men to realize that they were incapable of meeting the righteous requirements of this Holy and utterly Righteous God ensconced and unapproachable in His heaven and to force them to cry out to Him for His mercy…something, sadly, that Israel, as a nation, has failed to do historically (and has yet failed to do - though we have God’s promise that He will one day draw them to Himself).

Such interpretations often offend victims, however. Public outcry prompted Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara to apologize for calling the disaster a "divine punishment" for Japanese egoism.

Notice, by the way, the reference, so common in the media and in the world’s mind, to the “fable” of the Old Testament’s historical record:

From Noah's fabled flood to 21st-century disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti….

Like so many in modern days, Noah (and, we must assume, the rest of Old Testament history) is not in the same class [verifiable Fact!] as more recent events. It is placed in the class of “fable”. A fable is a fictitious narrative or statement, a legendary story of supernatural happenings or a narration intended to enforce a useful truth. In literature it is especially one in which animals speak and act like human beings. It has come also to speak of a falsehood or a lie. This is the class to which most people have assigned the Historical section and statements of the Old Testament - they are fables. Not only is it that they cannot be true - they were never intended to be true! Hence the reference to idea of “interpretation”. Their presupposition feeds their perception.

The problem is that it leads them to a contradictory position… Robert P. Jones, CEO of Public Religion Research Institute rightly notes:

"It's interesting that most Americans believe in a personal God and that God is in control of everything that happens in the world ... but then resist drawing a straight line from those beliefs to God's direct role or judgment in natural disasters".

Because the vast majority of people in the world are just that - in the world - they easily believe contradictory things concerning the things of God…they believe whatever suits they and their mood at the time. They ask God and His works to accommodate them, and the way it ought to be… which, oddly enough, seems also to be the way that USA Today is asking God to behave as well.

Job did this as well and God did not respond the wild things Job said in his confusion, but rather rebuked him and asked him who he thought he was. I can almost hear God’s voice saying some of those same things in this day and age…

Poll: Most In U.S., Except Evangelicals, See No Divine Sign In Disasters

 

I came across an article today in USA Today that cited a poll that talked about the opinion of the American people concerning the origin of the events in Japan of recent weeks. It was a fairly lengthy article, at one that I’d like to think about over the next couple of blog posts if you will indulge me.

USA Today, from its perspective is as a fairly liberal news media outlet, took the results of this poll and, with what seemed almost to be a certain amount of glee, put forth their proposition denouncing the evil evangelicals. Here is their opening paragraph:

We may never know why bad things happen to good people, but most Americans - except evangelicals - reject the idea that natural disasters are divine punishment, a test of faith or some other sign from God, according to a new poll.

It is true that we may never know, at least not in this world, but that is not for the reasons implied in this article; that being because those reasons don’t exist. It is because man is not in the place of calling God to account for His actions. Neither is God responsible for giving account to man His actions. Where is it posited that the sovereign God of the universe needs to explain Himself to man? And where is it anywhere put forth that the creature gets to hold the Creator accountable for His actions when he doesn’t like them (and there are times when I don’t particularly like them sometimes either…but I submit to them because He is God and I am not).

Curiously, the author uses the word “reject” in his discussion; a very Biblical word that goes a long ways toward helping understand the roots of why there is such a difference between these two views. Why do so many people see things one way and yet, so very many others reject that possibility and choose to see it another way?

Reject, of course, can be used as either a verb or noun. Here it is obviously uses as a verb. The word comes from the middle English, ultimately from the Latin “rejectus”, from the the past participle of “reicere”, from re- + jacere “to throw”. You’ll see the significance in a moment. Its’ first known use was in the 15th century in old English.

It is a transitive verb (the action of the verb is passed through the verb from the subject to the object: the subject DOES whatever TO the object). It has several “shades of meaning (as do all words…)

• It can mean “to refuse to accept, to consider, or to submit to. To refuse to take for some purpose, or to use as in a rejected the suggestion or to reject a manuscript.
• Secondly, it can mean to refuse to hear, receive, or admit. Here it is more of a rebuff or a repelling repel as in parents who reject their children.
• Thirdly, it can be used to speak of “to refuse” as in a lover or spouse.
• There are also a couple of lesser used meanings: to throw back, or repulse; and to spew out. They have fallen out of use over the years.
• Likewise there is a medical usage: “to subject to immunological rejection”, that is, when the body “rejects” a donor organ or some other foreign tissue or other transplanted device from the body it is said to “rejected”.

The thing in common in all of these is that is that it is both definitive and unreasoning. In all of the meanings above, the action is a matter of reaction and action, a matter of instinct and not a matter of rational and logical thought. This is not to say that it is an independent of all rational and logical thought. Rather, it is to say that these facilities are not the controlling facilities!

What then, are the controlling facilities? As the word would indicate, emotion and instinct become the controlling facility in such matters. Now, in many instances, this would not be a problem. But in spiritual matters this certainly is a problem. It has a problem because we are dealing with people who have no spiritual capacity. That leads us to our next observation.

Note the use of “we” versus two groups of people Biblically as the explanation for the dichotomy of opinions… This has always been a point of conflict, one that is difficult if not impossible to get across to the world given their inability to understand spiritual matters. The scripture is very clear that the natural man cannot understand the things of the spirit. 1 Corinthians 2:14 says:

14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

It is perfectly understandable and absolutely normal that the unredeemed laugh and scoff at this idea. They believe themselves to be “OK” with God. In fact, many of them believe themselves to be on sterling terms with God! But that is not the case. As was the situation where ancient Israel, so it is today. Isaiah told Israel

For the LORD has poured out on you
The spirit of deep sleep,
And has closed your eyes, namely, the prophets;
And He has covered your heads, namely, the seers. (Isaiah 29:10)

And it is not just the case with Old Testament Israel! Christ, speaking to Israel, but intending His words for the church of all ages said:

But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! (Matthew 6:23)

A particular interest is that phrase “if therefore the light that is in you is darkness…”. How can the light that is in us at the same time be darkness? The Lord would have said that it was impossible. Of course, “light” is used in a number of different ways in the Scripture. It is used to speak of the light that enables us to see physically and the world. That, of course, is not the way it is used in this passage. It is used of the “light” that enables one to understand.

The word is used is the simple word “phos” in Greek. It refers to lack, as in that which contrasts with darkness. 2 Corinthians 4:6 uses the word to refer to god’s creation of the world as an illustration of the way that God “creates” the ability to understand and the life of a new believer.

For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

It is apparent that some receivers light while others do not. It is not our purpose here to discuss the “who’s” or the “why’s” of that process. We simply want to acknowledge that the Scripture plainly says that it is indeed the case. Some receive light and some do not. This is true to the extent that the Scripture identifies those who are redeemed as “children (or sons) of light ”.

So the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light. (Luke 16:8)

While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” These things Jesus spoke, and departed, and was hidden from them. (John 12:36)

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (Ephesians 5:8)

You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. (1 Thessalonians 5:5)

Once again, Christ said, in that very famous passage in John 3:

19 And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. (John 3:19–20)

In this passage that has to do with redemption our Lord very clearly puts forth the difference between the those who are seeking to be reconciled with God and those who are merely “playing the game”. All men, without exception, at one time in their lives are unredeemed. But there comes a time when God begins to deal with "whosoever will". But there comes a time when God begins to deal with "whosoever will". The Scripture, in other places, calls this group "the elect". They are those whom God has chosen from eternity past.

The point that God is making to Nicodemus in this passage in John 3 is that there is a difference between those who are earnestly seeking God and those who are not. Those who are, are willing to come into the "light" and have their deeds exposed as evil. Those who are not, and sadly, this seems to involve the bulk of mankind, what are told remain in the darkness "lest his deeds should be exposed".

The light, then, is what shows men and their deeds and character for what they truly are. To say that in another fashion, without the light man labor on in deception and falsehood thinking one thing (that spiritually they are fine) when, in reality, the exact opposite is so!

Our responsibility as believers, is to ignore their “outrage” and to understand it, seeing where it comes from, having been in that place once ourselves. I do not mean this to be nearly so condescending as it sounds, truly I do not. Rather, I intend it to be merciful in tone. I think of how frustrated and angry Job and how even one as godly as he could get caught up in raging against the “whys and wherefores” of these great tragedies. But just as God never give account of Himself to Job, so also He will never, ever give account of Himself to any mortal man. This is not because of arrogance or a matter of pride. It is simply that he is God and we are not. He is the creator and we are that created. He is the Master of the vineyard and we are workers in that vineyard. It not only cannot be any other way, but it should not be any other way. I would not have it be any other way.

O That Sin Might Be Shown To Be Sin To Me!

O that sin might be shown to be sin to me and appear in its own colors; that through the commandment may I see it to be sinful beyond measure, (Romans 7:13) because it is lawlessness. (1 John 3:4) As I have said often before, Lord, I desire to see sin as it is...not as I perceive it. I can too easily excuse and justify it as my own nature, as humanity, as unavoidable, as a part of the circumstances... Lord, I want to see it as You see in me...and I want, I truly do, to horrified by it! By every willful sin I have in effect said,

“I do not want this man to reign over me.” (Luke 19:14) I have said “Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice?” (Exodus 5:2) And thus have I reviled the LORD, (Numbers 15:30), And cast his law behind my back. (Nehemiah 9:26)

Help me, oh dear Lord, help me as only You can help me, to see sin as it is.
I know that the only a]way this happens is for me to see Your character as contrasted with my own in You law. This will make me cry out to You for the mercy contained in Your Gospel! As an unredeemed man I called out for that mercy and You came and you pulled me from the miry clay. Now Lord, once again, I call and I call with full confidence that You will answer me...

"8 I cried out to You, O LORD; And to the LORD I made supplication: 9 “What profit is there in my blood, When I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise You? Will it declare Your truth? 10 Hear, O LORD, and have mercy on me; LORD, be my helper!” 11 You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, 12 To the end that my glory may sing praise to You and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks to You forever."

I will call and You will, indeed, answer me! Oh Father, I thank You that I can have that confidence despite my faulty character and my shaky ability to walk and obey... What the Law requires absolutely You did for me in the Person of the Lord Jesus. I thank you that in Jesus Christ you have made an everlasting covenant with me, your steadfast, sure love for David and all his descendants. (Isaiah 55:3) I am a part of that spiritual Israel by the grace and mercy of God.
Because of Your own purpose, and by Your own will You took me when You made me Your own! Likewise, You've trained me, convicted me, and kept me headed in the direction that I need to go. Lord, I have no capacity to do more than to offer up my praise and my thanks. What can a man give back to the God Who is all and has all? We can offer up our earnest praise -

To God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:21) To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. (1 Timothy 1:17) To him be honor and eternal dominion; (1 Timothy 6:16) to him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. (1 Peter 5:11).

The Friend of Prisoners - Thomas Wright (1789 - 1875)

From the Kairos Journal

In Honor of Wings of Eagles Ministries on their 30th Anniversary…

“Thomas Wright, the philanthropist of Manchester, distinguished himself as the true friend of forlorn prisoners. He was a man of no position in society. He possessed no wealth, excepting only a rich and loving heart.”^[1]

This tribute from a famous contemporary expressed the admiration of Victorian England for Thomas Wright’s pioneering work in rehabilitating criminals and reintegrating them within normal society - an achievement all the more impressive for being the work of a busy factory foreman without any resources or connections apart from his modest weekly wage (£3.50p) and a reputation for industriousness and honesty.
A man of humble origins and little formal education, Wright grew up in Manchester and after some troubled years of youthful delinquency, found faith in Christ under the influence of his mother and a young Christian friend. Spiritually renewed, Wright’s life-long ministry to prisoners began when an ex-convict asked for a job at the Manchester iron foundry where he was the foreman. When it emerged that the man had a criminal record, Wright persuaded his employers not to sack him, placing £20 of his own money into their hands as a guarantee of the ex-convicts’ good conduct.^[2]
Moved by the plight of this ex-convict and encouraged by his success in helping him to keep his job, Wright eventually obtained access to his local prison in Salford (Manchester) in the hope that he would be given further opportunities to help convicts find employment and a new lease on life after they had served their sentences. At first he was only allowed to attend the prison’s Sunday afternoon services, but one day the prison chaplain asked for his help in finding a job for a prisoner who was about to be released. Wright promptly did so and from that moment on was given a free run of the prison by the governor. As a result, he was able to visit prisoners, develop a personal relationship with them and their families, and provide the help, advice, and encouragement they needed to start a new life.
Wright met prisoners on their discharge, took them to their homes, and then supported them financially from his own slender resources until he was able to find them work. So successful was he in winning the trust and confidence of the prisoners and their future employers, that within only a few years he managed to find jobs for nearly 300 ex-convicts. He also succeeded in reclaiming many female convicts from alcoholism and in persuading their husbands to take them back into their homes. On those occasions when he could not find employment for released prisoners, he either lent them money or raised a subscription from among his friends to enable them to emigrate and start new lives abroad. He helped 941 ex-convicts in this way.^[3]
Wright’s voluntary labors on behalf of prisoners, to which he devoted all his spare time and his meager savings, eventually won official recognition in the British government’s annual reports on the state of the country’s prisons. As one of these acknowledged:

“…it is but necessary to state that out of ninety-six criminals befriended by him, and re-established in life, only four have returned to a prison.”

With the help of the people of Manchester, who provided him a pension in 1852 so that he could devote all of his time to his charitable activities, Wright continued his work until failing health forced him to stop in his 85th year.^[4]

“I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me,” says Jesus to his “sheep” in Matthew 25:36.

If ever a man was one of those “sheep” it was Thomas Wright. Likewise, in our day, if ever there was a ministry that demonstrated the spirit of men like Thomas Wright in seeking to show Christ to those who are in prison and need to see Him, it has been Wings of Eagles Ministries…
___________________________________________
[1] Samuel Smiles, Duty (New York: Wm. L. Allison Co., 1880), 279.
[2] Ibid., 280-281.
[3] Ibid., 281-284.
[4] Ibid., 283-286.