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Today I saw ( inner City London) a bus drive past with a vast, apparently gratuitous, huge public advertisement:
'There probably is no God. Now relax and enjoy yourself.'
As well as making the incorrect statement that there is no God, this new 'trailer' suggests that relaxation and enjoyment do not happen in the Spirit filled born again believer's life, which is also false.
There seemed to be no commercial reason for the bus announcement. Has anyone else seen this new bus slogan?
Would anyone expect to see such vast announcements everywhere in the public domain a decade ago?
Jesus said, " Luke 17:26-30 "And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. "
The days of the Son of man infers to the days before the second coming of the Lord Jesus. Prior to his return, we can expect a situation as described to Timothy, who learned from the Apostle Paul:
2Timothy 3:1-7 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy. Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, fierce, despisers of those that are good. Traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
Rembrant's Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul wrote in the bible:
'If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.
And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, (love) is not pompous, it is not inflated,
it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury,
it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing.
For we know partially and we prophesy partially,
but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.
At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.
So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love'.
There is a redeemer, he went to the cross for you. His name is Jesus. He is the son of God.
'For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, Jesus Christ, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.'
The description 'having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof' refers to people who put on a show of godliness but deny the truths of the bible, they deny the full story.
Jesus said: "And you shall be hated of all men for my names' sake, but he that endures to the end shall be saved'. .....'For in those days there will be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time, nor ever shall be. And except that the Lord shorten those days, which for the elects (believing Christian's) sake he has chosen, no flesh could survive, but for the elects' sake, he has shortened the days. "
I love this 'Lift Jesus Higher' video below. Many Christian communities in Africa are being terribly persecuted at present. Zimbabwe is suffering terribly. At my Church we receive stories about people having members of their families murdered, their houses ramsacked; they're being bullied, robbed, expelled, continually intimidated. What they endure while satan is taking his last stand in the world is appalling.
They continue to sing the praises of Jesus.
The words are: 'Lift Jesus higher', 'Lower satan lower'.
Give these people all your love and support whenever and wherever you can. (End Time Evangelism here. They have removed their videos is a reshuffle, I hope they go back up again!)
Continue to declare the full bible story and praise Jesus.
Yet more demonstrations of pride, fear, aggressive ancestor worship, ( worship of human ancestors) racism, vengeance, and violence in the region.
Maneuver American lobbyists into standing successfully against Obama's contacts in the Islam network?
There is a much higher probability of an attack on Jewish Israel and Jerusalem in consequence of this....
Jesus and John the Baptist spoke out against ancestor worship ( worship of human ancestors). The saducees the pharisees of his era attempted to excuse themselves from their patently apparent need for salvation on the basis that they were 'descendants of Abraham'.
Think not to say... 'We have Abraham to our father'. Sadducees and pharisees believed that Abraham's race was to be saved, if all else were destroyed. However, there was one way they could take, like everyone else: they had to be born again. They were not to flatter themselves that their inheritance ( human ancestry) could make them secure.
Another layer of meaning (prophetic) :
'God is as able to raise up a seed to Abraham out of those stones........ as He was 'to take Abraham himself out of the rock whence he was hewn and out of the hole of the pit whence he was digged' (Isa 51:1). While Jesus may have pointed as he spoke to the pebbles of the bare clay hills that lay around it was clearly the calling of the Gentiles into the room of unbelieving and then disinherited Israel that he meant to indicate ( Mt 21:43; Ro 11:20, 30).'
Israel was never disinherited in the sense of cast away, abandoned or rejected. Rather, there was a change of situation and the gentiles came into the Kingdom of God. After Jesus resurrection, the Lord as promised 'poured out his spirit on all flesh' ( All believers) and continues to do so.
International Standard Version.
'In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on everyone. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams'.
The Lord gave, still gives, his spirit to indwell all who believe, who enter into a direct relationship with the Heavenly Father through Jesus. The bible later speaks extensively on the gratfing in of the gentiles into the 'cultivated Olive tree' of God and the salvation of the Jews in the 'end times' who will return to Messiah Jesus in significant numbers : 'when the fullness of the gentiles has come in.'
Romans 11:1 I say then, Has the Lord cast away his people? The Lord forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.
2 The Lord has not cast away his people which he foreknew.
Jeremiah 31: 35 Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, who divides the sea when the waves thereof roar; the Lord of hosts is his name:
36 If those ordinances depart from before me, says the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.
37 Thus says the Lord; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, says the LORD.