For Evil to be Overcome in America, the Church Must Rise and Defeat It using the Spiritual Weapons Delegated to Us by Christ
I don’t usually present teaching videos from YouTube but I thought these two from Dutch Sheets’ “Give Him 15” series of daily devotionals were well worth sharing. Be blessed!
Time for a Change
Just wanted to let you know that I am on the move–moving from my home state of Virginia to my husband’s home state of Kentucky. So, if you don’t hear anything from me for a bit, you will know why. There is still so much more to share of God’s One Big Story, I don’t want you to miss any of it. Hopefully, it will be sooner than later. Until then…
Blessings,
Judy
I don’t know about you but the older I get, the darker the world seems to grow. This may be because the farther along I walk with God, the more discerning of the world and its ways I am becoming. Or, it could be just another indication that the long-awaited day of Jesus’ return is rapidly approaching. Certainly, the conditions prevailing in our world today greatly resemble those described by Jesus in Matthew 24:4-8, when He answered His disciples’ request for a sign of His coming by saying…
See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of birth pains.
If these conditions—the same ones that we are experiencing today—are but the “beginning of birth pains,” what can we expect to follow? Jesus goes on to address this question in verses 9-14, when He declares…
Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
Undoubtedly, all of these things are taking place in our day and age, but the truth is that much of what has been described here has also taken place throughout most of human history. In fact, with the exception of the gospel being proclaimed throughout the whole world, I think that every generation of believers has looked around at the events taking place in their particular era and seen a world growing darker as a result of sin, thinking surely that the end of the world would soon be upon them.
As an example of this, listen to what Jude, the brother of Jesus and James, had to say about the conditions in his world back in the first century AD…
Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who were long ago designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ…these people…defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones…blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understood instinctively.
While this is a pretty scathing indictment of his own times, Jude goes on to tell us about a time when the same kind of wickedness had saturated another, much earlier, society—and when another godly man arose to address the evils of the world around him then…
It was about these [the people referred to above] that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, ‘Behold the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him (Jude 14-15).
Wow—such was the world in which Enoch lived! And when was that? It was, according to Genesis 5, about halfway between the creation of man and the Flood which took place in Noah’s day. And what was the reason for the Flood? It was the judgment upon all of the “ungodly sinners” about whom Enoch had prophesied. Did Enoch live to see the fulfillment of his prophecy? No, because, as we are told in Genesis 5:21-24…
When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.
In other words, Enoch, after walking with God in the midst of his sin-saturated world, was “raptured” out of that world before the Tribulation of the Flood came upon it.
It was this very time to which Jesus referred when He continued in His reply to the question His disciples had asked in Matthew 24. Likening it to the time preceding His own return, He said…
For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man…Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming…you must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect (vv. 39-39, 42, 44).
And how are we to make ourselves ready?
According to Jude, we…
…must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, ‘In the last time, there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.’ It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the spirit.
But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt, save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.
Or, as Jesus put it in Matthew 5: 14 &16…
You are the light of the world…let your light shine before others, so they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
…which, in our world of rapidly escalating darkness, is just another way of saying that for us to able to find our way through the darkness, we all need to be walking lightly!
Learn the Basics of Bible Study
For those who may not have been with us from the beginning of our Bible Study Tour, here is a little video explaining our approach to the study of God’s Word. It’s only 6:23 minutes long, so please take those few minutes to acquaint yourself with these basics of Bible Study. Be blessed as you listen!
It’s Been a Long, Dry Year but We’re Still Here!
Today marks the seventh birthday for His Truth, My Voice. When I started this blog, I knew nothing about blogging–I just knew that I wanted to share what I had learned about the Bible with others. There have certainly been a lot of ups and downs but then that’s the way life is, isn’t it? As my mother used to say, if it’s not one thing, it’s another!
For the past year and a half, I have been taking care of our grandson (now twenty months old) while his parents work so I haven’t been as productive as in previous years. But, I do hope that I can get back in the production groove soon. For those of you who have stuck with me during this dry spell, your continued support is greatly appreciated–as are your prayers. As always thanks be to God, as well as…
Blessings to you all,
Judy
Raised to Walk in Newness of Life
The Monday night before one Easter several years ago, I casually asked my pastor husband what he would be preaching on the following Sunday. Although he usually has it all planned out by then, he said that he didn’t have anything special in mind at that point, and asked me if I had any ideas. I thought for a moment, and then told him that the only thing that had come to mind was the expression new life. And, since I was busy watching my favorite television program at the time, I didn’t give it another thought for the remainder of the evening. But the next day, when I began wondering what new life might have meant to Jesus’ disciples on that very first Resurrection Sunday, there were three things that immediately popped into my mind. They were freedom, hope, and power—freedom from the bondage they had known in the past; hope for a better, more meaningful life in the future; and the power they would need to leave the one behind and fully enter into the other.
Freedom…“For freedom Christ has set us free…Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another (Galatians 5:1, 13).”
From what I know about the times in which Jesus lived, it seems quite likely that most, if not all, of His disciples originally began following Him because they expected Him to be the leader of a rebellion that would secure the freedom of the Jews from their oppressive Roman overlords. This, however, was not the kind of freedom that Jesus came to bring them. Instead of the temporal political liberation that they had been longing for for so long, the liberation that He came to provide was one which was spiritual in nature, and one that would endure throughout all eternity. And, while they couldn’t have realized the full import of that type of liberation on that first Easter morning, in time they would come to treasure and rejoice in the freedom it gave them from…
Because of the resurrection of Jesus, never again would they have to…
Wow, what a sense of freedom that must have been!
Hope…“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 3-5).”
As a result of these new-found freedoms, new life would have also meant that the disciples could begin to enjoy a hope that they had never known before; a hope that…
Power…“I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, in the knowledge of him…that you may know…what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him form the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come (Ephesians 1:16-21).”
Of course, setting men free from their bondage to sin and death, from their centuries old religious traditions, and all the while giving them new life through a rebirth of their spirits was no mean task; it would require a power that had never before been seen by mortal men. And yet, this is the kind of power that was demonstrated when God, after Jesus had conquered the powers of hell and the grave, raised Him from the dead and seated Him in the place of honor at His right hand. And, the wonder of it all is that this same power, which was available to God’s only Begotten Son, is the very same power that He has made available to each of His adopted children—that is, to those of us who have placed our faith in this resurrected Christ. For the power that can raise someone from the dead is the only power strong enough to free one from the chains of his past, to cleanse and purify him of his sins and place him in the position of an adopted child God, and then to lead him to victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil. No wonder the disciples had cause to rejoice!
But they weren’t the only ones with a reason to do so; like them, we have become the beneficiaries of this new life of freedom, hope, and power which was made available through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This matchless gift of new life is something that this Easter should serve to remind us of, and something which we, as the modern-day disciples of Christ, should be rejoicing in every other day of the year.
About three weeks ago, when the company hosting this website ran some updates, they crashed our server, causing His Truth, My Voice to go down along with it. Sadly, they denied any responsibility and did nothing to get us up and going again. Thankfully, though, I know someone who is a computer genius and it is due his skillful intervention that we are now back on-line. So thank you, AB! However, in the process of all this, my most recent post was lost in the shuffle–but, since I keep copies of everything that I write, I will be able to re-post it shortly.
I just want to say, thanks so much for your patience and continued support during this frustrating time!
It’s That Time Again!
In January, 2014, at the invitation of our tour guide, Horatio, we boarded the Truth Train for a Journey into the Land of Revelation Knowledge—that is, we launched out into a study of the Bible quite unlike any other that we’ve ever taken. That’s because, in this study, the Bible was to be presented as a Love Story in the form of a play–one that would be acted out for us on the fourteen different Stages positioned along our journey’s path.
In February, 2016, we saw the curtain drop on Act 1, Scene 1 of our Story but, rather than move on to Stage #2, we broke for what turned out to be a rather lengthy intermission. During this intermission, we opened the Workout Room where, since March, 2016, we have been working to get into the best spiritual shape possible through a series of exercises dealing with Salvation, Sanctification, Service, and Spiritual Warfare. Now, having recently finished the last of these exercises, the time has come for us to once again change directions, re-board the Truth Train, and resume our journey to Stage #2, where Act 1, Scene 2 of our Story will soon get underway.
To help facilitate a review of what we have experienced so far, the His Truth, My Voice Theatre page is now open; there all of our earlier episodes can be viewed in the order of their presentation. This should help both our more seasoned travelers and any who are new to this tour understand just where we are at this point in our journey. That being said, it’s time for us to find a comfortable seat on the train so that we can make our way to Stage #2, where we will very shortly be introduced to Abraham–the Father of Israel–and, to the others in Genesis 12-50 who connect him with her .
Bon Voyage!
