The Performer

The Performer
Vol: 19 Issue: 31 Tuesday, January 31, 2017

“For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.” (Romans 11:25)

The “fulness of the Gentiles” — that’s the key phrase here. The word translated into English as ‘fulness’ is from the Greek word, “pleroma” which means, “completion, what fills (as in contents) what is filled (as container, performance or period) that which is put in to fill up, full, fulness.”

So, blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the completion of the Gentiles have come in. Clearly, the reference here is to the complete number of Gentiles to be saved. And so also follows, just as clearly, that there IS a completed number of Gentiles to be saved.

Eternal security is a hugely significant doctrinal point that most Christians either miss altogether or refuse to acknowledge. Let’s look at why they refuse to acknowledge it, first.

If there is a finite number of Gentiles that signify “pleroma” or completion, then it follows that God knows how many, and who they are. That freaks out Christians that cry “Calvinist” at the mere mention of predestination.

Because John Calvin included ‘predestination’ as one of the Five Points of Calvinism does NOT mean it is a “Calvinist” doctrine. It is a Bible doctrine that Calvin happened to get right, kinda.

There are plenty of Arminians (the opposite of Calvinism) that deny predestination and all other points of Calvinism, and yet believe in Bible prophecy. But if there is a difference between Bible prophecy and predestination, it is too fine a distinction for me to be able to see.

In Bible prophecy, God predicts what certain men will do at a certain time, and because He is omniscient (all-knowing), we can be certain that the prophesied event will unfold precisely as foretold, or, predestined.

Predestination simply means that God already knows what YOU will do at a certain time, but predestination is rejected because it somehow interferes with free will.

So when it comes to everybody doing what God says they must at a certain time, that’s prophecy and therefore, doctrinally correct. When it comes down to God predicting the fate of an individual¸ that’s Calvinism, and therefore somehow, not Bible doctrine.

Even though both describe precisely the same thing!

Arminianism rejects predestination in favor of doctrines that give all the power to the people, by denying that power to God. Opponents of predestination say that because God knows what you will do on a certain day, it affects your free will.

That might be true if you were God and knew what you would do in the future, but since you aren’t, it has no effect whatsoever on your free will. The decisions you make are your own — the fact God knew what they would be is irrelevant to free will.

The word ‘predestinate’ is used four times by the New Testament; Romans 8:29, 30, Ephesians 1:5 and Ephesians 1:11.

It is translated from the Greek word, “proorizo” which means, “to limit in advance, predetermine, determine before, ordain” or simply, “predestinate”.

To summarize before moving on, you were predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son before the world began. The Bible says so.

“For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” (Romans 8:29)

The Bible says that you were elected to be saved.

“Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.” (1 Peter 1:2)

Do you see the three separate elements here? We are 1) elected according to God’s foreknowledge, then we were 2) sanctified (hagiasmos- purification by a purifier) because of 3) the obedience of Jesus Christ Who shed His Blood for you.

What does the word “elect” mean? In Greek, it is eklektos and it means, “select, by implication, favorite: — chosen, elect.” So it means, selected, or chosen.

On to the next question: When were we chosen by God to be saved?

“Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.” (2 Timothy 1:9)

God saved us, NOT ACCORDING TO OUR WORKS, but according to His OWN PURPOSE, and given to the elect through Christ BEFORE THE WORLD BEGAN.

Where are you in this narrative? Are you the hero of this story? Are you saved because you had an epiphany and turned from your wicked ways and now live a life of total dedication and purity to Christ? Did YOU do it?

Or were you saved because you trusted Christ’s promise you are saved by grace through faith and by trusting that He can keep you saved by sending His Holy Spirit as your hagiasmos purification agent?

Did YOU make the decision for Christ based on your own best judgment of what is best for you? Or are you saved because the Bible says God elected you for salvation before the world began?

The doctrine of eternal security hangs entirely on those distinctions.

Assessment:

If you saved yourself by your actions or conduct, then it follows that you can lose your salvation by your actions or conduct. If you were saved by grace through faith, then your actions and conduct are irrelevant.

The Bible gives seven distinct and unassailable proofs that salvation is an eternal condition that begins when we are saved, not when we die. If you are saved now, you are saved forever, because you are not who you were anymore.

At the point of salvation, seven distinct and immutable changes took place. At the moment you were saved, you were forever;

1. Converted — your life is irrevocably turned around. (Acts 3:19)
2. Sanctified — purified by the indwelling Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 1:2)
3. Reconciled – we are at peace with the Father (2 Corinthians 5:19)
4. Regenerated — or given new life (1 Peter 1:23)
5. Redeemed — purchased, or bought back for a price (1 Peter 1:18)
6. Adopted — made a permanent part of God’s forever family (Romans 8:15)
7. Justified — declared righteous by God. (Romans 3:28 – 2 Corinthians 5:21)

From the very first second one comes to faith in Christ, all this becomes equally true for every believing child of God. They are what are called “positional truths” because they are unrelated to changing human emotions and feelings.

If your salvation was conditional on your performance, consider what that means. It means that God must reverse all these actions in the lives of uncounted millions every single day. Then, assuming you get born again (again) He must change it back (again.)

Some Christians believe that at the moment of salvation, God only forgives the sins committed to that point. From that perspective, it is only logical that a person could lose his salvation.

But look at the logic. It also means that a Christian, once saved, can never sin again. If he does and loses his salvation, he would have to be born again. (Again).

But that not only violates Scripture, it violates Christ Himself.

“For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame. (Hebrews 6:4-6)

Let’s look at what it doesn’t say here, first. It doesn’t say it is impossible to fall away. What it says is impossible is to be renewed to repentance. IMPOSSIBLE!

The reason it is impossible is because it would put the Lord to open shame. Why?

“But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God; From henceforth expecting till His enemies be made His footstool.” (Hebrews 10:12-13)

He offered ONE sacrifice for sins, FOREVER, and then He sat down. Why is that significant? Because He was done. It was finished.

It is impossible to justify a person twice. Why? Because it would mean that His sacrifice wasn’t good enough the first time. The Scriptures say differently. Note it carefully:

“For by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” (Hebrews 10:14)

“Aha!” you say. “But what about the Bible’s command requiring us to confess our sins daily?”

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)

Confession is necessary for us to maintain communion with Christ, but NOT to maintain union with Christ. Union with Christ is a function of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Communion with Christ is what we have when we pray.

Nowhere does this verse link confession with salvation. It links confession with cleansing, not regenerating.

I’ve noticed that those who discredit eternal security as a false doctrine often avoid giving specific answers to questions about their position.

For example, if one can sin oneself out of God’s grip, which sin is the soul-killer? Is it a particular sin? A pattern of sin? How much sin? How often?

How can an individual know he has lost his salvation? If there is a way of knowing, is there a way of recovering it? To get saved, one must believe and have faith. How does one believe again? How does one have faith — again?

Are there any Scriptural examples of saved Christians who lost their salvation and then recovered it?

My email box is eager to receive concrete answers to any of these questions. But what I anticipate in reply are different questions, like, “Oh yeah? What about this verse?”, instead of answers to the ones I posed.

In hand-to-hand combat, there are certain target points each combatant must protect. The Apostle Paul used hand-to-hand combat as an analogy for how believers should prepare for spiritual combat:

“Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:” (Ephesians 6:14-17)

First, the truth. Note the anatomical analogy Paul uses. In battle, that is an extremely vulnerable target. Strike a serious blow there, and the victim is rendered helpless.

Secondly, the ‘breastplate’ of righteousness. The torso is the biggest and easiest target to strike, but it is also the easiest to armor. If one is covered by the righteousness of Christ, the heart is protected.

Thirdly, the feet. A battle tactic commonly employed in Paul’s day was to sow the battlefield with nails and other sharp objects. Foot soldiers with injured feet are not very effective. If one is fully prepared (‘shod’) with the Gospel, one can engage the enemy uncrippled.

Fourth, Paul says, “Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.” (v16) If one is certain of his standing before God, the enemy’s whispering campaign falls on deaf ears.

Finally, Paul says to, “take the helmet of salvation, and the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God:”

The ‘helmet of salvation’. In battle, the most effective way to take an enemy out is a head shot. If the enemy can convince you that your salvation is in doubt, he has sidelined you as a threat.

Without truth, the righteousness of Christ, knowledge of the Gospel, faith in its promises, and the certain knowledge of your standing before Christ, the Christian’s only offensive weapon, “the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God” is pretty much useless.

And without the Sword of the Spirit, the Christian is defeated before he even steps onto the field. Opponents of the doctrine of eternal security sometimes deride it as the ‘doctrine of demons’.

Scripture — and logic say exactly the opposite.

Why would ‘demons’ promote a doctrine that renders the Christian invulnerable in battle, rather than the one that guarantees the Christian’s defeat — since all Christians sin?

Bottom line: If eternal security is a false doctrine, then we are defeated, and even Jesus can’t save us from ourselves.

“Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6)

If He began it, and He will perform it, then I can be confident. Because if it is up to me, well . . . let’s just say I know me better than to count on me to perform it.

I’ve already let me down, lots of times. I’d be a fool to trust me with anything this important again.

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on  December 28, 2011

Drowning the Seed

Drowning the Seed
Vol: 19 Issue: 30 Monday, January 30, 2017

I believe that the Bible calls us to be witnesses of Christ, and that there is no more perfect expression of God’s will in the life of a Christian than when he works to lead others to Christ.

That said, what does one do, as one of our readers related recently in one of our forums, when somebody is clearly not interested in hearing the Gospel? 

The forum comment describes an experience we’ve all shared in some variation. You strike up a conversation, and somehow, Jesus comes up in the discussion. 

Your conversation suddenly stalls, and when you try to revive it, you meet a wall of stony silence. 

Eventually, you come to recognize the signals and past experience tells you its time to say something cheery and take your leave.

But then it bothers you all the way home. . . “why didn’t I press the issue? Am I a coward for Christ? Jesus endured the collective hatred of the human race. Am I so weak I can’t bear a little rejection?” 

You are convinced you failed Him. You had a chance to share the Gospel, and you blew it. 

Maybe if you had tried a little harder, they might have listened. But no, you were too chicken! 

It isn’t like you don’t know what is at stake — especially if you have been an OL member for any length of time at all. 

You know that every person you meet is destined to spend eternity somewhere. You already know that they will either spend eternity in the joyful presence of Christ.

Or they will spend a Christ less eternity alone, tormented by the punishments of hell and their memory of rejecting their chance to escape it. 

You know it because I remind you of it every chance that I get to do so. The redemption of a single sinner is worth the whole world, the Scriptures say. When one sinner repents, the angels rejoice. 

Nothing in our walk though this world is of greater eternal value than leading a lost sinner to Christ. 

But instead of pressing the issue, you walked away. 

Knowing all that you know, you gave up without a fight. What kind of soldier are you? 

Assessment:

If that is your story, or you have one like it, then the answer is, a smart one. A smart soldier would not press a battle against the odds — just so he could say he was in the fight. 

Once you’ve used up all your resources in an unwise and ill-prepared assault, then those resources are no longer available to be deployed elsewhere where they can be of greater tactical value. 

You offered Jesus, the offer was rejected. But in making the offer, you planted a seed. What you do next will affect the probability that your seed will take root. 

You can continue to pour water on it until it drowns. Or you can plant it, give it as much water as conditions demand, give it a chance to germinate, and let nature take its course. 

Planting the Gospel is sometimes like that. You plant it by sharing the Gospel, but sometimes, like planting in saturated ground, you can overwater and drown the seed. 

Sometimes, just planting the seed is all that is necessary, and then its time to let the Holy Spirit take care of the nurturing. 

Instead of drowning the seed in your eagerness to get it to take root, sometimes its better to let it germinate, even if it means somebody else will get to reap the harvest. 

If your concern is for the health of the seed rather than your profit from the harvest, then it is not such a big deal if somebody else gets to harvest it. 

Should you have pressed that person who clearly didn’t want to be pressed? 

Ask yourself how you react when a salesman keeps pestering you after you tell him you’ll think about it. 

Not only won’t you buy from that salesman, odds are that you won’t buy that brand, either, even though the salesman had nothing to do with the quality of the product.

Jesus knows whether or not you’ve done the job He sent you to do. How does He tell us to handle rejection? Does He tell us to press the issue until it comes to blows? 

No. He says:

“And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.” (Matthew 10:14)

“And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them.” (Luke 9:5)

“He that heareth you heareth Me; and he that despiseth you despiseth Me; and he that despiseth Me despiseth Him that sent Me.” (Luke 10:16)

When Paul and Barnabas attempted to preach the Gospel, “the Jews stirred up the devout and honourable women, and the chief men of the city, and raised persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them out of their coasts.” 

Paul and Barnabas did their best. They preached the Word, the offered the salvation of Christ, and the Word was rejected. What did they do next?

“[T]hey shook off the dust of their feet against them, and came unto Iconium.” (Acts 13:50-51)

“And when Silas and Timotheus were come from Macedonia, Paul was pressed in the Spirit, and testified to the Jews that Jesus was Christ.” (Acts 18:5)

Notice that Paul and Timothy were moved by the Holy Spirit to witness to the Macedonians. Notice also what happened when the Macedonians didn’t want to hear it.

“And when they opposed themselves, and blasphemed, he shook his raiment, and said unto them, Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean; from henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles.” (Acts 18:6)

This was the Apostle Paul, and the Bible says it was the Holy Spirit moved him to preach. But the Macedonians were free to choose. 

Paul and Timothy didn’t browbeat them, but rather, Paul said, “I’ve done what the Lord sent me to do. From here on out, it is up to you.” 

Paul was not a bad Christian. He wasn’t weak, he wasn’t wishy-washy, he wasn’t uncaring. Paul was God’s chosen evangelist to the Gentiles. 

But Paul understood that the seeds he planted would grow unto the Lord, or they would NOT grow unto the Lord. 

There is an old saying to the effect that “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.” 

And if you try, you’ll probably drown the horse. 

It wasn’t up to Paul to do more than the task that God put before him. Neither is it up to you. 

It is our duty and our solemn responsibility to make sure everyone we meet has a chance to choose whom they will serve in this life and where they will spend eternity.

But it is not up to us to make the choice for them. Or to feel responsible when they choose badly. It’s not we that we failed Him. 

The seed we plant may not germinate for decades, but that’s up to God, not us. That’s where the ‘trust’ part takes over.

“Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” (Ephesians 6:13)

Don’t beat yourself up. Your job is to take the stand as a witness. It’s up to the Holy Spirit to obtain a conviction.

“Faithful is He that calleth you, Who also will do it.” (1st Thessalonians 5:24)

There are times when its our job to plant the seeds, then get out of the way and let Him take it from there.

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on  February 27, 2008

Featured Commentary: The Rapture According to Jesus Christ ~Pete Garcia

Christ is NOT Dead In Vain

Christ is NOT Dead In Vain
Vol: 19 Issue: 28 Saturday, January 28, 2017

The Omega Letter is aimed at those who have already grasped the simplicity of salvation. A lot of what we focus on is what Paul calls the ‘strong meat’ of Bible doctrine.

For example, we’ve examined the nuts-and-bolts answers to hard questions like, “Why did Jesus have to die?” and “would a loving God send people to hell?” etc.  But it is good from time to time to revisit the basic gift of salvation.

I have friends who can’t seem to ‘get’ how simple God made salvation.  The miss the forest for the trees.  Maybe you have friends like that too.  They can’t grasp the basic fact that salvation is for sinners. They think they have to earn their way by doing good.

When Jesus was asked which was the most important commandment of God, He replied: 

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

Love God above yourself and love your neighbor as yourself.  Simple. 

A person cannot have a personal relationship with God apart from Jesus. There is a gap that exists between God the Father and sinful humanity.

God is completely holy and cannot tolerate the presence of any sin. But we are all selfish sinners. To redeem us, He had to become ONE of us.

To do THAT, He had to physically enter sin’s ‘quarantine zone’ (the earth’s atmosphere), conquer sin in THIS world, thereby defeating sin’s universal stranglehold on humanity. And then, having qualified as an acceptable Sacrifice, He paid the eternal penalty for sin on our behalf.

When Adam sinned, God cursed him, saying;

“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” (Genesis 3:19)

God covered the first sin of Adam by clothing his nakedness with dead animal skins. Sin, by definition, introduced death into the world. “. . . without shedding of blood is no remission.” (Hebrews 9:22)

Jesus paid the penalty prescribed by Adam’s sin, just as every human being since Adam, but Jesus was WITHOUT sin.  Having been born of the Father into this sin-sick world, He lived the life that God expected of each of us and then paid the penalty for sin that we deserve.

He was not under that penalty for Himself, which is why He could pay the price demanded on our behalf. Having defeated the cause of death (sin), He then defeated the penalty of sin (death) by His Resurrection.

Nobody who ever sinned, even once, has defeated sin personally, and all remain under sin’s penalty of death.

“And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:” (Hebrews 9:27)

But death is in two parts. The physical death, and what the Bible calls the ‘second death’ eternal separation from God in the Lake of Fire.

And so is the judgement. The believer’s sins were judged at the Cross, and the penalty for them has already been paid.

For those who trust to their own good works, there is a second judgement before the Great White Throne, where they will be judged according to ALL their works, good and bad.

There is no balancing scale. One sin earns eternal separation.

Our personal sin still earns the wages of physical death. We are spiritually and eternally saved, but the world in which we live remains under the curse. Sin has its consequences on the things which are in it.

“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)

Jesus sinless Sacrifice paid our eternal debt — there is nothing left to judge but our rewards. Nothing we could ever do could earn it, because it is a gift, freely offered to all men.

By accepting Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf and committing to follow Him we are declared righteous by God on the basis of our faith.

Therefore as new creatures, recreated by the Blood of Christ, wearing His righteousness instead of our own, we are able to come before the throne of God blameless and cleansed, reestablishing our relationship with God.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2nd Corinthians 5:17)

It has NOTHING to do with religion. Paul was preaching to the Church at Galatia, where a heresy had crept in that said Christians had to be circumcised like Jews in order to prove they belonged to God.

Paul makes it clear that Christians are neither Jews nor Gentiles, but something entirely new.

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.” (Galatians 6:15)

The difficulty in trusting Jesus is rooted in the failure to understand the ‘new creature’ for what it is. We’ve discussed this many times in the past, but for the benefit of new members and as review for the rest of us, the Bible teaches that there are four sentient spiritual creations of God.

First, God created the angels. Then, He created Adam in His Image and in His Likeness. At Adam’s fall, his spiritual state was changed, he became separated from God, and Adam was the father of the spiritually unregenerate Gentiles.

Abraham, through faith, fathered the first of another new spiritual creation. Isaac was the first spiritual Jew, the father of Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel.

Since then, every person is born either a Jew or a Gentile, from the perspective of their spiritual state of existence. The first three sentient, spiritual creations of God, then, are angels, Jews and Gentile, descended from Adam, but in God’s Image, with an eternal spirit.

A descendant of Isaac can never become a Gentile. He can denounce Judaism, become a Buddhist, an atheist, or whatever, but in God’s eyes (as well as man’s) he is still a Jew.

A Gentile can become a practicing Jew, but he remains a spiritual Gentile, since his eternal spirit remains estranged from God apart from Christ. 

Jesus introduced a new spiritual creation with His Resurrection. Those who trust Jesus are transformed into a totally new spiritual creation, personally indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, and restored to the fellowship lost by Adam.

“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12)

“For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” (Romans 5:19)

Having been MADE righteous and restored to fellowship, Christians are neither Gentile nor Jew. Nor are they angels, either literally or figuratively. The Bible calls them ‘saints’ — something entirely unique in the history of the universe.

Jews and Gentiles are born what they are. Christians are REBORN into a ‘new birth’ — a new spiritual creation of God.

Salvation is a permanent transformation from one kind of spiritual creation to a different kind of spiritual creation.  It is the misunderstanding of the new creature that is a stumbling-block to grasping the simple assurances of the Gospel. 

At the point of salvation, according to Scripture, the old creature (Jew or Gentile) is “passed away.” (2nd Corinthians 5:17)

The Bible says the old creature is dead. Only God can raise the dead, not an act of man. God would be forced to raise the dead spiritual Gentile,  and undo His new spiritual creation based, not just on an act of man, but on a sinful act.

If sin can force God to undo His own creation, then where is the victory?

The Bible says to repent (literally, change your mind), realize your sin will take you to hell, and that there is nothing you can do about it except to trust Jesus’ promise that by trusting Him for your salvation as the Lord of your life, you are now a new creation of God.

It’s so simple. So simple, in fact, that there are millions upon millions who just can’t get it. Paul spoke of being “wise in your own conceits” (Romans 12:16) not the least of which is the belief that our works contribute to our salvation.

“But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.” (1st Corinthians 1:27)

 If Jesus didn’t do it all, then He didn’t have to do it at all and He died in vain. 

“I do not frustrate the grace of God, for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” (Galatians 2:21)

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on October 27, 2012

The Fig Tree Generation

The Fig Tree Generation
Vol: 19 Issue: 27 Friday, January 27, 2017

The restoration of the Jews to the Promised Land is one of the most staggeringly overt fulfillments of Bible prophecy to occur in the last 2,000 years.

The Hebrew prophets all foretold an eventual restoration of Israel, even addressing the future state by name, in some cases centuries after Israel had ceased to exist. 

Jesus said, “Learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh; So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till ALL these things be fulfilled.” (Matthew 24:32-34)

In his book, Personal Witness, Ambassador Abba Eban, one of Israel’s Founding Fathers and Israel’s first Foreign Minister wrote; 

“In accordance with our plan, a letter from [Chaim] Weizmann to [President] Truman had been sent on May 13 asking him to recognize our new state. The expected infant state was still nameless, since the Zionist leaders were still characteristically, arguing over the name (should it be “Judea.” “Zion,” what about the name “Israel”?). Weizmann, for the first time in history, was asking for a nameless state to be recognized….

Although Ezekiel confidently wrote of the restored Jewish state as “Israel” 2,500 years before, those who actually served as midwives to the rebirth did not decide on the name until the very day before! 

Hosea said of Israel, “I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers as the firstripe in the fig tree at her first time . . .” (Hosea 9:10) 

Joel wrote of the northern invaders of Israel, “He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree. . .(Joel 1:7)

In 1948, the fig tree began to put forth leaves, so to speak, and Jesus said that generation would see ‘all these things’ fulfilled. 

The Bible said that pivotal event in history would take place simultaneously with the birth of a revived Roman Empire. A unified Europe looks back to its’ foundation as January 1, 1948.

It said an apostate world religion would develop at the same time. Revelation 13:11 describes this religious system as “having two horns like a lamb” — symbols of Christianity. The World Council of Churches was born in 1948. 

It predicts that global political system will co-exist with a global economy. The World Trade Organization — a trade organization empowered to regulate the global economy — saw its genesis in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, enacted by the UN in 1948. 

The Bible predicted that global economy will fall under the control of a single individual who will be able to regulate commerce down to the individual level — “That no man might buy or sell” -Rev 13:17. Such individual control was impossible before the advent of computers. 

Although computers had been invented during World War II, they were huge, bulky monsters that used notoriously unreliable and hugely inefficient vacuum tubes. The first computers were slower than a pocket calculator, filled huge environmentally sealed rooms and required enough electricity to power a small city. 

That all changed in 1948 after Bell Labs invented the transistor chip, signaling the official birth of the Computer Age. 

That final age would be marked by ‘rumors of war’ – Matt 24:7. The ultimate ‘rumor of war’ was the Cold War. It began with the Berlin Airlift of 1948. The Soviet collapse was a direct result of the cost of fighting the Cold War. 

The ongoing decline of US influence in the world is also related to the costs of that ‘war’. The power vacuum left by the simultaneous decline of each of these great powers is being filled by Europe, just as the Bible predicted.

Earthquakes began to show a marked increase in size, scope and intensity in 1948. The modern period of ethnos against ethnos can be traced to the death of colonialism beginning in 1948. 

Increasing ‘pestilence’ or deadly disease, can be traced to 1948. Economic ‘kingdoms’ began with the first multinational corporations in 1948. 

Legislation passed by the UN in 1948 like the UDHR and the UNCPR function today as the legal cornerstones of our developing globalist worldview and the disintegration of US Constitutional guarantees. 

The decline in morality — worldwide — can arguably be placed at the feet of the current trend of devaluing human life to the degree that legislation permitting abortion and euthanasia are evidences of an ‘advanced’ society. 

The Japanese Eugenics Act — the first legal abortion on demand legislation ever passed in modern society — was passed in 1948. 

American Margaret Sanger was so impressed with the idea that she founded the premier abortion rights advocacy group — Planned Parenthood — in 1948.

Let’s not forget the other technological advances introduced in 1948 — commercial television, holography, cybernetics, meteorology, the nuclear arms race, microelectronics and dozens of other advances that served to demystify the books of Daniel and the Revelation for this generation. 

Add that to the social breakdown that followed the ouster of God from American education following McCollum vs. the board of education decision of 1948. 

Don’t forget the contribution made to evolutionary theory by the introduction of the ‘Big Bang’ theory of 1948. That served to further alienate the concept of a Creator God from the American worldview. 

2 Peter 3:3 warns “that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.”

All these things taken in context point to one logical conclusion. This is the generation of whom Jesus was speaking when He said, “This generation shall not pass until ALL these things be fulfilled.”

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on August 9, 2008

Featured Commentary: Rationlizing Evil ~Alf Cengia

Misplaced Faith

Misplaced Faith
Vol: 19 Issue: 26 Thursday, January 26, 2017

Faith in Christ means a pretty substantial faith that you are right about where to put your faith. I have to admit that, from time to time over the years, I’ve heard some skeptic’s argument, some new interpretation of an accepted doctrine, or heard of some new archeological discovery that caused me to go, ”Hmmm”.

I admit that I’ve asked myself on more than one occasion if maybe I am following ‘cunningly devised fables’ concocted by brilliant men who lived centuries ago and refined in secret in the centuries since.

After all, if the Bible is true, then the writings of Buddha, which are unquestionably brilliant, are false. But one seldom hears of Buddhist suicide bombers or Buddhist killers or even Buddhist thieves. Their doctrine of ‘karma’ is not too much different than Jesus’ doctrine of ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’

‘Karma’ is the belief that what goes around, comes around. A good man in this life comes back a better one in the next. A bad man in this life may come back in the next one as a dog. Or a pigeon. Or a chicken. (Karma also explains Buddhist vegetarianism. Yuck)

Still, while there are bad Buddhists (just as there are bad Christians) most of the followers of Buddha are pacifists who work hard at being good neighbors.

An evolutionist’s faith is rooted, first and foremost, in his own conviction that he is right about where to put his faith. As when one comes to Christ, that decision comes first. The search for confirmation that one’s faith is correctly placed comes afterwards.

The dedicated evolutionist is one who first concluded evolution made sense, then investigated his conclusion until he was satisfied he was right in reaching it. The rest of his energy is devoted to convincing others that his conclusion is right, creating new dedicated evolutionists in the process.

That is not too different in practice than is Christian dedication to leading others to Christ. But is it truly different in theory? Is it a case of being right? Or of being saved?

The evolutionist will make his point, and your reaction is to disprove his point first, then go back to your point, and so on, by which time the point you were trying to make gets lost in the argument over details. Soon, you find yourself, red-faced, eyes bulging, shouting, “Jesus loves you!” while resisting the temptation to grab the guy by the lapels and shake some sense into him.

What’s happened is that your faith is less in Jesus than it is in being right personally. It’s no longer about Jesus. It’s now about you. All somebody has to do to shake your faith is seemingly prove you wrong.

And you didn’t even see it coming.

Assessment:

Nobody puts their faith in something they don’t believe in. Evolution has been disproved so many times that, even though it is taught as fact in schools, it still bears the label ‘theory.’ ‘Theory’ means ‘unproved’. The evolutionist’s faith isn’t in the evidences from science. The evolutionist believes he is right because he has faith in himself.

Salvation comes by putting one’s faith in Christ instead of in oneself. It isn’t a case of being right so much as an understanding of how wrong you are by nature.

It is possible to put one’s trust in Jesus for their salvation and still be wrong.

One can be wrong about the timing of the Rapture and still be right about trusting Jesus for their salvation. One can be wrong about Bible prophecy and still be right about trusting Jesus for their salvation.

One can be wrong about their understanding of who the antichrist is, or is not, and still be right about trusting Jesus for their salvation.

It is even possible for one to be wrong about their church and its doctrine and still be right about trusting Jesus for their salvation.

Beyond the need for salvation and the way to obtain it, the battle isn’t over faith in Jesus, it is over one’s personal faith in oneself and one’s own rightness. What happens to that person when they lose the battle to someone with superior debating skills?

I’ve known many Christians who’ve been utterly demolished by skeptics who make a career out of debating the existence of God.

The Christian marches in, full of faith in his knowledge of details and doctrine, and has his faith shattered because his faith was rooted in his being right on all the details, rather than being in Jesus.

He gets a few details wrong, the skeptic uses those details to obscure the central truth, and the Message is lost in the debate. But the debate was supposed to be about the Message. Instead, it became about him.

The Christian’s faith in himself is in shambles. The skeptic walks away more convinced than ever of his rightness.

The final score? One wounded Christian. No victories for the Kingdom. Our faith was more in being right than being in Christ. And we pay the penalty for our misplaced faith.

None of us knows everything there is to know of God and His plan for the individual believer. What we DO know is that there are as many denominations within Christianity as there are letters in the alphabet, and each is convinced that their way is the only ‘right’ way.

But the Bible says that the ONLY way to heaven is through faith in Jesus. Everything else leads to bitter and endless debate that always degenerates into an argument over who gets to be right.

Debates are useful tools for sharpening one’s understanding of the things of God. But the problem with debates is that somebody has to be wrong. That doesn’t mean that it was God.

The Bible says, and logic and experience confirm, that all men are sinners who have missed the mark and come short of the glory of God. The Bible further says, and logic further confirms, that man is by nature a sinner from the day he is born until the day he dies.

The Bible says, and logic further confirms, that man is spiritually hopeless on his own. Spiritually, all men are equal.

Logic says that man is therefore lost without Someone to save him. The Bible says that God Himself took on human form in the Person of Jesus Christ.

Jesus lived the life God expects of each of us, and, having complied with God’s standards, was uniquely qualified to pay the penalty failure to meet God’s standards demands.

Our faith is rooted in understanding our inability to meet God’s standards, first, with our faith in Jesus Christ to meet that judicial standard on our behalf rising out of that first understanding.

There is a difference between winning a debate and sharing the Gospel. Sometimes, listening to Christians debating non-Christians (or especially each other) it seems like a distinction without a difference.

It becomes more about the personal vindication by being ‘right’ than it is about sharing what you know and leaving the rest up to the Holy Spirit. Salvation comes by putting one’s faith in Christ instead of in oneself.

To the unsaved observer, that looks like ‘humility’ — which is a lot more attractive than arrogance. And it is the unsaved observer that is the mission. Leading him to a saving knowledge of Christ is the mission.

Not winning the debate. That’s a mission you take on for yourself.

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on July 7, 2006

Featured Commentary: I Used to Be a Fetus ~J.L. Robb

The Netherlands: A Cautionary Tale

The Netherlands: A Cautionary Tale
Vol: 19 Issue: 25 Wednesday, January 25, 2017

In 58 BC, Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, a region comprising modern-day northern Italy, all of France and Belgium, western Switzerland and parts of the Netherlands and Germany.

In 1648, under the Treaty of Westphalia, the Netherlands was granted independence from Spain following history’s Eighty Years’ War.

One of Rome’s earliest military outposts was in Maastricht in the Netherlands, where the treaty that formally created the European Union was signed in 1992.

During the 15th century’s “Eighty Years’ War” the Dutch provinces became the most important trading centre of Northern Europe.

The Dutch nation flourished culturally and economically, creating what historian Simon Schama has called an “embarrassment of riches”. The first stock market crash in history was the Dutch stock market in 1637.

In 1688, William III of the Netherlands invaded England, leading to the English revolution that swept King James II from the throne, installing William the Dutchman as King of England.

It was the Dutch who settled New York City. Many of the place names around eastern New York are Dutch — (Amsterdam, NY comes to mind).

It was the Dutch unit of financial measure – the thaler — that loaned its name to the almighty American ‘dollar’.

When America was little more than a collection of coastal villages dotting the Eastern Seaboard, the Netherlands was among the world’s wealthiest and most powerful nations.

While the Americans were struggling to break away from their own colonial masters in 1776, the Dutch already ruled the vast colonial empires from Indonesia to Africa. There were no doubt Dutchmen serving in the Roman Army in the time of Christ.

The British invaded and tried to conquer the Netherlands in the 15th century. The Belgians invaded and tried in the 19th century.

The Nazis invaded conquered, occupied and even tried to erase the Netherlands from the map in the mid-20th century — but the Netherlands remained Dutch, tulips, dikes, wooden shoes and all. 

Until the youth movements of the 60s and 70s abandoned Dutch traditional values, rejected Dutch nationalism, and embraced multiculturalism, sexual ‘freedoms’, abortion, women’s rights, legalized drug abuse, euthanasia, the environment,and especially, unrestricted immigration.

The once-great Dutch empire was reduced, said Princess Maxima, wife of Holland’s Crown Prince Willem, to what she described in a speech last month as a place where;

“A typical Dutch person doesn’t exist.”

Assessment:

Her comments have tapped into a growing feeling among many Dutch who fear the rise in Muslim extremism in their midst and the loss of their own national identity.

“Unfortunately, the debate about Dutch identity is too often held at a very trite and trivial level, as if the discussion is between Brussels sprouts and wooden shoes on the one hand, and couscous and caftans on the other,” according to Bart Jan Spruyt, founder of The Edmund Burke Foundation, a conservative think tank.

“What is really at stake, due to a frivolous immigration policies and decades of multicultural indifference, is the identity of the Dutch nation, Dutch history and culture as a part of the history of Western civilization.”

The Dutch model for immigration allowed new immigrants to separate into ethnic groupings known as ‘pillars’, meaning people of different ethnic backgrounds, faiths or political persuasions had their own churches, schools, newspapers, television and radio broadcasters and labor unions.

The result was a hodge-podge of unassimilated ethnic groups loyal only to their communities, their home countries — or Islam.

On December 23, 2004, the Dutch Ministry of the Interior published a 60-page report entitled; “From Dawa to Jihad.”

The report concluded that there are close to one million Muslim immigrants, out of a population of just sixteen million, and that of that number, it estimated roughly fifty thousand of those are radical jihadists.

It also concluded that recruitment in The Netherlands for the armed radical Muslim struggle – mainly among descendants of immigrants – is not incidental but rather a trend.

Holland — with its disproportionately high Muslim population — is the canary in the mine. All across Europe, debate on Islam is being stopped.

Italy’s greatest living writer, Oriana Fallaci, was facing trial in her home country on charges of defaming at her death in September 2006, and in Britain the government seems intent on pushing through laws that would make truths about Islam and the conduct of its followers impossible to voice.

The governments of Europe have been tricked into believing that criticism of a belief is the same thing as criticism of a race. As a consequence, it becomes increasingly difficult to discuss the threats posed by the malignant ideology in their midst.

It is not racist to want to preserve one’s national culture, anymore than it is racist to want to preserve one’s family culture. Culture isn’t rooted in race, but in common beliefs. values and goals.

My family racial line is Irish. I have members of my family who married in from different ethnic backgrounds than Irish, but they are still part of my unique family culture.

We all tell stories to our kids about where we came from, and why family ties and family values are important. A national culture is merely the expression of a larger version of the family unit. 

Holland is a country whose culture was invaded with the enthusiastic support of its citizens who blindly and blissfully embraced the liberal Marxism that led to its cultural occupation.

They never saw the iron fist inside the velvet glove of multicultural madness until it hit them squarely between the eyes. But by then, they were already on the way down.

Holland is now a nation without national definition. It is too late for debate. It is too late to try and stuff the genie back into the bottle.

Those few Dutchmen who have tried have died. The rest are in hiding.

When Theo Van Gough attempted to produce a film critical of Islam written by Somali-born ex-Muslim and Dutch citizen Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Van Gough was murdered in broad daylight on an Amsterdam street.

The Muslim jihadist who killed him pinned a warning to others about insulting Islam on Van Gough’s chest. It was pinned there by a knife.

The Van Gough murder sparked a number of reprisal attacks by the Muslim community in The Netherlands, and Ali joined the growing group of intellectuals forced into hiding by the terror they invited into their midst.

It’s been said that ‘a liberal is a conservative who has never been mugged.’ Holland’s new rising political star is Geert Wilders, head of the Dutch Freedom Party. He rose to power on the strength of statements such as the one he gave in a British interview in February:

“Islam itself is the problem. Islam is a violent religion,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “The Prophet Mohammed was a violent man. The Koran is mostly a violent book. We should invest in Muslim people but they have to first get rid of half the Koran and half of their beliefs,” he said. 

(That statement earned him the sobriquet of ‘anti-immigrant politician’ in the liberal Telegraph’s lead sentence.)

Here in America, those who oppose the kind of unrestricted immigration that killed Holland face the same blind knee-jerk liberal reaction as their Dutch counterparts. 

To liberals, restricting immigration is racist and selfish and xenophobic and any other insult they can think of. If one opposes unrestricted immigration, then such a person is selfishly depriving of the benefits they themselves enjoy. 

I listened to liberal queen Susan Estrich last night on Hannity and Colmes defending a California law that would extend free education benefits to illegal aliens that it specifically denies members of the California National Guard, for example. 

Dr. Estrich is no intellectual lightweight — she is a professor of law at Loyola University. I even met her once. But it is mindless babble nonetheless. 

Susan Estrich lives in a gated community. So do most California liberals. They see no conflict in the fact that they themselves lock the doors to their own homes at night. They put up fences around their own yards. They lock their cars when they park them. Don’t they want others to enjoy the same benefits that they have? 

Of course they don’t. They want to give away yours. That is what makes liberal ideology so insidious. Liberalism is like a Tootsie-Roll Pop with an arsenic center. 

Holland is a typical liberal success story. Other countries where liberals rule find themselves more or less following Holland down the tubes, some more than others, but all in the same direction. 

For America in 2008, Holland serves as a cautionary tale. The root of liberal thinking is that man is his own supreme being, and therefore, it is up to man to provide what a ‘mythical God’ cannot.

Take your own mental poll: Those who trust God tend not to trust government. True or False? Those who put their trust in big government tend not to trust God. True or False?

If you picked ‘true’ for both questions, then you are in line with the Gallup poll that found conservatives are twice as likely to self-identify as born-again Christians as liberals are.

The Scriptures warn us (twice): “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” (Proverbs 14:12, 16:25)

Just ask a Dutchman — if you can still find one.

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on November 21, 2007

Featured Commentary: Quark Soup ~Wendy Wippel

Rapture Immanency

Rapture Immanency
Vol: 19 Issue: 24 Tuesday, January 24, 2017

The sermon known as the Olivet Discourse was given by Jesus from the Mount of Olives during the final week of His life on this earth.  He had just finished condemning the religious leaders of His day from the floor of the Temple for corrupting the Law of Moses.

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchers (tombs) which indeed appear beautiful outside, but are within full of dead men’s bones and of all uncleanness.”  (Matthew 23:27)

Matthew writes that when Jesus left the Temple, His disciples followed after “to show Him the buildings of the Temple.”

After having stood in the Temple itself to condemn its leaders for corruption, the disciples were no doubt imploring Him to reconsider, reminding Him how important the Temple was.

“And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”  (Matthew 24:2)

Keep the context in mind here.  Jesus has just now predicted the destruction of the Temple.  

“And as He sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto Him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world?”

This verse is usually where students of Bible prophecy commence their study of the Olivet Discourse. . .  “What shall be the sign of Thy coming? . . . and then we’re off to the races.

Let’s stop there and take a look at the time frames involved.  Jesus has yet to be sacrificed.  The Temple economy is in full operation.  There is no Church, no Gospel message . . . not even His Disciples really believed in Him.  (Peter later denied Him three times.)

Later that week, Jesus is crucified, dies and is Resurrected.  Jesus remained with them for forty days after His Resurrection. (Acts 1:3) Even after His Resurrection, they remained clueless.

“When they therefore were come together, they asked of Him, saying, Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6)   

After His ascension, the Comforter came at Pentecost. For the next forty years, the Church and the Temple stood together before its prophesied destruction in AD 70. 

It is during those forty years that the Gospel accounts were published and the early Church grew in spite of persecution by both the Romans and the Jewish authorities.

But while the Church was persecuted and hunted, Temple worship continued unabated.  The Book of Acts is filled with accounts of the persecution of the Apostles at the hands of the religious authorities.  Jerusalem remained the seat of Jewish religious authority. 

And for the next forty years at Passover, the Temple was crammed with pilgrims, until Titus destroyed it, brick by brick.

Assessment:

It is a more or less commonly-accepted belief that because the Church Age comes to a close with the Rapture that the Tribulation Period immediately follows.  

But that is really an assumption that has no Scriptural support. The Doctrine of Immanency says the Rapture is a secret, signless event. 

The signs of the approaching Tribulation merely confirm the lateness of the hour.  The Rapture could have happened long ago and the Tribulation still be future.  

The Church Age began at Pentecost but Temple worship continued another forty years.  That’s not to say that there is necessarily a forty-year interval between the Rapture and the Tribulation, but it does lend support to there being some interval period between the Rapture and the Tribulation Period.

If there is anything in Scripture that directly links the Rapture to the Tribulation, I am unable to find it.  Paul writes that before “that Wicked” can be revealed, there must first come a great falling away, or a great apostasy.

Secondarily, Paul writes, the Holy Spirit must be ‘taken out of the way.’   But nowhere does it say that the Antichrist appears the next day.  It says only that “He Who now letteth will let until He be taken out of the way.”

(The ASV translates the KJV’s “let” as“restrain” — the Greek word is katcheco — which literally means, “to hold fast” or “to possess.”  The Old English rendering ‘to let’ is in the same sense as having a room ‘to let’ or ‘to occupy’. )

Paul writes that the antichrist takes his seat in the Temple of God.  The Temple of God was destroyed by Titus and the Romans 40 years after the arrival of the Restrainer. 

The Prophet Daniel predicted that a prince of the people that would come to destroy the city and the sanctuary (Daniel 9:27) would confirm a covenant with ‘the many’ for one week.

(The people were the Romans under Titus. The coming ‘prince’ will therefore arise from some revived form of the Roman Empire.) 

Daniel’s prophesided “week” is a week of years (shabua) and represents the seventieth of Daniel’s 70 Weeks (Daniel 9:24).  

Paul describes the Temple desecrated by the antichrist as “the Temple of God.”  That requires the existence of a consecrated Temple on Temple Mount in Jerusalem as part of the overall covenant the antichrist breaks 3 1/2 years later by abolishing Temple worship.

Scripturally speaking, there is no more time-sensitivity between the Rapture of the Church and the Tribulation then there is between the ascension (or Rapture) of Jesus and the Destruction of the Temple forty years later. 

Scripturally speaking, there could be several years or — even decades — between the Rapture of the Church and the ultimate rise of the antichrist. 

In fact, it almost seems that some interval will be necessary for the world to reorganize and regroup after the sudden and unexplained disappearance of millions.  

We often think of the Rapture this way.  Suddenly, millions of people disappear.  An hour later, the antichrist confirms a peace treaty with Israel and the clock starts ticking down the final seven years.

Another view has millions of people suddenly disappearing after the antichrist has confirmed the covenant, after a quarter of the earth’s population have perished as a result of the other three horsemen of Revelation, (Famine, War, and Death) at the onset of the 3 ½ year Great Tribulation.

This destroys the doctrine of immanency and links the Rapture to the ‘blood moon’ of Revelation 6:12.

Neither view makes allowances for any interval between the removal of the Church (and Restrainer) and the onset of the Tribulation Period.  

But the Thessalonians feared they had missed the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto Him and that the Day of Christ was at hand. (2nd Thessalonians 2:1-2)

(Note that Paul speaks of “our gathering together unto Him” and the “Day of Christ” as two separate events.)

The Rapture could take place tomorrow and the Tribulation could start the next day.  But there is no Scripture to support that supposition. 

It is equally possible that the Rapture could take place tomorrow and it could take another twenty years before the world is sufficiently deluded to accept the antichrist.

What seems less possible is that the Rapture could take place tomorrow and that the antichrist could accomplish all that is prophesied within the next three and a half years, or even the next seven years.

But the Bible says that those living when all the signs of His return begin to come to pass, we are to look up, and lift up our heads, for our redemption draws near. (Luke 21:28)

But the Bible also says that the Lord will wait until the last possible moment to Rapture His Church for the sake of that last repentant sinner.

“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2nd Peter 3:9)

We watch the signs of the times because they are evidence that the Bible is true, that Bible prophecy is being fulfilled in this generation and therefore, there is no time to waste.  

If we can see the signs of the coming Tribulation, and there is an interval in between, then it means that the Rapture is even closer. 

And once we’re gone, there’s no second chance for those who are left behind.

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on June 12, 2010

They That Wait Upon The Lord. . .

They That Wait Upon The Lord. . .
Vol: 19 Issue: 23 Monday, January 23, 2017

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. – Isaiah 40:31

The word translated as “wait” in this verse is qavah, a root word with a number of different meanings.  As a root word, it literally means ‘to bind together’ in the sense of collecting, or twisting together.    

Figuratively, it is used in the same sense as our literal understanding of the English word, ‘wait’ , but the use of the word qavah adds two new dimensions, one in the sense of being “gathered together” and the second  in the sense of collectively looking for, or waiting upon, something or someone, in this case, the Lord.

The traditional understanding of this verse is its literal, historical context, which is that of an exhortation to the children of Israel suffering a long and miserable captivity in Babylon. 

The Kingdom of Israel had been destroyed by Sargon the Assyrian a generation before, and there was little reason to believe the Kingdom of Judah would fare any better.  As the years dragged by, the captives lost all hope of deliverance. 

The Prophet Isaiah exhorted them with words of comfort and hope:

“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD’s hand double for all her sins. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” (Isaiah 40:1-3)

The Prophet goes on, offering comforting visions of future prosperity, mixed with promises of a Deliverer . . .  yet the people remained in bondage.  Isaiah closes with the exhortation about “waiting upon the Lord”  . . . yet the people remained in bondage.

In the Big Picture, Isaiah’s vision spans the scope of history, from the Captivity through to the Diaspora, the Holocaust, and finally, the restoration process that began with its political revival in 1948 and will conclude with Israel’s national salvation at the conclusion of the Tribulation Period.

But it is also something of a metaphor for the Church in the last days.  The Prophet Jeremiah prophesied Judah would serve Babylon for seventy years.  So when the seventy years were over, all the Jews could expect to go home.  

(If only they knew for sure when the seventy year time-clock started.  Was it from the beginning of the siege in 597?  From the date of the Destruction of the Temple in 586?)   

And if one examines Jeremiah 25:9-12 closely, Jeremiah never said the captivity would last seventy years — he said the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years .  This is confirmed by the Prophet Daniel:

“In the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.” (Daniel 9:2)

But is only with the benefit of hindsight that we can see clearly that the seventy year time frame spanned the period of the Temple’s Desolation.

The Temple, and Jerusalem, were destroyed in 586 BC by the Babylonians.  The Temple, which was rebuilt, was consecrated in 516 BC, exactly 70 years after its destruction.

But if you were a Jewish captive serving your Babylonian masters, until it was history, you might as well be trying to guess the date of the Rapture.

Assessment:

“Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” (2nd Peter 3:3-4)

In a sense, that’s where we are on the prophetic time clock today.  Somewhere between the Temple Desolation Periods.  The Temple was desolated in AD 70.  The Bible predicts that at some point at or near the start of the Tribulation Period, the Third Temple will be rebuilt.

The Prophet Daniel predicted that the antichrist,  — a prince of the people who destroyed it in AD 70, will confirm a covenant that will permit the Jews to rebuild the Temple and restore the Temple worship and sacrifice system.

“And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.” (Daniel 9:27)

So, Israel was restored politically in May, 1948 which is just over sixty-four years ago.  For the first time in 2520 years, Israel was again in control of her own destiny.  So, is this event thetimeclock?  It hasn’t been seventy years yet, but it is close. 

Jesus prophesied that Jerusalem will be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.  Did that event trigger the timeclock?

Jerusalem was recaptured in June, 1967.  And here we are, forty-seven years later, still arguing about whether Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Israel, or of the non-existent state of Palestine.

Like the Babylonian captives, we won’t know exactly what event started the timeclock until afterwards.  Like them, we look around for signs that will give us hope that our deliverance is near.  

Every one of the major miracles in the life of Jesus corresponded to a major Jewish feast day.  The only two feast days for which there is not a corresponding major miracle are Rosh Hashanah – the Feast of the Trumpets – and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement.  Jesus died to atone for my sins and on the Day of the Rapture, I will be caught up with Him, completing my atonement process!  It is an entirely logical assumption.  It is extremely compelling.  Heck, it might even be right.

Except it isn’t.  Every year, both days go by and we’re still here.  We didn’t go last time around.  Probably won’t go this time around.

So we fixate on this sign, or that, while guys like Harold Camping give guys like Bill Maher all the material necessary to discourage guys like you and me.

And, as each period passes, more scoffers come out.  Go back to 2 Peter 3 and read Peter’s assessment of the scoffers in full — and see if you can identify them from his description.  

He tells you not only who they are, but WHY they became scoffers.

“And saying, Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.”

The scoffers know of the Promise.  It isn’t guys like Bill Maher that Peter is talking about.  The scoffers are believers who got burned by bad doctrine.  They got tired of waiting for the Lord and started looking for teachers offering shortcuts that ultimately didn’t pan out.  

As students of Bible prophecy, we have an awesome responsibility before God.  We’re to be witnesses.  Not storytellers.

Bible prophecy is both the proof of God’s existence and the assurance we have of our salvation.

“We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:” (2 Peter 1:19)

The same Voice that proclaimed,

“So shall my word be that goeth forth out of My mouth: it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. (Isaiah 55:11)

also proclaimed,

“And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand.” (John 10:28)

Bible prophecy is not gloom and doom, but instead offers hope and a blessed assurance.  It is proof positive that God remains on His Throne and that He WILL do all that He has promised. 

But it is NOT a parlour game to be used to impress people at parties or to divine the future.  There must be a million websites devoted to identifying the antichrist (and selling you provisions to escape the coming wrath.)

Believers are instructed to await the return of the Lord for His Church, not the coming of the antichrist.  Signs that the world is preparing for the antichrist are really signs the Lord is preparing to come for His Church first.

1 Thessalonians 1:10 admonishes us; . . . “to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.”

We are instructed to wait for the Deliverer from wrath, not the wrath itself.

To the lost, the Lord will come unexpectedly like a thief.  But to believers who are expecting Him and do not sleep, the Bible says that Christ will not come “as a thief.”

This does NOT mean that we are prepared because we KNOW the date of His return, rather, we are not surprised because we are EXPECTING an IMMINENT Rapture.

It is the job of the Church to prepare the world for the coming of Christ, not to try and figure out His exact itinerary.

Guys like Bill Maher are rich enough already.

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on July 3, 2012

Featured Commentary: From Here to Eternity ~Pete Garcia

Atonement

Atonement
Vol: 19 Issue: 21 Saturday, January 21, 2017

If there is anything about this Christian life that makes it hard to grasp, it is the principle of atonement.  But once you get it, the rest of it makes sense.

It makes shorter work of understanding grace and mercy and explains why salvation cannot be related to works.  I’ll say that again at the beginning of the column so you will know what to look for. 

We are going to find the reason why salvation CANNOT be related to works.  So let’s start first with ‘works’.

In Christian theology, we work at the task of living, and our “works” are the visible results of that effort. 

“Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.” (James 2:18)

How we approach the task of living produces certain fruit reflective of the way in which in works at it.  I don’t need to be told that Donald Trump has a strong work ethic. 

He wouldn’t have accomplished what he has with his life if he didn’t.  The fruit of his works is his wealth and property.

I don’t need to be told that Barack Obama is a man of great ambition – his ruthlessness in the pursuit of his high office reflects that.  The fruit of his works is obvious.

James says that faith is not something that can be visibly demonstrated except through the works that result from it.  This makes logical sense.  Faith without works is dead.  But you can’t turn the equation around — works have nothing to do with faith. 

Works cannot generate faith, unless that faith is in one’s own ability to perform them.  If my faith is in my works, then it can be well and truly said that I am faithful — to me. 

From here, there is no possible way to skip over me and claim my real faith is in the completed Work at the Cross because of how good I am.

But it is by faith we are saved and not works. 

“Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.” (Romans 3:27)

“And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.” (Romans 11:6)

“This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” (Galatians 3:2)

“Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began,” (2^nd Timothy 1:9)

“That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.” (2^nd Timothy 3:17)

We are saved by grace and perfectly equipped with the necessary equipment (Scriptures) to do all good works. 

There is an old hymn that says, “only one life, t’will soon be past, only what’s done for God will last. . .”

The only truly unselfish and perfect good work a Christian can do is to lead a lost soul to Christ.  We are equipped with the Scriptures and motivated by faith.  Works, good or bad, cannot possibly be relevant to faith in Christ’s ability to save you.

Otherwise, the principle of atonement would not make sense.

Assessment: 

The word atonement is a variation of the Hebrew word “kapher” whose primitive root literally means “to cover, specifically with bitumen, or pitch.”  It is the same word used in Genesis 6:14 when God instructed Noah to waterproof the ark with pitch.  

Bitumen is the heaviest, thickest form of petroleum.  It’s a really sticky, gooey type of oil like the tar used to patch a leaky roof.  The point is that bitumen covers completely, doesn’t wash off and prevents anything from getting through it.

Atonement literally means ‘to be covered’ and figuratively as ‘the means whereby alienation ceases and reconciliation ensues’. “Reconciliation” is the equivalent term given for the same Hebrew word, kopher ‘to cover’, or ‘atonement’.

A kindred term expressing a different aspect of the same truth is “propitiation” (hilasmos) (1^stJohn 2:2), the verb of which is in Hebrews 2:17 translated “to make reconciliation.”

Also “ransom,” or payment for redeeming a captive (Job 33:24), kopher, “an atonement,”Matthew 20:28. Hebrews 9:12; Christ, “having obtained eternal redemption for us.”

We are saved by faith in the atonement, through Christ, Who obtained eternal redemption forus.

The atonement; kopher, hilasmos, is the covering of our sins with the Blood of Christ, which covers them as completely as pitch, allowing nothing to get through.  The redemption is the price paid for the covering that provides for the ‘reconciliation’ which means ‘atonement’. 

We can go at it all day but every word that is used to explain the mechanism by which we are saved eventually winds back to atonement, illustrated as ‘covering’.  That is salvation.

To lose one’s salvation, one must, by his own works, somehow sin through the covering Blood of Christ, which is why understanding the illustration of “covering” — specifically with something as sticky and impenetrable as bitumen – is so necessary to understanding the Christian’s true standing before God.

I didn’t make atonement (cover) myself.  Neither did I make atonement for myself.  I didn’t have the ‘pitch’ I needed – I had to get it from somewhere else.

After atonement was made for me and the covering applied at the moment of salvation, I put my faith in the clear and repeated proclamation that the covering was enough.

“Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” (Romans 3:28)

The atonement (covering) allows us to stand before God justified, judicially righteous and without the stain of sin.  We obtain that covering by repenting (metaneo – a change of mind) about our sin and trusting Jesus Christ for our salvation.

The illustration used by Scripture recalls the pitch used to seal Noah’s Ark at the Lord’s direct instruction. Our works cannot add to the atonement (covering), nor can they scrape it off. 

In this illustration, you aren’t Noah.  You’re the ark.

The atonement (covering) is obtained by faith and it is faith in the atonement that produces works of faith. Works neither produce that faith, nor can they undo the covering obtained by that faith. 

Saving, sustaining faith is in the covering, not the coveree.

“I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ, liveth in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith ofthe Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself for me.”

“I do not frustrate the grace of God, for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain. (Galatians 2:20-21)

Don’t let the enemy steal away the victory.  There are dark times ahead.  Know where you are in Christ and you can’t help but walk in the light. 

How great is that?

This Letter was writen by Jack Kinsella on Novemeber 11, 2010

Godly King David?

Godly King David?
Vol: 19 Issue: 20 Friday, January 20, 2017

Israel’s King David is the only man in the history of man to wear the title, “a man after God’s own heart.”  The title isn’t one bestowed on him by the rabbis or the sages as a result of his being Israel’s greatest King.

“Israel’s greatest king” is a secular, political title given him by Jewish historians.  He didn’t get that title until after Israel’s Kingdom Period came to an end and there were no more kings to evaluate. 

Of all the kings of Israel from its first king, Saul, to its last king, Hoshea, David was the greatest political leader. 

Under David, Jerusalem was established as Israel’s capital.  David purchased the threshing-floor from Araunah the Jebusite, even though Araunah offered it to David for free as tribute.  Note that the Bible refers to Araunah as “a king.”  

 “All these things did Araunah, as a king, give unto the king. And Araunah said unto the king, The LORD thy God accept thee.” (2 Samuel 24:23)

 Instead, the Bible says that David paid for it in cash. 

“And the king said unto Araunah, Nay; but I will surely buy it of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the LORD my God of that which doth cost me nothing. So David bought the threshingfloor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver” (2 Samuel 24:24)

Araunah was a Jebusite, meaning he spoke the language of the Hittites.  In the language of the Hittites, Araunah means “the lord” or “the king” in the sense of a personal title.   

King David conquered Jebusite Jerusalem.  While David took the city after the manner of conquerors, he bought the threshing-floor.   He paid cash for it, to the owner, who just so happened to also be the king of the newly conquered city.

Why is this important?  Jerusalem is a political entity whose conquest was typical of the times.  Once conquered, it became the capital city of the Kingdom of David, which also expanded as the result of conquest.

There is nothing particularly unusual about that – that is the way that all existing political divisions became political divisions – through conquest.

America was born out of a failed British attempt at conquest and expanded to the West Coast through the political doctrine of ‘Manifest Destiny’ – which justified the conquest of the people who owned it.

But Araunah’s threshing floor was the site selected by God as the home of the Ark of the Covenant and the site of the eventual construction of the Temple.  It wasn’t conquered or taken as a prize of conquest, although it was freely offered.

There was to be no question as to legal ownership of God’s Holy Hill.  Jerusalem has been conquered and lost and reconquered hundreds of times over the course of its three thousand year history. 

But the Temple Mount was legally purchased only once.

Araunah was the king that legally owned the threshing-floor.  David was the king that legally bought it – for cash, before witnesses, and the sale was recorded for posterity in the pages of Scripture.  

David’s actions ensured that, even after three thousand years, the only possessor of clear title to the Temple Mount is the heirs to David’s kingdom.  That action, more than any other, is what made David Israel’s greatest king.

But what made David “a man after God’s own heart?”

Assessment:

David was no shrinking violet but was instead a bloody man of war.  King Saul made David a commander over his armies after David handed Saul more than 200 Philistine, er, ahem . . . foreskins.  I mean, this guy was brutal.

His last request of his son and heir, Solomon, was that Solomon kill David’s oldest enemies on his behalf.

King David’s record is nothing one would think of as ‘godly’ – he was at various times deceitful and corrupt, a traitor to King Saul, a tyrant who lacked for justice and a murderer.  David slaughtered Saul’s seven sons, seduced a married woman, Bathsheba, and had her husband, Uriah killed.

I could go on listing David’s offenses, which are many, all of which are carefully noted in Scripture. David was such a bloody man that God would not permit him to build the Temple. (1 Chronicles 22:8)

God punished David for his bloodthirstiness by delivering his kingdom to Absalom (2 Samuel 16:8).  God cursed David for ordering the murder of Uriah the Hittite (2 Samuel 12:9-10)

By any standard interpretation of what would make a guy a good person, David was a very bad man indeed.  His conduct was deplorable in almost every single aspect of his reign.  So what made David a man after God’s own heart?

The Bible also tells us that David loved God’s Law. (Psalms 119:97)  He loved to pray (Psalms 116:1-2). He loved to praise God (Psalms 119:164).  David hated falsehood (Psalms 119:104).  When confronted with his sin, David didn’t attempt to justify it.   Nor did he pretend to be more than he was.

After Nathan convicted David of his sin against Uriah with Bathsheba, David took it directly to the Lord.

In his prayer of contrition in Psalm 51, David reveals much of what it was that caused God to pronounce him a ‘man after His own heart.’

“Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.” (Psalms 51:1)

David understood that his relationship with God was ‘according to His lovingkindness’ and not according to David’s definition of what God should do.  He also understood that his sin, as horrendous as it was, could be blotted out, not by some act of David’s, but solely due to the ‘multitude of God’s tender mercies’.

“Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.  For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.” (v.2.3)

David knew that God knew what his sins were, but the important point was that DAVID knew what his sins were, and the importance of honest confession before God.

David understood also that his sin was against God, that it was deliberate, and that the reason his sin haunted him was because of its offense before God.  David understood that, since it was a sin against God, only an act of God could blot it out.  Nothing David could do to make restitution would ever be sufficient.

“Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight: that Thou mightest be justified when Thou speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest.” (v.4)

David understood that there was no ‘wiggle room’ before the Lord and that God’s justice is as absolute as His mercy.  But David was also a realist;

“Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psalms 51:5)

David understood the dual nature of fallen humanity, that which caused the Apostle Paul to cry out;

 “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24)

“For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.” (Romans 7:14-15)

Having expressed his frustration with his own struggle with his dual nature, Paul summarized that which David understood, saying,

“So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.” (Romans 7:25)

David prayed,

“Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.” (Psalms 51:6)

God’s truth is that nothing we can do by our own effort will ever make restitution for our past sins.  Each of us shares the same conflict between the carnal nature and the spirit.

David trusted God to lead him, even when he was out of fellowship, having faith that ‘in the hidden part’ — in his spirit, God would ‘make him to know wisdom’.

David’s understanding of the grace of God as expressed in his prayer in large part, fits with God’s description of him as being a man after His own Heart.

It was this understanding of unmerited grace that formed the centerpiece of the ministry of Jesus.  One of the Lord’s earthly titles is the “Son of David.”

David expresses his understanding of how the process of forgiveness operates in God’s economy.

“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” (v. 7-10)

Note the role David plays in his redemption.  Admit, confess, repent and trust.  To ‘repent’ means to change one’s mind about sin.  David saw himself as King of Israel, and therefore, whatever he did was above reproach.

David sat on his throne, and passed judgment on the wicked rich man of whom Nathan spoke.  Until he realized Nathan was speaking about HIM, at which point he changed his mind about his sin and laid himself bare before the Lord.

All the rest of the redemptive process David placed in the Hands of God.  ‘Purge me, wash me, forgive me, bless me and renew me.’

Even his sense of conviction came through a direct message from God through Nathan, just as we are directly convicted by God through His indwelling Holy Spirit.  David’s only role in his redemption was to trust in God to make the changes that David knew he could not effect himself.

David accepted the earthly consequences of his sin, such as the death of his infant son, but with the clear understanding that the spiritual consequences of his sin were forgiven.

“While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether GOD will be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I SHALL GO TO HIM, but he shall not return to me.” (2nd Samuel 12:22-23)

What made David a man after God’s own heart was his understanding of the consequences of being out of fellowship with God, and how to get back into right fellowship with God. 

David simply asked Him.

“Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation; and uphold me with Thy free spirit.”

Note that David didn’t ask for his salvation to be restored, but rather, the joy of it.  It is the joy of knowing one is saved and in fellowship with the Lord that shines through and attracts the lost. 

“THEN will I teach transgressors Thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto Thee.”(v. 12-13)

Note also the progression: GOD restores our joy, GOD then subsequently upholds us with His Spirit.  THEN we find ourselves effective witnesses, teaching people His ways, and leading the lost to Christ.

David makes it clear that the redemptive process is in God’s Hands, understanding grace so well that he could see past the Temple rituals of the Mosaic Law and peer into God’s Heart, saying,

“For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” (v. 51:16-17)

One of the most debilitating emotions to one’s Christian witness is the weight of the guilt we heap on ourselves because of what we KNOW that we are in our own ‘inward parts’.

David understood, in his spirit, that God’s forgiveness is total and absolute, and leaves no spiritual residue of guilt.  At the Cross, the Son of David cried out in a loud voice, ‘Tetelestai!’ which means, ‘paid in full’.

David trusted God instead of relying on his own righteousness.  God called David “a man after My own heart.”  It is deceptively simple.  Trust God.  Be joyful.

Allow Him to lead you and not the other way around.

“And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:7)

Maranatha!

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on July 27, 2011

Featured Commentary: Please, Just Give Me Christ ~Alf Cengia