Many of us, writing from the perspective of ‘watchmen on the wall,’ are convinced that time is so short that there is NO TIME left for any of us to fool around. We were given the gift of life to make this choice. Sadly, too few of us choose to optimize it.
We take the attitude that we must put the case directly to anyone remotely prepared to listen. Why? Because eternal Hell is standing open with its great maw waiting impatiently for the multitudes that very soon (having had judgment passed on themselves as they stand in abject poverty of spirit before the Great White Throne) are to be consigned, along with their true master, to that awful place so reserved for them down through the ages since the fall of man.
And what they are going to experience in ‘Tribulation’ before they stand before the Throne is something they would not dare, nor in their weirdest nightmare, care to contemplate.
Funny that, when you consider the World’s preoccupation with doomsday films. Hollywood screenwriters spend a great amount of time preparing the scenarios for an ever-increasing number of such films. It’s as if this passing World is writing its own epitaph in some kind of macabre pictorial obituary. BUT WHO WILL REMAIN TO READ IT, I WONDER?
What then is our real sin?
It is not our broken Commandments and maybe our dissolute way of life hitherto. The latter is simply symptomatic of the LORD’s real gripe with us. It is that we are to be judged for our ‘denial’ per se.
We have been granted (as a gift from God) our whole life (whether in health or illness) to reconcile ourselves to the LORD through Jesus.
We (in the so-described Christian countries of the West) had every opportunity to meet Him. This is particularly valid if we were raised in what purports to be a ‘Christian’ household. We had more than sufficient time and opportunity to listen, read a Bible, ask questions, and thereby to realize that the way home was only through a broken and contrite heart. And then, having had this exposure, we surely had more than enough time to fully understand and accept that Jesus is truly the Christ of The Living God and thus is God Himself. And that He was given to us as the sacrificial, paschal lamb.
That is, that God gave HIMSELF, as man, to die to sin that lives within us, legacy to our fallen state. TRY GETTING YOUR HEAD AROUND THAT!
And He died the death of an executed criminal for the sins of every man, woman or child (intellectually capable of having the cognizance of understanding).
Actually, I think the latter comes very early, having listened to the testimony of some kids stricken with terminal cancer who were both fully aware of Him and indeed had placed their trust in Him.
But most of us have failed the test. And generations of our earthly parents and forebears have also consistently failed us (more so at this time than perhaps at any other).
We were offered a relationship of Grace. Most of us have consistently scorned it.
We have denied that which was staring us in the face all the time. But pride and arrogance together with the omnipresent pull of our flesh and self-will has, in the main, won out. Passing through and into many of us, the sin of denial has won a satanic but pyric ‘victory’ entering the multitudes of the ensuing generations of fallen man.
Though all of us contend with our fleshly desires as they constantly seek new levels of titillation to stimulate our sensory receptors, the believer (given of himself by personal choice to Jesus) will not give up the fight. He seeks to live in the spiritual realm, working with due diligence to subdue the flesh.
Oh… he will so often fall and fail. And yet, undaunted, because of the call of his own Spirit and under the protection of the Holy Spirit, he is aided by that great counselor to approach the Cross once more, throwing himself upon the mercy of the Christ King.
Where there is no enduring, complicit denial (guess what?), that mercy is not only an enduring promise, IT IS ALWAYS HONORED AND DELIVERED.
Thanks be to God to Whom belongs the glory!
How sad, how awful, how beyond comprehension that the multitudes have alternatively (by deliberate choice) chosen to ignore the spiritual (and their only chance of redemption) in favor of giving themselves over to that which results in eternal death.
Matthew 7:7-8 says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened….”
But you can also (most definitely) apply this passage negatively if you are perpetually, by choice, locked into denial.
For if, in denial, you seek that which gratifies the flesh, you will find it. Knock and that door will be opened to you. Ask and you WILL receive; he who seeks finds, and he who knocks upon the GATES OF HELL WILL SEE IT BE OPENED TO HIM IN WELCOME. For you see, within your convicted denial, your appeal is directly to SATAN; and he will surely give you what you seek and chortle as it destroys you utterly.
God seeks us constantly through Jesus (presently through the Holy Spirit). The Bible and faithful pastoring guides us to Him. And then, if in our broken and contrite hearts we claim that we have found Him, He demands that we acknowledge our commitment to Him through Jesus, by word of mouth.
This is the true confession of faith. No priest can give it to you or say it on your behalf; you must confess it so with your lips to Him.
Note that scripture (as far as I understand it to say) doesn’t intimate that this is something you need to do in public confession, though you may delight to do so in praise of Him. Nor do you need to make this confession of faith to a third party who, though purporting to have some passed-on divine mandate from God, says that he or she can so intercede for you. That, brethren, is hogwash and garbage of the first and finest water.
In every family where the opportunity was presented at one time, we either freely chose or denied; and, in doing so (by our denial) we sang that melody, ‘I did it my way,’ (that greatly ironic, worldly mantra warbled by the late Cranky-Franky Sinatra and a swathe of others who adapted it seemingly as almost an anthem of this passing age).
Indeed, media accounts of the chosen lifestyle of some who have sung from this songbook over the years serve to indicate that they certainly appeared to have made such a personal choice. Looking at profiles of their earthly lives, we see almost a testimony to the course they apparently chose. However, whether at the last their lives gave testimony to radical re-consideration of the state of their souls, I know not?
This option held out to us by a compassionate, loving LORD is always ours to take. However, it is truly a ‘take it or leave it’ choice. For just as compassion and love incarnate is completed in His glorious Majesty and holiness, it must be understood that it is tempered by His divine will and judgment. There is a given limit to His patience. And He will not stay His hand forever for judgment of His own wayward creation who remain, by free will, locked behind the stone wall of their personal denial.
When they appear for judgment, the Living God will utterly smash that stone wall so that they are forced to acknowledge what they so willfully denied.
I confess a little “we tried to tell you” to those who will not recant their denial and whose sneers and jeers we have endured down the centuries. Philosophy, ‘science,’ and what purports itself as pure intellectualism (often masquerading under the mask of gross pride and supreme arrogance) are tools well utilized by Satan.
On the other hand, we stand accused of fundamentalism, brainlessness and, these days, dangerous subversiveness. We are thus personified as folk who interfere with the progress of mankind towards his rightful utopian existence (if only clods such as we would get off the highway and make way for what will surely come).
Actually, we do get off ‘their’ highway. It is well-known to us scripturally as ‘The Highway to Hell!’ And it fills us with dire dread and shuddering fear of the consequences lying in wait for the multitudes of unbelievers.
The Earth is His footstool. He made it. It is His to do with as His own Will sees fit. If you can get your head around that, my brothers and sisters, you have certainly come to realize the infinite power and might of what we, taken from dust, are subject to and by whom.
I’m not speaking of those who have even yet not had any opportunity to meet Jesus. There will be a special judgment for them whether under the Law or upon any claim that God feels is relevant to their situation. I won’t go into that too much here – too lengthy and a lot of Scripture dealing with it, particularly in Peter, Paul and Acts.
However, we might just look at Paul’s Letter to the Philippians wherein he writes that ALL (whether in Heaven or on Earth, including the deniers) will one day bow the knee before Jesus and confess that He is both Messiah and the Lord God to the glory of God His Father. I understand this to mean that even the deniers will have no option so to do; they will be compelled to make this acknowledgement.
Philippians 2: 5-11 (Aramaic Bible in plain English):
“And reason in your souls this that also Yeshua The Messiah did: He who, while he was in the form of God, did not esteem this as a prize, that he was the equal of God, But he stripped himself and took the form of a Servant and was in the form of the children of men, and was found in fashion as a man. And he humbled himself and was obedient unto death, even the death of being crucified.
“Because of this, God has also greatly exalted him and he has given him The Name which is greater than all names, That in The Name of Yeshua, every knee shall bow, which is in Heaven and in The Earth and which is under The Earth, And every tongue shall confess that Yeshua The Messiah is THE LORD JEHOVAH to the glory of God his Father.”
As far as we are concerned (to simplify), there are TWO camps:
- The ‘good guys.’ They chose Him (at last having admitted in their hearts that Jesus is Lord and Savior and that the only way Home is through Him), TOOK IT and – with hearts broken in repentance for the time wasted, loaded and bowed down with their own surfeit of sin – begged God for forgiveness.
THEY FREELY MADE THE CHOICE OF ACCEPTANCE, AND BY MOUTH AND HEART HAVE PROCLAIMED JESUS AS LORD and acknowledge that only the Christ leads us home to God.
- The ‘bad guys.’ They have not/will not recant. And ‘NO,’ the sin that will convict them is not that they have plumbed the depths of depravity.
God Help us, we all have (in our secret heart of hearts) plumbed the depths that we should never have dived into. We are speaking of those who, well-knowing their sin, not only reveled in the pig swill, but flaunted it before the Throne of God, willfully denying themselves the opportunity to seek His forgiveness through Jesus.
These are they who, by intent (in whatever form or way they freely chose), deny God Himself. This may include denial of His existence or, well-knowing His Lordship, utterly rejecting the concept that God should be given ‘control’ over their self-gratifying lives. And I rather suspect that most of this world knows He exists but even lie to themselves and others on that which really, in their souls, they know to be incontrovertible fact.
There is no hope for these. Their God on Earth, in this passing World, is themselves; and their master has become, by action of choice, Satan.
So there are the two alternatives. I cannot simplify in any other way, though others may do a far better job. Those still subject to strange cults and manmade godheads will, as I understand it, be granted opportunity to ‘see’ Jesus and choose. Those remaining in denial and rejection have already made their choice. And such is the degree of their denial that Scripture says that God will, at some stage in their lives, turn them over to blindness. When He chooses to do so, any chance of them seeking his mercy through the option reserved for the ‘good guys’ is lost.
God is merciful, He is loving, AND He is JUST. He will NOT be mocked indefinitely.
Go onto YouTube and you will see dozens and dozens of deniers. Locked into the ‘wisdom’ of their self-proclaimed understanding and great intellect, they deny, they alter the meaning of Scripture, and many love to even deny the historical entity of Jesus. They portray Him who was condemned and sacrificed, sinless, as fallen in sin. In doing so, they deny Him as The Paschal Lamb of unblemished purity, given by our Father for us who freely choose Him. Out of the sepulcher of their denying mouths is spewed forth their own condemnation.
For just as we, in our commitment, must freely confess our conversion to God through Jesus with our lips, so is it ordained that the truly fallen do likewise as they ‘sing’ their wicked mantra of denial, also with their lips. Condemnation is most often the end result of what we spew out of our evil mouths.
In speaking of ‘the good guys,’ remember that we are not speaking of the ‘wonderfully’ righteous life we may have (in our own estimation) been hitherto leading. All of us are fallen in sin. All of us have, without exception, failed miserably.
Have we no hope then (paraphrasing Paul)?
Of course we have.
Romans 8:9 “You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.”
And so we would do well to remember that wonderful hymn:
My Hope Is Built On Nothing Less
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly trust in Jesus’ Name.
Refrain
On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.
When darkness seems to hide His face,
I rest on His unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.
Refrain
His oath, His covenant, His blood,
Support me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my Hope and Stay.
Refrain
When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh may I then in Him be found.
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.
Refrain
Listen to the hymn at this link.
Maranatha,
Denis Bowden