Articles

Last week, we clearly showed that a person who has truly been saved cannot, under any circumstances, be lost. And, if one could be lost, he could never be re-saved, as Jesus has only died once for our sins, and He will never die again. The text for this is Hebrews 6:1-6. Jesus would need to be put to open shame again, and that is not happening. Now, let us move on. Those trying to make you doubt what God has given you are mistaken, or worse, simply trying to scare you into constant re-thinking and never actually growing in Jesus.

Romans 5:1, those of us who are saved are declared ‘justified.’ This is a legal term; we have been acquitted, declared blameless (remember, God told Satan that Job was ‘blameless’). This is a term to declare that no sin, no record of sin is recorded against us.

Go and see the last lesson for a list of verses that tell us where our sins have gone. In Psalm 32:2 and then repeated in Romans 4:8, we are told that we are blessed to have ‘our sins removed.’ If they are removed, we are saved, and we are now justified in Jesus. In verse 2, we have this great ‘Hope’, a true hope that God can use to build a future for us. We have a reason to rejoice; our sins are gone, and with that we have true fellowship with God according to 1 Corinthians 1:9 and John 14:23.

In verses 3-4, we find the process of sanctification. When I was working on this, I came across a story of a woman who was in a ladies’ Bible class, and they had read from Malachi 3:1-3: “He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer to the Lord an offering in righteousness.” Verse 3, quoted here, got her attention, and she set about to research it. She found a local jeweler and asked to watch him purify silver, and he obliged. He explained that silver needed a high temperature between 962-1100 Celsius to boil, and that the smelting had to be perfectly timed; neither too little nor too much time was good – as such, the jeweler could not take his eye off the silver.

She asked him how he knew it was done, and his reply was when I can see my reflection in the silver, it is done. And so it is with us as God sanctifies and purifies us. He is a master jeweler, and He is ever watching over us, making sure that we do not burn and that one day soon, His reflection will be seen in us.

In verse 5, we find that love is one of the natural fruits of God growing us into the image of Jesus. We begin to love God more, and we love each other more. We begin to want to love even those whom we did not love before or even think we could love before. Sin begins to bother us more; things that used to come naturally gradually become foreign to us. Our words change, our actions change, our thinking changes, and our desires change. Life is gradually reshaped by God through the Holy Spirit living in us, and our eyes are opened.

Imagine the Apostle Paul, who was a Pharisee for the vast majority of his life until he met Jesus, and then he tells us that all the self-righteousness he had as a Pharisee he counted as ‘dung,’ and he began to see himself as ‘the chief of sinners.’ If you recall, Jesus used two men as examples one day at the Temple. One, a Pharisee, thanked God that he was not like other men, mere sinners. The other, a Publican, a tax collector, fell face-first to the ground and refused to even look up because he knew he was a sinner, and he cried out to God for mercy.

Paul began life as a Pharisee and ended it as a Publican. So too do all who come to Jesus. We may not think we are that bad when we get saved, but the more time we spend with Jesus, the more sinful we become in our eyes and the more in love we become with the One who died for a sinner like me. When was the last time you told Jesus that you loved Him? When was the last time that you had a conversation with Jesus? No, not prayer, a conversation. You know, when you just start talking to Him like He is in the car or on the trail walking with you and the dog?

The Apostles had conversations with Jesus; they chatted with Him about life, their wants, needs, dreams, complaints, and the like. At times, He spoke kindly to them; at times, He told them to wait a bit longer to get their wants; and at times, He rebuked them. But they had these real, sometimes emotional conversations because they had a true relationship fraught with the emotional valleys and hills that come to all relationships. This is the sanctification; it can be messy and filled with failures and re-dos, but it reminds us that what we have is real. So, you are justified in Jesus, not let’s get sanctified by Jesus.

seangooding@yahoo.ca

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario

Future Shock is the name of a book written by sociologist and futurist Alvin Toffler in 1970, at just about the same time that Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth was hitting the New York Times bestseller list.

Toffler’s book was made into a movie narrated by Orson Welles in 1972. Coincidentally, Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth was also made into a movie, also narrated by Orson Welles, in 1979.

Toffler’s book addressed the speed with which technology was changing, back in the age of microwave ovens and beta VCRs.

He defined the social response to the shattering speed of 1970s technological and social advancement this way:

“Future shock is the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.”

Toffler explains, “Man has a limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock.”

As already noted, Toffler’s book was published the same year as Hal Lindsey’s Late, Great Planet Earth. Toffler’s book explained future shock as a social symptom. Hal’s book explained what future shock was a symptom OF.

The prevailing feeling of impending doom that existed in the early 1970s was real enough that both books were instant runaway best-sellers. In those days, that sense of ‘something’ was vague and undefined, but it was there.

Toffler tried to define it, Lindsey tried to explain it, movie franchises like The Omen and Mad Max tried to capitalize on it, but one thing is certain:

Whatever ‘it’ is, ‘it’ made its presence known with enough impact to make The Late, Great Planet Earth the best-selling Christian-themed book in history (excluding the Bible). It embraced Toffler’s term, ‘future shock’ so completely, it is now part of our vocabulary, and made The Omen and Mad Max franchises among the most successful of their time.

There was a sudden awakening to the fact that the Bible gave certain signs for the last days; discernible, chartable, undeniable and precise signs.

The 1967 Six-Day War awakened the world to Israel’s existence and thrust her onto the world’s stage. Jerusalem, a city which most people thought of more in mystical than bricks-and-mortar terms, was suddenly the most important city on Earth.

Although Bible prophecy was seldom discussed among Christians, suddenly, people started to connect some of the dots. Some ran to guys like Toffler for answers. Others ‘whistled past the graveyard’ by turning their fears into entertainment.

When Hal Lindsey connected the dots for the secular world through Scripture, millions turned to the Bible for the answers instead.

Assessment

Future Shock was published forty-four years ago. If the pace of change was shocking back then, consider what it means today. An entire generation has grown up in a world where everything they learned yesterday is obsolete information tomorrow.

If you were born in 1970 and went to college and majored in geography, for example, when you graduated at 22 in 1992, everything you spent the last four years learning was wrong.

There was no Soviet Union, and there were about forty extra countries that didn’t used to be there.

Technology changes so fast that last year’s TV is as obsolete as last year’s computer. Last year’s car gave GPS-guided verbal directions to any destination on the globe – this year’s car can parallel park itself.

As all this takes place, that sense of an impending ‘something’ continues to build as we look for ways to explain it. It sits somewhere at the back of the consciousness – like wondering whether or not you turned off the iron before leaving for church.

Consequently, there has been an explosion in interest in things spiritual, extra-terrestrial, occultic, and scientific as people look for an explanation for what amounts to a global ‘nagging’ feeling.

Daniel said all this would take place in the midst of an explosion of knowledge and a sense of disorientation (future shock?), writing,

“But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased” (Daniel 12:4).

At about the same time that Alvin Toffler wrote of the ‘to and fro’ nature of exploding knowledge and gave us the term, ‘future shock,’ Christians like Hal Lindsey, Dwight Pentecost and others were taking note of the fact that the words of Daniel were no longer “sealed.”

As Israel took her place among the nations, the Arab-Israeli conflict took global center stage, and Daniel’s ten toes began to wiggle as old Europe began to pull itself together. Daniel and Revelation became less about symbols and more about specific details.

Until this generation, symbols were satisfactory because there was no literal framework in which to put them. Until the restoration of Israel, everything about Bible prophecy for the last days was symbolic.

With Israel’s restoration, symbols revealed themselves as facts; the heads, horns and beasts became identifiable nations; leaders and systems and the words of the Prophets morphed from ancient prose to future history to future shock as the world slowly recognizes that the clock is winding down.

“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful” (Romans 1:28-31).

The symbols are no longer symbolic; they are literal. Bible prophecy is only as futuristic as tomorrow’s newspapers. The Second Coming of Christ is much less a joke and much more a cause for sober reflection than at any time since the first century.

“And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh” (Luke 21:38).

Wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, pestilences, false Christs, solar anomalies, signs in the cosmos, global fear and confusion at what appears to be coming upon the earth…it’s ALL part of our present existence.

“Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till ALL be fulfilled” (Luke 21:32).

This generation. That’s us. Tell your friends.

(Written by Jack Kinsella on June 24, 2011)

Romans 5:1-5: Justified and Sanctified :: By Sean Gooding

When the Future Was Yesterday :: By Jack Kinsella