The Production of Spiritual Fruit

John 15:1-8, Genesis 49:22, Isaiah 5:1-7, Matthew 3:8, Romans 7:4, Colossians 1:10

Summary: John 15 presents the themes of fruit-bearing, or the visible evidence of true faith and obedience Jesus demands of those who follow Him (Matthew 10:34-39, Luke 14:25-33). Fruit-bearing Christians, or those who do the work of the LORD, will be blessed by Him and hated by the world.

The German pastor and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, opened the first chapter with these words: “When a man comes to Christ, He bids him come and die.”

Bonhoeffer lived by his own words as he lingered in a concentration camp, condemned to death by the “courts” of the Nazi regime in the closing days of World War 2. He and other pastors had left Germany shortly after Adolf Hitler assumed power over the nation and fled to the safety and neutrality of America. However, over time, he began to hear of the numerous deaths of not only the Jews but of Christian pastors throughout Germany who would not bow to the ideological demands of the Nazis and their demands to twist the churches into their antisemitic and evil mold.

Bonhoeffer returned to Germany, determined to not only give aid and pastoral comfort to the struggling remnant of believers but also became involved in a plot to get rid of Hitler and help to bring down the satanic regime he had organized.

The dictator almost met his death in late 1944 when a bomb hidden in a briefcase exploded near him while he was planning a series of attacks with his generals on Allied personnel, led by men such as Generals Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, and Montgomery. Hitler discovered the identities of the conspirators who tried to kill him and had them, their families, and all outside agents either arrested or put to death. Bonhoeffer was arrested and sent to a concentration camp designed to eliminate the Jewish people, the object of Hitler’s rage and hatred, and all who opposed him.

Only ten days before the camps were located and liberated by Allied troops, both American, British and Russian, Bonhoeffer had been hanged and entered into the presence of His LORD. It was April 20, 1945. We look back on these atrocities and ask ourselves why men such as Bonhoeffer and all like-minded Christians in history chose death over compromise, comfort, pleasure, notoriety, and the other characteristics that make up this present world. The common bond is not only a mutual faith in Christ but obedience to His commands, producing the fruit worthy of a harvest rather than lingering and stagnating in the realm of spiritual immaturity, seeing salvation in Christ as a form of “fire insurance” and leaving it at that.

As a pastor, teacher, and preacher of the everlasting Gospel of Jesus Christ, I cringe and fear for anyone who is crass and brazen enough to see the saving grace and mercy He provided for them and all of us through His work of redemption on the cross as nothing more than an assurance that they said the “right words” or prayed some kind of prayer that they really did not mean or understand.

Worse yet, I hear of people who made a “decision” for Christ, who “walked the aisle” at an “altar call” sometime in their lives while attending a church service, shook the hand of the preacher, got dunked in the baptistry, or sprinkled, and afterward are never seen again, living for their own desires. They live and act like the garden-variety pagan who kisses the trees, protests the latest causes, and is in a state of mind-numbing bliss that has been weaved for them by the very devil who assures some “converts” that everything is all right, to their eternal peril (Matthew 7:21-23).

I have dealt with the tragedy of “false converts” (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23; Mark 4:1-9, 13-20; Luke 8:4-8, 11-15) in previous sermons. I do not want to repeat myself. What I want to do is to show new believers and those who have been real followers of the LORD over the years that salvation in Christ is the foundation of what He expects of us while we are in this world.

We are not to merely sit back, sing hymns, attend our varied church services and wait for the LORD’S soon return (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). As the remnant body of Christ, we are to be busy with the King’s business, producing spiritual fruit such as sharing the Gospel (Matthew 28:18-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 23:44-49; Acts 1:8), standing firm for the faith (2 Timothy 1:8; 1 Peter 3:15), displaying the characteristics of a life under the control and direction of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), and not becoming attached to the things of this world (1John 2:15).

When the Lord Jesus was preparing to depart to the Father after accomplishing His work of redemption on our behalf (John 19:30; Romans 5:6-11), He taught HIs disciples about the concept of bearing spiritual fruit with Him as the true Vine who gives them the ability to grow, mature, and produce the fruit that is expected from them.

He taught that we cannot bear fruit, meaning a spiritual harvest, apart from Him. A branch that is not attached to the vine withers and dies. Being attached to the True Vine (John 15:1-8) means that we are dependent on Him and the ability to do that which is expected of us. We cannot mature in Christ if we believe that it all depends on us. As He explains later in Chapter 16, it is through the power of the Holy Spirit (v.13) that we are able to present the truth of the Gospel or do anything else that glorifies Him.

It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that we are even drawn to Christ in the first place (John 6:44, 12:32; Romans, Chapter 9). Any kind of “religious work” or “duty” apart from Christ is worth nothing (Psalm 127:1; Jeremiah 10:23; John 3:7; 2 Corinthians 3:5, 4:7) and is as wood, hay, and stubble, fit only for the fire. And there will be some believers who will have nothing to show for their time on earth, getting into heaven saved, yet smelling like smoke (1 Corinthians 3:11-15).

In these last days before His return for the church and the coming judgment upon this world for its wickedness described in Revelation, those of us who are serious about our testimony and faith in Jesus Christ cannot afford to merely sit back and wait for the eschatological fireworks to commence. I will repeat this once again as I bring this message to a close. We must be about the King’s business more than ever, praying for the lost, sharing our faith with others even at the cost of ridicule, rejection and persecution (2 Timothy 3:12), staying pure in a filthy world, and have the fruit and gems of our work ready to place before Him when we arrive in His heaven (John 14:1-3).

If you’ve not been producing what Jesus expects, now is the time to come before Him with a repentant heart and be willing to obey His directions and do as He commands in the Scriptures. If you have never made Jesus Christ the Lord of your life and asked Him to save you from your sins, now is the time to do so (Romans 10:9-10, 2 Corinthians 6:2). The season for bearing fruit is coming to a close. Have your harvest ready.

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Donald was born and reared in the authentic “Cajun Country” of southern Louisiana. He is a graduate of Louisiana College (B.A. in History Education/ Biblical Studies, 1984), New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (M.Div. In Christian Education, 1994), and Andersonville Baptist Seminary (Doctor of Ministry, Biblical Exposition, 2000). He has been in the Gospel ministry since 1986, serving as an evangelist, interim and supply pastor, hospital and rescue mission chaplain, high school and college teacher, and pastor in churches in Louisiana and Oklahoma.

In 2018 he began to devote his time to the rich field of internet and social media evangelism and outreach. In 2021 he became a member of the Oklahoma Conference of Southern Baptist Evangelists, using his skills as a writer to contribute articles and sermons to websites such as Rapture Ready, Sermon Central, and Inspirational Christian Blogs. He also writes Bible studies and curricula for churches in southeast and central Asia and Africa, the locations of which are anonymous. He can be contacted at: donaldwhitchard@gmail.com for inquiries, information, and speaking/preaching engagements. A copy of his resume is also available upon request.

 

 

Better Monkeypox than Smallpox. If we were talking about Smallpox right now, the situation – if accurate – would truly be horrifying for humanity.

Few are saying it, but I will: The fact that Monkeypox is spreading to humans is because it has been engineered to do so with gain-of-function research. The book The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston, which is primarily about Smallpox, details the efforts to first eradicate this terrible disease, then to find methods – believe it or not – of enhancing its virility. This book was written in 2002. Do you think that perhaps in twenty years, genetic researchers might have perfected their art, not only with Smallpox but with Monkeypox?

If you’ve never read a description of the horrors of Smallpox and want to be completely freaked out of how infectious and deadly it is, as well as gain a great appreciation for how Bio-level 4 laboratories work, you’ll find the narrative in Demon quite fascinating as I did. The author discusses the use of anthrax as a bioweapon that was used around the September 11, 2001, WTC attacks and explores its intersection with Smallpox, along with the potential combination of anthrax and Smallpox as a weaponized, genetically engineered doomsday scenario. All fun stuff, as you can imagine.

Detailed at length is the effort first to enhance Mousepox to cause its lethality to break through any vaccines or immunity and then how researchers have likewise done the same with Smallpox. Monkeypox is noted throughout the book, just not in the extensive manner of these other infectious viruses.

One of the things I took away from the book, especially with the current Monkeypox scare that is being propagated throughout the media, is how these poxes can be DNA-modified to become more potent. That’s one of the key points. Researchers and scientists in this area are never content to leave well enough alone.

All of a sudden, around the world, we have outbreaks of Monkeypox. Previously, monkey to human transmission could occur, but it was rare. Interestingly, Smallpox could not jump from humans to monkeys. The researchers couldn’t let that one go. In a series of experiments following the eradication of Smallpox in 1978 (hello – it was ERADICATED for a reason), permission was given to do one final experiment on infecting monkeys. The researchers succeeded.

The question then becomes: If someone wanted to initiate a global pandemic of the previously rare infection of Monkeypox with humans, what would they do? The answer is: Scientists would be set loose in trying to make it more infectious. Given what we’ve seen over the last couple years with COVID gain-of-function manipulation, can anyone reasonably believe this is a naturally occurring event?

As it turns out, we have clues that indicate this has been planned, just as COVID was. Coincidentally (hah! – if you believe in coincidences, you’re extremely naïve), a simulation was conducted in March 2021 on the possible outbreak of – wait for it – Monkeypox. Of even greater coincidence (ah-hem; pardon me while I clear my throat), the simulation posited that the Monkeypox outbreak would begin mid-May 2022. Are these people prescient, or what? So, just like the Event 201 simulation was held a few months prior to the beginning of COVID with all the corresponding scenarios that might arise, so it was with the 2021 Tabletop Exercise Conducted in Partnership with the Munich Security Conference.

Of course, you’ll never guess WHO took part in the simulation. If you wildly speculated that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the CDC, and Big Pharma executives had a hand in it, you win the prize; free vaccination for you and your family.

Oh, did I tell you that the Biden Regime has ordered up millions of doses of Monkeypox vaccine for $119 Million? They have the option to buy another $180 Million worth of vaccines if desired. You see, our government has your best interests at heart.

Of great interest in this narrative is also the fact that Wuhan Labs were experimenting with Monkeypox last year in a manner that could be identified through the infamous PCR tests used for COVID. You can’t make this stuff up.

Naturally, the Ukraine biolabs come into this picture as well as the possible source of the monkeying around with the genetic makeup of this disease. I have no stake one way or the other in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but I have seen reports that Putin has specifically targeted to destroy these US-funded biolabs because of the dangers of this very situation.

The World Health Organization has helpfully assembled an information page about Monkeypox so that we can all be fully informed. Of interest is that the Smallpox vaccine works against Monkeypox. However, those individuals with compromised immune systems can be at risk. One wonders about this given the VAIDS epidemic, i.e., the Vaccine Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome, that has “mysteriously” sprung onto the scene since COVID vaccine injections began. If a person’s immune system is compromised and he takes the Smallpox/Monkeypox vaccine, how will that work? Another fascinating detail in its spread is the caution that it is occurring primarily within the homosexual community. That may be true, but it’s also true that many, many people are now immune-deficient.

What is the difference in symptoms between Monkeypox and Smallpox for me to have made the statement earlier that I did as to being thankful this isn’t an epidemic of the worse kind?

Comparatively, Monkeypox is pretty mild. According to the CDC, it’ll initially feel like the flu. As it progresses, the subject will get pustules, lesions, and scabs. You’ve probably seen photos – if not, here are some. The prognosis for fatalities with Monkeypox is all over the board, ranging anywhere from 1% up to 10%. If the disease has been enhanced through gain-of-function research, who knows how it might transmit and spread or kill in greater measure?

Smallpox is another beast altogether with a better than 30% mortality rate – truly a demon as described in the book I noted.  From The Demon in the Freezer, here is a description of a man who contracted Smallpox in 1970:

The red areas spread into blotches across Peter Los’s face and arms, and within hours the blotches broke out into seas of tiny pimples. They were sharp feeling, not itchy, and by nightfall they covered his face, arms, hands, and feet. Pimples were rising out of the soles of his feet and on the palms of his hands, and they were coming up in his scalp and in his mouth, too.

During the night, the pimples developed tiny, blistery heads, and the heads continued to grow larger. They were rising all over his body, at the same speed, like a field of barley sprouting after rain. They were beginning to hurt dreadfully, and they were enlarging into boils. They had a waxy, hard look, and they seemed unripe. His fever soared abruptly and began to rage. The rubbing of his pajamas on his skin felt like a roasting fire. He was acutely conscious and very, very scared. The doctors didn’t know what was wrong with him.

By dawn on Thursday, January 15th, his body had become a mass of knob-like blisters. They were everywhere, all over, even on his private parts, but they clustered most thickly on his face and extremities.

This is known as the centrifugal rash of smallpox. It looks as if some force at the center of the body is driving the rash out toward the face, hands, and feet. The inside of his mouth and ear canals and sinuses had pustulated, and the lining of the rectum may also have pustulated, as it will do in severe cases. Yet, his mind was clear.

When he coughed or tried to move, it felt as if his skin was pulling off his body, that it would split or rupture. The blisters were hard and dry, and they didn’t leak. They were like ball bearings embedded in the skin, with a soft, velvety feel on the surface. Each pustule had a dimple in the center. They were pressurized with an opalescent pus.

The pustules began to touch one another, and finally they merged into confluent sheets that covered his body, like a cobblestone street. The skin was torn away from its underlayers across much of his body, and the pustules on his face combined into a bubbled mass filled with fluid under the skin that essentially detached from its underlayers and became a bag surrounding the tissues of his head. His tongue, gums, and hard palate were studded with pustules, yet his mouth was dry, and he could barely swallow. The virus had stripped the skin off his body, both inside and out, and the pain would have seemed almost beyond the capacity of human nature to endure.

Note: part of the process of Smallpox is to develop a cytokine storm.

Cytokines are messengers that drift in the bloodstream. Cells in the immune system use them to signal to one another while the immune system mounts a response to an attack by an invader. In a cytokine storm, the signaling goes haywire, and the immune system becomes unbalanced and cracks up, like a network going down. The cytokine storm becomes chaotic, and it ends with a collapse of blood pressure, a heart attack, or a breathing arrest, or with a stench coming through the skin, like something nasty inside a paper bag. No one is certain what happens in the cytokine storm of smallpox. The virus is giving off unknown proteins that jam the immune system and trigger the storm, like jamming radar, which allows the virus to multiply unhindered (pgs 29-30).

Where have we heard about a cytokine storm before? It is what often happens in the body when someone has COVID and/or of someone injected by the COVID “vaccine.” The marvelous systems God designed in our bodies become completely out of phase, and the body destroys itself in the confusion.

Here are images of Smallpox in multiple places at various times. If all this doesn’t give you nightmares … (You’re welcome).

Such a description makes me think of the terrible boils as part of the plagues God brought down on Egypt to facilitate the Exodus. It makes me consider even more what the 1st Bowl in Revelation 16:2 will do to the unbelieving world which has rejected and cursed God:

“So the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth, and harmful and painful sores came upon the people who bore the mark of the beast and worshiped its image.”

So, where does all this leave us?

What should be obvious to everyone on the planet by now, but sadly is not, is that Monkeypox – just like COVID – is a planned, engineered narrative. It has been game-theoried in a simulation event and is simply one of many attacks that the globalist elites will unleash upon the world. In some respects, Monkeypox is the precursor to what I believe will be sprung upon America and elsewhere in September of this year. We can be thankful for now that we’re not seeing a Smallpox plandemic, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if that happens at some point. After all, the intent is to depopulate the world. Smallpox, because of how infectious it is, is a terrific weapon to accomplish that.

We’re still waiting as well for the cyber event that was role-played in the various Cyber-Polygon preparations (next one coming this July), so don’t get too comfortable having electricity, water from your faucets, or internet access. When the next crisis hits by early Fall, it will likely be the perfect set-up to blame conservatives and Christians as domestic terrorists and take action against them. Under such a nationwide emergency that will be promoted, it may be “necessary” to implement martial law and/or rule that guns in private hands are illegal and subject to severe enforcement against those who resist.

Naturally, with the country in extremis of this nature, it wouldn’t be prudent to hold the November elections because of the many dangers. All who anticipate a Republican takeback of government this Fall will be sorely disappointed.

For those believing the Pollyanna-ish view that a Great Awakening will halt all this demonic agenda and bring America and the world back to some semblance of “normal,” don’t hold your breath. The Bible clearly tells us that these end-times will grow worse – not better – just as birth pains increase in intensity and frequency. Birth pains give way to birth; the travail we are experiencing will result in the Tribulation.

What we see happening must take place to fulfill Bible prophecy. The world is getting worse because Jesus said it would. Christians can deny it all they want and pray for a return to times past, but God has His purposes in allowing all this to come about. He MUST judge the world. Every nation is guilty of great sin against Him. That includes America. Our good deeds from the past have been rendered null and void. Our spiritual eyes as a nation are upon pagan gods; we have forgotten the One true God. Just as Israel turned from Him and suffered the consequences at the appropriate time, so must America; and that time is now.

Take heed. Establish yourself in your faith, and don’t allow your eyes and heart to wander. When possible, reach out to the lost so that some may be saved from the wrath to come. As for us who love the Lord, we have a wedding date coming up very soon. Let us anticipate that with great excitement. Christ’s Rapture of the true church is sooner than we can possibly imagine.

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Gary Ritter website: books & blog

http://garyritter.com/

Kindle Vella story: Tribulation Rising

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099Z462WD