General Articles

2 Thessalonians 3:6: Walking in Idleness :: By Gary W. Ritter

Published on: by RR7

(Jeremiah 3-4; 2 Thessalonians 3)

How often do you encounter another professed Christian who doesn’t seem to walk in a Christian life? I’d bet such people are all around you. What does that mean, and how are we to respond to people who just seem not to be with the “program”?

I first saw an instance of this not long after we were saved, with people who said they were Christians when my wife and I were doing some real estate rehab. We had fixed up a house with the intent of selling it, but circumstances in the market didn’t lend themselves to that objective. Grudgingly, we decided to rent the property.

The house was in a challenged community. We could discuss for a couple of hours the wisdom of our rehabbing in that suburb, but one thing we vainly hoped was that we could be part of an increase in community restoration. The couple we rented to were on Section 8 rental assistance from the government. There are pros and cons to that, but we certainly saw the cons over a period of time.

Government largesse has always come with a price. In this case, free money came at the expense of family unity. Handouts were greater when the husband wasn’t living in the household because that’s how payments were structured. Since the initiation of the Great Society by LBJ, the intent was to destroy families by making it more profitable than keeping them together.

Once we learned that’s how this couple was pulling in more free rental assistance, we weren’t terribly pleased. At one point, the wife asked if we would lie to cover for them so they could continue the ruse. We refused, but somehow they managed to keep the conditions for paying them in place.

These folks were, as I say, professed Christians, but the more we interacted with them, the less they seemed to be people who walked in the way of Christ. Unfortunately, in this community, the allure of living on Welfare ran generationally deep. The people in our house had learned well and did all they could to game the system. Assistance was available for utilities, and of course, food stamps. To access a newer program for utility payments, they willingly spent their morning at the government office waiting in line for hours to have that obligation paid for by others.

After about three years, we decided to try again to sell the property. Upon inspection, we knew that we had to put significant time, effort, and money once again into making the house sale-ready. We gave our renters notice that they’d have to leave. Because in this particular community, for them to continue with rental assistance, it was required that they get a recommendation and release from their landlord to go into a new place.

They had done some damage, and we required them to pay for it. Additionally, my wife happened to check with the city for the water bill, which wasn’t covered under the utility assistance program. Our folks owed around $800. If we had signed off without learning this (which they didn’t tell us about), that bill would have been our responsibility. As it was, because of the leverage we had for the sign-off on their moving to a new house with rental assistance, we were able to demand they pay the bill.

All this background to say that these people were certainly not living up to the standards that the Apostle Paul declared were necessary for those in Christ. He wrote in 2 Thessalonians 3:6:

“Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us.”

I think we could safely say that Paul would not have been a big fan of public welfare as an ongoing lifestyle. Moreover, Paul admonished in 2 Thessalonians 3:10:

“For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”

To the folks living in our rental house (and probably to us for agreeing to cooperate with the system), Paul would likely say that welfare is not healthy. It destroys families and the incentive to work. Don’t live that way, and don’t be part of the system promoting it. In fact, Paul’s attitude was that people should learn from their idleness by going hungry so as to realize that they needed to work for a living.

Finally, in this letter, the apostle had concluding advice that cuts both ways. He said in 2 Thessalonians 3:13-15:

“As for you, brothers, do not grow weary in doing good. If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.”

Our renters, if truly born again, should have heeded the Word of the Lord in their lifestyle, which obviously wasn’t pleasing to Him. But we had an obligation as well, which we may have fallen down in obeying. Paul charges us to go to people such as this and warn them in the Name of Christ about the error of their ways.

I know I spoke to them one final time, but did I do this in the way that Paul urges? I don’t know that I did. One thing I can say is that I know more now about walking in the light of Christ than I did then. Hopefully, I’d be bolder now than at that point.

We all have to learn these things. As we read God’s Word, He works in us to do greater things in His Name and to better represent Him. There’s no sense in beating ourselves up if we’ve blown opportunities to be a better witness for the Lord. What we can and should do is to learn, to repent, and to move on.

We are Christ’s ambassadors to this lost and dying world. How well are we doing?

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The Lord put it on my heart this year to write a daily essay relating to my practice of Reading Through the Bible in a Year. Last year, that resulted in my producing the Awaken Bible Study Notes, a 4-volume set correlating with each quarter’s readings. This year in my writings, truly through the grace of God, I’m producing the 4-volume Awaken Bible Commentary and Reflections series. Volume 1, which covers January – March (Genesis 1 – Judges 5; Matthew 1 – Luke 7), is now available on Amazon in both paper and Kindle e-book formats at this link:

Awaken Bible Commentary and Reflections series Volume 1

If these daily writings have been a blessing to you, I hope that you’ll acquire this first book and the subsequent ones as I finish editing them. My intent in all I write is to bring God the glory and to make His people think. As in the Study Notes from last year, the Commentary and Reflections delve into the prophetic and supernatural nature of God’s Word, a combination you simply won’t find elsewhere.

They attempt to show the parallels to our times and the peril from the past when God’s people turn away from Him and His commands. Scripture is very much a blueprint for today.

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Gary W. Ritter is a lay pastor, Bible teacher, and prolific author. His Whirlwind Series comprises three books: Sow the Wind, Reap the Whirlwind, and There Is a Time. These books are contained in the collected volume of the Whirlwind Omnibus. Gary has written many other Christian thrillers that will challenge you, and which you can learn about at his website:www.GaryRitter.com. Recently, Gary wrote a novella for the new Kindle Vella platform called Tribulation Rising: Seal Judgments – The Coming Apocalypse. This seven-part short work can be found at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099Z462WD. You can also watch Gary’s video Bible teachings on Rumble at his Awaken Bible Prophecy channel: https://rumble.com/c/c-783217.

Antichrist’s Prophets Preparing Planet :: By Terry James

Published on: by RR7

 

Any observer of these strange times from the preTrib view of Bible prophecy can do no other than conclude that the wicked powers and principalities in high places of Ephesians 6: 12 are at work.

Concerning one major section of this work being done by the minions in that stratosphere of evil, I find the following conclusion by a writer quite on the mark.

(1) COVID-1984 Bringing the Great Reset’s Conquest

The Chinese Flu may be a minor pestilence, but after two years of scientific dictatorship taking hold around the world, it is clear that the lockdowns, small business devastation, church closures, and punishments for disobeying arbitrary and capricious mandates devised by petty tyrants have all been about conditioning national populations to accept total government control over their lives. Plain and simple: Governments love the virus they have taught the world to fear. It is their weapon of choice for initiating, in their own words, a “Great Reset” that allows them to conquer free nations and remake them into slave states mastered by a small coterie of the fantastically wealthy and politically powerful. (Source: The Four Horsemen of the Left’s Artificial Apocalypse, J.B. Shurk, American Thinker.com, January 7, 2022)

The minions in high places determined to bring about the new global order have, of course, been setting the stage –or attempting to do so— for decades. They concentrated first on global warming, then climate change when Manhattan and other places failed to succumb to the ocean waters rising from melting Arctic ice as predicted. It seems that they concocted the idea of adding global pandemic to their one-world design and implemented the blueprint in 2020 to begin the process of controlling us and channeling us into planetary lockdown.

Their main thrust in implementing their plan to reset Planet Earth in their own image remains forcing everyone into a Mother Earth worship. This is an unending movement despite the fact that most of earth’s population isn’t concerned to any great extent. The masking and vaccines are much greater fear producers than the climate horrors predicted, it seems. So, the minions are full bore in demanding that the vaccinated turn against those who don’t want to take the jab.

People across the world, for the most part, ignore the dire warnings, despite the likes of the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg being used as the megaphone alarmist proclaiming earth is doomed. The distance between the rational mind and the fear-mongering mind of the globalist provocateurs is stark. The American Thinker presents an excellent contrast in this regard.

Most journalists, the U.N., Kerry, Greta, Biden, educators, entertainers, environmentalists, and other Democrats say the science is settled. They say it is proven that humans, CO2, fossil fuels, and automobiles cause warming. They say the warming is causing the ice to melt, and coastal cities will soon be gone. They say we need to stop using fossil fuels because there are only a few years left to stop the warming. Somehow, they also pretend more people die from a little warmth than the cold. Evidence hasn’t mattered for a long time when they are pushing their agenda to destroy the economy.

On the other hand, people with the ability to use logic and reason will say that there is no correlation between populations, fossil fuel use, CO2 content, and temperature. They will say truthfully that the climate has always changed cyclically and naturally. Sometimes it is cold, and sometimes it is warm. Sometimes we have droughts, and sometimes we have rain and floods. Sometimes we have less snow, and sometimes we have more snow. Some years are stormier than others. They understand that fossil fuels have greatly improved the quality and length of life for those who use them.

In other words, people who can use logic and reason follow the facts. People who are pushing the leftist agenda to remake and destroy America don’t care about the facts.

Regardless of ideological differences in the matter of earth’s ecology, weather, etc., God’s Word indicates man can neither save nor destroy the planet.

“The earth is the LORD’S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods” (Psalm 24:1-2).

I recommend that one read the complete article above, which includes facts and fallacies about COVID and what’s going on as well as facts about the climate change delusion, to understand clearly truth vs lie in the Luciferian plans to bring on the Antichrist regime.

It seems to me that dynamics taking place in Europe, with regard to the dictatorial demands of the likes of President Emmanuel Macron of France in effect controlling all activity with mandates, shows how near the world might be to the man of sin being revealed. Before the Antichrist steps into the spotlight, we can be assured believers in Jesus Christ will be with their Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. What a Glorious prospect if you are in God’s Eternal Family!