“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14)

According to God’s own words the vast majority of human beings will never come into a saving relationship with His Son. Statistically speaking (meaning a person or persons being treated as a piece of data or information) multitudes of humans will take the wrong road which will lead them to an eternity void of God (hell).

The only question in this life you need to be overly concerned with is which statistic will you choose to become?

Perhaps you’re reading this commentary because someone loves you enough to want you to see the truth. They’ve sent it to you but you are highly skeptical of God and the Bible. Please, do yourself a favor; take a moment to humor your friend, me, and God. Just sit back, relax, and let God guide your mind and heart for the next few moments, you won’t be sorry.

The Bible is the Word of God. Yes, it was written by men but it was authored by God Himself and no one else. The Bible is thousands of years old; no other book has endured the test of time as God’s word has. It was written by some forty men over a period of approximately 1,500 years. And by men who, for the most part, didn’t even know each other.

Yet, when we study it we find it to contain one integrated design from cover to cover. There are 66 books all together that make up the Old and New Testaments. Each of these books has its importance. As we read and study our Bibles we learn that it is actually just one complete book.

How do we know that the Bible is God’s word? Why should we believe it? God authenticated His Word so man, after reading it, would have no doubt as to whom the author is. He did this by giving us history lessons in advance. The Bible is jam-packed with prophecy, which is simply God telling us what will happen next in the history of mankind. Many of those prophetic scriptures have already come to pass. Thus God’s authentication process is working fine.

In the Old Testament we’re given more than 300 prophecies concerning the coming Messiah. Who is this Messiah? Jesus Christ is the Messiah. Jesus fulfilled those Old Testament prophecies to the letter. Just in case you’re interested, the mathematical possibility of one man fulfilling even eight of those prophecies is astronomical; basically impossible.

Only God Himself could have accomplished such a feat. Yet the Bible is still ridiculed and disparaged as being nothing more than myth, fairy tales, and legends by those who have no use for God or His Word. Most people who fall into the category of unbelievers only know what they’ve been told about the Bible by others who are also unbelievers. In the case of a non-believer teaching what the Bible has to say to other non-believers, naturally all that will be produced is more non-believers.

If you truly want to know and understand the Bible you must first become spiritually in tune with its Author, you must be born again, this will be explained a little further on in this commentary. But I will tell you right now that listening to other non-believers who only parrot what they’ve heard from like-minded non-believers will do you no good whatsoever.

You must at least hear both sides of any story. That’s the only way to find the truth for yourself. Only then can you make an informed decision about which eternal statistic you’ll become.

Speaking of eternal destiny, most people will put more emphasis on which new refrigerator to purchase than where they will spend eternity. Man has been placed on this planet to do something; we have a purpose, but most folks have no concept of just what that something is.

We have a Creator God and our God wants, more than anything else, to have a relationship with His creation (that’s us). Together with our Creator God we cultivate an everlasting relationship. But we must first believe in Him, who He is, why He did what He did for His creation.

“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20)

The word of God tells us that if we don’t believe in God there is no excuse for our unbelief. God has clearly revealed Himself in His creation. All we need to do is to look around and God’s power can be easily seen.

God is real, He is our Creator, and He is also our Savior. “But I’ve always heard you Christians say that Jesus Christ is your Savior.” That’s correct. “But, you said God is your Savior.” Jesus Christ is God Almighty. Here, let’s let God’s Word explain who Jesus is:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” (John 1:1-3)

Now, before we go any further let me explain something you might not know. The Old Testament was originally written in the Hebrew language and the New Testament was originally written in the Greek. The Bible was not translated into English until some four hundred years ago.

The apostle John was one of Jesus’ original disciples and he wrote this book. He knew Jesus, he ate with Him, they walked the shores of Galilee and climbed the hills of Judea together. John was an eye witness to Jesus as He performed all the miracles recorded in the Bible. In John’s record of the events of Jesus’ earthly ministry he refers to Jesus Christ as the “Logos” in the Greek. The English translation of the word “Logos” is “Word.” Jesus Christ is the Word. If we skip on down to verse 14 in this chapter we read the following: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…” (John 1:14a).

What John is saying here is that God entered His creation and became a man, the man Jesus Christ. Jesus has two distinct natures, He is fully God and He is fully man. Jesus Christ is our Creator God, and He is also our Savior, and that’s the truth found on the pages of our Bibles.

Your question right about now might be, “Why do I, or anyone for that matter, need a savior?”

You see, we humans blew it back some years ago in a place called the Garden of Eden. God created Adam and from Adam He made Eve. God had this great place all designed for their lives to be filled with happiness. But they weren’t happy with God’s explanation of how things were to go, through the prodding of an evil fallen angel (Satan) they rebelled against God which began a steady spiral down to what we now see as a very depraved society.

In all this depravity humans have become more and more rebellious through the years. God calls this rebellion “sin.” Sin and God cannot co-exist so God had to do something to save His Creation from total damnation (hell).

God offers you and all of mankind the same free gift. There is nothing you can do to earn it, nor can you purchase it. It’s free for the asking, but you must ask for it to receive it. “So, what is it?” I could tell you but again let’s let God do the explaining.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

God is telling you in perfect English that if you desire to escape that place called hell (perish), you must believe in His Son, Jesus who is the Messiah (the Christ). You must believe that Jesus Christ died while He hung on a cross some 2,000 years ago, and that He did this to take the sin of the world upon Himself.

He was buried, and rose from the grave three days later. He’s alive today. He’s waiting for you to ask Him into your life. But you must ask. God is love, He loves you but He won’t force you to accept His free gift but He plainly explains the alternative to that gift throughout His Word.

“…if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.” (John 8:24)

You are a sinner and you must acknowledge that fact before anything else. God is telling you here that the penalty for unbelief is death; you will die in your sins. In other words, unbelief results in eternal punishment instead of eternal glory. Like I said, God will not force you to love Him. He loves you so much that He died for you and allows you to choose loving Him over an eternity in hell.

Only our living God could have stepped into the picture to save His creation from everlasting damnation. Nothing less than the death of God Himself would suffice to accomplish this reconciliation between God and man. God loves you and does not wish for you to choose the alternative to His free gift

“I’m still not clear on this free gift thing.” Let me explain, Jesus Christ is the free gift from God. Jesus willingly died in your stead, He took your place on that cross, He took the punishment that was rightfully due you onto Himself. The free gift from God is His only begotten Son. God gave His Son to cover the payment necessary to take away the sin of the word. All you have to do is accept His free gift, Jesus Christ, into your heart and you will live forever.

You see, right now as a non-believer you are dead. You are dead in your sins. You are basically awaiting the second death when you will pass from this life into the next. But as a born again believer in Christ you only die once. That one death is death to sin. Once you say yes to Jesus Christ your sins are forgiven never to be remembered again, and you become born-again, born from above, from God.

God creates in you, not just a clean heart, but a brand new heart, you become a new creation in Christ, and something you will be very happy to learn is that your sins will never be thrown in your face by God. As a forgiven sinner you will be seen by God as He sees His Son Jesus, perfect.

God even goes a step further as He places in you His Holy Spirit who will dwell within you until you are taken off this planet and enter into your new home in Heaven. God seals His Holy Spirit in you and that seal can never be broken, not even by you.

Remember earlier I said you had to be in tune with God to understand His Word? Here’s that explanation of how you can be in tune with God. When you have the Holy Spirit dwelling in you, you are then spiritually in tune with the Author of the Bible and He will give you your heart’s desire. If that desire is to understand His Word (the Bible) He will provide you with that understanding.

All this is given to you by God the moment you first believe and are born again. You will have joy unspeakable, peace unmatchable, and a love unattainable from any other source. God becomes your Father, you become His child. Nothing can separate you from the love of God, nothing

“And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.” (Romans 8:38)

The apostle Paul tells us that once we are born of God (born again) nothing can separate us from Him. On the other hand God loves everyone equally, believer and non-believer. The difference is in the separation part. Non-believers, even though loved by God, will be separated from Him when they die.

Even if you don’t believe in God you still reap the blessings from God. You are sustained by the God you don’t believe in. But that will all end at the death of the unbeliever as God will not be in Hell with them. Your punishment for rejecting Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord is eternal separation, eternal damnation.

“…Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved…” (Acts 16:31)

All through the New Testament we’re told to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved. But what does it mean to believe? It means we place our faith, our trust, and our hope in Jesus Christ and Him alone for salvation. There is no other way we can ever get to the Father than to believe in the Son.

“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6)

All other religions are false and can offer you nothing when it comes to everlasting life. God is the God of the Holy Bible, of Judaism and Christianity and no other religion. All other so called gods (small g) are made up out of the minds of evil men and women who follow after their father, Satan, who God tells us is the father of all lies. And he’s promoted a mass of lies since.

Follow Jesus Christ, put your faith in Him and believe. Our human lifespan is short but eternity is forever. Dying is the closure on God’s free gift. After you’re dead and taken from this world you have no more chances to change your mind. It’s done; you’ve made your decision while you lived. Once in Hell there will be no pardons, no reprieves, no commuting of sentence.

If, on the other hand, you’ve made the right choice then heaven awaits you and you won’t want to ever leave. Which of the two statistics have you chosen to become? Where are you opting to spend your eternity?

My prayer is that you’ve chosen wisely, and now you know Jesus and He knows you.
 

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)

God had a plan  and that plan needed light. The heaven and the earth could not have sustained life if it remained in darkness. Even before the sun and stars were created, God spoke light into existence.

“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.” (Genesis 3-4)

Where was the source of this light? The answer is Jesus.

We read Scriptures which describes Jesus as the Light of the World and many people think that this is just an allegory. It isn’t an allegory, a fable, or a nice story. It’s truth.

“Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” (John 8:12)

Without light we would stumble around in darkness and fail miserably. Jesus is Light, and Satan is dark. The closer we draw to Jesus the closer we come to His light. It’s easy to fall into darkness and to be prey for the wiles of the devil if we move away from the light. If we stay near Jesus we have His light as a guide. The Psalmist knew this when he wrote:

“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” (Psalm 119:105)

We have to study God’s Word and apply it to our life in order for Him to light our path.

When Jesus took on the form of a man, the light that shone from Him was covered with skin just like us. His light wasn’t dimmed, just shielded. John was a man who was blessed to see Jesus as He truly is, so he writes with authority when describing Jesus’ appearance at the Transfiguration. John was one of three disciples, along with Peter and James, who witnessed this event.

“And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun and his raiment was white as the light.” (Matthew 17: 1-2)

The gospel of Mark also describes this event, and describes His clothes in more detail:

“And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them.” (Mark 9:).

The word “fuller” is translated from the word gnapheus. Some other Bibles versions translate this in terms of laundry and bleached cloth, meaning His robes were whiter than white. The disciples had seen Jesus perform many miracles, but seeing Him change from human in appearance to having a shining radiance that was as bright as the sun must have baffled them.

In this account we are also told that Moses and Elijah appeared there too. We aren’t given a description of their appearance, but the disciples knew who they were. Did Jesus call them by name or did He later tell Peter, James, and John that they had seen Moses and Elijah? Scripture is silent on this point, so any discussion about this is pure speculation.

Most of us who yearn to be with Jesus don’t give much thought to what He will look like. For that matter, we don’t give much thought to our own appearance after death. Our human minds tend to relate everything to what we are familiar with, so when we read descriptions of Jesus shining like the sun, we don’t truly understand.

As far as our own appearance we mostly just figure we will continue to look the same as we do now. Will we? Scripture says that we will be like Him, and we’ve already been given a description of His face shining like the sun. John tells us that we will be like Him.

“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2)

Interesting. I know that I will be in awe when I behold Him, and from my human perspective, I’m sure I will bow before Him being unable to stand.

When we receive our glorified bodies will we glow? Probably. When Moses went up on Mt. Sinai, he met with the LORD. When he came down he had to put a veil over his face because of the light that shone from it.

“And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him. And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him.” (Exodus 34:29-30)

He had been in the presence of Yehovah. Why did his skin glow after being in the presence of the LORD? In 1923 a Russian scientist named Alexander G. Gurvich discovered that there is a natural glow found in living cells which is called “biophoton.” It’s actually in the DNA found in the nuclei of cells. This is very weak light that is emitted from all living things.

Scientists have some ideas about it, but Christians know that Jesus is the Light of the World and in Him is no darkness. Could it be that the closer we draw to Him the stronger our biophotons glow? Moses’ skin shone bright after being in the presence of the LORD. The more we study God’s word, spend time in prayer, and live to please Him, the more of a Heavenly aura we acquire. It’s His light shining through us that a dark and fallen world sees.

At one time we all stumbled down the dark path. We may not have been murderers or thieves, but if we didn’t follow Jesus then we followed Satan. Once a person accepts Christ there should be a desire to draw near to Him and come into His light.

“For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” (Ephesians 5:8-11)

We aren’t to be judgmental and condemn people, but we are to inspect the fruit they bear. Fruit needs light to grow and we’ve already seen that Jesus is the source of Light.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:22-25)

The Holy Spirit indwells Christians and we need listen to His promptings. He will only lead us closer to Jesus where we will bear more fruit. If we ignore Him we will fade into darkness.

“Quench not the Spirit.” (1 Thessalonians 5:19)

Study Scripture and it will be easier to hear the guidance given by the Holy Spirit.

We need to seek truth in order for the Holy Spirit to enlighten us. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, but was a man who wanted to know the truth. He came to talk with Jesus to find out more about who He was. One of the things that Jesus talked about was light and darkness. He told Nicodemus that God loved the world and He hadn’t come into the world to condemn it but to offer salvation.

“And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.” (John 3:19-21)

If you love darkness rather than light then you condemn yourself. Nicodemus didn’t let his position as a Pharisee blind him to truth. We know this because the next time we read about him is after the crucifixion. He and Joseph of Arimathaea tended to Jesus’ body after He died.

“And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.” John 19:39-40.

It took courage for these two men to come forward. In spite of the darkness around them their eyes were opened to the Light of the World.

Light has many beneficial properties in our daily life. When we draw near to the Light of the World we separate from the darkness found in the world. We will be like Him.

God bless you all,

Nathele Graham

twotug@embarqmail.com

www.straitandnarrowministry.com

ron@straitandnarrowministry.com

Ron and Nathele Graham’s previous commentaries archived at https://www.raptureready.com/featured/graham/graham.html

All original Scripture is “theopneustos” (God breathed).