BAD NEWS/GOOD NEWS

BAD NEWS/GOOD NEWS

                No one wants to be the bearer of bad news, but nowadays the watchmen are being forced to bear bad news much more than we would like.

                The truth is that when you sign on to be a watchman, you actually have to warn people. It is like Paul Begley said the other day in the most powerful sermon I have ever heard him preach… He said that if he holds back from telling the whole truth he will be held accountable before God. The same goes for the watchmen and really the whole Body of Christ. If we keep silent we will become liable for the blood of those around us who could have heard the Gospel.

                Since most people only listen to the globalist controlled news media, they are not hearing about global crop failures, or the wide spread dying of the oceans. Just this week tens of tons of dolphins, sea turtles, manatees, and countless fish have died off the west coast of Florida due to the red tide, while off the coast of Tabasco, Mexico 50 manatees, dolphins, turtles and countless fish are going belly up for reasons science can’t explain and commercial fishermen are saying that there are no fish to be caught in that part of the sea. But these are just two out of hundreds and hundreds of reports happening daily around the world.

                The world is being ravaged by floods, droughts, fires and crop failures. China, for instance, has five times more people than it has food from crops, so they must import vast amounts of food. But with the crop failures going on in the world there isn’t enough food to go around. This may add some insight into why the Kings of the east will come to the battle of Armageddon. After all, Israel is one of the bread baskets of Europe and surrounding areas. That tiny little nation is blessed by God with abundant produce and resources. So for one thing, a lack of global resources may help to draw the nations into the final battle.

                Meanwhile the globalists keep manufacturing reasons for this war and that. Nowadays it is the war on terrorism and that may seem to be a legitimate reason for war, but in reality it was our past couple of administrations that destabilized the Middle East, thus creating the unrest and the refugee problem in the first place. Nearly every war we have seen over the past few years has had one underlying reason… oil and resources. There is a war going on over earth’s dwindling resources…everything from water, to food to energy and the big boys are pushing the little boys around to get what they want and so the little boys are starving and languishing in gross poverty and sickness and death.

                A financial advisor from Noble Gold recently said that food production would be a good thing to invest in. Everyone needs food. The supplies are dwindling and he also warned that the price of food could increase by as much as 10 to 20 percent by next year. That may be good news for investors, but not such good news for consumers. It can only mean increased famine and starvation on a global scale.

                On every front we are facing a convergence of end time issues that are pushing the world into a panic mode. California is imploding right now with miles and miles of tent cities and homeless people sleeping on sidewalks amidst growing piles trash everywhere. Thousands of drug users and the homeless line the halls of BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit in San Francisco) so that passengers have to wend their way between doped invalids and trash just to ride the train and the problem is so big that overburdened California can’t muster enough police or custodians to control or to clean up the overwhelming mess.

                Meanwhile exhausted fire fighters battle intense heat and out of control fires all over northern and southern California… even as rumors of a giant earthquake have people trying to prepare for even worse times.

                All around the world, long dormant volcanoes are belching to life as our planet reels under unseen pressures from our sun and solar system.  Increased radiation is heating up the core of the planet causing it to expand, thus causing the sink holes and the volcanoes that we are now witnessing along with increased potential for nation destroying earthquakes and upheavals in nature. The nations are in an uproar. Religious people are losing faith; deceivers are deceiving; politics has turned into a civil tug of war in many places and we are now facing the prospects that all of these things and much more are going to get worse rather than better.

                Do you know why the globalist controlled News Media doesn’t report most of what is going on in the world and in nature right now? It is because an awareness of the magnitude of these events might get people to thinking in terms of Bible prophecy being fulfilled and that might result in a revival of biblical faith and such a revival does not fit with their Luciferian agenda.

                But the greatest tragedy of all is that Christian preachers, instead of using this occasion to warn the people and to begin preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom; are dismantling the gospel so that it no longer has the power to deliver us. Instead of warning that the hour of God’s judgment has come and that we must come out of Babylon and stop partaking of her sins; many are accommodating gross sins and embracing the lifestyles that have always brought God’s judgments in the past. Instead of shouting out a warning against the sins of our age and calling people to the foot of the cross, many are conforming to the politically correct guidelines of the globalists. In many cases they are even embracing and endorsing the sins of mankind that God calls an abomination. And instead of fasting and praying for the powers of the age to come, many are denying that those powers are available in our day. In other words Laodicea is all but dead.                 They are committing treason against the kingdom of God and teaching their people to do likewise. And we need to do whatever it takes to get into Philadelphia. Rev.3:7-22

                We are indeed entering into the specific time prefigured by the 3 Hebrews and the fiery furnace. Babylon was Satan’s first attempt at a global kingdom. So when the prophet Daniel told him that his kingdom would be replaced by another, he defiantly made an image of solid gold and forced all of the leaders of the then known world to bow down and worship that image.

                Three of Daniel’s companions refused to bow down, even as the whole world of Daniel’s day bowed down to the global image of the Beast. This is a direct parallel to our day as nearly the whole world is bowing to the global aims of the beast today. Only Daniel’s three companions refused to bow down. They had refused to drink of the wine of Babylon.  In today’s language we would say that they refused to take the Mark of the Beast.

                Now, of particular interest to us in this story is that God did not keep them from the fiery furnace. Such a miracle would not have impressed anybody, because the glory would have gone to the heathen king Nebuchadnezzar for sparing their lives.

                Instead, God allowed them to be thrown into the fire, where he preserved them through the fire so that when they came out of it, neither their hair had been singed, nor did their clothes smell of smoke. It was as though they had not been in the fire at all. Only the ropes of the king had been burned off.

                The result was that king Nebuchadnezzar approached the door of the furnace and said: “Come out you servants of the Most High God and come here.” And he said: “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego who has sent his angel and delivered His servants who put their trust in Him…”

                Could there be a message for us in this story? Is God going to remove us from tribulation or is He going to preserve us through it? Either way, we win. But we need to build the kind of character that was exhibited by these three Hebrew youths. We need to stop drinking the wine of Babylon and partaking of her sins. We have a covenant with God that guarantees our salvation. It is signed in the blood of Jesus. It is backed by the very eternal name of God Almighty. But it is a two way covenant.

                To get into this covenant we have to die to the world and to be born again into it. This is a blood covenant. It is not something that we merely add to our lives. Instead it must BECOME our life. We must live by its power and be governed by its principles. We must stand with Paul in saying. “I am crucified with Christ nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who gave His life for me.” Gal. 2:20

                This covenant cannot save us if we don’t enter into it. We must exchange the wine of Babylon for the bread and wine of Christ. The wine of Babylon is full of the abominations of the earth, while the bread and wine of Christ is filled with salvation, healing and restoration. And many are sick today because they are partaking of the bread and wine of Christ in an unworthy manor. We want the wine of Babylon at the same time. We want to keep self alive. We want the benefits of the covenant without actually living in it and by it.

                So let’s forget about the rapture for a minute and ask ourselves what Jesus is looking for in a bride. He is looking for a Bride that walks by His Spirit and not by the flesh. Romans 8.

                He is looking for a Bride that is after His own kind.

                We take the Gospel much too lightly when it comes to being a Bride for Jesus. He says in Ephesians 5:25-27: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her; that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she should be holy and blameless.”

                You see, over time the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been turned into a false gospel. In effect we say that we are covered by the blood of Jesus so we no longer need to come out of Egypt.  We have turned Passover into an occasion where we eat the lamb and drink of its blood, but we stay in Egypt instead of following Jesus through the water and through the wilderness to the foot of Mt. Sinai to the foot of the cross where we die to the spirit of this world and receive instead the precious Spirit of Christ. We no longer resemble the Ark of the Covenant, where the Holy Presence of God dwells upon us and in us, even as His Law is written in our hearts. In other words, most of the church is not really living in the covenant and yet we are claiming its benefits. We claim Psalm 91 even as we refuse to dwell in the secret place of the Most High. The secret place of the Most High is in the Most Holy Place of the sanctuary where only those who are sanctified and made holy may enter.

                In effect, many Christians are saying today: “I’m just going to live my life the way I want to and call the shots the way I see them. It doesn’t matter because I am covered by the robe of Christ’s righteousness.” Come on now, do you really thing that will fly with God? Perhaps it is time to look at the other 99% of the texts in the Bible that call us to repentance saying: “I urge you therefore brethren by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:1, 2

                The fivefold ministry of the church is given “For the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.” Ephesians 4:12-13.

                The everlasting Gospel that must go to the whole world in these last days is not a set of doctrines. It is not a list of creeds or long held traditions. It is Jesus Christ Himself living His life through us.. transforming us into His image even as we call others to Him.

                 Paul goes on to say what this will accomplish saying: “As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head even Christ, from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by that which every  joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building of itself in love.” Eph. 4:14-16

                Friends, we need to study these things very carefully. We keep praying for revival and a huge outpouring of the Holy Spirit for the final harvest, but we ignore what the Bible says.  The church needs to become a living organism where every part is involved in the proper working of each individual part so that we will grow into a body that functions by love. We know that if one of the parts of our body isn’t working properly, the whole body is sick. If the stomach or the heart or the liver or the kidneys fail, the whole body can die. Even a  stubbed toe will cause all of the other members of the body to concentrate on the toe. And as it throbs with pain, so is the body in pain.

                We need to love, help and encourage the broken parts back to health and unity. But if they refuse healing and continue to walk in a broken manor, God is going to prune His tree at some point and toss the dead branches into the fire and this is exactly what the great shaking will accomplish when God will shake mightily the earth and the heavens also. Everything that is not truly of God will be shaken out. Everything that is not born of His Spirit will be shaken out. Everything that is manmade in religion will have to go. Hebrews 12:25-29

                Each of us needs to answer one question: “Am I a dead wood branch in the Body of Christ, or am I a living branch that is connected to the Vine and living by that power which is Christ in me the hope of glory?

                THE GOOD NEWS IS THIS

                This covenant that Jesus has invited us into is totally adequate for every need. It is based on His power, not ours. It is His grace that supplies every need… His promises that sustain us… His blood that flows through our veins… His Body into which we are growing as fruitful branches… and the very fact that we have put on His full armor means that we have become soldiers in His kingdom. The battle is not ours, but the Lords… but we are the soldiers through which He will fight this battle. So let us lay aside everything that would encumber us and let us fight the good fight of the Lord in His infinite strength.       2 Tim. 4:5-8

                “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God that you may be able to resist in the evil day and having done everything, to stand firm. Ephesians 6:10-13

                Today’s bad news only serves to remind us how badly we need the good news of the Gospel and not a truncated and weak version of the Gospel, but the whole of it in power and might and infused with the Spirit of the living God.