THE BREAK OF DAY

THE BREAK OF DAY

                I always look forward eagerly to Saturdays. Having gone to bed somewhat early the night before I rise at more like 2 AM rather than my usual 3-3:30 AM. I spend time with the Lord and in His Word until He graciously provides me with a message and then I write my regular morning article, such as you are reading right now.

                Then, while it is still pitch dark outside (At least at this time of year) I jump into my car and head for Melton lake where I meet my son Zach for our 4 mile walk. By 7:30 the first grey of dawn is making the bike trail visible and so we head out along the lake. Usually there is a ghostly night fog hovering over the water as nature yawns and stretches and prepares to meet the day.

                Ducks ply the waters along the shore and up on the high power pole, thirty to forty Vultures sit hunched against the cool of morning like cloaked monks waiting on God for their daily bread.

                Yesterday a beaver appeared in the water close by, just his head above surface, leaving a wake behind him. As we approached, he suddenly dived slapping the water with his broad tail. Then silence returned to the morning with nothing more to hear than the gentle lapping of the water and the hushed murmuring of the ducks.

                During these walks Zach and I talk about the many mysteries of God’s Word and the deeper things that cannot be spoken of in most circles simply because so few people really study into the deeper things of God. We both learn something from each other in these conversations and I the most, because Zach is a vast library of knowledge and understanding. His recall is amazing and he is well-read in church history and world history and in many disciplines along the lines of philosophy and early Christianity and how and why many things have come together the way they have through time.

                Four miles goes by very quickly and in fact we were so engrossed in conversation yesterday that we went another 2 miles in the other direction making it into a 6 mile walk. Our only other silent partner on these morning walks is Zach’s dog Peeves. (As in pet peeves)  Peeves are a long haired Dachshund with 4 inch legs. He sets the pace, which for us is a brisk walk and he never slows down, but follows his impressively long nose at a purposeful gait.

                At about 10 AM we part company, wishing each other a good day with our respective wives and I head home for breakfast and coffee with Bonnie. We take communion together as we do most mornings.  We pray for family and friends and fellow church members in the Body of Christ and in our local church. We pray for those who read what I write, that the Holy Spirit will guide them into all truth in spite of me. We learned several years back to live by divine appointment and so we always look to God for His direction in the affairs of our lives. So He placed us in the church we are in as a direct answer to our prayers and theirs.

                Some years back we learned a secret about going to church that has made it a most joyful and fulfilling experience. We learned to go, not to see what we can receive, but what we can give. We shy away from any form of church politics, but rather love and encourage and pray with people and minister to people and we just find it all to be so wonderfully fulfilling. Church is a gathering place for the saints, but it is also a place of hope for sinners and there is plenty of ministry to be done.

                Our criterion for attending a church is that they must believe and teach the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation. That they don’t shy away from Bible prophecy and they don’t shy away from the truth even when it is not politically correct. They must have a prophetic view of our times and purposes. They must have a ministry to the poor, the homeless and the widows. They must understand Israel’s role in last day events and on top of it all, they must believe in and participate in the ongoing presence and power and activity of the Holy Spirit without which the church is dead.

                The choices of places to attend is dwindling rapidly as one criteria or the other is no longer met and so we rely upon the Holy Spirit to guide us to the right place and when He does, then we put our whole heart and soul into it.

                The creed of the church must be solid as it has to do with the nature of Christ, the nature of salvation, the role of sanctification in a person’s life and the power of the Gospel unto salvation. And beyond those foundational pillars, we expect to study the Bible for ourselves, not having a lot of man- made, or institutional doctrines and interpretations of scripture and prophecy imposed upon us.

                Too many denominations take on the role of Mediator in dictating a long list of doctrines to which one must subscribe in order to join. What this results in is that a person will develop a relationship with a certain combination of doctrines and an organization rather than with Jesus Christ.

                Our role as Christians in this world is to bring people to Christ, to the foot of the cross, to repentance and new birth and then to teach them how to study the Bible for themselves so that truth comes to them as divine revelation by the Holy Spirit. God has no grandchildren, only children and each child of God must be born into His family and they must grow into maturity, not being force-fed, but by searching the Scriptures to gain personal knowledge and understanding. See Heb. 4:12

                Many churches these days have become stadiums for spectators. They make members, but they don’t make disciples. A majority of Christians today don’t know what they believe and why. They no longer think for themselves. They just follow the party line and many of them in this day and age are following the party line right into the arms of the coming antichrist.

                This is why I feel such an urgency to make people think. Not so much so that they will agree with me, but rather that they will think about what they believe and why and if they disagree with me, I hope they will search the Scriptures to find out why they disagree with me and maybe we will all learn something together. I am a fellow student, a fellow seeker… not an authority figure.

                Not one in a thousand people can give you a scriptural outline for what they believe. They just believe what they were taught even though most cannot remember what they were taught, but hey, they are members of the club and they are on the glory train to heaven. But is that enough?

                `I used to be embroiled in a plethora of doctrines and prophetic interpretations that I no longer espouse simply because I couldn’t find them in scripture.  As Chuck Missler used to say: “Anyone can force the Bible to say whatever they want it to say if they torture it enough.” But what we really need is to understand the broad themes of the Bible that flow from Genesis to Revelation in grand agreement and purpose. That way we won’t get caught up in these little side issues and pet oddities that so often characterize offshoot religions.

                Paul said to the Corinthians, “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified…And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.” 1 Cor. 2: 2, 4, 5.

                And so, Paul’s entire teaching centers on those themes and the power of the Gospel to transform lives into the image of Christ. He speaks of the mystery of the Gospel which is Christ in you the hope of glory. Col. 1:27 He informs us that we have this treasure in earthen vessels. 2 Cor. 4:7 He reminds us that we are temples of the Holy Spirit. 1 Cor. 3:16. He teaches us how to be truly born again in a way that will bring us into the fullness of the stature of Christ Ephesians 4:13. He teaches us how to be filled with the Holy Spirit and how the Holy Spirit will be manifested in and through our lives. 1 Cor. chapter 14. He teaches us about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. 1 Cor. Chapter 12, 14. He teaches us about the fruit of the Spirit, Galatians 5:22, 23. He teaches us about the kinds of sins that must be weeded from our lives as we follow Christ. Romans 1:18-32, 2:1-6 and Gal. 5:19-21. He teaches us about the New Covenant that Jesus brought to us and how it is not of Law, but of the Spirit and that it operates under a new priesthood, where Jesus ministers on our behalf in heaven after the order of Melchizedek. Hebrews chapter 7. He teaches us that the Holy Spirit accomplishes transformation in us such as the Law could never do. Romans 8:1-4. He teaches us about the Body of Christ and how all of its members function together as orchestrated by the Holy Spirit. 1Cor. 12:11-31.

                Paul warns us not to be carried away by every wind of doctrine, but rather 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, cause the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.” Eph. 4:14-32

                What the Law could not do, weak as it was in the flesh, God did, sending His own Son who died for us and who rose again from the dead. Romans 8:1-3. And His Son in turn, sent us His Holy Spirit so that we can relate to God in a new and living way. Heb. 10:20.Through the infilling of the Holy Spirit we become living stones being fitted together into a dwelling place of God.  1Cor. 6:19, 20, 1 Peter 2:5. So, when a church sidelines the Holy Spirit, it has become like a car with no engine… and that is what many have become. And they are falling away because of it.

                Paul, as a central theme of all that he teaches sums it up in Chapter 8 of Romans telling us that it is those who are being led by the Spirit of God who are the sons of God and that all of creation waits in eager anticipation for the revealing of the sons of God, for when they are revealed in glory then all of creation will be freed from the bondage of sin and death. He reveals to us that we have been predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ and that nothing can separate us from His love and that in all things we will overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loves us. Romans 8: 1-39

                I believe that we are living in the days of the great falling away or apostasy mentioned in 2 Thess. 2:3, 4 and that this falling away will make way for the arrival of the antichrist. Even the temple in Jerusalem is soon to be built in which the antichrist will commit the abomination of desolation. Mt. 24:15.  I believe that we are just that close to the end and as such, we need to review our lives, our faith and our doctrine, to make sure that it is centered in the Gospel as Paul taught it and not in a long list of traditions that most of us could never understand in the first place. We need to center our faith in Jesus Christ in such a way that we will not betray Him for any reason when the Mark of the Beast is forced upon the whole world… and believe me, as this 5 G network comes on line, they will be able to track every single human being on the planet in real time and the A I driven D wave quantum computers will be able to handle all of that information with ease.

                It won’t be long before our freedoms will be gone and we who are faithful to God and His Word will be shut out of the system so that we will not be able to buy or sell, or pay bills or buy food, or even to stay in our homes or drive our cars.

                We need to know what we believe and who it is that loves us so that nothing can tear us away from our faith in Him. We also need to be prepared for the strong delusions that are coming that will, if possible deceive even the very elect.

                We need to build up our most holy faith, praying in the spirit. Jude 20. We need to place our faith in Him “who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.” Jude 24, 25.

                I love the break of day, when I walk by the lake with my son, I love the Sabbath, for it is a day of rest when we can pursue the things of God and to have fellowship one with another.   I love holding communion with my wife as well as with my church, for it reminds us that we belong to a covenant that was signed by the blood of Jesus. But I also look with eager anticipation for the breaking of another day, when we will see Jesus face to face. May we all be there together.