AUSTRALIAN BIBLE CHURCH August 26, September 2, 2007

A CONTINUATION OF THE THRUST AND BASE OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
OF AUSTRALIA ON BIBLICAL LINES …

WHO are KEPT by the POWER of God ?

On this Sunday, we can specialise on the last part of our topic, Identifying Answers. It is this.  

Who is kept by the power of God ? 
First, it is by God not Symbol!

 AUSTRALIAN BIBLE CHURCH August 26, 2007

A CONTINUATION OF THE THRUST AND BASE OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
OF AUSTRALIA ON BIBLICAL LINES …

On this Sunday, we can specialise on the last part of our topic, Identifying Answers. It is this.  

Who is kept by the power of God ? 

Part I

First, it is by God not Symbol!

Let us start with I Peter 1:3-5.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away,
reserved in heaven for you,
who are kept by the power of God
through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Now we come to the opposite to straying, the apposite opposite. Those who are kept by the power of God, says I Peter 1, are those who by God's abundant mercy have been begotten again in a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. In fact, as in Romans 10:9, if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead (not some spiritual imagination, but the testable corpse – John 20, Luke 24), then you will be saved.

The Christ in whom you are to believe, then, is not some made up again as bread or mere man, but the One who came from heaven (John 6:51, 62, 17:1-3, 8:58, Acts 3:19ff.) and returned there, there to remain till the final restoration of all things through His own power and in His own return and rule! His overpowering might is so contrary to the Wrong Song of which we spoke last Sunday (cf. John 8:19) that the Lord will even dispense with the heavens and the earth, and this soiled old world will go! (II Peter 3, Matthew 24:35, John 5:19ff.) with its works, to be burnt up in much power and noise and heat! HIS words however will remain.

Daring to suggest that the demonstrated power of God is a 1^st century hang-up, this Anglican Spong is in fact espousing a last century hanging of manifest truth, a neo-crucifixion, out of due time, an insurgency 2 millenia too late, demanding the excision of the Christ of God, biblically defined, historically exhibited in power, glory and grace, prophetically precise and never invalidated, nor invalided and sent home, but rising on time from the dead, in the face of all who could do nothing to stop Him, or dissolve His Church. He is not the first, not will he be the last, for such assaults are naturally predicted in the Book of the Lord, the Bible (Matthew 24:24). Christs out of the mind of man are two a penny, based on air, made according to demand, dolls of false doctrine, show-bags of unspirituality, paps of pretence.

On the doctrinal dyspepsia, then, we have elsewhere been looking at the bread-god of Rome, the heresy exposed by the Reformation, a thing to be worshipped contrary to explicit direction, at which we paused in "Who is my mother ?" Now however, in all responsibility, one must draw attention to the fact that in The Advertiser, August 23, 2007, in an effort to distance a major Pentecostal body from the fall into fallacy of Spong, the Senior Pastor of the Paradise Community Church, renowned for Pentecostal specialisation, made a declaration of great significance. As reported, after leaving Spong out of the throng he endorses, it reads as follows: "We are orthodox Christians with orthodox beliefs. We stand with all the Heads of Churches, the Lutherans, the Catholics and the Baptists; we are united."

This definition of 'orthodoxy' is as fallacious as the fondness for Romanism! For long many have been the Pentecostal bodies which have had fellowship with Romanists, sharing tongue speaking with them; and of great interest in that respect was the report of one who attended, indicating that for that one, there was an even greater emphasis on Mary than before! Since this emphasis has her as Queen of Heaven, even mentioned by popes as Redemptrix, one to whom prayer is made whereas from the lips of Christ,  EVERY ONE who does the will of God is "My Mother" - Christ Himself declared it! it is apparent that this meeting was fruitful in forbidden and fraudulent claims (cf. Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 8, SMR p. 1086 *10). That was a beginning; but the child of disfaith grows! Put differently, the contours become sharper. This then becomes a chute of more and more former churches, leading to a unity with Rome which assaults the Christ of the Bible. Going astray becomes a multiple alternative to the way which is Jesus Christ of the Bible.

You can have your twentieth century man, as with Professor Geering of New Zealand (and sad it is to consider the plight of those who remorselessly abused the resurrection, when it comes to the day of it!), or the twenty first century man as with this Wrong Song, but it is not after all man at all, of whatever century – you can take your pick with William the Conqueror in the 11^th century, 11^th century man for England, or the Man of the 19^th century, with his industrial might and mechanistic views as so often in England, with Darwin a coping stone of this solecism, this ranting blindness to what the mechanisms are FOR, and where they are FROM, and where they are to GO. You can take the 1^st Century Man of Israel, rejoicing in the crucifixion of Christ if you want, but what difference does it make ? They are all wrong.

They have the wrong song, invented without ground, this recent one nearly 2000 years too late; they sing of man and his works, his ways and his day, and look more than a little ridiculous with the spectacles of time; how much more are they vulnerable to the inspection of eternity!

Let us consider the world’s way, its immunity from morals in its own mind, and tremble. One example will suffice of what is found widely, but with convicting horror in China, as illustrated recently in a recent article in The Advertiser, August 18, 2007, dealing with China. This  shows such a sophisticated, robotic, surreal and sensational indifference to the welfare of toy factory workers, that it is hard to consider how much more cruelty could have been shown, without making them unable to work at all. Let us ponder this report from The Real Toy Story, Eric Clark.

Here we see unmanned man (or in this case denatured woman) from a land whose god is the State: and as to it, it has neither mind nor moorings. Based on illusion, unelected man dictates. Falun Gong has been an earlier revelation of its workings, as hordes were assailed by a State evidently determined to rub out the spiritual aspirations of man, be they true or false. 

Second,
it is not by Truncating Truth or Tying Up Man

The hours in continuance could be as long as 20 (one died after a bout of that), while the ability to leave was made all but impractical for many by an array of evils. Thus not only were they thwarted by the guards and the gates,  by the dormitories and the little food - the poor efforts almost ludicrous if health be at all considered, but by the intensely demanding rate for work, and the fact that something like 6 weeks' salary could be docked if one did succeed in leaving.

With starvation wages or something like it, and small food, bad health and great, indeed vast tiredness, this was rather like the Siberian cases, which at least the USSR viciously propagandised as a matter of receiving punishment; though in one way, this only made it worse by evilly attacking their moral standing whilst itself being wholly immoral, and devoutly cruel towards them. How could one go home with the guards and dogs abounding in Siberia, or without money in China!

The occasion of this noted news article was the fact that a famous toy company had to recall two million toys, hordes having been exported,  because of lead paint dangers for children, and parts coming off, these liable to enter children's throats. This development has however helped to concentrate focus on the drab situation, the dire dynamics of the factory and the inhuman practices that would seem to make contempt a compliment.

Fresh from rural China, a migrant may thus come to the city situation. One is traced, after a time in the factory. Skin has many open cuts, neck, chest and forearms are heavily mottled; red patches of allergy are raised, from toxic chemicals, while there is much coughing and with this, arrive chronic aches and pains, frequent headaches. Vision is blurred.

This is one case ? but when one considers the reported conditions, it is scarcely surprising that she looks older than her 18 years. Many, the report continues, return from the factory to their residences or home sites with disfigurements and illnesses. One was reported to have actually run 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, for lack of automation of part processing. Grime and sparsity of water and bathrooms is reported notorious.  Toilets may require a queue, enabling with other impediments, bed perhaps by 2 a.m..

The article, statedly based on the book, points out that China has dominance in the vast toy market, much of which finds buyers in the USA.  To achieve by competition without rules, the pre-eminent low cost, there is this amoral pressure on the workers. In principle, the individual is trashed.

But what of the human erosion and spiritual corruption involved ? Such political and commercial like other virtual prostitution of man by man for the pulse of power is no part of man's mandate (Psalm 8:5-8, Habakkuk 2:12-14 - Berkeley, Amos 5:12-15, James 5:4-6), but abhorred by God.

“Woe to him who builds a town by blood and establishes a city by iniquity!

"Consider, it is not from the LORD of hosts that peoples exert themselves
and that nations exhaust themselves for nothing;
for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea." 

In other words, so massive is the Lord's determination to expose evil and forward good, that His aversion to greedy withholding of wages, misuse of man by man, exploitation and violence (as in Amos 5 and James 4) will be seen by acute contrast when the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.

It is not saying that He is espousing these exploitations because the earth will be so filled, but that He is against them so that, by contrast, in His OWN will, when times of test are past and His rule is most direct in the millenium,  this blessed fact will be seen well enough. In what way ? It will be the precise opposite, coming in terms of His love of justice, mercy and judgment, equity and truth (on which Psalm 72 dwells for this coming period of history). He may send evil on a city  (Amos 4) - that is devastation or trouble, or withhold good; but it is man and his sin which engenders the plight, making man vulnerable, it is sin which occasions it and brings its own reward.

It is sin which eats the fruit of its own doings (Proverbs 1).

Hence the words of James flame with fiery ire.

"Come now you rich men, weep and howl for your miseries
that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted
and your garments are moth-eaten...

"You have heaped treasure together for the last days.

"Behold the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields,
which is of you kept back by fraud, cries;
and the cries of those who have reaped
are entered into the ears of the Lord of hosts...
You have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.
You have condemned and killed the just ..."  (emphasis added).

The riches of Communism are just as aristocratically disproportionate as in many another regime, and redress is even more difficult than in some, since all the weapons of power are put in man, the legislative, judicial and executive in one bundle, undivided; and justice becomes his plaything, morality his invention, and power his tool of selfish extraction, as in Communist fiasco, which crucifies morality only to make itself the moral law, based on nothing, and doing nothing ultimately good, for it is lost before it speaks and null before it opens its mouth. It is a dummy exhorting, a moral zero in its own perspective, berating its victims.

It is then both a moral and actual holocaust, inflamed in alienation and by bluster banishing truth, assailing justice and evacuating mercy. Such is the trend for those who amend goodness into their own hearts, justice into their own wills and truth into their own models which deny it at the outset, though they affect to speak it.

Its rule is as in Isaiah 59, showing you can come by this or that folly of idolatry, whether of man or other objects, to the same bitter end, revolting in emptiness of good, filled with its own vapours, settled in its own wastelands of greed for power and swamps of spiritual loathsomeness. Communism, idolatry of man, is merely one of these ways. Consider this exposure of the mechanics of formalised and defeatured man in Isaiah 59, spoken of backsliding Israel, but horribly applicable to Communism's lair. . 

"Justice is turned back, And righteousness stands afar off;
For truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.
So truth fails, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.

Then the Lord saw it, and it displeased Him
That there was no justice.
He saw that there was no man,
And wondered that there was no intercessor;
Therefore His own arm brought salvation for Him;
And His own righteousness, it sustained Him.
For He put on righteousness as a breastplate,
And a helmet of salvation on His head;
He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing,
And was clad with zeal as a cloak.

“According to their deeds, accordingly He will repay,
Fury to His adversaries,
Recompense to His enemies;
The coastlands He will fully repay."

It proceeds to describe the coming of the Redeemer (as in Romans 11:26-28), for which we wait by faith (Hebrews 9:28), by whom we are, who are His, kept by the power of God to an inheritance incorruptible, that does not fade away, reserved in heaven by the God who made both us and our longings. He provided the precision of prophecy that expounds itself in history: and the very spirit prophecy and its core (Rev. 19:10) is shown to the universe as the testimony of Christ whom none can destroy; for even death is in His power, and life is His love. Man can die in many ways; but life comes only by One, the fabricator of matter, the maker of mind and the dower of spirit. To this life, He comes again, the surgeon of spirituality, deleting the cancers of scoffing sin and proud disdain, restoring knowledge where wisdom had long fled.

As He came at the first, to die for sin and declare deity, the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus (II Corinthians 4:6), so He comes at the last to judge what seeks or acts to dam grace and damage that face with new gospels, new christs, or no christ at all, asleep in the deep till judgment rolls (Acts 17:31).

Make fast therefore your reservation in heaven by THIS Christ from heaven whose is the work that endures, the word that rules and the way for man (John 14:6).  Only the Trinitarian God is the Saviour (Isaiah 43:10-11, 48:16, 45:22-23), who having sent man to earth, sent the Saviour, His everlasting word as man to restore him. Nor is there is no other name under heaven given among men, by which they must be saved, than that of this same Jesus Christ, Deity Himself incarnate, inviolate, immutable, beautiful in holiness, vast in praises, eternal (Acts 4:11-12, John 8:58).

Glory in that name, pray in it, abide in His words as the fruit forms and the joy increases in His presence: for the Lamb is worthy of worship (Revelation 5), and it is for Him not to be sacrificed again, godless task, but to receive the sacrifices of praise. Sacrificing Christ in efforts to make novelties and call them 'Christ', new christs, new 'man', new oldnesses, erected from the pit of pollutions past and unthinkable, this is merely to tread under foot His blood, and to measure a coffin for one's own mercy.

Not wise are they who dash from the doctor's hand the saving medicine, or assault the life that brings salvation. Foolish is the foggishness that disdains clarity, hides from truth and blots out God; for it is only from the wind-screen of the soul. The reality remains and when one persists, then as Amos 4:12 has it, "Prepare to meet your God!"

 AUSTRALIAN BIBLE CHURCH September 2, 2007

A CONTINUATION OF THE THRUST AND BASE OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
OF AUSTRALIA ON BIBLICAL LINES …

Who is kept by the power of God ? 

Part II

We have been considering being KEPT by the POWER of GOD! and have seen that is by the true God not mere symbol, nor is it by imaginary christs from false prophets, of whom Peter warned (II Peter 2:1ff.) as did Christ (Matthew 24:24), who do violence to truth and very frequently to man as well! It is God who knows what is good for man, and neither doctrinal dyspepsia nor dynamic oppression is this! We were considering the parallel between some of the evils of ancient Israel as in Isaiah 59, and Communism, and before we expound our texts on the power of God further, let us complete this review.

What then, indeed, of the human erosion and spiritual corruption involved in the Communist fraud, the people its messiah, but themselves oppressed ?

Communist hypocrisy makes it, if possible, worse with the high words and low deeds. It highlights the miserable miseries, with hideous irony, of what this toy factory case merely reminds, hideous events that have been effected through bitter years of hypocritical condemnations, removal of whole tracts of people to Siberia or prison or commercial ruin by dishonesty and greed, or to death by execution.

This, as Solzhenitsyn points out in the USSR case, was worse proportionately than under the Czars (SMR 971-972). Death here indeed has been like a giant sea creature swallowing whole populations, whether slow or fast, many engulfed in corrosive glamour and clouds of burning air (which some Chinese cities are in danger of conferring almost literally, it appears) in the intoxicated rush to glory which fades at advent and appals in its onset).

That one should wish to help the afflicted is one thing. Moreover, the righteous show their foundations by the delight in justice and equity, kindness and grace which is a mark of the one who knows God, who does not condone exploitation at any level, opportunistically or otherwise.

But to afflict both in your soulless propaganda and ruinous oppression of spirit and body, that is rather different. Indeed, some  years ago, Time magazine told of multiplied loud-speakers throughout rural areas, dinning the materialistic philosophy into the disquieted ears of the literally ear-bashed peasants.

Alas for man: Neither Nazi man nor Communist man nor Imperialist man, sleazily selfish man  nor deluded god-making man nor any other mini-man in the van of the vanguard of illusion and freedom from truth is the way. Mindless of the living God, mini-man has his day, and it sets.

Third: How are they Kept ?
It is by the Predestining, Loving and Sure Power
of the Changeless God 

MAN is NOT the way! He is always trying to put himself in front of God, by making a new one, or ignoring the actual One, doing it theologically, geologically, frantically, in wars and in words of deviousness as frequently, while seeking ruthlessly to dispose of God’s  assets in man for Him, tilting at His authority, or ignoring His design of and for man; but God does not move.

God has His own way. The body of Christ He moved OUT of the notable and marked tomb of Joseph of Arithmathea (Mark 15:42-47) and this was one case where a person COULD take it with Him ... but what a Person! for with God nothing blocks, no not death itself. It is His own sentence, and He took it for man, as many as received Him. In His own time, He can and will take His people with Him, for He always does what He says; nor is He available for manipulation in mass, mind of minister or priest, or political regimes. His word rules while this world fools.

It is in GOD’s OWN POWER that the Christian is engendered, to become a new creation in Christ, and is kept, to become a place of grace and a testimonial of truth. Imagination without ground never competes with reality verified under fire! God Himself acts.

The Lord's people are kept by a power which knows no counter, and controls in the end, whether the degraded mannishness of man,  the brutality of beast or the dynamic of the devil!(I John 4:4) But to what are those who so believe KEPT ? It is, says Peter (I Peter 1:3-5), to an inheritance (as in Ephesians 1:11, it is sure, as in I John 5:11-13, 14:3).

^"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away,
reserved in heaven for you,
who are kept by the power of God
through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

It is to an inheritance

	1) incorruptible (it CANNOT be spoiled)
	2) undefiled (it IS not polluted) and
	3) that does not fade away (it is permanent);   and further, it is
	4) reserved in heaven for all such – its mandate is unalterable (John 4:14, 5:11-13).

Such is the lot (Daniel 12) of those who are begotten again, regenerated (I John 3:9).

These ? It is the ones in whom the Lord is like a well of water springing up into eternal life! (John 4:14) who know God and so go with God (John 12:26, 8:12, 17:1-3,24), who have received Him as He is and so believe; and while they may stray (as did Jonah!), yet in Him is their life and He is their Lord who pardons, reprocesses and reproves, yes and restores (as He did Peter, John 21).  

In Him is no shadow of turning, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8, James 1:17), more reliable than the mountains, deeper than the sea, broader in grace than the winds and stars: the power, righteousness and wisdom of God ( I Corinthians 1:24,30-31, Hebrews 13:5).

Indeed, in II Timothy 1:9, we see how far deeper and higher is salvation than something depending not on the Shepherd Himself, but on the sheep (each of which is BORN to be one,  by regeneration into the everlasting - Titus 3:5-7). It is not even possible for a sheep to degrade into a goat (I John 3:9), for as to what is born of God, says John, its SEED REMAINS IN IT.

But Timothy ? -

“the gospel according to the power of God,
who has saved us and called us with a holy calling,
not according to our works,
but according to His own purpose and grace
which was given to us in Christ Jesus
before time began” (emphasis added).

First this verse tells us that we have been saved. It is not a process merely, it is not a hope of any uncertainty, nor is it a possibility to be plumbed, any more than is a birth an option, once it has happened. This new birth KEEPS its seed, its new nature, IN IT (I John 3:9, 5:24).

Secondly, it is with a holy calling. It is not some passing mutter. Those so called are kept. God from eternity has resolved this, and is holy, not partial or problematic. The nature of God is in it, and nothing can snatch it from His hand (John 10:27-28): His voice has declared it as surely as He called the universe into being. This small new universe, the newly begotten soul is here, it has come; for

"it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (II Corinthians 4:6).

	Thirdly, it is not according to works - that is not its domain, type or kind, nor has it kinship with it. Divorced from human contribution at the outset, in it He works.
	Fourthly, it is according to God's own purpose and grace that we have been saved. It is not a dependency of our abilities, power or purpose, but of His own. The love of God has found His own, He who would have all (Colossians 1:19ff.), has known who are His and secured them before time, for ever (John 6:50-54).
	Fifthly, it is a grace which has been given to us in Christ Jesus before time began. Time does not erode it, but merely conveys it! It conveys what is the case, and time can no more age it than distrain God Himself! Inviolate, He suffers none to violate or vitiate the eternal status of His own property.

Let us pause here. Time is processive, eternity is investitive. We who are saved, have been chosen before what is temporal and the processive began, elect in the foreknowledge of God; and as to that, this has been predestinated for us (Romans 8:29ff.). It is in God's "own purpose and grace" that we who have been saved by Christ are granted this place: the whole gamut of grace revealed by the appearing the Saviour, Jesus Christ. As to Him, He has "abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel" (I Timothy 1:10).

Such is the GRACE and its MAGNITUDE, the KNOWLEDGE and its ETERNITY, the FUTURE and its INTERMINABILITY, which God has provided for His people, who have been saved, as is any one who enters through that door, which is that of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ;. For any such, this is Christ's infallible affirmation (John 10:9,27-28). They will be saved and go in and out and find pasture, and are given eternal life, so that NONE can snatch them from His hand, and indeed, they SHALL NOT PERISH. This is the mind of God revealed.

In such depth has God prepared the plan of salvation; such is its design, case and position for those designated by Him, who accordingly find Him, being found by Him; and such is the result of redemption, eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12), the cover perfected in one offering (Hebrews 10:10,14). Let us then work out our salvation with fear and trembling, being sanctified by truth (John 17:17, Philippians 2:12-13) and fearless in mercy, truth and love, turning aside for none and for nothing, investing our lives in the security of Christ.

 It is HE, this Jesus Christ, and not another, who is the passport to felicity, the object of faith, the active and living Saviour, the performer of all the works needful for salvation, the example in life and in death, rising from the dead with the same indelible, physical certainty which defying death and devil, man and circumstance alike, is the prelude to that future act for all who are His (I Thessalonians 4, I Corinthians 15). His body, it is this which He collects (Isaiah 26:19, I Thess. 4). It is He who is the religion of the children of God; it is His resurrection which in body, is the felicity and dower which awaits them (I John 3): it is His righteousness in which they regale themselves and which accredits them forever (II Corinthians 5:17-21, John 10:27ff., Romans 5:17) and as to this, not only is it a gift, as in 5:17, but a GIFT BY GRACE (5:15), assured in Him, His word and deed (Romans 5:5-11).

Let us then work out our salvation with fear and trembling, being sanctified by truth (John 17:17, Philippians 2:12-13) and fearless in mercy, truth and love, turning aside for none and for nothing, investing our lives in the security of Christ.

 It is HE, this Jesus Christ, and not another, who is

	the passport to felicity,
	the object of faith,
	the active and living Saviour,
	the performer of all the works needful for salvation,
	the example in life and in death, rising from the dead as is the future act of all who are His (I Thessalonians 4, I Corinthians 15).

It is He who is the religion of the children of God; it is His resurrection which in body, is the felicity which awaits them (I John 3): it is His righteousness in which they regale themselves and which accredits them forever (II Corinthians 5:17-21, John 10:27ff., Romans 5:17) and as to this, not only is it a gift, as in 5:17, but a GIFT BY GRACE (5:15).It is He who as I Timothy 1:10 declares, who has "brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel", by the glorious means of the "appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ", and "has abolished death."

Death is a fearful curse and it is apt for sin; but grace is a glorious wonder, and it is apt for salvation. In bringing immortality to light, God did not simply show the positive, but trampled on the negative. Declared in Christ, He not only healed and fed thousands, but raised the dead as a prelude to His showing in Himself the total power of God, even representing man the sinner severed by evils, breaching death itself.  In this way, all who receive Him according to His word, that binding covenant,  the true God who so appeared,  find freely en masse the abolition of death. Its guilt and dire discipline becomes pardon and past premiss; and at the general resurrection the full fulfilment is to be.

Immortality is no more a desire for philosophers; it is a donation for Christians. Life that does not end is no more a fear or a desideratum, but a finding and a deliverance; for in God, the author of eternity for man, there is authority that is not void, and love that never dies. Life abounds. Death is no more a fearful bludgeon, but an abolition, like slavery of old, in Europe. There then is Jesus Christ Himself, whose is the abolition of death for life by His gift.

HE, and He alone is the passport of the faithful; and He is mine, in whom I am well content (Ephesians 1:6, I Timothy 6:6): for His life is mine, as is that of a tree branch, and by His Spirit He enables me, guaranteeing by His power which keeps me. In His grace is my sufficiency (II Corinthians 3:5, Ephesians 1:5-11). HE seals and NONE steals!

Praise God for the living Passport. The perspective of the passport ? It is that of the Prince of Peace, whose kingdom does not end, but grows, and in the end, the pledge of the beginning is revealed (Matthew 12:28); and the kingdom of heaven having swept up upon us, we who believe are open to that very power of God which He displayed in the resurrection, by which immortality being promised, is provided (I Corinthians 15).

Life is eternal, the simple solution to the dismal yearnings of misled man. It is however not obtained by talk or innovation; it is by salvation in the Christ of God, who came and did what was required, returning till the test of those upon this earth is concluded: His return and restoration awaits. Ignoring God is unwise; imagining that He has ignored us is spiritually slanderous, grossly untrue to the facts and the demonstrations, validations, verifications concerning Him, and is merely to receive the result that reality gives to the lie (II Thessalonians 1-2, cf. Swift Witness    6).

Many are asleep; but when some snore, as in II Peter 2's case, the lie has a double meaning. Awake! says Paul (II Corinthians 6:1ff).