GOLD STANDARD

GREETINGS ALL!

Its been a lil while indeed since I wrote an entry, but something's been brewing in my heart that I've wanted to communicate.
Then I read Greg Reid's blog ( http://www.gregoryreid.com ) entry and discovered that he's said what I wanted to, but much more better.
I've asked him before if I could use his material in my own blogs and he said he'd be honored (well, that's how I feel having his writing in my blog!).

Any way, here is his entry in the link below; click, read, ponder and then pray what the LORD God would have you do as a result.

Remember, if all you are led to is intercessory prayer for this matter it's NO SMALL DEAL! Its vital that the saints of the LORD Jesus Christ raise up a thunderous, resounding appeal to our heavenly Abba.

If ever there is a time for the saints to get serious about the LORD, His Word, the church and the world today here in America and around the globe, IT... IS... NOW!!!


Bronze Shields <~~~~~~~~~~~~ click here and he who has ears to hear, let him hear!

The GOSPEL in Code

We as Christians know the Gospel, for it is the proclamation of good news, given by the LORD God in the scriptures. Note that it's GOD that has given this message to us. We didn't think this message up ourselves: it's origin is GOD.

We surely didn't create the Gospel but it has created us: by believing the Gospel, we have been born of heaven, rejuvenated spiritually, regenerated by the Holy Spirit Himself, based on the atonement of the LORD Jesus Christ's death on the cross, and His resurrection!
One of the best definitions of the Gospel is found in

1 CORINTHIANS 15:3-4: 
For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:

Definition Of A Biblical JESUS FREAK

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word "freak" as follows: "One that is markedly unusual or abnormal: as a : a person or animal with a physical oddity who appears in a circus sideshow; a thing or an occurrence that is markedly unusual or irregular. An abnormally formed organism, esp. a person or animal regarded as a curiosity or monstrosity. An eccentric or non-conformist person, esp.a member of a counterculture."

Certainly such definitions if taken objectively would bring no offense, but say such a word to someone in a derogatory fashion, and the intent of insult could hardly be missed. Such was the intention of the Romans who perceived the disciples of Jesus Christ as objects of curiosity, or even monstrosities, and at the very least, enigmatic followers of a strange religion.

However they couldn't deny how these people loved one another, or the One that they claimed to be the Son of God, only begotten of God. In a derogatory manner, the Romans referred to this strange lot of people as "little Christs", a term meant to ridicule and insult.

Yet when the disciples heard of it, they were humbled by such praise, as to even be compared to the LORD of Glory whom they served with love and obedience. They were first called "Christians" in the city of Antioch. Christians today are similarly confronted with another derogatory term, "Jesus Freak" and take exception to such words, for as we look upon our past and compare it with the life we now have with Jesus, we would readily agree that we WERE once freaks, but are now as God intended us, redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb and indwelt by the Spirit of the LORD.

The Shortest Longest Line

They say that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. I really don't know where heaven is located positionally, and I can claim the same ignorance as to the exact location of hell. I believe that the terms "heaven", "hell", and "location" are non-compatable, as both places exist outside of our time/space continuum. Yet when it comes to these two 'locations', no two points were ever farther apart, possessing the longest distance. Still, no two points were ever the shortest where the resurrection of Christ is concerned. Truly this comprises the Shortest, Longest Line ever!

EPH 4:8-10
Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.)

While the LORD Jesus lay in that tomb, having endured to the end, the excruciating agonies of the cross, both physically and spiritually (for the Holy Son of God "became sin for us", He Who "knew no sin...") He suffered no corruption in this body that was prepared for Him for the explicit purpose of being sacrificed for our sins: "Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once [for all]". (HEB 10:5,10, ACTS 2:27,31)

And we know scripture teaches that Christ Jesus went into hell (that is Sheol, or Hades, the abode of the dead) to preach to the spirits there of those accounted righteous by their faith in God, as was Abraham and all others prior to the crucifixion and ascension of the LORD Jesus: 1 PET 3:19; 4:6; LUKE 16:19-31

And in the midst of our LORD's spiritual work while His body rested in that cold, dark tomb, He knew that He would have to present His blood at the altar in heaven, before the Father, for that utterly perfect propitiation for the sins of mankind. 

HEB 9:11-12,23-24
But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption [for us]. [It was] therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, [which are] the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us:

Moses was told to build the tabernacle according to the pattern shown to him, and there is no doubt that these patterns were of the heavenly things as spoken of in the passages of Hebrews as listed above. There in those places, upon that altar that would know of no stain of blood, save for that of the Lamb of God--- this was the place where Christ had to make His presentation of blood!

We have no record in scripture testifying to this, but I can imagine that Satan wanted to do everything he could to block the Messiah from achieving that goal! As much as he tried (in vain) to repress, stall, stymie and prevent the LORD Jesus from His mission while on Earth, how much more vehement would be his dam of demonic defenses to rise up and attempt to thwart the Son of God from racing towards Heaven and plaster that altar with His shed blood!

And yet those THREE DAYS finally expired! And our expired LORD arose from Sheol with Divine Determination, and as He began to ascend, there was never an apt comparison ever portrayed on any football field where a defensive line tried to hold back the opposition from making a touch down! Higher and higher the LORD raced, trailing behind Him all the righteous dead who looked ahead to the coming Messiah, knowing from the scriptures that He "would save His people from their sins" MATT 1:21! Plowing aside like the All Powerful Potentate that He is, every foul and pernicious devil that stood in His way, onward He raced!

Aside from that time, 40 days I believe while in His resurrected state, He spoke, ministered, taught and comforted His own before His final ascension, it was at some time He presented His blood; imagine all the principalities and powers, all the princes of darkness and spiritual wickedness in heavenly places, all vainly trying to drag the LORD down from His lofty destiny. No tyrannical demon, no arrogantly potent devil, no malicious spirit was a match for our matchless King who finally approached that better altar in better places and presented better sacrifices and blood for the remission of sins!

How we can offer our praises and glorify God in our worship of Him who brought such salvation, from the Shortest, Longest Line: from Hades to Heaven! From destruction to destiny! From Hellish damnation to Holy Glory! 
If we could glimpse that Holy Temple in heaven right now, we would no doubt see the dried on blood of our Righteous Redeemer, still staining the mercy seat of the Holy Ark. The price has been paid, the repentant are redeemed, and the LORD of Glory is lauded as KING of Kings and LORD of Lords, to Whom EVERY KNEE WILL BOW and EVERY TONGUE CONFESS that JESUS is LORD - to the GLORY of GOD the FATHER! 

The MUSIC That Is HEAVEN

REVELATION 7:9-12
9 After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;
10 And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.
11 And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God,
12 Saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen

Heaven is the dream and desire of all the saints throughout the ages. Its the place we all consider our home, one that we long for. Peculiar in a way, that we are homesick for a home we have yet to even visit!
When you think of 'Heaven' what's the first word that comes to mind? Well, there are innumerable answers to that question, and no single one is the correct one.

What I think of is 'harmony', absolute, total, pure harmony "unmixed with baser matter". The very opposite of what we so often experience in this world, that is, disharmony. While I certainly don't espouse New Age thought, the idea that when the body is in disharmony it gets sick, has a measure of truth to it.

Disharmony is seen in cataclysmic storms like hurricanes and tornados. It's seen politically in wars, civil unrest and national strife. We observe it in times of economic depression when certain interest groups desire things opposed to by the general public. Disharmony is what started this existence of sin: 

Lucifer was no longer in harmony with the will and plan of God, and in the great symphonic orchestra of creation and the Plan of God, Satan struck a series of discordant notes that disrupted the entire score  (ISAIAH 14:12-14).

Harmony however will be restored. The Music of the Messiah will resound and overcome all opposition until it is finally silenced, and in the reign of righteousness all things will conform to the Divine Will which seeks the Way of Peace and Love and Joy for all God's creatures.
There will be an end to strife, contention, frustration and wrath. The lion will lay down with the lamb! Of course the lion lays down with the lamb today as well, the only difference is the lamb is INSIDE of the lion!

A result of the disharmony disaster that is sin, is the fatigue and weariness of life that began when Adam harvested thorns and thistle, and Eve gave birth in pain. The LORD Jesus Himself declares:

MATT. 11:28-30
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

In heaven when we see the LORD face to face, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is, and we shall know Him even as we are known of Him! (1 JOHN 3:2; 1 COR 13:12).
Such revelation and understanding will dissolve all conflicts of confusion, will melt away all sorrows, wash away all pain of loss and regrets. The harmony we will know on that Day will be the accord with which we shall love and worship the LORD Jesus, in absolute and total agreement in our proclamation that He is indeed WORTHY of our worship and praise and thanksgiving.

Even more so, the love experienced in heaven by the saints, will be so overwhelmingly powerful that the LORD Himself will be the supreme and holy influence whereby we shall "be one" by His Spirit.

We are admonished in the Word to keep the unity of the faith, a certain means of harmony within the body of Christ. Note it doesn't say obtain or acquire unity of the faith, but to KEEP. One cannot KEEP something one does not already possess. 
With such an emphasis among churches and even world religions for UNITY, we Christians posses unity already and only have to MAINTAIN this unity of the faith (the faith refers to that body of doctrine that's recorded in holy scripture) in accord to what the BIBLE says. Regardless of what ecumenism says today, DOCTRINE IS IMPORTANT and is the means by which we can keep the unity of the faith, via the Holy Spirit. EPH 4:3,13

This harmony is something we can know today in a very real way; this very day you can have a taste of the joy of heaven. How? It's simple, if done by the power of the Holy Spirit, Whom EVERY Christian has access to. WALK IN THE SPIRIT, and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh (GAL 5:16,25)! For is not this sinful, carnal, lustful flesh the source of all disastrous disharmony of sin and destruction (ROM 7:5)?

WALKING in the SPIRIT is walking in harmony with the will and accord of the LORD Jesus, it is putting on the mind of Christ (PHIL 2:5-8), it is following in the footsteps of our LORD: accomplished ONLY by the power of the Spirit Who resides in us as a result of our spiritual regeneration, aka being born again. 

Mortifying the flesh with all it's sin and spiritual ugliness, by reckoning ourselves to be dead indeed to sin is the other side of this endeavor (ROM. 8:12-14). The flesh is discordant with the Spirit and the Spirit with the flesh (GAL. 5:15-16) - to acquire this harmony is to silence the awful and raucous cacophony of corruption and let the Spirit have free reign in us, making His music!

Together, you and I, as children of the Living God, disciples of the LORD Jesus, the ONLY Way, Truth and Life that leads to the Father (JOHN 14:6), can participate in the grand orchestra that is integral to the plan that the LORD has scripted for all of us, writing each note on the music bars of said orchestration.

So lets make some beautiful music together, inspired by our LORD, a melody and harmony so  infectious that others will be drawn to that music, and persist in playing this music from here to Heaven, the place of absolute harmony! Amen!

Personally I have a lot of ideas about what heaven will be like; once we arrive I will most likely feel embarassment for my paltry notions, but perhaps by the Spirit of the LORD, He might grant us some insights about this wondrous place, insights that are based on and in accord with Scripture? I will consider these ideas in a potential 'Part 2' of this article . . .

REVELATION 21:1-7
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
5 And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.
6 And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
7 He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.  

the real war of the worlds

Steven Speilberg recently did a re-make of the old sci-fi classic WAR of the WORLDS, based on the book by H. G. Wells. In this remake, we see a far more graphic, realistic portrayal of an invasion of Earth by hostile alien forces intent on exterminating mankind from the planet and taking it for their own. Of course, this is just make believe . . . isn't it?
In a manner of speaking, yes; it IS after all science FICTION. However the idea of taking this world by force and controlling it and its population has long been the mission and intent of a being far more lethal than the aliens portrayed in this (or any) film.

The person of Satan, a spirit being of enormous intellect and power, a purely psychical non-corporeal being whose malevolence is as immense as his blinding pride which brought about his own fall from his heavenly domain to begin with.

The agencies under Satan's command as the god of this world are those by which, though unseen (a power group that in fact H.G. Wells was a part of), are weilding the reins that are steering our world into a total socialistic world government. All of this is leading up to the time in which the Beast as spoken of in the book of Revelation, will rule this world, and eventually bring the servants of the god of the world (fallen mankind) into an actual conflict with the GOD of the UNIVERSE: the LORD God who became flesh and blood, entering this world to bring salvation and redemption for all who would be free of the enslavement of sin, Satan and the heinous destiny that global societies are plummeting towards.

In the WAR of the WORLDS film, the aliens used the blood of their human victims to reshape our Earth into a domain more suited to their own needs. Yet the LORD Jesus Christ provided His own blood to recreate us, into new creations, infused by His Holy Spirit and ensured of the glorious destiny that will bring us out of this earthly existance and into His eternal reign, free from any evil rebellion or conflict perpetrated by fallen angels and mankind.

And yet here we are today, engaged in a reality not wholly physical, and yet not wholly spiritual either, but both, enmeshed for the time, on a stage being played out before us. This conflict between good and evil, God and Satan, and the souls of all mankind between them: either being drawn into the kingdom of heaven, or else being bound all the more resolutely in the kingdom of darkness.

And YOU and I are in this conflict; we can have an effect on those around us. The War that will culiminate at the end of this Age, started at the very beginning when Lucifer said "I will . . ." (Isaiah 14th ch.) and it rages on. Yet its the saints of God who're able to rejoice in the Truth, that when this rebellion has run its terribly temporary course, all will be set right again, and remain true on its irrevocable course in peace, righteousness and love.

Therefore REJOICE and maintain hope, for the victory in this WAR of the WORLDS has already been decided; the victory secured by our LORD Jesus Who Himself won the conflict on the Cross, and NOTHING can ever change this TRUTH. Hold fast to this glory and grace, maintain the high altitude of Holy Conviction, persist in the Proper Perspective as revealed in prayer and by His Word!

1Cr 15:57 But thanks [be] to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1Jo 5:4 For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, [even] our faith.

 

LEAVEN, FOWL & GLOBALISM REBORN

Gods admonition to the post-flood civilization of man was to go forth and be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth (Gen. 8:16-17; 9:1). Then in Genesis ch. 11 we have the people of the earth, rather than spreading out to replenish the earth as God instructed, rallied together and decided to build a tower in the plain of Shinar, that is the location of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon, or today's Iraq.
"And the whole earth was of one language..." there was a unity in the communication among the early civilization of man. "Let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; let us make us a name lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth." Had they been scattered, they would have been in obedience to God's command, but instead they incorporated.

When they said "...a tower whose top may reach unto heaven" I see the same boast as in Isaiah 14:13 "For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north"