PARTY

“John the Baptist’s arrest is tucked neatly between the lines about Jesus’ baptism and his setting out to begin his ministry.

There’s no fanfare, no explanation, no slowing down to explain why someone a faithful prophet could get carried away to prison. No stopping to explain the ‘why do bad things happen to good people’ question, even though Jesus later said there was ‘no prophet born among women’ who was greater than John the Baptist.

It was just a brute fact that a faithful servant of God got arrested and — later — killed.

Not for what he did wrong, that might be understandable, but for what he did right. That kind of story really messes with any picture that TV preachers might tell us is waiting for Christians.

But whether we like it or not, it’s reality.”

Doug Giles, Clash Daily

Yesterday, at my church, a visiting pastor from Alabama reminded us that not every encounter with the Holy Spirit is happy… Often the Holy Spirit brings conviction of sin and demands repentance.

The road to Heaven is not one big party… Those who live their best life now have only Hell to look forward to in the next life. You cannot party your way to Heaven. Jesus did not die to buy you a big house and a fine automobile.

Paul said, “If in this world only we have hope, we are of all men to be pitied!” The greatest Apostle who ever lived was beaten, stoned, betrayed, shipwrecked, snake bitten, and arrested… It was after all of those things and shortly before his execution that he wrote, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me…”

If you are following Jesus because you think that He will make you fat, rich and happy in Babylon and take you to Heaven when you die… you are in for a big shock. As a matter of fact, it was Satan who offered Jesus material wealth and political power. Jesus turned down the offer but when the Televangelists make that same offer, people fall all over themselves trying to receive it… Satan, calling himself Jesus, will gladly oblige them…

Jesus never promised that the cross would be light or the road easy, He promised tribulation, persecution and death. The cross He told you to take up will kill you dead… That has been turned into some kind of a metaphor and made to mean that you might have to miss a drunken orgy with your friends… NOT! The cross of Jesus was an agonizing instrument of torture and death… It is that cross that you are commanded to take up.

Jesus will be Jesus. If you take up your cross and follow him, you will see him work miracles through you and provide for you in miraculous ways… If you stop to party, that may not be the case. Jesus was with Paul in his sufferings and death and Jesus provided for him, yet he would write of being cold, tired, hungry and naked. He would also write, “I have learned in all things to be content…”

Powerful members of secret societies, posing as Seminary Professors and Pastors, have planted doctrines in the church that have created the Laodicean church in America… If having once prayed a little canned prayer can get you into Heaven no matter what you do later and the Rapture will magically exclude you from suffering and death, why worry? Why study? Why think or pray? Why make any decision that might lead to pain and suffering?

The answer is, if you believe these things, you have no reason at all!

The Televangelist, preaching the pure gospel of Lucifer, tells you that his god wants you rich… Timothy wrote, “If we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.”

While millions of Christians have suffered and died with and for Jesus, the American church is trying to party their way to Heaven… It will not work!

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,  that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

Paul, Apostle

Compare that with what you hear on “Christian” TV…

Think on these things…

David…