Lawmakers in Honduras garnered national headlines last week when they voted to ratify a change to the national constitution that effectively bolsters the ban on abortion in the Latin American nation.
The lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in favor of the amendment on Jan. 21, with a second ratification vote last Thursday solidifying what supporters call a “Shield Against Abortion in Honduras.”
“The unborn shall be considered as born for all rights accorded within the limits established by law,” the amendment reads. Language was added to the amendment stating that “it is prohibited and illegal for the mother or a third party to practice any form of interruption of life on the unborn, whose life must be respected from conception.”
Jesus said He will judge sheep and goat nations on His return can I suggest that Honduras and Brazil where abortion is a crime will be among those sheep nations. Remember the Saints will have been raptured prior to Jesus return. Jesus will return with the saints to begin His Millennial reign on this earth.
“When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Matthew 25:31-33
“Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”Matthew 25:34
“Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire.”Matthew 25:41
Living Eternal Now – Ready for Jesus Return is about living our lives knowing that everything we give ourselves to will be judged in the fire of Jesus’ coming. Everything. If it isn’t yoked to eternity, it will burn up. The book provides abundant proof God exists and His Word (Holy Bible) is inerrant from Genesis to Revelation providing an accurate history of this Cosmos. It includes direct links to videos and articles that support this thesis which make eBooks particularly useful. It provides testimonies of prominent people, PhD scientists, famous actors like Denzel Washington. that are already living life with an eternal focus clearly in mind. The essential elements for living eternal now are covered in detail, so you can live with an eternal perspective knowing God’s purpose for your life. The last chapter, Discerning the Times, establishes we are living in the last days hence there is an urgency for you to know His will for your life.
If you would like an autographed copy of my book then you need to email me on ron@bakb.com.au providing your home or shipping address and donate equivalent of US$12.99 (includes postage anywhere) by clicking on the Donate icon on the Home Page.
In West Virginia, not only are the number of COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations coming down, they’ve vaccinated more people per capita than almost any other state.
West Virginia Governor Jim Justice credits God and common sense as the State leads U.S. in vaccine rollout.
Jim Justice realises God exists and that He loves to respond to the heartfelt, repentant prayers of His children. Their success was due in large part because Jim prayed on behalf of the State of West Virginia. The governor proclaimed March 25th of last year as a statewide day of prayer. He urged West Virginians to pray for God’s mercy and intervention with the coronavirus during a virtual prayer service at the state capitol.
“But Father, I pray for all of us in our great state that You will intervene now and hear our words as I know You will, and someway, somehow intervene to stop this terrible virus,” Justice prayed.
The governor says although they’ve seen their share of tragedy and loss of life, he knows God has been with them through it all. He has surely guided the boat since that day, (that we prayed) I can promise you that. This State is blessed because they have a Governor who believes in God’s goodness and His promises and acts accordingly.
In the year 1849 in the United States a major cholera epidemic broke out and quickly spread. Soon more than 150,000 died. The death rate was far higher than today’s covid19. In response President Zachary Taylor called for a Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer – a solution that had been called by Americans many timespreviously, beginning with the Pilgrims. Within days the epidemic was stopped. God responded.
Abraham Lincoln called three times during the Civil War for such Days of Humiliation
The Lord has allowed today’s global pestilence. New more virulent virus strains of the Covid virus are emerging worldwide. God typically uses catastrophes whether it is pestilences, famines, floods, wars to cause nations to repent and turn to Him. Read the story again of Jonah and Nineveh (Jonah 3:6-10). If sincere repentance happens, “God will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sins, and heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:12-14). Abraham Lincoln called three times during the Civil War for such Days of Humiliation, He said, “But we have forgotten God; we have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplies and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
Yet this simple but humbling solution is ignored by not only our nations leaders but most church leaders. I would suggest we are living in the last days Jesus spoke of prior to His return to rule and reign on this earth. Jesus said, lawlessness will abound like the days of Noah and Sodom and Gomorrah. Apostasy in the church, a great falling away, “For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.” (Matthew 24:24)
Personal and national repentance is typically not on the agenda of most political leaders and most churches. In that vacuum, you and I, are called to be examples, if necessary to start a prayer network, certainly to join other prayer networks, participating, for example, in Global Days of Repentance. The next Global Day of Repentance focuses on Australia on February 7, 2017. If you want to join in then do so by going to: www.globalrepent.com
Dr Martin Luther King certainly knew He does. God speaks especially to His people but also to anyone in order to achieve His purposes in His world. Even kings such as Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 4:1-3) and Darius (Daniel 6:28), to name two kings of major empires, Babylon and Persia. Read one of Martin Luther’s encounters from his book Stride Toward Freedom (1958): “I got out of bed and began to walk the floor. Finally I went to the kitchen and heated a pot of coffee. I was ready to give up. With my cup of coffee sitting untouched before me I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward. In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had all but gone, I decided to take my problem to God. With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud. The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory. “I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.”
“At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced Him before. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: “Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth; and God will be at your side forever.” Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything. “Three nights later, on January 30, I left home a little before seven to attend our Monday evening mass meeting at the First Baptist Church. A member of my congregation, Mrs. Mary Lucy Williams, had come to the parsonage to keep my wife company in my absence. After putting the baby to bed, Coretta and Mrs. Williams went to the living room to look at television. About nine-thirty they heard a noise in front that sounded as though someone had thrown a brick. In a matter of seconds an explosion rocked the house. A bomb had gone off on the porch.
“The sound was heard many blocks away, and word of the bombing reached the mass meeting almost instantly. Toward the close of the meeting, as I stood on the platform helping to take the collection, I noticed an usher rushing to give Ralph Abernathy a message. Abernathy turned and ran downstairs, soon to reappear with a worried look on his face. Several others rushed in and out of the church. People looked at me and then away; one or two seemed about to approach me and then changed their minds. An usher called me to the side of the platform, presumably to give me a message, but before I could get there S. S. Seay had sent him away. By now I was convinced that whatever had happened affected me. I called Ralph Abernathy, S. S. Seay, and E. N. French and asked them to tell me what was wrong. Ralph looked at Seay and French and then turned to me and said hesitantly “Your house has been bombed.” I asked if my wife and baby were all right. They said, “We are checking on that now.”
“Strangely enough, I accepted the word of the bombing calmly. My religious experience a few nights before had given me the strength to face it. I interrupted the collection and asked all present to give me their undivided attention. After telling them why I had to leave, I urged each person to go straight home after the meeting and adhere strictly to our philosophy of nonviolence. I admonished them not to become panicky and lose their heads. “Let us keep moving,” I urged them, “with the faith that what we are doing is right, and with the even greater faith that God is with us in the struggle.
What is your experience with prayer? Hopefully, we can learn from Martin Luther King’s experience: if we are doing what is right and are moving forward in trust, then God will orchestrate the outcome.
Some of us will have an experience like that of Martin Luther particularly when we come before God in our weariness, confessing our inability to continue confronting a godless world. Sadly, much of the church no longer believes God answers prayer and is in total control of His universe. What about you?
God is the moral lawgiver and has declared there is a moral order that governs life. It is revealed in His Word to us – the Bible. He created us, so He has the authority to tell us how life should be lived. Moreover, He created us in His image to be in a love relationship with us. Consequently, He gave us free will to choose, to trust Him or reject Him. Sadly, our progenitors disobeyed Him resulting in a world separated from its Creator. Demonstrating the extent of His love for us, our Heavenly Father sent His Son, Jesus, to become one of us so that He could provide a way for us to get back into a right relationship with Him. Jesus made it possible for our Heavenly Father to send the Holy Spirit to indwell all believers so they can follow the road map (Bible) God provided so we don’t get lost.
Adam and Eve expelled from the Garden of Eden
However, it must be remembered, all have a conscience, a moral compass which ultimately keeps us from destroying ourselves.
“No society has ever survived or will ever survive without morality, and no morality has ever survived without a transcendent source.” C.S. Lewis, Six Essays on the Abolition of Man
Dr. George Mavrodes taught philosophy at the University of Michigan for thirty-three years. He said that though the reality of moral obligations might not be proof for the existence of God, it is very strong evidence for it. He said that if anyone believes in absolute moral obligations, this only makes sense in a world where God exists. He makes it clear that this is the only way to account for one of the most significant aspects of human life. He encourages people who might not believe in God to be open to the possibility that the theistic view of life is truer to reality.
“Most of the skeptics I have seen move toward faith later told me that it was around this issue of moral obligation that they first began to wonder whether their views really fit the actual world they lived in.” Dr Tim Keller, Making Sense of God
Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher who coined the phrase “God is dead,” clearly recognized the hypocrisy that existed among those who claimed to be atheists. He had great contempt for those who didn’t believe in God and yet still clung to a belief in truth, morality, love, and human dignity. Nietzsche attempted to practice atheism until the day he died. As Jean-Paul Sartre said, such a life is “a cruel and long-range affair,” a life where love, beauty, and meaning could not exist. Nietzsche eventually went insane, suffering from the horrors of syphilis and spending the balance of his rapidly declining life in an asylum.
If you have an atheistic worldview and you logically think through its implications, you cannot help but experience despair when you consider that life is purposeless. We are here by chance, and when we die we go into everlasting nothingness. This generally culminates in a life of emptiness.
Diverting the mind is much easier for us today, because of the breakneck, vastly accelerated speed of daily life. The frenzy of digital life allows so little time for introspection and reflection. We find we are subtly, insidiously encouraged to ignore the significant issues of life, particularly the issue of “meaning.” Without realizing it, we seek to divert our minds with work and pleasure, to keep us from having to think about the emptiness of life, knowing that one day this is all going to end.
Throughout the Scriptures the fig tree is used as a symbol of Israel. Jesus spoke the “Parable of the Fig Tree” (Matthew 24:22-25) to the disciples as part of His response to their questions concerning when He would return to establish His Kingdom on earth. The parable states that when the fig tree blossoms again, the generation that witnesses that event will be the one that will be living when the Lord returns.
Mark 11:12-14, 20-25
Just the day before as Jesus and His disciples were walking on the Mount of Olives, they came across a fig tree that was barren. Jesus pronounced a curse upon it, and it withered (Matthew 21: 18-19). This was a symbolic prophecy that because the Jewish people (represented by the fig tree) had rejected Jesus as their Messiah (and were therefore barren), their nation would cease to exist. Then, the next day, Jesus reminded them of the tree and said when it blossoms again (when the nation is re-established), the Lord will return. That prophecy, like the prophecy of the Millennial Days covered in a previous post “History of the World”, indicates we are living in the season of the Lord’s return.
“I (Jesus) will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me. Hosea 5:15
Come, let us (Jews) return to the Lord; for He has torn us, that He may heal us; He has struck us down, and He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live before him.” Hosea 6:1-2
This amazing rarely considered prophecy in Hosea indicates His return is soon. The passage says the Messiah will return to Heaven and remain there until the Jewish people acknowledge their guilt in rejecting Him and earnestly seek His face — this will happen during a time of severe trouble for them (Great Tribulation). The Messiah will be gone for “two days.” He will return on “the third day” and will raise up the Jewish people, refreshing them like a spring rain. As God calculates time, it has been “two days” since Jesus ascended to Heaven, for to God, “one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day” (2 Peter 3:8 and Psalm 90:4).
A sober prophetic message from Jonathan Cahn to President Biden. It testifies that God’s judgement will be poured out on America in increasing intensity unless the nation repents of its rejection of God’s values. Jonathan’s message to Christians: it is time for our light to shine in the darkness, to live lives unhindered, uncompromised, unbound, bold, all out for Jesus regardless of the cost. Will you say YES to JESUS?
The book of Nehemiah vividly demonstrates that God is all-powerful and able to accomplish his will, both in individual lives and in nations. Nehemiah’s prayer in Neh. 9 focuses on praising God for his sovereign and powerful acts: God created the heavens and earth (Neh. 9:6), called Abram from Ur, and gave the land to Israel (Neh. 9:7-8, 22-25). The miraculous signs in Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, and the provision of guidance, food, and water in the wilderness all demonstrate God’s power over man and nature to provide for his people (Neh. 9:9-15).
The Lord had sent the Israelites into exile after generations of persistent sin (Neh. 9:26-27). Now he was fulfilling part of his promise to restore them (Neh. 1:8-9).
NEHEMIAH HAD CONFIDENCE IN GOD
Nehemiah had confidence to pray and lead because he knew that everything that happened was part of God’s sovereign plan. This same confidence in God’s sovereignty led Abram to leave Ur and by faith go to an unknown land (Genesis 12:1-3; Hebrews 11:8-10), caused Rahab to trust in God (Joshua 2:9-14; Hebrews11:31), and prompted Hezekiah not to give in to the demands of the Assyrian king Sennacherib (2 Kings 18–19).
Confidence comes when people believe that God will keep his promises and complete the work he has started in their lives.
“And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Philippians 1:6
How about you? Where do you lack confidence? Can you think of any promises God makes that you can rely on as a source of confidence? Share some of God’s promises that have given you confidence in the Comments section and I will share them on LEN. Love to get feedback.
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Asking God for vision in the new year should be a solemn act. It should also be specific, personal, uncomfortable, and riddled with challenging questions. It should involve more than a half-hour of brainstorming hyper spiritualized resolutions. More than praying for God to help you kick that pesky habit or finally read the Bible from cover to cover. It should probably involve less asking for blessings and more asking to be transformed into his image. Attempts to map out our destinies and polish our illusions of control should be replaced with humble submission to God’s sovereign plan. Less “we will” and more “if the Lord wills” (James 4:13-17). Not only must we ask God for vision, we must ask him how to ask for it.
So this new year, let us ask God to prepare us for the unknown and grant us the grace to accept the unexpected. Let us pray for our hearts’ desires to more closely reflect his own. Let us seek conformity to his likeness, that in circumstances we hoped we would never face and never dreamed we could handle, we would respond in humble obedience. Come what may, we know God is faithful. In 2021, may He give us faith in return.
Ultimately, instead of writing a liturgy which asks, “How can we hack into God’s vision for our future?” perhaps we should ask, “How should we respond when our personal ‘vision’ is shattered by God’s divine interruption?” The biblical figures were blessed with grace-filled opportunities for growth. When our biblical heroes responded with trust and obedience, they experienced God working in and through them in extraordinary ways. When they clung to their shortsighted expectations and entitlements, as in the case of Jonah, they brought unnecessary grief on themselves and those around them. But in the end, God’s will was achieved despite their obstinance.
Let us ask this year for God to prepare us for the unknown and grant us the grace to accept the unexpected. Let us pray for our hearts’ desires to more closely reflect his own. Let us seek conformity to his likeness, that in circumstances we hoped we would never face and never dreamed we could handle, we would respond in humble obedience. Come what may, God is faithful. In 2021, may he give us faith in return.
This excellent article is taken largely from a post by an unknown guest contributor “10 Ways God Might Ruin Your Plans for 2021? on the website http://www.patheos.com
