In the Garden of Eden there was one plan. God told Adam, everything is yours except for
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil[1]. At this point, there was no knowledge of
evil, for everything was good, even the forbidden tree. There was no evil, no sin, no pain and no
death or illness. Only after the one and
only restriction was ignored did evil enter the world; through the urging of
Lucifer.
Since the beginning, through his God given right of free
will, man has thought either that he knows better than God or that surely an
all loving God wouldn’t condemn you for doing as you pleased. Just a little bite of the fruit! Not a big thing. Surely God would overlook that little
thing. But it was enough to bring
rebellion (sin) into existence in God’s perfect place, and plan. I won’t go into detail about Lucifer’s
rebellion and rejection of God. Suffice
it to say that although Lucifer was in the presence of God, he rebelled in
order to further his own desires. My
estimation is that that was the first sin, unless you would count the envy that
led up to it. From that point on,
Lucifer set out to thwart all of Gods plans for mankind.
From that point on, man (with the help of Lucifer) chipped
away at the respect (fear) and authority of God. Since ‘a little bit’ wouldn’t hurt, surely a
little bit more wouldn’t matter. By the
time of Noah, man had become so self absorbed with his own desires and things
had gotten so bad, God realized He had to start things over. Perhaps this time man would respect Him and
His creation. Apparently, at that point
in man’s history, Noah and his family were the only ones left with any respect
(fear) of God.
As usual, with mankind, being led astray by the devil and
their flesh, the world was doing as it pleased during the time of Abraham. Abraham yielded himself in faith to God, and
the result was the Hebrew nation.
Abraham and his descendents, for the most part, followed God and His
will. As time passed, God’s chosen
people did not follow Him as they should.
The result was over four hundred years of servitude in Egypt
Time, after time, after time, the Hebrew people would
reject God and time after time, after time, they would return to Him. When they followed Him they prospered, but
when they strayed they fell into disrepute. He sent a multitude of prophets to bring the
people back to Him. The prophets were treated shamefully. It was at just such a time of betrayal that
God decided to put forth one more effort to redeem His people. He thought; surely they will respect my Son
and return to me.
From the beginning, God has done everything godly possible
to bring us to Himself. At this time,
about one third of the world claims to be Christian (followers of Christ). The last chance is at hand. Through His Son, Jesus, we are given one last
chance to redeem ourselves. You can
reject Him, as you have done with all God’s previous messengers, or receive the
gift of salvation that He paid for, with His sacrifice of suffering and death,
on your behalf.
There are two kinds of death: the ‘death’ which is a celebration
of the passing over to glory and eternal life with God, and dead-dead, which is
the passing over to eternal damnation. The second death is not part of the
celebration.
I don’t want to just give lip service to Jesus: Judas did
that when he kissed Him. There are
consequences for pretending to be a Christian.
The lack of true acceptance of the salvation of Christ leads to
spiritual death. You must truly accept
Jesus, as Lord of your life, to be acceptable to God. God doesn’t “sell salvation”[5] to
the highest bidder. Salvation isn’t
something you can earn by your good deeds or the sweat of your brow. It is a free gift; bought and paid for by the
blood of Christ.
It’s
easy. All you have to do is admit your
need for Him, ask for forgiveness, invite Him into your life as your own
personal Lord and Savior, and pronounce to others that you have accepted Him as
your Lord and Savior. The time is
short. Jesus will be returning soon, and
when He does the offer will be retracted.
If you ask now, the door to salvation will be opened to you. If you wait too long, the door will be locked
for all time. Today is the day of
salvation!
0 comments:
Post a Comment