What are we doing here? What business do God's people have trying to mimic and compete with the world for glory and monetary success? How do people justify living one way and teaching an entirely different one?
Welcome to the world of hypocrisy that has overruled this earth since the days of Adam and Eve. Of all the traits God longs to find in His people, purity has to be at the top of the list. For most people the word pure conjures up images of Puritans, nuns and ultra-religious sects which forbid their adherents to breathe. The world has so twisted the definition of purity around that those who attempt to live a pure and undefiled lifestyle are nothing but the butts of comedian's jokes.
There will be a day coming, far sooner than anyone wants to believe, when the joke will be on the scoffers. All those who today sit back and deride those of us totally committed to speaking and living the truth of God's Word will be the ones facing an extremely angry God. "That will never happen" they say, but deep down inside they have to know their day of reckoning approaches.
The most grizzly, rude and rank old codger on earth will many times decide to get saved on his deathbed. A person who spent his whole life harassing, slandering and backbiting those who tried to live holy lives suddenly finds himself a few hours from meeting his creator. Isn't it amazing how fear of eternal torment changes a person?
Haven't we all known someone who was mean and vile and was more than willing to tell the world that there is no God, only to be the first in line praying to the God they claimed to not believe in as certain death was ready to sweep them away? "Oh God help me" is the cry of saint and sinner alike. "If you will save me I'll live my life for you" is the plea both the rank unbeliever and strongest believer make to God as their life passes before their eyes.
This is all well and good if a person has the time to cry or make such a plea before their demise. Did the astronauts on the space shuttles that disintegrated have time to utter such pleas? Did the trucker who crashed his tanker truck full of gasoline have time to utter such a cry before an inferno vaporized him instantly? Did those people scrambling down flights of stairs in the World Trade Center really have time to bargain with God as those towers crashed upon them?
God has stated emphatically over and over again in His Word that when the time of destruction comes, rarely will there be time to repent at the last instant and escape the eternal torments otherwise earned. Why should God listen to a person who had a lifetime to repent and chose not to just because he knows his life will be gone in 10 seconds? Maybe God will listen, but I wouldn't stake my eternal future on it.
Being saved is far more than a onetime prayer thirty years ago. Being saved is a matter of the heart being turned to God in true repentance and loving Him with every fiber of one's being. Being saved is living in a way reflective of the inner commitment that God is your Father and you are His child and Jesus is your Savior and Lord. Those who think they can live just like the world and do all the same things as the world and still be saved are sadly deluded.
The lies are coming as swarms both from the mouth of the world and the pulpit of the churches. Compromises have been made and deals have been struck between men of the cloth and the god of this world. Untold wealth and power of unimaginable magnitude have been promised, just as they were to Jesus in the wilderness. Jesus stood upon the truth and boldly spoke to the devil "IT IS WRITTEN". Those who have compromised today have accepted the bribes offered and are basking in the temporal glory of an illusion.
No one will hear the shout but for the dead in Christ. No one will hear the trumpet save those who have truly made Jesus Lord in their lives and have forsaken this world and its promises of fame, fortune and honor in return for the heart. All but the remnant will move on to the next and final stage of God's plan of the ages. All who remain must endure the tribulation of testing and perhaps the wrath of destruction.
Do not delay dearly beloved. Do not wait expecting to repent upon hearing the trumpet blast. It will not happen that way. You will never hear it. Now is the day and hour to crawl into your prayer closet and pour your heart out to the Lord of all. Now is the hour to repent and pray for the cleansing blood of Jesus to wash away all that stains and marks you as unclean. Now is the time to confess with your mouth that Jesus is YOUR LORD. Now is the hour to break the chains of servitude to this world and your own evil and selfish desires.
Don't wait until you are trying to escape a building collapsing upon you. Don't wait until your body is already on fire and burning. Don't wait until it is too late and there remains only weeping and gnashing of teeth and wails of "if only" and "why didn't I" fill this world. There is still time, but the time is quickly running through the hourglass. Please, don't wait until the clock strikes midnight to make the decisions that you still have time to make NOW.
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