NO MORE MR. NICE GUY: THE TURNING OF A PROPHET
GREENVILLE STATION, Nova Scotia, July 17, 2021 – When Jesus burst on the scene in the early days of his ministry, it was like a honeymoon for him and his followers. He could do no wrong. They hung on his every word and the mood was constantly upbeat. These were the days of the Sermon on the Mount that included the oft-quoted beatitudes about blessed are the poor in spirit and blessed are the meek. Jesus was hailed as a great prophet and champion of the underdog, the long-awaited leader of his people. Everyone loved him and wanted to be near him, and his reputation as a healer drew thousands wherever he went.
But as the months turned into years, the promised kingdom materialized not as a geopolitical realm but as a spiritual one, and the followers started to drift away. This happened slowly at first and then more quickly as the doctrines grew less feel-good and more demanding. At the same time, Jesus expected more of his followers. He grew increasingly impatient and occasionally angry with them. He even openly voiced his desire to be finished his work so he could get back to Heaven and not have to deal with them anymore. This was a different Jesus than the “gentle Jesus meek and mild” who’d fed thousands from a few loaves and fishes. This was a Jesus who was whittling his followers down to a core group of believers, down to those who truly wanted to buy what he was selling and were willing to pay whatever it cost.
In the final days before his execution, Jesus again changed. He became distant but magnanimous towards his followers. He was preparing for his transition to Heaven and also steeling himself to endure his final agonizing hours on Earth. It was then that the first fruit of his Messiahship fully ripened from the flowers that had bloomed earlier in his ministry. While the kingdom had already come (as was witnessed in his casting out of demons by the power of God’s Holy Spirit), it was only in his last days on Earth that Jesus ascended the spiritual throne as King. No more Mr. Nice Guy – in his place was the Great Messiah who was to rule over the prophesied Kingdom that would have no end. He had truly become King of the Jews, just as the sign over his crucifix proclaimed.
The lives of all true believers follow a similar trajectory. Their early days of spiritual rebirth are full of joy and wonder and miracles, and they are a blessing to be around. This phase is followed by a long trek of ups and downs, mistakes and repentance, reaffirmations of promises made and a steady deepening of the commitment to God and his Messiah. How long this second stage lasts is entirely up to God. Sadly, many fall away during this time, even those who were once fervent believers.
But those who remain faithful to God finally enter a transition phase that is glorious to behold: They grow more powerful in their witness, more assured of their salvation, and more formidable in their presence. This is Stephen before being stoned to death and Paul in his final letters in Rome. This third phase may last either a few days or a few decades, again depending on God’s judgement, but God’s Spirit is strong with these tried and trued believers and they are an immovable force for good on Earth.
This is what we’re aiming for – to endure to the end, as Jesus said we must, so that we may stand strong and immovable and with a full measure of God’s Spirit, witnessing the Kingdom to all who want to hear: No more Mr. Nice Guy, but instead a powerful prophet of God, moving mountains and people with God’s Word.
SUNDAY SERMON
GREENVILLE STATION, Nova Scotia, July 11, 2021 – Jesus tells us that the time of his second coming will be much like the days of Noah, that is, people going about their daily lives, buying, selling, marrying, and giving in marriage. Most people will be caught unawares by the destruction, if you can call repeatedly being warned to repent and constantly ignoring those warnings being caught unawares. Maybe it’s better to say that most people will claim to be caught unawares.
We know that God is patient. But there is a certain measure of evil, the threshold of which God will not permit to be surpassed. It’s like an hourglass that has only a certain number of sand grains. When all the grains pass through the conduit, there are no more grains left to pass through. Time is up. No matter how much you wish there were more grains, there are none. The hourglass must be turned upside down for the grains to pass through again.
The exact measure and threshold of evil in a person’s soul is known only to God. But we can still know two general things about it: 1) The measure and threshold are perfect in their formulation, and 2) the measure and threshold are mitigated by God’s mercy. There is room for God’s mercy as long as there is time. But when time is up, mercy is no longer an option. You can no longer appeal to God’s mercy.
I mention all this not to teach you anything that you don’t already know, but simply to remind you about it. We all need reminding every now and then. God’s mercy is available to anyone who asks sincerely, but it is a time-limited offer. The people in Noah’s day found that out when they were drowning in the tsunamis, and the people in Sodom found that out when they were incinerating in brimstone.
There is an expectation (even among some of God’s own people) that God should fix everything for everyone all the time, without limit, but scripture is very clear that there are provisos and time limits to God’s help and mercy. Scripture tells us over and over again that you must seek the good to get the good. You can’t live a sinful life, purposely breaking Commandments and refusing to repent, and then demand that God heal all your wounds and prevent all calamities. It doesn’t work that way. Even those who love God and follow Jesus are still subject to pain and suffering. Their pain and suffering are, however, mitigated by the presence of God’s Spirit, a blessed balm that is not available to those who reject God.
Destruction comes in an instant, but it never comes without warning. God doesn’t just one day get up on the wrong side of the throne and decide to mess up people’s life on a whim: He gives them fair warning. In fact, he gives them more than fair warning, until the threshold of evil is reached, and there is no more sand in the hourglass.
When the end comes, it will seemingly come without warning to those who defy God, though those of us who love God and keep his Commandments will know somewhat in advance, the way Jesus during his ministry years always knew somewhat in advance what was coming. We will know because God will tell us, just as he told Noah, and just as he told Lot.
The old and new Testaments are full of warnings about what happens to people who defy God and his Commandments, and the world is full of old and new Testaments and of people teaching from them. No-one can say they weren’t warned. Even if people claim they don’t have access to an old or a new Testament or to hearing people teaching from them, God has put his Commandments in everyone’s heart, so they know right from wrong even without someone teaching it to them. If they are old enough to know how to defy the right, they are old enough to know right from wrong.
I guess you could say this Sunday sermon is in defence of God and his Way. I get tired sometimes of hearing people asking why God permits evil and destruction, as if God were some kind of spiritual anti-virus whose whole purpose is to prevent and eradicate all evil all the time. But God invented evil. He uses it as a testing tool and as a reward for wrong behavior.
The world is fallen and cannot be fixed. Only individual souls, one by one, if they embrace Truth and choose the good, can be fixed. Otherwise, the world is the valley of shadow and death, and was made to be such.
I get tired of people who openly and purposely and consistently defy God and then petulantly demand that he help them when they need help, all the while refusing to repent or in any way change their evil ways. Knowing what they do is evil, consistently choosing the evil, and then demanding that God help them even when they remain defiantly unrepentant – this is the worst kind of human behavior and deserves the worst kind of punishment.
God shows mercy to the merciful. That is scriptural. But mercy has to come first from the merciful before God imparts his mercy. We are always to take the first step. God will not override our free will. We are always to take the first step and make the first gesture, like the prodigal son who realizes he would be better off living as his father’s servant and so makes the long journey home to his father to tell him that. The son makes the first gesture, and then his father joyfully races out to meet him and shower him with gifts. God is ever-ready to shower everyone with gifts, but they must take the first step, make the first gesture, and it must be sincere.
Even so, there is an expiration to God’s mercy. When the time of mercy expires, those who love God will know, but those who hate him won’t know what’s going on. For me, some of the most poignant words in scripture are those describing people crying out for God’s help and mercy too late. They left it too late. And God could no longer help them.
What do you say to those people? They will only curse you and God all the more, blame you and God all the more. So when people ask you “Why does God permit evil?” or “Why has he done this to me?”, tell them what Jesus said during his ministry: “Repent and believe the Gospel!” If they don’t want to repent and believe the Gospel, then they don’t want to know the Truth or to be set free from lies, so nothing you say will make any sense or any difference to them. They are blind and deaf and going the way of all blind and deaf. You must let them be. As hard as it is, you must respect their free will right to choose evil and to earn the rewards of that choice. You must let them be.
But if they do choose to repent and believe the Gospel, you have won a friend.
One spirit unites all true believers – there are different talents, different opinions, different likes and dislikes, different hair and skin colors, but the same Spirit of God unites us all, and so we share the same values and are all friends. You cannot but be friends with those who sincerely love God and follow Jesus. I have yet to meet a true believer I haven’t felt an instant and overwhelming connection with, even if I don’t know anything about them, and even if our contact is just for a few minutes. There’s something about the presence of a true believer that makes me respond like John the Baptist jumping for joy in his mother’s womb when he hears Mary’s voice, knowing Jesus is right there beside him.
The time of the end of God’s mercy will come, and we as true believers will know that time has come, but until and even after then we must continue to treat everyone as we want to be treated. As long as there is time, we need to be like Jesus and point the way home. When time is up, we still need to be kind, even to the condemned, and even amidst the unleashing of Hell on Earth.
And that, my friends, will be our greatest test of all.
THE BEST THING ABOUT BEING BORN-AGAIN
GREENVILLE STATION, Nova Scotia, July 9, 2021 – When Jesus was asked what was the greatest of all Commandments, he didn’t hesitate in answering that it was to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This directive was so ingrained in Jesus that is was, for him, self-explanatory. He didn’t have to think about it: He lived it.
If someone asked me what’s the best thing about being born-again, I would say that it was the inbuilt desire to love God with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind, and with all my strength. You see, when you’re born-again, you don’t have to be commanded to love God. You just love him. It’s part of the state of being born-again.
If you’re not born-again, you have to consciously work at putting God at the center of your life. It doesn’t come naturally. It takes effort and time to form that habit, but form it you must. That’s why God made it a Commandment.
But when you’re born-again, you just love God. You can’t help it. It’s like Jeremiah lamenting about preaching the Word – if you try to stop yourself from doing it because of all the problems it causes you, it burns you up like a fire on the inside. You can’t contain it. You have to love God and speak his Word because it is who you are. It’s become the core of your being. It’s more you than you.
Loving God is part and parcel of being a born-again believer. It’s not something you can turn on and off: it’s perpetually on as long as you’re in the state of grace. And with it comes the enormous rewards of God’s ferocious love and protection, joy under every circumstance, and the sure hope (not yet a guarantee, but a sure hope) of Heaven when your time on Earth is up. While hope does leave some wiggle-room for failure, being born-again ups the ante of the hope into nearly a sure thing. At the very least, you can know that you’re firmly on the road that leads to Heaven. This is your sure hope and the best guarantee that God can give you for the time being.
So go ahead – ask me. Ask me what’s the best thing about being born-again. Ask me again and again and again, because I love talking about God and I love being born-again and I love talking about all the things God does for me as a born-again believer. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me and remains the best thing, no matter what’s going on in my life. No matter what stupid thing I do to bring crap on myself, God hauls me through it by the seat of my pants and sets me upright on the other side with a hug and a kind word and a tissue for my sniffles. And then he gives me a gentle push to keep me going in the right direction.
Being born-again is the greatest state of being on Earth. There is nothing greater. How do I know this? Because Jesus, during his temptation in the desert, turned down the devil’s offer to control the world and all its resources if Jesus would just worship him. Jesus instead chose loving God and the rewards that come with loving God as being greater than the rewards that come with having all the wealth and power in the world. That’s how I know that being born-again is the greatest state of being on Earth.
We need to thank God every day, all day, for this very great gift that no amount of money can buy.
So what’s the greatest of all Commandments? To love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength.
And what’s the best thing about being born-again? Loving God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and all the rewards that come with it.
“ARE WE THERE YET?” The Seemingly Endless Journey to the End of Time
GREENVILLE STATION, Nova Scotia, July 6, 2021 – Jesus tells us that the end of time is unknown to everyone but God. Nonetheless, an entire field of theology called eschatology (“ess-ke-TOL-ogy”) is devoted to it, and countless self-professed prophets have been trying to pinpoint the end date for millennia, to no avail.
There are two problems with trying to find out the end date: 1) God won’t tell you, and 2) God still won’t tell you.
If all the angels in Heaven don’t know, and even Jesus seated at the right hand of the Father doesn’t know, why would people on Earth think they can know? Even more puzzling, why would other people believe them?
Yes, we can know the “season”, but the predictors that indicate the season are quite general (war and rumors of war, earthquakes, famines, etc.). Was there ever an age when we didn’t have wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, and famines? Jesus also mentioned that the Gospel must be preached in all the world before the end can come, but with hundreds of babies being born every minute, the preaching will go on for a while yet.
The beings with probably the biggest stake in wanting to pinpoint the end date are the fallen angels and demons, because they have a strong motivation for wanting to delay it, namely forestalling eternity in the lake of fire. And it appears that delaying is exactly what they’re doing. As mentioned, Jesus says that the Gospel first has to be preached in all the world before the end can come, so one of the two main ways that the dark spirits are trying to delay the end is to prevent the Gospel from being preached.
And how are they doing that?
By outlawing it, changing it, and bringing it into disrepute (“it’s out-dated”, “it’s irrelevant”, “it’s racist”, “it’s homophobic”, “it’s hate speech”, etc.). Their plan seems to be working. Even in places where the Gospel isn’t outright banned, it’s been removed from public spaces and hounded off public and private Internet forums. To our dire detriment, God and Jesus are no longer welcome in formerly Christian nations.
Along with getting rid of the Bible and stifling or perverting the Gospel, another way that the times of the gentiles are being dragged out is preventing souls from coming into the world. And how is that being accomplished? Through birth control, abortion, vaccines, and sterilizing chemicals in the food, water, air, and everyday household products. At the same time, non-stop propaganda informs us that having children is not only selfish but also bad for the environment, and families are a thing of the past.
I’m not entirely convinced that these stalling tactics will be successful, however. Remember how the legion of demons begged Jesus to let them go into a herd of swine rather than to be cast back into Hell? Jesus gave them their wish, but then drove the herd over the cliff and into a lake, drowning them. No matter how clever the devil and his hordes think they are, God and Jesus are always one step ahead.
The takeaway from all this is that the end will come when God says it will. He’s in the driver’s seat. We can know the signs of the season, but seasons themselves can be fickle. Yes, eschatology has a place in the life of believers, but it’s better to focus on doing God’s will both in and out of season than on constantly looking for and trying to interpret the signs of the end.
“Are we there yet?”
Nope, not yet.
We’ll get there when we get there.
FROM HORROR TO LOVE: The Story of King Manasseh
GREENVILLE STATION, Nova Scotia, July 4, 2021 – Being under the power of Satan can lead you to do some horrible things.
I knew this intimately before I was born-again because I did horrible things myself, and now, since my rebirth, I see those horrible things being done by others.
But some take the horror to extremes, like Manasseh, King of Judah.
We know from scripture that Manasseh was the son of Hezekiah. He co-reigned with his dad from the age of 12, and then became king upon Hezekiah’s death. We also know from scripture that Hezekiah did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, but that Manasseh did that which was evil, overturning, for a time, all of Hezekiah’s reforms.
If you don’t know the story of King Hezekiah and his son Manasseh, please take a few moments to read through 2 Chronicles 29-33:20.
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God is patient. Even in the face of extreme evil, God gives people time to repent of the horror they inflict on others. God has also promised to look after the children and children’s children and children’s children’s children of those who love him and keep his Commandments.
The prophet Isaiah was related to Manasseh on his mother’s side. Some sources claim that Isaiah was Manasseh’s maternal grandfather. Isaiah was a very great prophet in the eyes of the Lord and also greatly beloved by Jesus. In fact, Jesus quoted a passage from Isaiah when he publicly came out as the Messiah in his home synagogue in Nazareth. Isaiah’s prophecies speak intimately and personally of Jesus.
And yet Manasseh, while under the spell of evil, had the prophet Isaiah, his grandfather, sawed in half with a wood saw.
Let that sink in for a moment.
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God is patient. He was with me and still is with me. But God was also patient with Manasseh, even despite all the horror he unleashed on his people, including his grandfather. As a reward for his evil, Manasseh was captured by the Assyrians and imprisoned.
While in prison, weighed down by heavy chains and the full horror of his sins, Manasseh cried out to God, and God heard him. Manasseh then repented of his evil, and God forgave him.
As a token of his forgiveness, God released Manasseh from the Assyrian prison and reinstated him as King of Judah. Manasseh then spent the remainder of his reign undoing all the evil he had done, faithfully keeping his promise to God and showing the sincerity of his repentance.
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The story of King Manasseh is intertwined with the story of the prophet Isaiah, his grandfather, and the story of King Hezekiah, his father. It starts out as a horror story, but then turns into a love story showing God’s great mercy and forgiveness. We don’t hear much about Manasseh’s conversion from evil to good, but we should. It’s a reminder that God looks after the children and children’s children and children’s children’s children, and so on, of those who do God’s will and die in God’s grace. It is also a reminder of God’s great mercy even to those who do profound evil to those who die in God’s grace.
As a final gesture of humility, King Manasseh requested that he be buried in the grounds of his own house rather than in the City of David, where kings traditionally were buried.
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I know that if I make it home to Heaven, I will find Manasseh there among the living, and that all the horror he did before his conversion will have been forgotten by everyone there, including God, just as what I did will be forgotten. Here on Earth, we still read about the horrors inflicted by Manasseh before his conversion because we need to learn from his mistakes, just as we need to learn from the mistakes of others and (hopefully) from our own. At the same time, we need to take hope in how Manasseh found forgiveness through sincere repentance, and how he made good on that repentance for the rest of his life.
Manasseh’s is a horror story that turned into a love story with a happily-ever-after ending. I pray that our stories – however they started out – will end the same.
SPIRITUAL REAL ESTATE
GREENVILLE STATION, Nova Scotia, July 2, 2021 – There’s no such thing as a spiritual vacuum.
If someone refuses to have God and Jesus in their life (remember, God and Jesus are a two-fer, you can’t just get one or the other) – if someone refuses to have God and Jesus in their life, some other spiritual entity will take over that spiritual real estate, and it won’t be a good entity.
The same happens with nations.
When a certain percentage of people in a country turn against God, the blessings and protections that God brings to that nation are removed. We see that over and over again in scripture. God doesn’t even spare his own people, if they continuously choose evil and refuse to repent. Born-agains, too, can fall away, if they choose to.
What we are witnessing now is the spiritual, economic, and cultural implosion of formerly Christian nations under the guise of a “pandemic”, all leading to a global revolution that is at heart demonically inspired. None of this could have happened if the people in those nations had chosen the good rather than the evil. When evil is chosen, it is welcomed, and when it is welcomed, it comes in and makes itself at home.
Over the short term, evil may have the appearance of good, calling itself “equity” and “justice” and “inclusion” as a rallying cry. But at some point, the rallying becomes bullying and the suggestions for “fair treatment” become doctrines of man enshrined into laws, replacing God’s Law. And suddenly we are threatened with arrest for calling a man a man instead of the woman he prefers to be called.
Evil always reveals itself eventually, though at first it usually comes masked. This is why Paul says to test the spirits, so you can see what is underneath the mask. We well know that Satan appears as an angel of light to non-believers and believers alike.
Spiritual real estate is the most precious commodity on Earth. It’s not bought or sold on any stock exchange, but there is not one soul that is not under some form of speculation. Born-again souls are of especially high value in this market. We are fully protected by God’s Spirit, yes, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be tested, that doesn’t mean that our souls aren’t coveted by evil spirits. Remember how Jesus said to Peter that Satan desired to have him. Satan desires to have us all. Just as there is more joy in Heaven over one sinner who repents, there is a similar celebration among the evil spirits when the righteous fall.
So you can imagine the celebration going on now as church buildings and the Bibles in them burn and the children and grandchildren of God’s faithful turn their backs on God – whole nations turn their backs on God – and choose evil.
There is no such thing as a spiritual vacuum. When God’s Spirit and protection leave a place, devils rush in to claim it, and its end is death. As Jesus said, it would have been better for that spiritual real estate never to have existed at all.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 