FOCUS ON GOD
GREENVILLE STATION, Nova Scotia, September 5, 2021 – The book of Job tells the story of a man who had it all, lost it all, and then got it back in spades.
The thing about Job is that he didn’t lose everything through any fault of his own. He lost it because God made a bet with Satan.
Now, I would not be one to bet against God expecting to win. No-one beats God. Not at anything. You would think Satan would have known that, but maybe when he lost his holiness and free will, he also lost the capacity to know you can’t beat God. Or maybe he just wanted to see Job suffer. In any case, Satan was permitted by God first to take away Job’s wealth and kill most of his family, and then to take away Job’s health. Poor Job was left penniless, childless, and sitting in a pile of ashes scraping pus and scabs off his sores with a piece of broken pottery. And God permitted this to happen.
When God allows evil to attack us, it’s not always because we’ve had it coming. Most of the time, yes, we have it coming, but sometimes it’s more like Job. Certainly Jesus never earned any evil attacks, and yet he had plenty of them when he was in his earthly body. God permitted these attacks as a way ultimately to bring Jesus up higher.
God is always in control. If he permits evil to come into your life, it’s either a punishment or it’s a test that, if you pass, will bring you up higher in the Kingdom. Sometimes God permits Satan to bet against you because God’s going to use the situation to your benefit.
So the point of the book of Job isn’t why God permits evil, but why our focus isn’t more on God. When Job finally acknowledges God’s vast superiority in every regard – that is, when Job humbles himself before God – he not only gets back everything he’d lost, but God adds to it. Job comes up higher.
Our time here on Earth is a series of tests. It can also be a time of punishment, if we have it coming. But regardless of whether we’re dealing with tests or punishment, our focus shouldn’t be on Satan or on praying away the evil. Our focus should always be on God, knowing he and he alone is in control.
No matter the situation, whether good or evil, your focus should be on God. No-one but God can get you through whatever it is you’re facing. When evil attacks you, don’t focus on the evil; focus on God. When Stephen was confronted by the enraged mob just before he was stoned to death, he looked past them and saw God and Jesus. He focused on God and so was able to die with blessings rather than curses on his lips. He didn’t focus on the evil that was surrounding him, he focused on God.
If you spend all your energy trying to pray the evil away, you won’t make it. It’s way stronger than you. You need to focus on God. Even if all you see around you is evil a mile deep, focus on God. That’s how you’ll get through what’s coming.
CHRISTIANS OF CONVENIENCE: THE RELIGIOUS EXEMPTION TRAP
GREENVILLE STATION, Nova Scotia, September 5, 2021 – There’s a horrifying new trend developing, where people pretend to be Christians in order to claim a religious exemption from getting the shot.
When I say “horrifying”, I mean for the people doing it. Pretending to be followers of Jesus and making a mockery of God and his Messiah will not end well for them. Sitting in a pew for a wedding or a funeral is one thing; pretending you’re a believer (false swearing) and signing a contract to that effect is quite another.
In fact, it’s a temptation from the devil. It has the fingerprints of Satan all over it. In other words, it’s a spiritual trap. The religious exemption option is being offered to ensnare people, not to help them. And many are falling for it, thinking it’s a way out of their predicament.
When you fall for a temptation, you ultimately suffer. There may be a time initially when you think you’ve gotten away with something, but that ends soon enough. And if you haven’t acknowledged the error of your ways before it does end, the fall-out and punishment will be severe.
Remember the parable about the person who was at the wedding feast without the proper clothing? Remember what happened to that person?
I am not at all a fan of coerced injections, but there are other ways around a mandate besides cheapening Jesus’ sacrifice and God’s great gift of grace. It’s a form of spiritual fraud, to claim to believe in order to gain from it.
Even worse, there are now pastors selling (by ‘donation’) religious exemption letters online, no questions asked.
Christians of convenience are not entirely a new trend. For hundreds of years, when Christianity was the mainstream belief system, many people pretended to be Christians in order to gain from it politically or socially. This kind of fraud is particularly rife today within the refugee community, with people pretending to be Christians and claiming they’re in danger of persecution if they return to their home country. Christian organizations in the receiving countries (including the US and Canada) are vouching for these faux-Christians, justifying their lie by calling it a humanitarian gesture. The churches are also, of course, making money from the practice, which I suspect is their main motivation for doing it in the first place.
Having the option to claim a religious exemption for a mandatory shot is a God-send to those who are genuine believers, but a satanic trap to those who aren’t. God permits his own people to bend the truth occasionally (think of how David pretended to be insane so that his enemies wouldn’t see him as a threat), but unbelievers pretending to be believers do not fall into that category.
My prayer is that those who want to avoid getting the injection find another way around it than to pretend to follow Jesus. But if they do choose that path, I pray that the course of their lives leads them to repentance and conversion, and that they actually do end up becoming Christians.
OF GOD’S SEAL AND THE MARK OF THE BEAST
GREENVILLE STATION, Nova Scotia, September 5, 2021 – There are two kinds of marks mentioned in the Bible – one is a mark designating God’s ownership and protection, and the other is a mark designating Satan’s.
A mark is a tattoo. Scripture says that God forbids his people from getting them, in the same way he forbids his people from worshiping demons. The only one who should be worshiped by God’s people is God, just as the only mark on God’s people should be God’s.
You don’t schedule an appointment to get God’s mark. God gives it to you at a time of his choosing. The books of Genesis, Ezekiel and Revelation are clear about that. God’s mark is invisible in the earthly realm, but highly visible in the spiritual one.
You’re not born with a spiritual mark. You’re born with spiritual chains. You are born into satanic slavery but reborn into godly freedom, courtesy of God’s grace.
The so-called mark of the beast has been getting a lot of press lately, even with unbelievers. Lots of chatter over whether or not the shots or the passports are in actuality the mark of the beast, or at least its precursor. I’m not a fan of either the shots or the passports, but I don’t see them as the mark of the beast. We know from scripture that those who get that mark lose their shot at Heaven. There is no more hope for them. So when that mark is taken, the age of Mercy has to have ended.
I don’t believe we’re there yet. I believe we’re still in the age of Mercy. I believe there is still time for a few last stragglers to turn back to God and to receive the mark of his seal. There’s not much time, but there’s some. We know from scripture that the age of Judgement begins with world-wide cataclysms. These (thank God) have not yet begun. When they do, we’ll know that God’s Judgement has started.
At that point, anyone who has not be sealed by God and received his mark will belong to Satan. There is no way out of it. So the mark of the beast will just be a formalization of what already, at that time, will have been established. It will be an outward sign of a spiritual reality. Those who take the mark in order to buy and sell will take it as a matter of course, as something that self-evidently needs to be done. They will not have to be coerced or mandated to do it. The only ones who will refuse to take it will be God’s people.
Remember that during the time of the beast system, all religion will be outlawed except for Satan worship. It won’t be called Satan worship (any more than the beast system will be called the beast system), but that’s what it will be. There will also be a world government that is not just operating behind the scenes, like the current deep state. It will openly be a world government. Neither of these things have come to fruition yet, so the shots and passports currently being mandated cannot be the mark of the beast. They may be a dry run and a softening up for that time, but the lack of world-wide cataclysms, global government and global Satan worship indicates they are not the prophesied mark.
The mark of God and the mark of Satan will definitively and for all time separate humanity into two distinct groups. The larger one by far will have Satan’s mark. In fact, most souls will have Satan’s mark. Very few will have God’s mark, and even of those few, some will lose it during the tribulation.
Jesus tells us to pray not to come to the time of universal testing, to be taken home before it starts. He doesn’t say to pray to stop it, but to pray not to have to go through it. If you haven’t yet added that petition to your daily prayers, it might be a good idea to do so. In fact, it might be a good idea to begin and end your daily prayers with it.
At the same time, pray to be found worthy to receive God’s mark, and pray to remain worthy to your dying breath. Because without God’s seal of approval, you’re not going home.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 