Abide with me. ( Acts 17 v 24 -31 )

Many of us would not of heard of the Rev H.F.Lyte, he lived in Victorian times,he suffered from ill health which caused him to retire from the ministry,he died in 1847.He left behind ,as one writer puts it,' one of  the most   haunting lyrics of the 19th century ,the hymn 'Abide with Me'.It was the time when Darwin came on the scene,and so began the,  'Science vs Religion, controversy,'which has  continued to this day,and will continue  until our Lord comes back.We owe a lot to science,under God,but left to science alone we have no hope what so ever,life has no meaning, no  future only the darkness of oblivion.It is interesting that Tennyson  said of the hymn ,'Abide with Me', 'it was the cry of whole human race'. This hymn is sung every year at a major sporting event in England, sung as a tradition by most, yet for all that we have something of  the longing of the human heart in which God has placed  an eternal reality,that overrides ,the scepticism, secularism, modernism,atheism, which is so prevalent in life today.In the Christ event,God brings to us a message of hope, through His death  on the cross , and resurrection,is a  beacon of light to a lost world ,that in words from that hymn,'Shines through the gloom and points us to the skies'.

Lets get real( John 3 v16 )2

Yes lets get real,I do not live in a Walter Mitty world,when I write my Blog I desire to be truthful,I am not being cynical ,I am seeking to be true to God's word. I do not think it is right  to stick my head in the sand like the proverbial ostrich.I was born in the 20th century,it was a century of tremendous change,but it was also a century of momentous, awful ,terrible violence.take the wars,Here are some of them the,Russo- Japanese war,the 1st World war,Boer war,Balkan war,Irish war for independence,2nd World war, Korean war, Vietnam war,need I go on. Then there is the genocide committed by different nations, by Turkey possibly 5 million Christians massacred,then we know about the awful terrible treatment of the Jews, the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia,you get the picture,we live in a very violent world.I  realise this is not a happy message I am writing,but it is not made up ,I wish it was just fiction, but it is not.There is much  evidence of humanities fallenness ,it includes all of us,there are no innocent human being ,we are all part of it,to some extent. I continually stress that this world needs a Saviour, that means everyone ,and that Saviour is Jesus.The cross you may say is awful ,and it was,but it is Gods remedy,and the only remedy for humanities desperate condition and plight.It is your only hope,it is my only hope,we neglect it, to our cost,for judgement is coming.

                                                         

                                            'Believe on the Lord Jesu Christs and you shall be saved'.

Lets get real. ( Romans 3 v 9 - 18 /23) ( 1 )

 The world we live in,I come from Ireland,a land of the little people,of fairies,lets get real,one of my favourite movies is' ,The quite man', I've watched it many time,it depicts an Ireland that's not real.The history of Ireland is one of oppression of the poor, of division, violence. Oh yes there are many good things,but its not that little bit of heaven  that fell from the sky one day,as an old Irish song puts it.Lets not look at the world and think that it will be an earthly paradise,it is a fallen world,how serious is it?,very, God's answer is Calvary,yes the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,that's God's answer,for you and me.Leon Morris writes, 'Believers must live in this world, not an imaginary world of their own choosing,they must not expect to live in a world that understands them and welcomes their witness'. We are to be lights in the darkness,salt in the corruptness,messengers of hope,as we point sinners to Christ,and in doing so remember to be faithful in spite of the cost.

Be wise. ( Daniel 12 v 1-3 )

  In Proverbs chap 11 v30, we read',He that winneth  souls is wise',let us ask the  question,'why did Jesus come?'. The answer is,'He will save His people from' their sins, it is as simple as that ,nothing complicated,He did not come to set up an earthly kingdom,or to rule from an earthly throne CP  John 18 v36, He came to bring  in a spiritual kingdom within the hearts of people,as  Jesus said to the Pharisees''The kingdom of God  is within you''Luke 17 v21,Michael Wilcock comments,'the Kingdom  is primarily an inward  reality and not a political institution'.When we are without Christ we are lost souls,we have a sinful nature, the fruit of that  nature is sinful practices,thoughts, attitudes,wrong attitudes towards God and man.No one is excluded from this,all have sinned and come short of God's glory ( Rom 3 v 36 ).As Christians we know these things,and we know that people need to be saved,from the consequence of their sin and the power of their sin..The consequences of our sin,will follow us beyond the grave,and takes us to hell,to say it is serious,is an understatement,words fail to express the  awfulness  of that judgement on any human being.That is why we need to witness to people without fear or favour .In Psalm 142 David is in real difficulties,and he declares '.no man cared for my soul'.do we care? if we do not tell them,no one else will,don't be like a bull in a china shop when you witness to people,,be wise as a serpent and as harmless as a dove (Matthew 10 v16 ),you may be considered a fool.fear not man's judgement remember God's word say's he  that winneth souls is wise and I would add .'in the home beyond the skies'.

Fact not fiction.( John 20 v 1- 29 )

 In   Solzhenitsyn book,'The Gulag Archipelago', the destructive- labour camps, brought in during the reign of  Stalin ,were people suffered untold misery,and millions died. He writes this,'In this book there are no  fictitious events. People and places are named with their own names.He received 227 letters from survivors who had  been in these camps,which was further evidence as to the horrors that took place.Now I want to use what he wrote as regards to the word of God,it is not a fictitious book,the events and people are all real.Consider Christ miracles ,they were witnessed by the disciples,and vast crowds , His healings were not fake,in Luke 17 v 11-19, 10 lepers were healed,and Jesus told them to go to priests,who would verify that they were healed CP  Leviticus 14 v2,His healings were  real ,witnessed by many.Think about our Lord's resurrection,which He foretold ( Matthew 16 vv23),in spite of that the disciples didn't believe until He revealed Himself after His resurrection .But what evidence is there of His resurrection?,we move to  1 Corinthians 15 v 3-8,in these verses the Apostle Paul writes,'That Jesus died for our sins  CP Isaiah 53/ Psalm 22 v 16 -18, Then he proceeds to the evidence of the resurrection,and he writes of those who witnessed seeing the risen Christ,and he mentions over 500 people,and then he includes himself ( Acts 9),these are the facts.

Love triumphant. ( Revelation 1 v 18)

 It is said that love is blind,but let me tell you hatred is blind,hatred does not discriminate ,Hitler was filled with hatred for all Jews yet the Jews living in Germany were very patriotic,many had fought in the first world war,they saw themselves as German citizens,  it  made no difference ,they must all die,Stalin was no different, When the communist took over  Russia they made war on a certain class of people,and in the news paper called the 'Red Terror' they published the following article it read,'We are not fighting against  single individuals.We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class' and so hate took over and so the exterminations began.It was hate that drove Cain to kill his brother,  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote the following,'If it's hate inscribing the lines,instead of love,they will inevitably be drawn so that the lowest , meanest, most cruel and useless of the conceptual geographers will be justified in manifesting the greatest possible evil,and producing the greatest possible misery'.It is true when love goes hatred takes it's place in the most unbelievable ways,  The greatest example of this is the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ,in that  dastardly deed ,in that awful act mankind's hated reach its fullness,in spite of that, love was triumphant,the darkness could not extinguish the light.

                                          ' From that cross a shout of victory sounded forth'

                                                                      ' It is Finish'

                                                                

Hell. ( Mark 9 v 43 - 48 )

It appears to me that there are those who want to soften what they see,or read in the Bible's teaching on judgement ,or Christ death on the cross.The fact we must stay faithful to God's word,we have to tell it as it is,one preacher said that Christ only mentioned hell a few times,but in actual fact He mentioned it quite a number times, at least ten times,not only mention hell but He vividly described it.Go through the gospels and look for yourself ,see how many times he did mention it. R C Sproul was a very popular and gifted preacher, who is now with the Lord,was asked which doctrine did he struggle with most,he replied ,hell'. I  concur to that,most preachers would agree with that, one of my sons who is a Christian had a crises of faith,because he struggled with the doctrine of hell.My last  pastor would not have believed in hell,he never completely denied it, but it was obvious that he didn't,for I discerned that, by the fact that he never mentioned it.Recently  I witnessed to a person  ,he said he didn't believe in God,but I reminded him that there is a heaven and there is a hell and told him I would be praying for him,as he was leaving he said,he would remember what I said, I don't regret telling him about hell,because I don't want anyone to go there,and I am sure you don't. Just to let you know I did mention Christ to that man.