WHEN GOD ABANDONS

When a people refuse instruction, they are often left alone for destruction even though they still pray and call on God's name. God said in Hosea 4:17 "Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone". In Matthew 15:14 the Lord Jesus said "Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch".



 And haven been marked for destruction, God will further deafen their ears and seal their understanding. In Isaiah 6:10 -12 the Bible says,
10 "Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.

 11 Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, 

 12 And the LORD have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land".
When we encounter such people group, intercession is made first for the Almighty God to release His mercy and unplug their ears so they will hear and understand and be saved.

Understanding The Gospel

I recently spoke in a Catholic Charismatic fellowship where I challenged them to do more on evangelism. The session was so electrifying that I knew the result was going to be mass evangelism at the next possible date they could fix.  For me however, it was an anticlimax because I knew that most people in that group were not genuinely saved. The ones that were saved had little knowledge about the true meaning of the Gospel. Yet they were going to go out and preach.
The little time I had for conclusion was spent on encouraging them to give their lives to Christ as a first offering before venturing into any service for God. And thereafter they must submit to instruction to "show themselves approved unto God".
My title and the following points are part of some insight I gleaned from Gbile Akanni's message on the subject.

• You cannot offer what you don't have
• The extent to which you have been instructed is the extent to which you can instruct.
• It is possible for you to run all your life preaching what you think is the Gospel only to discover that you have run in vain!
• Every preacher will give account of the kind of Gospel he is preaching.
• The right Gospel have the capacity to keep us saved 1Cor. 15:2
• The Gospel remains relevant for your salvation and your continuous standing.
• Until we get to heaven, the Gospel continues to provide that which we need for our journey.
• Our experiences, no matter how spectacular, does not constitute the Gospel 1Cor. 2.
• The only way to bring many sons to glory is that Jesus tasted death for all men.
• Until a man sees Christ dying for his sins, he is not yet saved.
• You are not saved because you confessed your sins...armed robbers confess on the firing squad but they're not saved because they have not seen that Jesus died for them.
• I am saved because Jesus died for my sins and his payment was credited to my account Rom. 6:3,4,5.
• His death was to provide death for our old nature - if one died for all then all died...
• He was buried to go to hell and break the powers of dark principalities and powers.
• I was buried with him in baptism so I can rise with Him as he rose, not to stay on the ground but to ascend above where I am seated with him in heavenly places...far above demons and all powers.
• He arose from the dead not as spirit but physically. People touched and ate with him. This means He is Alive! Amen.
• Jesus is now a man in heaven speaking our language and feeling our feelings...He is not a ghost. The "first born among many brethren".
• He is coming back again physically "the same way he left".

What about the Apparitions?

Recently I saw a movie titled 'unidentified' which I recommend to anyone who has the time. The devil has been causing a lot of distractions with the UFO saga. Even the Christians are not spared in this confusion that has bewildered nations. In this movie, the message was clear that the devil picks on people with strong fascination for the mysterious and clairvoyant, gives them these visions and perpetuate the believe that theres a superior world out there threatening to attack our earth.

The above scenario is not so different, at least in source, from what is happening in our Roman Catholic world as more and more are being convinced that God's messenger in our time is the Holy Mary through the numerous stories of apparitions.

Someone may say, so long as you don't believe it, why not let them be?

But telling the story of apparitions amounts to getting the children of God to believe other ways of getting to God outside Christ Jesus, as in Jeremiah 23:27 "Whose purpose is to take away the memory of my name from my people by their dreams, of which every man is talking to his neighbour, as their fathers gave up the memory of my name for the Baal." (BBE)

Every Christian should be careful of hearing or receiving instructions from the dead; for if there was such a thing, Jesus would not have taught in the story of the rich man and Lazarus, (Lk 18:27-31), that the dead cannot and will not be sent to instruct or warn the living.

All through scripture, whenever God wanted a special message sent to humans, He sent angels. And these angels never accept any honor or veneration of any kind as doing so makes it clear that such is not from God but from Satan who draws attention to himself instead of the Christ of God. Rev. 19:9,10: "And he said to me, Put in the book, Happy are the guests at the bride-feast of the Lamb. And he said to me, These are the true words of God.

And I went on my face before his feet to give him worship. And he said to me, See you do it not: I am a brother-servant with you and with your brothers who keep the witness of Jesus: give worship to God: for the witness of Jesus is the spirit of the prophet's word." If the angel in the above scripture, "a brother servant with John", refused to be bowed to or venerated, then I believe the humble Jewish "handmaid of the Lord" will not be thrilled by all the 'adoration' we witness happening today.

As apostle Paul said, "woe is me if I preach not the truth" 1Co 9:16, for "he that knows what is good and does it not, to him it is sin" Jas 4:17.

Those who know what the bible says and still support Marian-ism do so because they do not want to be persecuted for teaching that there is no other link between God and man except Christ Jesus, as recorded in 1Ti 2:5.

The popular rationalization that since it is difficult for a man to refuse his mother's request so getting to Jesus must be a lot easier through Mary is a result of ignorance of the word of God and based on human wisdom which the bible says is foolishness.

Such mediation or intercession is completely unnecessary because Eph. 3:12 says if we put our faith in Christ, "we can now come fearlessly into God's presence, assured of His glad welcome."

Returning Catholics back to God

I think that in the midst of mounting waves of doctrinal corruptions and empty religiosity in the Catholic church, the following words of Christ might just be the wake-up call for all discerning catholics.

"And to the angel of the church in Sardis write,…I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead….hold fast and repent…strengthen the things which remain,…You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.”- Rev. 3:1-4

What do you think?

Was Mary a superior disciple?

"A certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto Him, Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked. But He said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it." --Luke 11:27, 28

It is fondly imagined by some that it must have involved very special privileges to have been the mother of our Lord, because they supposed that she had the benefit of looking into His very heart in a way in which we cannot hope to do. There may be an appearance of plausibility in the supposition, but not much. We do not know that Mary knew more than others; what she did know she did well to lay up in her heart; but she does not appear from anything we read in the Evangelists to have been a better-instructed believer than any other of Christ's disciples. All that she knew we also may discover. Do you wonder that we should say so? Here is a text to prove it: "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and He will show them His covenant." Remember the Master's words--"Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." So blessedly does this Divine Revealer of secrets tell us His heart, that He keepeth back nothing which is profitable to us; His own assurance is, "If it were not so, I would have told you." Doth He not this day manifest Himself unto us as He doth not unto the world? It is even so; and therefore we will not ignorantly cry out, "Blessed is the womb that bare thee," but we will intelligently bless God that, having heard the Word and kept it, we have first of all as true a communion with the Saviour as the Virgin had, and in the second place as true an acquaintance with the secrets of His heart as she can be supposed to have obtained. Happy soul to be thus privileged! - online publishing.