End of Days ...

From time-to-time on city streets, or at a crowded event, someone holds up a handwritten sign declaring “the end is near”.  Doomsday prophets have filled our ears with impending warnings of imminent doom for centuries.  Even poor Al Gore was recently lumped into this category for simply pointing out the logical conclusions of global warming.  Fear abounds from terrorism, nuclear holocaust, pollution, and disease.  Our financial future looks negative at best and the energy crisis seems insurmountable.  So have we finally arrived at what the Bible calls the “last days”?

The Bible is full of prophesies.  The future is foretold to those who believe to give them critical insights into the plans God has.  The entire Old Testament is full of prophesies related to the Messiah.  When Jesus walked this earth, He fulfilled every prophesy in scripture that preceded Him.  But prophesy did not end at the cross, or for that matter only with Biblical writers.  The “gift of Prophesy” is one of the gifts God’s Holy Spirit gives to certain believers throughout all of time and memorial.  It has its place in the building of His church.

But how do you interpret the prophesies of Christ’s second coming within the Bible itself.  And even if you could accomplish that, how do you tell the folks with real prophetic gifts from the just-plain-nut-balls out there?  Is there any point to knowing the future anyway?  Herein lies a difference between the casual observer, and the true believer in our creator God – those who have learned who God is, are able to trust Him, and rest and find peace in knowing Him.  Prophesy transitions from impending warnings of doom and coming condemnation to merely news reports chronicling the nearing of our last journey home.

Prophesy itself presses the fear button in so many believers hearts because they cherish the sins they currently commit.  The idea that this behavior must end, or they must end with it, frightens them.  People who call themselves Christians spend every waking moment digging for answers from prophesy, trying to correlate news stories from CNN with scripture texts.  They anticipate this political outcome with that prophetic message.  And most often, the end result of their study is the “end of all mankind”.  This strikes fear in them.

When you understand what salvation is, prophesy becomes something entirely different.  When you see your NEED of a savior, sense your own unworthiness, and find yourself changing through God’s awesome power despite your own failures – prophesy becomes something else.  Fear subsides.  Trust and peace replace it.  And the need to interpret every minute detail into the next “sign” of the time simply goes away.  Not because we do not want Heaven to come, but because the Kingdom of God is at hand – it is here already – it begins to live within you – right now.  The “life” we seek is not a far away goal, it can start here and now.  Mind you, the perfection we seek may still elude us, but the basis of how we live can change today.

So what truly is the end of days?  Is it really an end of human life?  No.  Scripture does not teach that mankind itself is to become an extinct species.  Not because we don’t constantly try to kill ourselves and our planet with behavior that defies all logic and embraces evil with both hands.  No, if it were up to us, we would face a true end to our species.  Al Gore’s warnings of global catastrophe are real.  They are predictable consequences of what we do today.  But despite our suicidal desires, intentions, and actions; God will not allow us to destroy ourselves completely as a species.  He will intervene to preserve us from ourselves and from the one who desperately seeks our destruction.

But the end of days is no less real.  An end of days is coming, scripture teaches that as well.  But it is not an end to our days, it is an end to the days of the evil one.  It is Satan who sees the writing on the walls as omens of his own destruction.  It is his last days.  It is he who is to die, to burn, to cease to exist for all eternity – to be no more.  It is he who feels the weight of the clock ticking away at his own life.  While he may not age, he senses his impending demise.  And there is no escape from it.  This knowledge drives his furor into a frenzied pitch and focuses his anger on the beloved followers of his enemy God.  He seeks to inflict as much pain on them as he can, to punish the one who will finally put him out of existence.  Before he goes, he wants to spread pain as far as possible. 

This is the true nature of evil.  Evil is not content to hurt only itself.  It loves no one.  It cares for no one.  It seeks only to hurt anyone and everyone it can.  Evil wishes to spread itself like malignant cancer through every nerve ending it can find.  It is evil that must end.  It is evil itself that faces a true end of days.  So in an ironic twist, evil seeks to have man believe he must share his fate.  Evil seeks to have man believe there can be no hope for him.  Evil seeks to have man choose to follow it to the grave, and therefore positions the end of days as our end, instead of his.

Motive counts.  God does not use fear to illicit allegiance.  Satan does.  God uses only love to lure.  He uses the power of love to change, forgive, and overcome – as only love can do.  For after all God is love.  This great controversy that has plagued the universe since the discovery of self, and the love of self, has had one clear truth; it would not last forever.  The war will end.  There will be a winning side.  And it was always going to be God.  The reason for the duration of the conflict has been for the participants to be able to see clearly both the nature of evil and the nature of love.  We are all that is left in the universe who still needs to see this difference and decide for ourselves who to serve.

Those poor misguided believers who look to apply the war in Iraq or Afghanistan to a particular biblical text are missing the point.  Whether it is a “sign” or part of a prophesy or not, is only marginally relevant.  What is keenly important is beginning to understand who God is.  What love is.  And how Salvation works.  These things are of utmost importance.  They supersede prophesy. 

Embracing the Kingdom of God now, makes prophesy become like watching a news ticker on TV.  We replace all fear, with eagerness.  It is not death we are embracing, it is eternal life.  It is not the end of this world we are looking forward to, it is the beginning of the next one.  It is not leaving our loved ones we wish to avoid, it is embracing them, all of them, even the ones we have lost to death in this world, in a perfect world to come.  And most of all, it is the end of the hell of separation from our God, that will truly come to an end.  We will be able to be with Him.  Right next to Him.  Sitting at His feet.  Listening.  Worshipping.  Loving.  And learning to live in a way we cannot now even begin to comprehend.

When I see a handwritten sign carried by some sayer-of-doom declaring the end is near, I respond by saying, I sure hope so.  It is time for evil to end.  And it is ONLY evil that faces an end.  Not us.  We are saved through the blood of Christ; a gift from the only God who was willing to save His own creation and define love forever by doing it.  There is no enlightenment, or reincarnation, or alien ascendency in our future as those false gods offer nothing to us but empty words and painful repetitive cycles.  There is however a real salvation occurring right now in hearts of men by a real God, the only real God, the only God who saves.  This is yet another reason to find Him, know Him, and respond to His love.  The only future worth knowing is one with Him in it …

Vigilance ...

Gethsemane was the place where the fate of humanity was sealed once and for all.  It was done at night.  It was late, there was an air of gloom clouding the night sky.  Our Savior God burdened with the frailty of humanity began to sense for the first time the horror He would endure as the presence of His Father would be hidden from Him.  It was not His own physical pain He dreaded, not even His earthly death at the hands of His own creations.  It was FAR worse than that. 

His Father would have to withdraw from Him as even though He was innocent, He carried with Him our guilt, our burden, our evil, and our pain.  Fear gripped Christ as He began to wonder if after having taken on this stain, perhaps He would be unable to shed it.  Perhaps, once tarnished with the weight of our iniquity it would forever separate Him from His Father, not by choice, but by design.  Evil cannot exist in the presence of His Father, it is consumed by it.  Perhaps after taking on this stain, He might forever be exiled from Dad, forever separated from Love, forever alone carrying our burden.  Perhaps reconciliation could not be won by the power of Love, perhaps evil is just too strong.

This was the nearly infinite burden that Christ must face that night in the garden.  His human nature longed to escape the weight of this burden.  As He sweat drops of blood from His brow, and wrestled with the thought of prolonged separation from His Father (the definition of Hell), He sought comfort from His closest companions.  He had asked for Peter, James, and John to simply pray with Him, and pray for Him; but instead of vigilance during the time when He needed us the most … we slept.  And it seems the followers of Christ have learned nothing from the lessons of the garden as the most common enemy even today of our spiritual passion, our spiritual vigilance, is sleep.

The fate of the universe was in jeopardy.  Our Savior needed the support of His creations the most in all of His life, and we were found sleeping.  Angels must keep silent.  The universe of unfallen beings look on in horror, and are restricted from the comfort they long to provide.  Even God says nothing.  He had only one venue for support that night, it was in us.  But these circumstances did not prevent us from our shame.  The direct request of our Lord and Savior did not impact our actions.  Not just once, but several times, He pleaded, and we slept, until truly alone He settled into His fate.  Whether He would endure the Hell of separation from God for eternity or not; He would face His cross so that we might be redeemed.  Even if our sin was to be His undoing, He moved forward to see us returned to the side of His Father.  This is the very depths of love, the very depths of sacrifice.  And while He labored with this decision, we slept on.

One of the true lessons of the garden is that WE are NOT to be depended on.  Our vigilance, no matter what the circumstances, is truly worthless.  We have proven it over and over.  Our failures extend beyond our ability to see, and yet we seem to cling to the notion that somehow, we can “help” our God out in the process of saving humanity.  We cling to the idea that God can somehow “rely” on us for accomplishing His purposes for man.  Wake up, sleepy heads, you’ve begun to dream again.  The lesson to be learned yet again here from Gethsemane is that human weakness is more powerful than spiritual necessity.  We have no strength to offer our Lord, only failure upon failure.  It is only when we depend upon Him completely that His strength is made perfect in our weakness.

I find I have no voice when I contemplate the depth of love that was extended to save me from my sin, I have only tears.  I weep at my record of sleep when I was needed most, and even now, at my pressing desire to return to the comfort of oblivion.  I wish I could have been there in the garden to put my arms around my Lord and just cling to Him during this time of His great travail.  To have offered comforting words.  But what could I have said?  Hang in there Lord, after all I will be saved by what you are going through, and I am so worth it … NOT!!!  The truth was and remains that saving me is NOT worth the agony He was going through.  I chose my fate.  I choose my evil all the time.  My life is the mess I made of it.  The truth is, seeing Him in that condition, I would have rather gone ahead and accepted my doomed chosen fate, and sent Him back to the perfection He deserved.  Better me in Hell, than Him in Hell.

But Christ would not have it.  Love did not think that way.  Love decided the worthless piece of garbage I was, was worth the precious blood of Christ.  More than that though, Christ decided in the garden to exchange His own permanent fate of separation with God for mine.  He was willing to endure ultimate separation if He could restore me to our Father.  And I believe it was this sacrifice He made, more than even His life on the cross, that ultimately proved Love could conquer ALL.  God could accept Jesus back at His side, as He was willing to sacrifice more than His own life, His very existence for all time on our behalf.  Jesus faced His own death, with the uncertainty of His ultimate ability to return to His Father.  There was NO more He could have given up for us.

And we slept.  We slept then, as we sleep now.  Our Lord knew this, He compared His coming to keeping watch on the thief in the night.  The thief does not come in the daylight, he seeks the cover of darkness.  So His counsel to us was to keep watch, to be vigilant.  In fairness He asked this of us, before that horrible night in the garden, when we would prove our unworthiness of His requests.  But His advice is no less real or meaningful than it was then.  The fate of our world is nearing its end now.  The time to live as if there is no God is growing shorter and shorter.  His return is nearing.  As it does, the darkness in the world, the desperation and intensity of evil rises and the level of pain in everyone’s life grows stronger as predicted.  We ache from it.  We moan and groan from it.

But we do not have to.  The plan of our Salvation begins and ends with freeing us from sin and the pain it is inseparable from.  We can live without being slaves to evil desires and abhorrent behavior.  We can live free, fully surrendered to a God so willing to prove His love to us.  We can start now, start today.  The perfection of our characters is within our reach if we but fully surrender our will to His.  It is His strength we require.  It is His vigilance we need.  It is Him alone that will change our behavior from self-service to the service of others.  We know this is possible.  We have seen it done, in our lives.  And like our forefathers before us, like the apostles of old, we have tasted failure because of our lack of vigilance.

The days we “forget” to surrender our will, are the days we fall back into our pain.  So much is our need of Christ.  We need Him to do the work we are incapable of, and now with our new lesson learned, we need Him to remind us that we need Him all the time.  After all, He alone is vigilant, the garden and our personal histories can attest to this fact.  We begin to discover the true meaning of the text that Christ is the “author and finisher” of our faith and our salvation.  He not only begins the process, but praise His name, He finishes it in us, for us, perhaps in spite of us.  I cannot imagine I will ever be done thanking Christ for the sacrifice He was willing to make in that dark dark night in the garden for me.  I will never be worth it, as He alone is worthy.  But I will honor it, uplift it, and most of all – I will accept the gift He has given, the whole gift and praise Him for it…

Survivor ...

There is a popular show on CBS entitled survivor where real-world contestants cooperate as well as battle each other to become the sole survivor and win a million dollars.  At the beginning the smarter players attempt to form alliances with fellow team mates, even inside their own designated larger teams.  Eventually both larger teams lose enough members to force a merger when then individual strength and skill become a larger factor in moving forward.  Generally at this point in the game, the lies escalate, and trust can save you or see you sacrificed on the altar of greed.  I wonder where I am in the game?

To be free to experience the joy my Lord intends for me requires trust.  I must trust that what He says, He means.  That the promise and delivery of His gift to me is real, it works, and it matters.  If I can’t get past surrendering self, I will never fully trust Him, and therefore never fully experience what He has for me.  And let’s face it, where it comes to surviving we are keen, observant players.  We have spent a lifetime honing skills to see us survive, not surrender.  We are inclined to eat the bugs if necessary to stay alive.  We will do most anything to preserve ourselves.  And we have a history of doing it this way.

History and habits form character, and it is not easy to suddenly put the brakes on character and do an about face.  Where it should be an easy thing to let go, and let God, neither seems realistic if given our past.  We cling to the notion that our survival depends on us, and if we allowed even God to take that role, we would somehow immediately perish.  How sad.  This is the distinctive mark that we have bought into the false assumption of control in our lives. 

We think that somehow our actions give us control.  But they do not.  We do not control our health although we can decidedly influence it.  We do not control the weather, or the earth’s responses to our pollution, even though we can influence it.  We do not control our relationships, our jobs, even our money lies in a bank hopefully shielded by our government.  We control nothing.  Yet we foolishly hold on to the idea, that somehow in spite of all these facts we control everything.

In our last discussion we discovered that to win we must die daily.  Therein lies the rub, how do I allow myself the thinking that my will, or my control, must be put on the altar daily?  I equate survival to self-control and independence; not to subservience to God and complete dependence on Him.  The American dream runs counter to every precept of Christianity.  I do not work, but yet I receive.  I do not earn my home, I am given a mansion instead.  I do not deserve eternal life and freedom, I am given it in spite of what I deserve.  I do not see value in me that anyone should love me, yet God values me personally so much He literally died to take my place, and save me from eternal separation from Him.

It is not the suicide of body I seek, but the suicide of my character.  I wish to be reborn, not into simply an altered form of sinful desires, but completely absent from them.  I wish not to leave a hole where once were loaded evil intentions, but instead to fill it with service for others in actionable deeds.  I want to want His will.  I want to want His life, His character, His perfection, even His cross.  This means that my life must have less value to me, than my deepest motives and intentions.  More important to remove impurity than to survive a slave to it.  Better death than bondage.  Better rebirth than simple death.

I want nothing of sin or evil to survive in me.  It must be pursued to the farthest lengths of my mind and soul and eradicated by the loving hand of my Savior.  I must learn total submission.  To begin I must want it, and therefore the first of my prayers to want what He wants, to need what He needs, to do what He does.  Someone once told me that if you struggled with being a horse-thief for example, it would do you little good to be forgiven for your sins, surrender your will to God on the topic, and then get up and go hang out all day with horse thieves.  The idea was that we should protect ourselves from influences that would inspire us to fall.  It sounds good, but is not needed.

The thinking that goes behind this premise is missing the absolute lack of motive.  What do you call a person who no longer wants to steal horses, even if they used to be a regular horse thief?  Reformed perhaps.  Recovering maybe.  But when even the desire to steal is removed completely, even the temptation is removed, the thought of continuing in conquered sin becomes repulsive.  The “used-to-be” horse thief can hang out with whoever, as he is made free from his former self. 

Let’s face it, every one of us is afflicted with sin, and could easily inspire someone else to commit another travesty if they are so inclined.  Even if not by intention, we often hurt each other, make each other angry, and tempt each other to do wrong.  We will likely not see in our lifetimes a time or place where everyone is in harmony.  The real world is full of horse thieves, former or practicing.  The billboards advocate us to evil, the media follows suit.  We will never be free from it in this place of woe.  But we need not be slaves to the old triggers that launched us into negative behavior.  He died to free us from all of that, including the subtle innuendos and psychological stimuli that once led to our doom.  We are to be truly free.

If only we can keep our instinct to survive out of His way.  In this, I love the prayer of the publican in the days of Christ, when he uttered … “have mercy on me a sinner.”  The publican knows his condition.  He makes no false claims of purity.  He makes no excuses for the sins he has committed.  He begs for mercy from a God who longs to give it to him, and his prayer is answered.  Our God knows our dysfunctions.  Our God knows our mental instabilities, our eccentricities, the things we think are cute about us that others may offer a different view of.  Our God can save us, despite our chemical imbalances whether self inflicted or genetically inherited.  Our God can bring clarity to the sin-sick or evil-diseased mind.  Our God can lift the veil of evil and show us His truth.  He longs to do so.

Building trust is a process as well.  Trust is not something we generally give unconditionally to anyone that asks.  Even God knows that trust must be earned.  And so He is faithful in every dealing with us, even when we change the terms, disobey, and bring shame to His doorstep.  He is a 100% God, who offers us nothing short of 100% of Himself.  He offers His love, His protection, His shelter, His comfort, His healing, and since we required it, He even offered up His life to pay our debts.  He has done everything He needed to in order save us from evil.  On the cross of Calvary came the best words in the English language – IT IS FINISHED.  To further quote Bill Gaither’s famous next line in his song by that name … “the battle is over!”

We were not meant to keep fighting a war that is already won.  We were not meant to further arm ourselves and face our demons in our own strength.  We are sheep, in simple need of a shepherd.  The shepherd fights and defeats the wolves, the mountain lions, and even our own sense of direction.  The shepherd feeds the flock, and insures it is watered.  The shepherd does ALL the work.  The sheep sit around and eat, drink, and know they are loved by a shepherd who cares deeply about every one of them.  The shepherd gladly gives up his night life and searches for the one of us, namely me, who intentionally wanders away from the flock, and finds themselves waiting to be dinner for the predators that remain in the world around us.  But the Shepherd intervenes.  He will not allow the wolf the victory over the crying, stupid, will-full, sheep.  Instead He scoops up the defiant lost battered sheep in His loving arms and carries him again back to safety in the fold.  The shepherd does not rest.  He is ever vigilant, ever watching.

It amazes me how often we think of ourselves as the shepherds, instead of our proper role as the sheep.  It amazes me how often we remove God’s ability to control our lives thinking we have a better idea or method of doing so.  It amazes me that so often we find ourselves having wandered away from the flock, and into the thicket just waiting to be eaten, when instead loving hands find their way around us, and take us home again.  We are sheep folks.  Christ is our shepherd.  Our survival has never been dependent on us, as we would have been long ago dead if it were.  We are here because of His faithfulness, not our own.  We are here, because He loves each of us.  And He wants us to see the freedom and magnitude of what he offers.  Little by little if that is how slow a sheep must go to understand it, but make no mistake His offer is larger than you are experiencing today.  His freedom is better than anything you have ever known in your life.  And best of all, it does not have to wait to begin.  It starts NOW!!!

Winning Wars ...

There is a secret in the Bible containing the keys to victory.  Calling it a “secret” seems a bit out of place in that God did not intend for it to be hidden from us.  But given how badly the Christian church of modern times has misunderstood and misrepresented the gospel, the plain truths of this secret seem to have gone back into hiding from our eyes.  To begin to reveal and re-establish it again we must begin by separating routines from more important regular behaviors.

Ever hear a memorized prayer repeated by someone?  I am not talking about “the Lord’s prayer” or the 23^rd Psalm being recited by someone.  I am talking more about the prayers like … “now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep”.  Often these kind of memorized prayers become just a series of words to the speaker.  Very little time is given to examining each word, each phrase, and then putting meaning behind the message. 

The same thing tends to happen at meal time.  We ask for God’s blessing (when not too embarrassed by our faith in public) over our food, as Christ did being our example.  But after a while, praying 2-3 times a day to bless food gets to be routine.  We say the same 3 or 4 prayers, or slight variations on each, over and over, until most of what we get out of our prayers is a routine habit, not a meaningful request to “bless” our food.  Let’s face it, few of us expect to break 5 loaves and 2 small fish for over 5000 eager listeners (as the remainder of our example story would have listed was the “blessing” requested).

But as we have discovered, the real meaning of Salvation is to be saved from our sin, from ourselves, and made free from our pain, free to love.  This saving process is not something intended to start once we get to heaven, it was intended to bring us immediate relief.  It was intended to ease our suffering and bring us even closer and closer to our God right now.  We have learned that once we eliminate “self” trying so desperately to take on the responsibility of removing sin from us, and instead surrender completely to God who alone is capable of such feats – that real victory is not only possible – it is real, it is here, and it is now.

But the process of Salvation is not one that is begun and ended in a day, as our dependence on Christ cannot last for only a day and be deemed sufficient.  We depend on Christ for our entire lives, each and every day.  Contained herein is the secret I was talking about.  What was it the apostle Paul said, “I die daily” (1 Cor 15:31).  What did he mean by that, obviously it could not have been a physical death?  Only Kenny on South Park seems to be able to do that (of course he is cartoon).  Paul was talking about dying to self.  Removing self from the process of getting rid of sin is how surrender begins to work.

Daniel the Prophet of the Old Testament, seems to take Paul’s practice and raise it up a notch.  For Daniel, he opened his windows that faced old Jerusalem (where the temple that had contained the physical presence of the Lord in those days was located) and prayed 3 times to God, thanking Him every day.  No, this was not a meal prayer.  And when you consider that worshipping a “foreign” God in the land of Babylon should have seen him killed, he was never embarrassed by prayer in plain sight.  This was Daniel’s daily ritual and it not only saw him through the Lion’s den; when you examine the life of Daniel in the Bible, you find almost no faults in his character.  Outside of Christ, he sets an almost perfect example of humble service.  Was his secret the same as Paul’s?

But lest you think that the number of prayers is the secret to success, let’s step back even further in time, all the way before the flood to the days of Enoch.  Enoch raised the game of Paul and Daniel, by actually walking with God on a daily basis.  The 2 grew so close that eventually … “God took him” home with Him.  Enoch was translated to heaven without seeing death, and at that time, with only the hope of a savior, not having seen the implementation of Gods plan to save us.  Enoch lived in days like ours, for Christ compared the days of Noah with the last days on planet earth.  Wickedness surrounded Enoch, the likes of which we are only recently beginning to experience once again here on planet earth in our day.

But surrounding horrific conditions did not prevent Enoch from walking with God every day, talking with God every day, depending on God every day, and surrendering to God every day.  In so doing, Enoch was made pure, and Enoch was taken to heaven without seeing death – a first fruits example of what will occur at the end of days.  The horrible conditions of being taken captive by a foreign dictator with absolute power over life and death, did not stop Daniel from praying.  Nor did the horrific oppression of the Roman Empire, and established Jewish Church stop Paul from dying daily.  Nor have we any excuse not to find ourselves being able to surrender in the world we find ourselves in today.

It is not the surrounding horrific conditions that bring about purity.  It is not the number of times we pray to God throughout the day that somehow increases our righteousness on a scale.  It is the meaning behind our petitions that counts.  It is the deep need we feel when we utter the words of surrender that make the difference between meaningless routine, and life altering change.  We are not asking for an unknown “blessing” over our meals.  We are asking that our God SAVE US from the sin we would otherwise commit right in front of Him.  We are asking that He intercede for us, dominate our natural sinful instincts, and save us in spite of us.  This is the meaning of dying daily.  And it must occur each day without exception, at the beginning of the day, in order for us to face the day.  Moments before our prayer of surrender, are moments of extreme risk of failure on our part.  We have demonstrated this countless times.

All through scripture, when servants of God have sacrificed daily to His will, they have found themselves the beneficiary of God’s success.  Note, I did not say that THEY were successful; I said they were the beneficiaries of God’s success.  Victory over sin does not belong to man on any level.  We screwed up in the garden, and have not recovered since.  No, victory over sin is the domain of the Lord.  He proved it already living a perfect existence prior to earth, and then on it, in human form.  Christ lived even His life on earth, in daily dependence on His Father’s will.  Even His dying prayer in supreme agony was a surrender of His earthly will, to that of His Father’s divine will.  And He succeeded.  This is our secret.

How sad, that the power of the gospel has been lost sight of over the years.  What an aching commentary on Christianity that we remember forgiveness, but have lost reform.  We replaced loving each other with judging each other, and in so doing, we polluted the gospel to the point where we look just like the world, and the world has NO reason to seek answers from those who claim the name of Christ.  Relying on self has been the core of ALL sin, and making self responsible for removing sin in our lives has been the devils greatest achievement in the Christian church at large.  As long as we continue to embrace the idea of independence over complete surrender, we are doomed to fail, doomed to miss the blessings God intended, and doomed to never see the road Enoch walked.

It is time to wake from our collective sleep.  It is time to put oil in our lamps, the oil of the Spirit.  It is time to forsake the ways of our past, and embrace the truths of our present.  The Kingdom of God is come.  It came many years ago.  It came to free us from our sin, not keep us enslaved to it.  It came to remove the pain and ugliness that ALWAYS accompanies every sin in our lives.  Sin is not the reward, it is the punishment.  Freedom from sin is the reward, and this is what Christ died literally to give us.  We must humble ourselves before God, and daily surrender to His will.  Not on a mere intellectual basis, not because it is a habit we form, but because the purification of our lives depends on it.  This is the secret that lies in plain sight in the Word.  Let us become different as we experience Salvation in our lives every day, rather than simply hear about in the lives of others.