Day 66 (Yahoo!) - Revelation

66-DAY JOURNEY OF THE BIBLE

Day 66 (YES!) - Revelation (Jesus is Coming Soon!)

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"And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work.  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last."  Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city.”  (Revelation 22:12-14)

Praise God I have finally reached the end of my 66-Day Journey of the Bible!  And what better way to end it than our text above wherein our Lord Jesus declares His coming soon to give His glorious reward to those who have faithfully served and waited for Him!

As you may know, the book of Revelation warns us about the coming judgment of God upon this evil world and its consequent utter destruction in order for the new heaven and the new earth to be ushered in.  God has every right to judge evil in the world which He created as a perfect place and to restore it to its original state.  Noone can accuse God of not giving man enough warning ot repent of evil and enough patience.  Until now, God is still patiently warning and calling all men to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ for salvation.

To those of us who have been faithfully serving God and waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus, we are in for a glorious surprise of our life!  We shall be changed instantly to conform to the same glorious spiritual body of our resurrected Savior.  We shall see God face to face and will know all things.  There will be no more tears or sorrow or death.  We shall experience joy unspeakable.  We will live forever in the presence of God and all the angels and all the redeemed.

Are you looking forward to the soon coming of Jesus or are you afraid that He may not find you ready for Him?  Start living for God now and soon you too will have the expectant anticipation of His coming.

Day 65 - Jude

66-DAY JOURNEY OF THE BIBLE

Day 65 - Jude (To God be the Glory!)

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“Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, And to present you faultless Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, To God our Savior, Who alone is wise, Be glory and majesty, Dominion and power, Both now and forever. Amen.”  (Jude 24-25)

There is a Christian real estate tycoon in the Philippines who owns multiple buildings and on top of each one is written these words: “To God be the Glory!”  At the time that I was living in the Philippines, I did not fully understand the full meaning of that phrase.  But praise God, I believe that I have a much better understanding of it now.

God says in Isaiah 42:8, “I am the Lord, that is My name; And My glory I will not give to another, Nor My praise to carved images.”  Jude, another half-brother of the Lord Jesus who simply referred to himself as the brother of James, reiterates the truth that God alone deserves all glory.  

I believe that in order to comprehend the reason why God will not share His glory with another, we need to understand the nature of God and the proper place of man which God has appointed for him.  God is not a jealous God in the wrong sense of the word.  The fact that there is only one God, there can be no other being that can receive the glory that is due to God alone.

Whenever I am able to produce any fruit from my labor for God such as someone being touched through a sermon that I have delivered or a blog I have written, it will be wrong and sinful of me to claim credit or glory for it.  Why?  Because it was the Holy Spirit who used the words I spoke or wrote and breathed life into it and also brought conviction to the heart of the person who was touched by it.  This is the meaning of “to God be the glory!”  God alone deserved all the credit and praise for what He accomplished in my life for without Him I can do nothing.

Day 64 - 3 John

66-DAY JOURNEY OF THE BIBLE

Day 64 - 3 John (Do Good, Not Evil)

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“Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. He who does good is of God, but he who does evil has not seen God.”  (3 John 11)

I pray everyday in my private prayers as well as with my wife and children during our family prayers that God would help us to hate sin and to cling to what is good.  This is because we want to be obedient to the command of the Lord in Romans 12:9 to “ Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.”

The apostle John in our text above basically repeats Paul’s statement in Romans to do good and not evil.  John then adds that he who does good is of God and he who does evil has not seen God.  This does not mean, however, that everyone who does a good deed is saved.  What John meant was the same message that James the author of the book by his name wrote regarding the evidence of true faith.

A person who is truly saved will prove his faith by his good works; whereas, the person who has dead faith will not show his faith by his good works.  This has to be what John was referring to otherwise, if one can be justified by doing good, there will no longer be a need for faith and the grace of God through Jesus Christ.  In other words, if one can be saved by his own good works, Jesus did not have to die to pay for our sins - we just need to be able to do enough good works.  But that is impossible because the Bible says that the passing grade for going to heaven through works is 100% perfection.

Do you want to know if you belong to God?  Examine yourself to see if what you do is good or evil in the sight of God and man.

Day 63 - 2 John

66-DAY JOURNEY OF THE BIBLE

Day 63 - 2 John (Do You Believe Jesus Lived and Died as the Bible Says He Did?)

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“For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.  Look to yourselves, that we do not lose those things we worked for, but that we may receive a full reward.  Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son.”  (2 John 7-9)

There is not a lack of literature and programs on the mass media refuting and denying that Jesus actually lived and died in the flesh.  The apostle John in our text above gives a grave warning to those who deny that Jesus lived and dies in the flesh.  

The Bible does not issue a threat of hell and damnation in order to scare people into believing in God.  It does so because to deny the truth without carefully weighing the evidence supporting the truth is a blatant disregard and insult to God.  That is the underlying reason for the warnings of damnation and judgment by God in Scripture.

To put it in everyday simple terms, any good parent who warns his two-year old child not to touch the hot pot for risk of getting burned does not do so because he enjoys threatening his child.  Obviuosly, he issues the warning out of love and concern for his child in case the child decides not to believe the truth.

Before you side with the mainstream in society who wants nothing more than to convince everyone in the world that Jesus either did not exist or was simply a man and not God, I challenge you to carefully consider the abundance of evidence supporting the claims of the Bible the Jesus Christ lived and died in the flesh and rose again to prove that He was God Himself.

Day 62 - 1 John

66-DAY JOURNEY OF THE BIBLE

Day 62 - 1 John (Can You Know for Sure if You are Going to Heaven?)

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“And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.  He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.  These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.”  (1 John 5:11-13)

Whenever I ask someone if he knows for sure if he is going to heaven I usually get a no as an answer.  Then they usually add a statement that no one can know for sure that they are going to heaven.  My response to them is “yes, we can know for sure that we are going to heaven” and then I ask their persmission if I could read our text above.

I continue to explain how they can know for sure sort of like this:  “The Bible says that he who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.  Suppose you were to ask Christ to forgive you of your sins right now and invite Him to come into your life to give your eternal life, what would Christ do?”  They would usually answer that Christ would do what they would ask and come into their life and forgive their sins.  Then, I would ask, “If the Son were in you, what do you have according to 1 John 5:12?”  They would have to answer the obvious, that they have life eternal.  Finally, I would ask them, “Would you like to receive the Son right now so that you can have eternal life and know it for sure?”

If you are reading this and have never been sure that you will go to heaven if you died right now, what are you waiting for?  Ask Christ to forgive you of your sins and invite the Son into your life to give you eternal life.  You will have the assurance of heaven if you do.

Day 61 - 2 Peter

66-DAY JOURNEY OF THE BIBLE

Day 61 - 2 Peter (A Warning to Those Who Think They are Saved)

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For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning.  For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them.  But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: "A dog returns to his own vomit," and, "a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire."  (2 Peter 2:20-22)

If you consider yourself a true born-again beliiever I pray that the warning from the apostle Peter in our text above will never apply to you.  Peter, talking about those who have received the knowledge of the truth through the gospel and have known the Lord Jesus to be the Lord and Savior and then deliberately turning their backs on him and embracing the sinful world they have apparently left behind, declares that these have never really been saved in the first place.

The apostle John teaches the same truth: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.”  (1 John 2:19)

The Lord Jesus first taught this truth when he spoke about false teachers: “Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?'  And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'” (Matthew 7:22-23)

Although it is hard to believe how someone who has known the truth about heaven can turn their back on it, many, far too many, false Christians have turned their backs on Christ and have decided instead to follow the world and the devil.  I pray that it may never be the case for you and me.

Day 58 - Hebrews

66-DAY JOURNEY OF THE BIBLE

Day 58 - Hebrews (One Sacrifice, Once Sacrified)

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“For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood of another--  He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.  And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,  so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.”  (Hebrews 9:24-28)

In the Old Testament, the high priest entered the Most Holy Place once a year where the Ark of the Covenant was to offer up a blood sacrifice for himself and for the people of Israel.  The high priests had to do this ritual every year indicating that the “blood of bulls and goats could not take away sins.” (Hebrews 10:4)

But our text above says that Christ Who is The “High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens” (Hebrews 8:1) entered heaven itself, and not the copy of heaven which was what the tabernacle signified, “to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.”  Jesus Christ fulfilled what the Jewish priests enacted and hoped to see fulfilled!  Hallellujah!

As my title for this devotion states, Jesus is the One Sacrifice that takes away the sins of the world and He offered Himself “Once to bear the sins of many.”  This is so important for everyone to understand and accept because the largest sect in Christendom teaches that Christ is literally sacricifed every time the Eucharist is offered because the elements of bread and wine literally become the blood and flesh of Christ.

Will you believe the Scriptures that declares the One Sacrifice for sin and the Once sacrified Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?