I do not want to be a fool.

So, you object to there even being a God.  Why? Because life is hard? Because life is horrifying? Because you believe God should never have allowed free will to choose sin, that He should have NOT given anyone angels or humans that choice? You imagine a God who should only have allowed goodness and no pain? Whatever your reason, whether you think you're too smart to believe, too evolved to believe, there are some pretty smart, evolved people who have gone from complete unbelief to believing, why? What could bring a person whose intelligence is beyond doubt, to go from a steadfast believe in there being no God, to believing? If you are one of those people who do not believe you have NOTHING to lose to read this, nothing at all. Your intelligence will not lessen, you will not de-evolve, in fact if anything you may find more fuel for your stance should need arise.

I wish all who didn't believe in God could read this book (Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis) but that is an empty wish. I just hope and pray at least ONE person, just at least one, will find the following compelling and seek to know more and in knowing more come to all the TRUTH.  (Please read yesterday's post before this one for continuity sake. Thanks!)

'Mere Christianity- C.S. Lewis

2 - Some Objections

If they are the foundation, I had better stop to make that foundation firm before I go on. Some of the letters I have had show-that a good many people find it difficult to understand just what this Law of Human Nature, or Moral Law, or Rule of Decent Behaviour is.

For example, some people wrote to me saying, "Isn't what you call the Moral Law simply our herd instinct and hasn't it been developed just like all our other instincts?" Now I do not deny that we may have a herd instinct: but that is not what I mean by the Moral Law. We all know what it feels like to be prompted by instinct—by mother love, or sexual instinct, or the instinct for food. It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act in a certain way. And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is due to the herd instinct. But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not. Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger.

You will probably feel two desires—one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the

sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.

Another way of seeing that the Moral Law is not simply one of our instincts is this. If two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in a creature's mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger of the two must win. But at those moments when we are most conscious of the Moral Law, it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two impulses. You probably want to be safe much more than you want to help the man who is drowning: but the Moral Law tells you to help him all the same. And surely it often tells us to try to make the right impulse stronger than it naturally is? I mean, we often feel it our duty to stimulate the herd instinct, by waking up our imaginations and arousing our pity and so on, so as to get up enough steam for doing the right thing. But clearly we are not acting from instinct when we set about making an instinct stronger than it is. The thing that says to you, "Your herd instinct is asleep. Wake it up," cannot itself be the herd instinct. The thing that tells you which note on the piano needs to be played louder cannot itself be that note.

Here is a third way of seeing it If the Moral Law was one of our instincts, we ought to be able to point to some one impulse inside us which was always what we call "good," always in agreement with the rule of right behaviour. But you cannot. There is none of our impulses which the Moral Law may not sometimes tell us to suppress, and none which it may not sometimes tell us to encourage. It is a mistake to think that some of our impulses— say mother love or patriotism—are good, and others, like sex or the fighting instinct, are bad. All we mean is that the occasions on which the fighting instinct or the sexual desire need to be restrained are rather more frequent than those for restraining mother love or patriotism. But there are situations in which it is the duty of a married man to encourage his sexual impulse and of a soldier to encourage the fighting instinct.

There are also occasions on which a mother's love for her own children or a man's love for his own country have to be suppressed or they will lead to unfairness towards other people's children or countries. Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the "right" notes and the "wrong" ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or any set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.

By the way, this point is of great practical consequence. The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials "for the sake of humanity," and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.

Other people wrote to me saying, "Isn't what you call the Moral Law just a social convention, something that is put into us by education?" I think there is a misunderstanding here. The people who ask that question are usually taking it for granted that if we have learned a thing from parents and teachers, then that thing must be merely a human invention. But, of course, that is not so. We all learned the multiplication table at school. A child who grew up alone on a desert island would not

know it. But surely it does not follow that the multiplication table is simply a human convention, something human beings have made up for themselves and might have made different if they had liked?

I fully agree that we learn the Rule of Decent Behaviour from parents and teachers, and friends and books, as we learn everything else. But some of the things we learn are mere conventions which might have been different—we learn to keep to the left of the road, but it might just as well have been the rule to keep to the right—and others of them, like mathematics, are real truths. The question is to which class the Law of Human Nature belongs.

There are two reasons for saying it belongs to the same class as mathematics. The first is, as I said in the first chapter, that though there are differences between the moral ideas of one time or country and those of another, the differences are not really very great—not nearly so great as most people imagine—and you can recognise the same law running through them all: whereas mere conventions, like the rule of the road or the kind of clothes people wear, may differ to any extent. The other reason is this.

When you think about these differences between the morality of one people and another, do you think that the morality of one people is ever better or worse than that of another? Have any of the changes been improvements? If not, then of course there could never be any moral progress. Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better. If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilised morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality. In fact, of course, we all do believe that some moralities are better than others. We do believe that some of the people who tried to change the moral ideas of their own age were what we would call Reformers or Pioneers—people who understood morality better than their neighbours did. Very well then.

The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something—some Real Morality—for them to be true about.

The reason why your idea of New York can be truer or less true than mine is that New York is a real place, existing quite apart from what either of us thinks. If when each of us said "New York" each meant merely "The town I am imagining in my own head," how could one of us have truer ideas than the other? There would be no question of truth or falsehood at all. In the same way, if the Rule of Decent Behaviour meant simply "whatever each nation happens to approve," there would be no sense in saying that any one nation had ever been more correct in its approval than any other; no sense in saying that the world could ever grow morally better or morally worse.

I conclude then, that though the differences between people's ideas of Decent Behaviour often make you suspect that there is no real natural Law of Behaviour at all, yet the things we are bound to think about these differences really prove just the opposite. But one word before I end. I have met people

who exaggerate the differences, because they have not distinguished between differences of morality and differences of belief about facts. For example, one man said to me, "Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?" But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things.

If we did—if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did. There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.

3. The Reality Of The Law

I now go back to what I said at the end of the first chapter, that there were two odd things about the human race. First, that they were haunted by the idea of a sort of behaviour they ought to practise, what you might call fair play, or decency, or morality, or the Law of Nature. Second, that they did not in fact do so. Now some of you may wonder why I called this odd. It may seem to you the most natural thing in the world. In particular, you may have thought I was rather hard on the human race. After all, you may say, what I call breaking the Law of Right and Wrong or of Nature, only means that people are not perfect. And why on earth should I expect them to be? That would be a good answer if what I was trying to do was to fix the exact amount of blame which is due to us for not behaving as we expect others to behave. But that is not my job at all. I am not concerned at present with blame; I am trying to find out truth. And from that point of view the very idea of something being imperfect, of its not being what it ought to be, has certain consequences.

If you take a thing like a stone or a tree, it is what it is and there seems no sense in saying it ought to have been otherwise. Of course you may say a stone is "the wrong shape" if you want to use it for a rockery, or that a tree is a bad tree because it does not give you as much shade as you expected. But all you mean is that the stone or tree does not happen to be convenient for some purpose of your own. You are not, except as a joke, blaming them for that. You really know, that, given the weather and the soil, the tree could not have been any different. What we, from our point of view, call a "bad" tree is obeying the laws of its nature just as much as a "good" one.

Now have you noticed what follows? It follows that what we usually call the laws of nature—the way weather works on a tree for example—may not really be laws in the strict sense, but only in a manner of speaking. When you say that falling stones always obey the law of gravitation, is not this much the same as saying that the law only means "what stones always do"? You do not really think that when a stone is let go, it suddenly remembers that it is under orders to fall to the ground. You only mean that, in fact, it does fall. In other words, you cannot be sure that there is anything over and above the facts themselves, any law about what ought to happen, as distinct from what does happen.

The laws of nature, as applied to stones or trees, may only mean "what Nature, in fact, does." But if you turn to the Law of Human Nature, the Law of Decent Behaviour, it is a different matter. That law certainly does not mean "what human beings, in fact, do"; for as I said before, many of them do not obey this law at all, and none of them obey it completely. The law of gravity tells you what stones do if you drop them; but the Law of Human Nature tells you what human beings ought to do and do not.

In other words, when you are dealing with humans, something else comes in above and beyond the actual facts. You have the facts (how men do behave) and you also have something else (how they ought to behave). In the rest of the universe there need not be anything but the facts. Electrons and molecules behave in a certain way, and certain results follow, and that may be the whole story. (*) But men behave in a certain way and that is not the whole story, for all the time you know that they ought to behave differently.

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[*] I do not think it is the whole story, as you will see later. I mean that, as far as the argument has gone up to date, it may be.

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Now this is really so peculiar that one is tempted to try to explain it away. For instance, we might try to make out that when you say a man ought not to act as he does, you only mean the same as when you say that a stone is the wrong shape; namely, that what he is doing happens to be inconvenient to you. But that is simply untrue. A man occupying the corner seat in the train because he got there first, and a man who slipped into it while my back was turned and removed my bag, are both equally inconvenient. But I blame the second man and do not blame the first.

I am not angry—except perhaps for a moment before I come to my senses—with a man who trips me up by accident; I am angry with a man who tries to trip me up even if he does not succeed. Yet the first has hurt me and the second has not. Sometimes the behaviour which I call bad is not inconvenient to me at all, but the very opposite.

In war, each side may find a traitor on the other side very useful. But though they use him and pay him they regard him as human vermin. So you cannot say that what we call decent behaviour in others is simply the behaviour that happens to be useful to us. And as for decent behaviour in ourselves, I suppose it is pretty obvious that it does not mean the behaviour that pays. It means things like being content with thirty shillings when you might have got three pounds, doing school work honestly when it would be easy to cheat, leaving a girl alone when you would like to make love to her, staying in dangerous places when you could go somewhere safer, keeping promises you would rather not keep, and telling the truth even when it makes you look a fool.

Some people say that though decent conduct does not mean what pays each particular person at a particular moment, still, it means what pays the human race as a whole; and that consequently there is no mystery about it. Human beings, after all, have some sense; they see that you cannot have real safety or happiness except in a society where every one plays fair, and it is because they see this that

they try to behave decently.

Now, of course, it is perfectly true that safety and happiness can only come from individuals, classes, and nations being honest and fair and kind to each other. It is one of the most important truths in the world. But as an explanation of why we feel as we do about Right and Wrong it just misses the point If we ask: "Why ought I to be unselfish?" and you reply "Because it is good for society," we may then ask, "Why should I care what's good for society except when it happens to pay me personally?" and then you will have to say, "Because you ought to be unselfish"—which simply brings us back to where we started. You are saying what is true, but you are not getting any further. If a man asked what was the point of playing football, it would not be much good saying "in order to score goals," for trying to score goals is the game itself, not the reason for the game, and you would really only be saying that football was football—which is true, but not worth saying.

In the same way, if a man asks what is the point of behaving decently, it is no good replying, "in order to benefit society," for trying to benefit society, in other words being unselfish (for "society" after all only means "other people"), is one of the things decent behaviour consists in; all you are really saying is that decent behaviour is decent behaviour. You would have said just as much if you had stopped at the statement, "Men ought to be unselfish."

And that is where I do stop. Men ought to be unselfish, ought to be fair. Not that men are unselfish, nor that they like being unselfish, but that they ought to be. The Moral Law, or Law of Human Nature, is not simply a fact about human behaviour in the same way as the Law of Gravitation is, or may be, simply a fact about how heavy objects behave. On the other hand, it is not a mere fancy, for we cannot get rid of the idea, and most of the things we say and think about men would be reduced to nonsense if we did. And it is not simply a statement about how we should like men to behave for our own convenience; for the behaviour we call bad or unfair is not exactly the same as the behaviour we find inconvenient, and may even be the opposite.

Consequently, this Rule of Right and Wrong, or Law of Human Nature, or whatever you call it, must somehow or other be a real thing— a thing that is really there, not made up by ourselves. And yet it is not a fact in the ordinary sense, in the same way as our actual behaviour is a fact. It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality; that, in this particular case, there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men's behaviour, and yet quite definitely real—a real law, which none of as made, but which we find pressing on us.

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Psa 53:1 ' … The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.'

Please, God, please, we do not wish to be fools!

All through the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior now and FOREVER!

AMEN!

You don't believe, why?

Act 17:23  For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.

Act 17:24  God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;

Act 17:25  Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;

Act 17:26  And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;

Act 17:27  That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:

Act 17:28  For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

Act 17:29  Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.

Act 17:30  And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:

Act 17:31  Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

C.S. Lewis really impressed me when he wrote about his devout atheism and how logic proved atheism wrong.  An atheist shouldn't be afraid to confront that logic and refute it with their logic.

God exists. Here in Acts, Paul is talking to the people about their UNKNOWN GOD, telling them that he knows who this UNKNOWN GOD is.  He ultimately tells them the UNKNOWN - yet KNOWN by him- God has appointed a day when He will judge the world in righteousness by Jesus Christ His declared only begotten Son who He raised from the dead.

IF this is true… shouldn't we comprehend that we need to repent? Ignorance is no longer an excuse. IF this is NOT true and there is no day appointed for the world to be judged in righteousness then there is NO harm in contemplating things others who USED to believe that way but no longer do, have to say. So let's look a little at Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis…

'1. The Law Of Human Nature Every one has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kind of things they say. They say things like this: "How'd you like it if anyone did the same to you?"—"That's my seat, I was there first"—"Leave him alone, he isn't doing you any harm"— "Why should you shove in first?"—"Give me a bit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine"—"Come on, you promised." People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups. Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes diem is not merely saying that the other man's behaviour does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: "To hell with your standard." Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange, or that something has turned up which lets him off keeping his promise. It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals, but they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football. Now this Law or Rule about Right and Wrong used to be called the Law of Nature. Nowadays, when we talk of the "laws of nature" we usually mean things like gravitation, or heredity, or the laws of chemistry. But when the older thinkers called the Law of Right and Wrong "the Law of Nature," they really meant the Law of Human Nature. The idea was that, just as all bodies are governed by the law of gravitation and organisms by biological laws, so the creature called man also had his law—with this great difference, that a body could not choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a man could choose either to obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it. We may put this in another way. Each man is at every moment subjected to several different sets of law but there is only one of these which he is free to disobey. As a body, he is subjected to gravitation and cannot disobey it; if you leave him unsupported in mid-air, he has no more choice about falling than a stone has. As an organism, he is subjected to various biological laws which he cannot disobey any more than an animal can. That is, he cannot disobey those laws which he shares with other things; but the law which is peculiar to his human nature, the law he does not share with animals or vegetables or inorganic things, is the one he can disobey if he chooses. This law was called the Law of Nature because people thought that every one knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it. They did not mean, of course, that you might not find an odd individual here and there who did not know it, just as you find a few people who are colour-blind or have no ear for a tune. But taking the race as a whole, they thought that the human idea of decent behaviour was obvious to every one. And I believe they were right. If they were not, then all the things we said about the war were nonsense. What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practised? If they had had no notion of what we mean by right, then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have blamed them for that than for the colour of their hair. I know that some people say the idea of a Law of Nature or decent behaviour known to all men is unsound, because different civilisations and different ages have had quite different moralities. But this is not true. There have been differences between their moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like a total difference. If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own. Some of the evidence for this I have put together in the appendix of another book called The Abolition of Man; but for our present purpose I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to—whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked. But the most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining "It's not fair" before you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter, but then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong— in other words, if there is no Law of Nature—what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else? It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table. Now if we are agreed about that, I go on to my next point, which is this. None of us are really keeping the Law of Nature. If there are any exceptions among you, I apologise to them. They had much better read some other work, for nothing I am going to say concerns them. And now, turning to the ordinary human beings who are left: I hope you will not misunderstand what I am going to say. I am not preaching, and Heaven knows I do not pretend to be better than anyone else. I am only trying to call attention to a fact; the fact that this year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people. There may be all sorts of excuses for us. That time you were so unfair to the children was when you were very tired. That slightly shady business about the money—the one you have almost forgotten—came when you were very hard up. And what you promised to do for old So-and-so and have never done—well, you never would have promised if you had known how frightfully busy you were going to be. And as for your behaviour to your wife (or husband) or sister (or brother) if I knew how irritating they could be, I would not wonder at it—and who the dickens am I, anyway? I am just the same. That is to say, I do not succeed in keeping the Law of Nature very well, and the moment anyone tells me I am not keeping it, there starts up in my mind a string of excuses as long as your arm. The question at the moment is not whether they are good excuses. The point is that they are one more proof of how deeply, whether we like it or not, we believe in the Law of Nature. If we do not believe in decent behaviour, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently? The truth is, we believe in decency so much—we feel the Rule or Law pressing on us so— that we cannot bear to face the fact that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility. For you notice that it is only for our bad behaviour that we find all these explanations. It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves. These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.

I hope you read that, in fact if you're reading this then I'm pretty sure you did. C.S. Lewis has a way with words, he has insight I believe has been God inspired. For a little bit we are going to continue with studying Mere Christianity- maybe not the whole book, but a bit of it because so many people today simply don't believe and yet there is no rational reason for them not believing other than Satan has deceived them horrifically.

Please God, please open our hearts and minds to Your TRUTH, please! Please bless all who are reading this and seeking to know the TRUTH in YOU!

Please Lord, we do repent of our sins, of our failings, so many failings.

Cleanse us, use YOUR righteousness because we have NONE.

Please, Lord.

In Your name always!

AMEN.

I long for the last trumpet to sound.

There is a last trumpet and it will sound, and when it sounds do  you know what will happen? When that LAST trumpet sounds in a single moment, in the twinkling of an eye… the DEAD in Christ will be RAISED INCORRUPTIBLE!

1Co 15:51  Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,

1Co 15:52  In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

1Co 15:53  For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

1Co 15:54  So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

1Co 15:55  O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

Now, lest we make a mistake about our Savior, we aren't promised a single easy day in this life on earth, not one. We see so much tragedy, so much heart wrenching horror goes on every single day. I am constantly having to hide posts people on facebook post because my heart breaks and I can't stop crying when I see and read about the awful horrors sin has brought upon our world.  The heartache of what I think of as the innocent, just tears me apart emotionally, mentally. I know though, that the cause of all that anguish is found in sin.

Sin reared up and at that time a plan was enacted that would ensure sin would NEVER rear up again once it was eradicated.  Right now we live in the time before the eradication of sin and it's an awful time, the worst time because all who are embroiled in sin's embrace, captive by sin's master knowingly and unknowingly -deceiving themselves or not, all sin's captives are raging at anything close to the real truth. Sin does not want light because it is filled with darkness. Sin wants to hide all truth, covering it in endless lies. 

No one can convince me there is no God- He's worked in my life in too many ways and NOT in giving me my every whim. I can see God's hand even in the horrors of my own sinful life. I can see His work so much in retrospect and none of that can ever be denied.  Sure, I could pretend none of it matters, I did for many years. It matters and I pray to God that I never lose sight of Him again!

I have to live for that LAST TRUMP sounding, knowing there is an END to sin, to death, to heart ache, to all pain in all its many insidious forms.

Joh 7:37  In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.

Joh 7:38  He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

Joh 7:39  (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)

Please Lord, please, I believe! Help Thou my unbelief! I believe, please I thirst, let me drink! Please, Lord, I need the SPIRIT, I need to receive the Holy Spirit, You have been glorified, please LORD…please!

All in YOUR name, all in YOUR love always!

Where is your hope?

Heb 13:20  Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,

Heb 13:21  Make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

God of peace- God the Father it was He who brought our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ up from the dead. Jesus Christ our GREAT Shepherd, was raised from the dead by HIS FATHER. And it is God the Father who WILL make us perfect in every good work to do His will. God the FATHER will work in US what is wellpleasing in His sight and He'll do this through Jesus Christ our Savior!

We have to believe this! We have trust, to have faith!  If we truly believe God the Father raised Jesus Christ His only begotten son from the dead then we must truly believe God will work in us!  And it's not a belief that means our lives will be pain free, care free, happy and wonderful, it means that we believe that our God will work in us, refining us, prepare us for His heavenly kingdom. We can't know why we are called to endure the agonizing heartaches of this life- the emotional tortures, the physical abuses, the mental tragedies. We can know that they are ALL TEMPORARY to eternity. No matter WHAT we are enduring it will end eventually. If we are tortured to death, if we are living in chronic agony, it too is temporary to one thing and one thing only-- ETERNITY.  Our TREASURE is in HEAVEN, our TREASURE is heaven where our LORD and SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST truly is preparing a place for us to live.

1Pe 1:21  Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God.

Our faith and hope is in GOD- we KNOW He raised our Savior from the grave and gave Him glory forever!

Our faith is NOT in ourselves or any person whatsoever, but GOD.

Gal 4:6  And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

God sends forth the SPIRIT of His Son into our hearts and we do cry ABBA FATHER!

Joh 5:28  Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice,

Joh 5:29  And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.

ALL in the graves will HEAR HIS VOICE.

Tell me- I'm asking once again because I have to ask- tell me if there is NO ONE in the grave because they've all risen to their fate already, then who is it that hears from the grave?  Does anyone in a grave hear a thing right now? NO!

Ecc_9:5  For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.

The dead KNOW NOT ANYTHING!

Ecc_9:10  Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

There is NOTHING in the grave.  So instead of us believing we go into death's sleep of nothingness we've concocted instant spirit life after death so we don't have to believe we go to where there is nothing- no device, no knowledge, no wisdom, where we do not know anything.  Satan has helped us manufacture a whole lie that has taken in virtually everyone.  And those who believe the lie and refuse the truth, they will hear Christ's calling them from the grave but it will not be to the resurrection of life.

We have HOPE in Christ our Savior through our LORD and SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST! THIS IS OUR ONLY HOPE, our ONLY TRUE HOPE when all in life falls apart around us, and even more so when all is right in our lives when we have a tendency to think we have no need of hope because we have all we desire. We need our true HOPE, our true happiness, HEAVEN with our SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD!

Please, Lord, please HELP US to be YOURS! Work YOUR WILL in US! PLEASE through the SPIRIT, please! We would be YOURS FOREVER!

AMEN.

To all that are afar off... Us.

Act 2:38  Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

Act 2:39  For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.

Repent.

Be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

Why?

For the remission of sins.

If we repent.

If we are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

We will receive the Holy Ghost.

This was a promise to those being spoken to and to their children and to US! This is a promise to all whom the Lord our God calls.

Jesus said…Mat_9:13  But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

The sinners are called to repent.

Luk_5:32  I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

The sinners are called.

So many believe the righteous are called, but they can't be called as those being righteous because we are all sinners.

Rom_3:23  For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God

Rom_5:12  Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned

Rom 3:10  As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one

The righteous cannot be called, the sinners are called and they are called to repent.

To have remorse for the sins we commit. To have a desire to not sin. To desire to follow the love of God.

We have a promise- and that promise is of salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord. We who are AFAR off from the days of the apostles have this promise just as they had the promise and all they personally witnessed to.

We need to believe in the promise, it is a promise God will never break.

Please, let us repent, let us be baptized and believe in our Savior, Jesus Christ now and forever!

Through the righteousness of Christ alone we can live forever in Him.

'We shall not all sleep...' Death's long sleep.

Mortal bodies.

The Spirit.

The SPIRIT of him (GOD) raised Jesus from the dead this is a fact. This SAME Spirit must dwell IN US.  God who raised up Christ from the dead will ALSO bring our MORTAL bodes to life by HIS Spirit in Us.

We will NOT be raised from the dead should we die before our Savior returns to gather us to Him, unless we have the Holy Spirit in us- this is truth!

Rom 8:11  But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.

The living in Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit, will NOT keep those who have died in Christ from rising from their graves.

Christ will descend from heaven with a SHOUT.

The voice of the archangel will sound.

The trump of God will be heard.

Then the DEAD in Christ will rise! 

1Th 4:15  For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

1Th 4:16  For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first.

(Again I must make mention of the fact that there is NO need for the dead in Christ to rise from their graves if they are ALREADY with Christ upon their death, right? Logic must dictate that waking those from death's sleep at the return of Christ when the archangel sounds and a trump of God is heard, means they are NOT already awake and with Christ. So, WHY do so many believe death is just slipping into spirit form and going to live with God in heaven? We need to ask this question and ask it seriously not just tossing it all aside as if it doesn't matter, it does matter.  Satan is going to impersonate Christ, Satan is going to have his evil angels appear as angels of light and he's going to do all that to DECEIVE people. Satan having evil angels impersonate our dead loved ones to lull us into a false man-made doctrine is done for one reason only- to deceive us so that he can claim us as his followers- the followers of deception. If you think you will not be accountable for such things, you are wrong.

Act 17:27  That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:

Act 17:28  For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

Act 17:29  Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.

Act 17:30  And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:

Act 17:31  Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

At times of ignorance God winked at- BUT now commandeth all men everywhere to repent.  We have no excuse for ignorance now, none.

Eph 1:19  And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power,

Eph 1:20  Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places

Ask yourself this question please…  WHY is it such a big deal that Jesus was raised from the dead if we already believe upon our deaths we go to heaven- that we are raised in spirit form?  According to our beliefs of living upon death, Jesus was merely going to heaven upon His death, right?  But He didn't, did He?  He lay in the grave and then He was raised from the dead- body and all. We believe this fact readily without asking ourselves questions about our beliefs.  So, Jesus did NOT go into spirit form upon death and immediately go to heaven, yet we believe that's what happens when we die. Many people will instantly say that our loved ones are in a BETTER PLACE now, that our loved ones are IN HEAVEN with all our other loved ones having a family reunion, that our loved ones are now in JESUS' arms. These are the words of comfort people give to one another all the time, yet they go on believing that Jesus didn't go to heaven upon His death.  If we agree that Biblically Jesus stayed in the grave until the third day then we also have to agree that He was NOT in heaven that day. In fact Jesus, Himself says that He shouldn't be touched because He hadn't ascended to His Father yet. Jesus admitted He hadn't gone to heaven yet. People love to say that Jesus promised the thief on the cross next to Him that He'd see him in heaven that day- but in truth Jesus was telling that thief that DAY, that he would see Him in heaven eventually. Jesus admitted He wasn’t in heaven that day! He hadn't gone to His Father that day upon dying. So why can't we realize these truths? Why does it offend us so easily to think that our loved ones are SLEEPING death's long sleep?  They aren't in pain any longer, they aren't suffering, they know absolutely nothing that is going on in our lives- all our pain and suffering, all our heartaches. They aren't subjected to the horrors of what is taking place upon earth at all. They are sleeping the long sleep from which they will be awakened from if they are Christ's, and they are awakened when Christ returns for them at the last trump sounding. Why must we fabricate the fantasy of our loved ones comforting us from their heavenly perches? We do it to appease ourselves. We lie to ourselves to comfort ourselves by believing that our loved ones know we loved them and all the arguing and chaos of life is over, their true feelings are now known and this brings comfort to people. They don't like the idea that their loved one is simply sleeping and thinking no more at all whatsoever, their breath of life returned to God so their bodies no longer function. They don't like the idea of them sleeping and not knowing how sorry those still living are for all the hard times between them. They don't like the idea of their dead loved ones having no consciousness at all. To me it is a marvelous, wondrous thing, this death sleep. Truly NO MORE suffering on any level for anyone. No witnessing of my heartaches and pains while they are in heaven unable to weep or feel pain of any sort any longer. Their emotionless - except for happiness - existence is intrinsically wrong on many levels if they are watching a loved one suffer it is just incredibly wrong, we have to know this on some level right?

Joh 5:28  Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice,

Joh 5:29  And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.

This is truth.

1Co 15:51  Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,

1Co 15:52  In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

1Co 15:53  For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

1Co 15:54  So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

1Co 15:55  O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

This is truth.

May we find comfort in the TRUTH and not in lies no matter how much they please our senses.

May God's Spirit live in US. May the Holy Spirit live in US. May Christ live in US and we in Him! May our hope be solely in the SAVIOR, our LORD, JESUS CHRIST now and forever!

Amen.

Not pleasing people, but pleasing God.

Rom 14:18  For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men.

ACCEPTABLE to God.

Rom 14:17  For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
Rom 14:18  For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men.

Righteousness, peace, and joy in the HOLY SPIRIT- in these we SERVE Christ and we are acceptable to GOD.

We want to be approved unto God, don't we? We want to be acceptable to God and we KNOW we are NOT ever going to be acceptable or approved to God of our own accord. We are approved unto God through the WORD of God, we are acceptable to God through the HOLY SPIRIT.  How can we ignore these truths and expect to truly be God's? How? Jesus Christ is the living Word. His Word. His entire reason for becoming the begotten Son of God and  the entire reason He EMPTIED Himself and took on our flesh was to SAVE US! He did not take on flesh to teach us how to save ourselves, to teach us how to behave, to give us a secret formula we can follow and be saved. He came to SAVE us, to save ALL who comprehend their need of a Savior. In comprehending this need we know that being SAVED in Jesus Christ truly is the treasure we need to seek first and all things after that.  We need to find Christ FIRST in our lives, not tucked away in a neat compartment labeled 'religion'.

Gal 1:10  For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.

IF we seek to please men over God are we serving God? If we seek to please God, we will serve men as we should, in love.  Obviously this apostle of Jesus Christ's comprehended that men will desire pleasing that doesn't include God. People want to be pleased, they want to hear things that will make them pleased, not upset. People want to hear things that go with their point of view on things. People want things to please their ears not bring discord to their thoughts. If we do NOT speak pleasing things to people they will STOP listening to us, and we need to choose whether or not we keep speaking things that don't please them and lose their interest, or change to please them.  Shouldn't we rather standalone and seek God first? Isn't it better to be alone than to have a following of one or a million? Others want us to fit in their mold of expectation, but at what cost do we agree to settle into that mold?

1Th 2:4  But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts.

We are put in TRUST with the truth- the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, do we ignore this trust?
ALLOWED of GOD to have this gospel trust we cannot convolute it to please people. We cannot twist the gospel to please ourselves and others, we must speak it plaining as Jesus spoke the gospel.  God ALONE will try our hearts! By Him, through Him may our hearts be acceptable!

Mat 13:52  Then said he unto them, Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.

Instructed unto the kingdom of heaven.  This is the gospel! The kingdom of heaven is our Savior, is salvation through our Savior. And truly the message of the gospel, the kingdom of heaven can be found in the old and new and it is TREASURE!

2Co 6:3  Giving no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed:
2Co 6:4  But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses

We will NEED much patience. We will ENDURE afflictions, in necessities, and in distresses. In so many things we will endure the assault of Satan and we are the ministers of God and as such we HAVE to know the end of our faith and look to that!

1Ti 4:12  Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.
1Ti 4:13  Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.
1Ti 4:14  Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.
1Ti 4:15  Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all.
1Ti 4:16  Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.

MEDITATE upon charity, spirit, faith, purity. Reading, exhorting upon DOCTRINE.  We have to TAKE HEED to OURSELVES and to the DOCTRINE - continuing in the WORD OF GOD- SAVING ourselves and those who hear us.  If we continue in the Word of God we are continuing in TRUTH. We are continuing in the FAITH of our Savior, we are living the truth of the gospel found in our SAVIOR!

1Co 2:6  Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought

The wisdom of this world is NOT God's wisdom! Satan has perverted this world so much it's no wonder people who choose not to believe are led astray so fully by the lies perpetrated by the evil fallen angel.  Satan has set in motion so many evils and man call these evil- wisdom!   God's wisdom alone is truth, is perfect! The things of this world are not the truth and can never give salvation to a single person!

2Co 4:2  But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.

RENOUNCING the HIDDEN THINGS of DISHONESTY.
NOT WALKING IN CRAFTINESS.
NOT HANDLING THE WORD OF GOD DECEITFULLY!
We must walk in TRUTH for all to see- man and God!  It's HIS TRUTH!

By HIS GRACE MAY WE WALK IN HIS TRUTH!

We are given instructions so many instructions and for people to believe that God does not give instructions, they are blinded to truth!

Please LORD, we want to SEE! We don't want to be blinded! PLEASE let us buy of You gold tried in fire, eyesalve and white raiment! PLEASE LORD we need faith, we need the Holy Spirit, we need Your righteousness!

Please!