How Great Thou Art
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Cast thy burden upon the Lord and He shall sustain thee. Psalm 55:22
The Lord says in His Word that He will never give you more than you are able to bear and that He will always make a way of escape. 1Corinthians 10:13. Somehow He will make it easier for you or at least help you to bear it. Even of our service for Him He says, "My yoke is easy and My burden is light!" Matthew 11:28-30. That verse can be a real encouragement to you sometimes when you may be tempted to feel like life is just too hard and the burden, the particular thing you are going through, is just too heavy.
Sometimes it is a rough and a rugged road, with a hard and a heavy load, and the people you meet are not always kind. But most of the time it is a smooth and a happy road, He helps you to carry the load, and many lost souls you will help to find!
So if you ever feel overloaded and down in the dumps, dump it on Jesus! And if you really are overloaded, He will help you! Seek the Lord! Cast your burdens on Him! Just roll it over on Jesus and roll over and go to sleep and let Him stay up all night! Do not worry about it! Let the Lord do the worrying! His shoulders are broad enough to carry any load, all the burdens put together, including His own!
Sometimes it is a rough and a rugged road, with a hard and a heavy load, and the people you meet are not always kind. But most of the time it is a smooth and a happy road, He helps you to carry the load, and many lost souls you will help to find!
So if you ever feel overloaded and down in the dumps, dump it on Jesus! And if you really are overloaded, He will help you! Seek the Lord! Cast your burdens on Him! Just roll it over on Jesus and roll over and go to sleep and let Him stay up all night! Do not worry about it! Let the Lord do the worrying! His shoulders are broad enough to carry any load, all the burdens put together, including His own!
Putin on America
"The Americans are obsessed with the idea of ensuring absolute invulnerability for themselves, which is utopian and unfeasible from both technological and geopolitical points of view,” said Putin. “An absolute invulnerability for one means an absolute vulnerability for all the others. It’s impossible to accept such a prospect.”
“Russia is worried about the growing threat of a strike on Iran,” he said. “If it happens, the consequences will be truly catastrophic. Their real scale is impossible to imagine.”
“Russia is worried about the growing threat of a strike on Iran,” he said. “If it happens, the consequences will be truly catastrophic. Their real scale is impossible to imagine.”
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
The International Bankers
From the Fourth Reich of the Rich by Des Griffin, Emissary Publications, 1976, page 204.
When the International Bankers bring about the next great crash they will be playing for total stakes, total control of the world! The stage is now all set for this planned catastrophe, only the timing is not known. The results will make the Crash of 1929 and the resultant Great Depression look like a time of great prosperity.
When the International Bankers bring about the next great crash they will be playing for total stakes, total control of the world! The stage is now all set for this planned catastrophe, only the timing is not known. The results will make the Crash of 1929 and the resultant Great Depression look like a time of great prosperity.
He wants you to be happy! February 28
From the Daily Might
God is not a sad God! He is a happy God, who wants you to be happy, too!The Bible says in Psalm 144:15, "Happy is the people whose God is the Lord!" This is the whole point of salvation, to relieve us of the suffering, pain, death and tears brought into the world by the Enemy and sins of man! God is not a monster who is trying to deny you everything and make you miserable. But He loves life and created it all for you to enjoy! He has made this beautiful world as a home for you to live in and enjoy and He has lovingly given you a wonderful body, mind and heart with which to enjoy it!
In fact, He sometimes almost spoils us with such blessings that He gives us the desires of our hearts for having delighted ourselves in Him. (Psalm 37:4) But God is pretty smart. He knows that the happier we are, the more we will love Him. The more we love Him, the more obedient we will be out of pure love and so do an even better job for Him in serving others with whom He wants us to share His love!
He wants to make you happy with His love and help yo to make others happy, too, with both His love and your love! This is our main purpose in life, to love God and enjoy Him forever, and to try to help others to do the same!
God is not a sad God! He is a happy God, who wants you to be happy, too!The Bible says in Psalm 144:15, "Happy is the people whose God is the Lord!" This is the whole point of salvation, to relieve us of the suffering, pain, death and tears brought into the world by the Enemy and sins of man! God is not a monster who is trying to deny you everything and make you miserable. But He loves life and created it all for you to enjoy! He has made this beautiful world as a home for you to live in and enjoy and He has lovingly given you a wonderful body, mind and heart with which to enjoy it!
In fact, He sometimes almost spoils us with such blessings that He gives us the desires of our hearts for having delighted ourselves in Him. (Psalm 37:4) But God is pretty smart. He knows that the happier we are, the more we will love Him. The more we love Him, the more obedient we will be out of pure love and so do an even better job for Him in serving others with whom He wants us to share His love!
He wants to make you happy with His love and help yo to make others happy, too, with both His love and your love! This is our main purpose in life, to love God and enjoy Him forever, and to try to help others to do the same!
Monday, February 27, 2012
Daniel Webster on America's Undoing!
“There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence. I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing.” ― Daniel Webster
Is the White Horse of Revelation 6:2 the Anti-Christ?
Dennis Edwards
Someone recently wrote my sharing with me a prophecy revealing that the white horse in Revelation chapter 6:2 is the anti-Christ. After praying about it for a few days, here is my answer.
Sorry I was not able to answer your note sooner. But over the weekend when I had more time your note kept coming to mind. Finally, when praying about the prophecy that the white horse in Revelations 6:2 is the anti-Christ, and restudying Revelations 6 and 19, the verse that came to me was from II Timothy 4:3. "The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine,... and shall turn away their ears from the truth."
The unscriptural pre-tribulation doctrine came in a revelation of prophecy to a person in Scotland around 1830´s. So a revelation in prophecy is not a sufficient means of finding true doctrine. It must be confirmed by a careful study of the Word itself. The Word is our true measuring stick and standard and guide. I have seen this doctrine of the white horse being the AC promoted in some evangelical literature, so it is not new in itself. The prophecy you sent me does not convince me that the view our fellowship has traditionally advocated is wrong.
In Revelations 6 we see the white horse going forth to conquer with a crown on his head. In Revelations 19 the white horse´s rider has crowns upon his head. He is more easily identified as Jesus because of the other descriptions added, The King of Kings and Lord of Lords, The Word of God, Faithful and True. (Revelations 19:11,13,16.) Maybe those crowns he is wearing are those of kingdoms which have accepted and received His kingship since he went forth to conquer after His resurrection.
The white horse is still continuing to go forth and is still conquering. That is why Christianity is making such headway in places like China and Africa, in spite of the red, black and grizzly grey horses and their devilry. Sorry, you will have to convince me with Scripture, line upon line, here a little, there a little, and not just a prophecy from someone you know of influence.
Thank you for sharing your question with me. Pick up your Bible and study, for in it you think you have eternal life. If there is some Bible study to go with the prophecy, I would be interested in studying it. Thanks.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Man-It is Hard to be a Christian!
By Peter Amsterdam
Being a Christian can sure feel like an uphill fight all the way. When you think about all that Jesus said and you try to actually apply it to your life, it’s really tough. Why? Because it doesn’t come naturally. So much of what He taught goes against the grain of our nature as human beings. Look at the list below and ask yourself if what Jesus said in the following verses comes naturally to you.
Love your enemies.
Do good to those who hate you.
Bless those who curse you.
Pray for those who mistreat you.
Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also.
Whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either.
Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back.
Lend, expecting nothing in return.1
Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.2
He said other things that are hard to live, too.
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.3
Go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.4
Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.5
Jesus said these things (and a lot more), and He expects us to actually do them. That’s the kicker. He really meant that you are supposed to do these things. And they’re hard!
Obviously, if you are going to be a follower of Jesus, it’s going to cost you.
Why would anyone be willing to follow Him, considering how hard it is? There are a lot of good reasons, but I’ll mention just two.
(1) Because the man who said these things is God.
Here was Jesus, the Word of God, the expression of the Father, walking the earth saying these things. If He was expressing God’s thoughts, if He was articulating the way God thinks about things, if He was telling mankind what God thought was important, or which of man’s actions or attitudes were valuable to God, then it’s a good idea to seriously consider trying to do what He said—even if it’s hard.
I’m pretty sure He knew that living what He said and following Him would be hard, because He was also human and underwent all the temptations we do. But He said what He said anyway.
He had to know that a lot of what He asked of us as disciples would go against natural human instinct. Humans tend to be proud; if someone hits us or steals from us or takes advantage of us in business, we often feel like retaliating in some way. We’re often selfish, or at least self-serving, by nature. Because it’s natural to be that way, it’s difficult not to be.
Yet Jesus was clearly trying to show that He expected us to act in ways that don’t conform to our human nature. I’d say He was intentionally challenging us by giving us a glimpse of how He wants us to be. After all, He did say, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word.”6 So there was some expectation that we would try to do just that—even if it’s hard.
(2) The second reason is a little less noble than doing it because God Himself said it, and that is, “What’s in it for me?”
You’ve got to think long-term—very long-term. It’s wise to not only make do for now, but also to put something forward for then. And then is a very long time. When you’re thinking about what you’re going to get, you want to look forward to the future, to invest now for then.
It’s pretty clear in Scripture that there are rewards given in the afterlife that are connected to how we lead our temporal lives.
Revelation 22:12 says, Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done (NIV).
Colossians 3:23–24: Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving (NIV).
1 Corinthians 3:11–14 says, For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward (NIV).
Luke 6:22–23: Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets (KJV).
Matthew 16:27 says, For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works (NKJV).
Besides rewards in the afterlife, God rewards us in this life as well.
Mark 10:28–30: Peter began to say to Him, “Behold, we have left everything and followed You.” Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life (NASB).
Matthew 6:3–4: When you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly (NKJV).
Jesus clearly states that we should build up treasure in heaven.
Matthew 6:20 says, Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal (NASB).
There’s a clear case made in the Scriptures that we will be rewarded, both in this life and the next, for doing the things that Jesus said we should do—even though they are hard. Perhaps the fact that they are so hard has something to do with why we are rewarded by God for doing them.
So two reasons for doing these tough things are that God said we should do them, and that we will be rewarded for doing them—both now and later. Let’s look at the later rewards for a minute.
He says that we have the means of laying up treasure in heaven. That’s like investing in the future—making right decisions now that will make our future better. Perhaps it’s a bit like putting money in the bank.
What I’m about to say might sound money-minded, but I think it helps to make the point.
Imagine that for every time you showed love or kindness to someone, 100 euros was deposited in your bank account. Or that every time you witnessed to someone, 500 euros were banked. What if you loaned someone money and didn’t expect it back, but you received double the money in your account? Or if every time you turned the other cheek, a check was deposited?
If that happened, then doing what Jesus said wouldn’t seem so hard, would it?
We’re going to live forever. It’s wise to invest in the future.—Even if it’s hard.
Originally published October 2010. Excerpted and republished February 2012.TFI
1 Luke 6:27–30, 35 NASB.
2 Mark 16:15 NKJV.
3 Matthew 6:19 NASB.
4 Mark 10:21 NASB.
5 Luke 12:15 NIV.
6 John 14:23 NASB.
Being a Christian can sure feel like an uphill fight all the way. When you think about all that Jesus said and you try to actually apply it to your life, it’s really tough. Why? Because it doesn’t come naturally. So much of what He taught goes against the grain of our nature as human beings. Look at the list below and ask yourself if what Jesus said in the following verses comes naturally to you.
Love your enemies.
Do good to those who hate you.
Bless those who curse you.
Pray for those who mistreat you.
Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also.
Whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either.
Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back.
Lend, expecting nothing in return.1
Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.2
He said other things that are hard to live, too.
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.3
Go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.4
Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.5
Jesus said these things (and a lot more), and He expects us to actually do them. That’s the kicker. He really meant that you are supposed to do these things. And they’re hard!
Obviously, if you are going to be a follower of Jesus, it’s going to cost you.
Why would anyone be willing to follow Him, considering how hard it is? There are a lot of good reasons, but I’ll mention just two.
(1) Because the man who said these things is God.
Here was Jesus, the Word of God, the expression of the Father, walking the earth saying these things. If He was expressing God’s thoughts, if He was articulating the way God thinks about things, if He was telling mankind what God thought was important, or which of man’s actions or attitudes were valuable to God, then it’s a good idea to seriously consider trying to do what He said—even if it’s hard.
I’m pretty sure He knew that living what He said and following Him would be hard, because He was also human and underwent all the temptations we do. But He said what He said anyway.
He had to know that a lot of what He asked of us as disciples would go against natural human instinct. Humans tend to be proud; if someone hits us or steals from us or takes advantage of us in business, we often feel like retaliating in some way. We’re often selfish, or at least self-serving, by nature. Because it’s natural to be that way, it’s difficult not to be.
Yet Jesus was clearly trying to show that He expected us to act in ways that don’t conform to our human nature. I’d say He was intentionally challenging us by giving us a glimpse of how He wants us to be. After all, He did say, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word.”6 So there was some expectation that we would try to do just that—even if it’s hard.
(2) The second reason is a little less noble than doing it because God Himself said it, and that is, “What’s in it for me?”
You’ve got to think long-term—very long-term. It’s wise to not only make do for now, but also to put something forward for then. And then is a very long time. When you’re thinking about what you’re going to get, you want to look forward to the future, to invest now for then.
It’s pretty clear in Scripture that there are rewards given in the afterlife that are connected to how we lead our temporal lives.
Revelation 22:12 says, Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done (NIV).
Colossians 3:23–24: Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving (NIV).
1 Corinthians 3:11–14 says, For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward (NIV).
Luke 6:22–23: Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets (KJV).
Matthew 16:27 says, For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works (NKJV).
Besides rewards in the afterlife, God rewards us in this life as well.
Mark 10:28–30: Peter began to say to Him, “Behold, we have left everything and followed You.” Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life (NASB).
Matthew 6:3–4: When you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly (NKJV).
Jesus clearly states that we should build up treasure in heaven.
Matthew 6:20 says, Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal (NASB).
There’s a clear case made in the Scriptures that we will be rewarded, both in this life and the next, for doing the things that Jesus said we should do—even though they are hard. Perhaps the fact that they are so hard has something to do with why we are rewarded by God for doing them.
So two reasons for doing these tough things are that God said we should do them, and that we will be rewarded for doing them—both now and later. Let’s look at the later rewards for a minute.
He says that we have the means of laying up treasure in heaven. That’s like investing in the future—making right decisions now that will make our future better. Perhaps it’s a bit like putting money in the bank.
What I’m about to say might sound money-minded, but I think it helps to make the point.
Imagine that for every time you showed love or kindness to someone, 100 euros was deposited in your bank account. Or that every time you witnessed to someone, 500 euros were banked. What if you loaned someone money and didn’t expect it back, but you received double the money in your account? Or if every time you turned the other cheek, a check was deposited?
If that happened, then doing what Jesus said wouldn’t seem so hard, would it?
We’re going to live forever. It’s wise to invest in the future.—Even if it’s hard.
Originally published October 2010. Excerpted and republished February 2012.TFI
1 Luke 6:27–30, 35 NASB.
2 Mark 16:15 NKJV.
3 Matthew 6:19 NASB.
4 Mark 10:21 NASB.
5 Luke 12:15 NIV.
6 John 14:23 NASB.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Say "I love you" to those you care about!
Life's Frailty, and the Gestures That Go a Long Way
By Tara Parker-Pope, NY Times, February 13, 2012
Several years ago, my friend Jeffrey Zaslow sent me a chapter from a book he was writing about lifelong friendships among a group of women from Ames, Iowa. It was a powerful story about love and loss that moved me to tears.
With the draft pages still in my hands, I sat down with my daughter, a second-grader at the time, to talk about the importance of friendship. We talked about her girlfriends, why occasional fights didn’t matter and why she should always treasure her friends. It was a sweet moment, and I was grateful to Jeff for inspiring the conversation through his writing.
Later, I called him to tell him how much that single chapter had meant to my daughter and me. How, I asked him, had he managed to inject himself into this circle of women he had only recently met and so accurately depict the power of female friendship?
“I have a wife and three daughters,” he said, laughing, without missing a beat. “I’m quite comfortable being outnumbered by women.”
I thought about our conversation this weekend when I learned the terrible news that Jeff had died in a car accident on snowy roads on his way to his Detroit-area home, returning from a book-signing event in northern Michigan. “The Girls From Ames” became a best seller. But many people know Jeff as co-author of “The Last Lecture,” with the Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch, who delivered that now famous lecture after learning he had pancreatic cancer.
Despite the disparate subject matter, Mr. Zaslow noted that much of his writing centered on the theme of love, commitment and living in the moment.
“We don’t know what moment in our lives we’re going to be judged on; that’s true for all of us,” he said at a TED talk last year. “We’ve got to be honorable, be moral; we’ve got to work our hardest.”
Despite his success as a memoir co-author, Jeff’s true labor of love was his latest book, “The Magic Room: A Story About the Love We Wish for Our Daughters.” Dedicated to his daughters, the book focused on a bridal shop in Fowler, Mich., as a way to tell a story of parents’ hopes and dreams.
Jeff often said he honed his skills for listening and offering advice during a stint as an advice columnist, a role he won in a contest to replace Ann Landers. During his many public talks, Jeff told the story of a favorite letter from a man who wanted his girlfriend, Julie, to undergo breast augmentation.
“Julie deserves someone who loves her for who she is, not how she looks in a sweater,” Jeff wrote in his reply. “If you can’t do that for her, she won’t need implants anyway because she will already have a big boob in her life. You.”
In every conversation I had with Jeff and in much of his writing, he talked about how much he had learned about the frailty of life and the importance of never leaving important words unsaid.
At his TED talk last November, Jeff told the audience about a column of his that focused on the words “I love you.” It appeared two days before Valentine’s Day in 2004, and led with the story of a judge in Maywood, Ill., who often told his children that he loved them. One day in 1995, as his 18-year-old daughter was leaving the house, the judge called out to his daughter. “Kristin, remember I love you,” he said.
“I love you too, Dad,” the girl replied. That day, Kristin was killed in a car accident. It was a story that resonated with Jeff, and one he took to heart, always saying “I love you” to his wife and daughters before saying goodbye or hanging up the phone.
“All of us should say ‘I love you’ to the people we care about,” Jeff said. “We should do it because you never know. I got about 1,000 e-mails from readers saying they were going to tell their children they loved them.
“What I like about my job is sometimes I’m just writing about the obvious. By doing that, you can touch a lot of people and tell them things that will change their lives, even if it’s something simple.”
Removing the Veil
By Aiden Tozer
“Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.”—St. Augustine
The great saint states here in few words the origin and interior history of the human race. God made us for Himself: that is the only explanation that satisfies the heart of a thinking man, whatever his wild reason may say.
God formed us for Himself. The Shorter Catechism asks the ancient questions what and why and answers them in one short sentence hardly matched in any uninspired work. “Question: What is the chief End of Man? Answer: Man’s chief End is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” With this agree the four and twenty elders who fall on their faces to worship Him that liveth for ever and ever, saying, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”1
God formed us for His pleasure, and so formed us that we as well as He can in divine communion enjoy the sweet and mysterious mingling of kindred personalities. He meant us to see Him and live with Him and draw our life from His smile.
Who can flee from His Presence when the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him?2 When, as the wisdom of Solomon testifies, “the Spirit of the Lord filleth the world?” The omnipresence of the Lord is one thing, and is … necessary to His perfection; the manifest Presence is another thing altogether, and from that Presence we have fled, like Adam, to hide among the trees of the garden, or like Peter, to shrink away crying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”3
The whole work of God in redemption is to bring us back again into right and eternal relationship with Himself. This required that our sins be disposed of satisfactorily, that a full reconciliation be effected and the way opened for us to return again into conscious communion with God and to live again in the Presence as before. Then by His prevenient working within us He moves us to return. This first comes to our notice when our restless hearts feel a yearning for the Presence of God and we say within ourselves, “I will arise and go to my Father.” That is the first step, and as the Chinese sage Lao-tze has said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step.”
The interior journey of the soul from the wilds of sin into the enjoyed Presence of God is beautifully illustrated in the Old Testament tabernacle. The returning sinner first entered the outer court, where he offered a blood sacrifice on the brazen altar and washed himself in the laver that stood near it. Then through a veil he passed into the holy place where no natural light could come, but the golden candlestick which spoke of Jesus the Light of the World threw its soft glow over all. There also was the showbread to tell of Jesus, the Bread of Life, and the altar of incense, a figure of unceasing prayer.
Though the worshipper had enjoyed so much, still he had not yet entered the Presence of God. Another veil separated from the Holy of Holies where above the mercy seat dwelt the very God Himself in awful and glorious manifestation. While the tabernacle stood, only the high priest could enter there, and that but once a year, with blood which he offered for his sins and the sins of the people. It was this last veil which was rent when our Lord gave up the ghost on Calvary, and the sacred writer explains that this rending of the veil opened the way for every worshipper in the world to come by the new and living way straight into the divine Presence.4
Everything in the New Testament accords with this Old Testament picture. Ransomed men need no longer pause in fear to enter the Holy of Holies. God wills that we should push on into His Presence and live our whole life there. This is to be known to us in conscious experience. It is more than a doctrine to be held; it is a life to be enjoyed every moment of every day.
The greatest fact of the tabernacle was that Jehovah was there; a Presence was waiting within the veil. Similarly, the Presence of God is the central fact of Christianity. At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His Presence. That type of Christianity which happens now to be the vogue knows this Presence only in theory. It fails to stress the Christian’s privilege of present realization. According to its teachings we are in the Presence of God positionally, and nothing is said about the need to experience that Presence actually. The fiery urge is wholly missing. And the present generation of Christians measures itself by this imperfect rule. Ignoble contentment takes the place of burning zeal. We are satisfied to rest in our judicial possessions and for the most part we bother ourselves very little about the absence of personal experience.
Who is this within the veil who dwells in fiery manifestations? It is none other than God Himself, “One God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible,” and “One Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God; begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God; begotten, not made; being of one substance with the Father,” and “the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified.”5 So in part run the ancient creeds, and so the inspired Word declares.
Behind the veil is God, that God after whom the world, with strange inconsistency, has felt, “if haply they might find Him.” He waits to show Himself in ravishing fullness to the humble of soul and the pure in heart.
The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the Church is famishing for want of His Presence. The instant cure of most of our religious ills would be to enter the Presence in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and that God is in us. This would lift us out of our pitiful narrowness and cause our hearts to be enlarged.
What a broad world to roam in, what a sea to swim in is this God. He is eternal, which means that He antedates time and is wholly independent of it. Time began in Him and will end in Him. To it He pays no tribute and from it He suffers no change. He is immutable, which means that He has never changed and can never change in any smallest measure. To change He would need to go from better to worse or from worse to better. He cannot do either, for being perfect He cannot become more perfect, and if He were to become less perfect He would be less than God. He is omniscient, which means that He knows in one free and effortless act all matter, all spirit, all relationships, all events. He has no past and He has no future. He is, and none of the limiting and qualifying terms used of creatures can apply to Him. Love and mercy and righteousness are His, and holiness so ineffable that no comparisons or figures will avail to express it. Only fire can give even a remote conception of it. In fire He appeared at the burning bush; in the pillar of fire He dwelt through all the long wilderness journey. The fire that glowed between the wings of the cherubim in the holy place was called the “shekinah,” the Presence, through the years of Israel’s glory, and when the Old had given place to the New, He came at Pentecost as a fiery flame and rested upon each disciple.6
The highest love of God is not intellectual, it is spiritual. God is spirit, and only the spirit of man can know Him really. In the deep spirit of a man the fire must glow or his love is not the true love of God. The great of the kingdom have been those who loved God more than others did.
Frederick Faber was one whose soul panted after God as the roe pants after the water brook,7 and the measure in which God revealed Himself to his seeking heart set the good man’s whole life afire with a burning adoration rivaling that of the seraphim before the throne. His love for God extended to the three Persons of the Godhead equally, yet he seemed to feel for each One a special kind of love reserved for Him alone. Of God the Father he sings:
Only to sit and think of God,
Oh what a joy it is!
To think the thought, to breathe the Name;
Earth has no higher bliss.
Father of Jesus, love's reward!
What rapture will it be,
Prostrate before Thy throne to lie,
And gaze and gaze on Thee!
His love for the Person of Christ was so intense that it threatened to consume him; it burned within him as a sweet and holy madness and flowed from his lips like molten gold. In one of his sermons he says, “Wherever we turn in the church of God, there is Jesus. He is the beginning, middle and end of everything to us. … There is nothing good, nothing holy, nothing beautiful, nothing joyous which He is not to His servants. No one need be poor, because, if he chooses, he can have Jesus for his own property and possession. No one need be downcast, for Jesus is the joy of heaven, and it is His joy to enter into sorrowful hearts. We can exaggerate about many things; but we can never exaggerate our obligation to Jesus, or the compassionate abundance of the love of Jesus to us. All our lives long we might talk of Jesus, and yet we should never come to an end of the sweet things that might be said of Him. Eternity will not be long enough to learn all He is, or to praise Him for all He has done, but then, that matters not; for we shall be always with Him, and we desire nothing more.” And addressing our Lord directly he says to Him:
I love Thee so, I know not how
My transports to control;
Thy love is like a burning fire
Within my very soul.
Faber’s blazing love extended also to the Holy Spirit. Not only in his theology did he acknowledge His deity and full equality with the Father and the Son, but he celebrated it constantly in his songs and in his prayers. He literally pressed his forehead to the ground in his eager fervid worship of the Third Person of the Godhead. In one of his great hymns to the Holy Spirit he sums up his burning devotion thus:
O Spirit, beautiful and dread!
My heart is fit to break
With love of all Thy tenderness
For us poor sinners' sake.
God is so vastly wonderful, so utterly and completely delightful that He can, without anything other than Himself, meet and overflow the deepest demands of our total nature, mysterious and deep as that nature is. Such worship can never come from a mere doctrinal knowledge of God. Hearts that are “fit to break” with love for the Godhead are those who have been in the Presence.
From “The Pursuit of God,” published 1948.
Excerpted and republished on Anchor February 2012.
1 Revelation 4:10–11.
2 1 Kings 8:27.
3 Genesis 3:8; Luke 5:8.
4 Matthew 27:51; Hebrews 10;19–21.
5 Genesis 1:1; Colossians 1:16; John 3:16, 17:5, 15:26; 1 John 5:7.
6 Exodus 3:2, 13:21; Ezekiel 10:2; Acts 2:2–3.
7 Psalm 42:1.
“Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.”—St. Augustine
The great saint states here in few words the origin and interior history of the human race. God made us for Himself: that is the only explanation that satisfies the heart of a thinking man, whatever his wild reason may say.
God formed us for Himself. The Shorter Catechism asks the ancient questions what and why and answers them in one short sentence hardly matched in any uninspired work. “Question: What is the chief End of Man? Answer: Man’s chief End is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” With this agree the four and twenty elders who fall on their faces to worship Him that liveth for ever and ever, saying, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”1
God formed us for His pleasure, and so formed us that we as well as He can in divine communion enjoy the sweet and mysterious mingling of kindred personalities. He meant us to see Him and live with Him and draw our life from His smile.
Who can flee from His Presence when the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him?2 When, as the wisdom of Solomon testifies, “the Spirit of the Lord filleth the world?” The omnipresence of the Lord is one thing, and is … necessary to His perfection; the manifest Presence is another thing altogether, and from that Presence we have fled, like Adam, to hide among the trees of the garden, or like Peter, to shrink away crying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”3
The whole work of God in redemption is to bring us back again into right and eternal relationship with Himself. This required that our sins be disposed of satisfactorily, that a full reconciliation be effected and the way opened for us to return again into conscious communion with God and to live again in the Presence as before. Then by His prevenient working within us He moves us to return. This first comes to our notice when our restless hearts feel a yearning for the Presence of God and we say within ourselves, “I will arise and go to my Father.” That is the first step, and as the Chinese sage Lao-tze has said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step.”
The interior journey of the soul from the wilds of sin into the enjoyed Presence of God is beautifully illustrated in the Old Testament tabernacle. The returning sinner first entered the outer court, where he offered a blood sacrifice on the brazen altar and washed himself in the laver that stood near it. Then through a veil he passed into the holy place where no natural light could come, but the golden candlestick which spoke of Jesus the Light of the World threw its soft glow over all. There also was the showbread to tell of Jesus, the Bread of Life, and the altar of incense, a figure of unceasing prayer.
Though the worshipper had enjoyed so much, still he had not yet entered the Presence of God. Another veil separated from the Holy of Holies where above the mercy seat dwelt the very God Himself in awful and glorious manifestation. While the tabernacle stood, only the high priest could enter there, and that but once a year, with blood which he offered for his sins and the sins of the people. It was this last veil which was rent when our Lord gave up the ghost on Calvary, and the sacred writer explains that this rending of the veil opened the way for every worshipper in the world to come by the new and living way straight into the divine Presence.4
Everything in the New Testament accords with this Old Testament picture. Ransomed men need no longer pause in fear to enter the Holy of Holies. God wills that we should push on into His Presence and live our whole life there. This is to be known to us in conscious experience. It is more than a doctrine to be held; it is a life to be enjoyed every moment of every day.
The greatest fact of the tabernacle was that Jehovah was there; a Presence was waiting within the veil. Similarly, the Presence of God is the central fact of Christianity. At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His Presence. That type of Christianity which happens now to be the vogue knows this Presence only in theory. It fails to stress the Christian’s privilege of present realization. According to its teachings we are in the Presence of God positionally, and nothing is said about the need to experience that Presence actually. The fiery urge is wholly missing. And the present generation of Christians measures itself by this imperfect rule. Ignoble contentment takes the place of burning zeal. We are satisfied to rest in our judicial possessions and for the most part we bother ourselves very little about the absence of personal experience.
Who is this within the veil who dwells in fiery manifestations? It is none other than God Himself, “One God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible,” and “One Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God; begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God; begotten, not made; being of one substance with the Father,” and “the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified.”5 So in part run the ancient creeds, and so the inspired Word declares.
Behind the veil is God, that God after whom the world, with strange inconsistency, has felt, “if haply they might find Him.” He waits to show Himself in ravishing fullness to the humble of soul and the pure in heart.
The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the Church is famishing for want of His Presence. The instant cure of most of our religious ills would be to enter the Presence in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and that God is in us. This would lift us out of our pitiful narrowness and cause our hearts to be enlarged.
What a broad world to roam in, what a sea to swim in is this God. He is eternal, which means that He antedates time and is wholly independent of it. Time began in Him and will end in Him. To it He pays no tribute and from it He suffers no change. He is immutable, which means that He has never changed and can never change in any smallest measure. To change He would need to go from better to worse or from worse to better. He cannot do either, for being perfect He cannot become more perfect, and if He were to become less perfect He would be less than God. He is omniscient, which means that He knows in one free and effortless act all matter, all spirit, all relationships, all events. He has no past and He has no future. He is, and none of the limiting and qualifying terms used of creatures can apply to Him. Love and mercy and righteousness are His, and holiness so ineffable that no comparisons or figures will avail to express it. Only fire can give even a remote conception of it. In fire He appeared at the burning bush; in the pillar of fire He dwelt through all the long wilderness journey. The fire that glowed between the wings of the cherubim in the holy place was called the “shekinah,” the Presence, through the years of Israel’s glory, and when the Old had given place to the New, He came at Pentecost as a fiery flame and rested upon each disciple.6
The highest love of God is not intellectual, it is spiritual. God is spirit, and only the spirit of man can know Him really. In the deep spirit of a man the fire must glow or his love is not the true love of God. The great of the kingdom have been those who loved God more than others did.
Frederick Faber was one whose soul panted after God as the roe pants after the water brook,7 and the measure in which God revealed Himself to his seeking heart set the good man’s whole life afire with a burning adoration rivaling that of the seraphim before the throne. His love for God extended to the three Persons of the Godhead equally, yet he seemed to feel for each One a special kind of love reserved for Him alone. Of God the Father he sings:
Only to sit and think of God,
Oh what a joy it is!
To think the thought, to breathe the Name;
Earth has no higher bliss.
Father of Jesus, love's reward!
What rapture will it be,
Prostrate before Thy throne to lie,
And gaze and gaze on Thee!
His love for the Person of Christ was so intense that it threatened to consume him; it burned within him as a sweet and holy madness and flowed from his lips like molten gold. In one of his sermons he says, “Wherever we turn in the church of God, there is Jesus. He is the beginning, middle and end of everything to us. … There is nothing good, nothing holy, nothing beautiful, nothing joyous which He is not to His servants. No one need be poor, because, if he chooses, he can have Jesus for his own property and possession. No one need be downcast, for Jesus is the joy of heaven, and it is His joy to enter into sorrowful hearts. We can exaggerate about many things; but we can never exaggerate our obligation to Jesus, or the compassionate abundance of the love of Jesus to us. All our lives long we might talk of Jesus, and yet we should never come to an end of the sweet things that might be said of Him. Eternity will not be long enough to learn all He is, or to praise Him for all He has done, but then, that matters not; for we shall be always with Him, and we desire nothing more.” And addressing our Lord directly he says to Him:
I love Thee so, I know not how
My transports to control;
Thy love is like a burning fire
Within my very soul.
Faber’s blazing love extended also to the Holy Spirit. Not only in his theology did he acknowledge His deity and full equality with the Father and the Son, but he celebrated it constantly in his songs and in his prayers. He literally pressed his forehead to the ground in his eager fervid worship of the Third Person of the Godhead. In one of his great hymns to the Holy Spirit he sums up his burning devotion thus:
O Spirit, beautiful and dread!
My heart is fit to break
With love of all Thy tenderness
For us poor sinners' sake.
God is so vastly wonderful, so utterly and completely delightful that He can, without anything other than Himself, meet and overflow the deepest demands of our total nature, mysterious and deep as that nature is. Such worship can never come from a mere doctrinal knowledge of God. Hearts that are “fit to break” with love for the Godhead are those who have been in the Presence.
From “The Pursuit of God,” published 1948.
Excerpted and republished on Anchor February 2012.
1 Revelation 4:10–11.
2 1 Kings 8:27.
3 Genesis 3:8; Luke 5:8.
4 Matthew 27:51; Hebrews 10;19–21.
5 Genesis 1:1; Colossians 1:16; John 3:16, 17:5, 15:26; 1 John 5:7.
6 Exodus 3:2, 13:21; Ezekiel 10:2; Acts 2:2–3.
7 Psalm 42:1.
Friday, February 3, 2012
The Wonder of the Universe
A Special Collection of Quotations From Great Minds Throughout History
"I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God."- Abraham Lincoln
"O Lord, thou givest everything, at the price of an effort."- Leonardo Da Vinci
"If a book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But for the sake of God, let us freely hear both sides if we choose."- Thomas Jefferson
"Great thoughts come from the heart."- Marques de Vauvenarques
"The visible order of the universe proclaims a supreme intelligence."- Jean Jacques Rousseau
"Science brings men nearer to God."- Louis Pasteur
"The visible marks of extraordinary wisdom and power appear so plainly in all the works of the creation that a rational creature, who will but seriously reflect on them, cannot miss the discovery of a Deity."- John Locke
"As a house implies a builder, and a garment a weaver, and a door a carpenter, so does the existence of the Universe imply a Creator."- Marques de Vauvernargues
"It is impossible to account for the creation of the universe without the agency of a Supreme Being."- George Washington
"From a knowledge of His work, we shall know Him."- Robert Boyle
"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."- Galileo Galilei
"Of what I call God, and fools call Nature."- Robert Browning
"So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have exited through all time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to one, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe."- Thomas Jefferson
"Nature is the art of God."- Dante Alighieri
"The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator."- Louis Pasteur
