Revelation 10 - 2010.11.27

FINISHED

“And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer: But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.” — Rev. 10:5-6

God finishes what He starts. With respect to His grand work of creation we read, “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made [Gen. 1:31; 2:1-3].” When He finished the work, He rested.

When God, the Son came into the world to rescue the sin fractured creation, He finished what He started. In His great prayer to the Father He declared, “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” Thus from the sacrificial altar of the cross He cried, “It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. [John 17:4].”

Concerning the consummation of the Divine plan of the ages, Daniel the prophet said, “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy [Dan. 9:24, my italics].” And the apostle Paul echoes, “For he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth [Rom. 9:28]. To this we might add the prophetic words of the Lord Jesus, “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened [Mt. 24:21-22].” In other words, God will not only finish His work of redemption and judgment, but He will finish it in timely fashion, affording deliverance for those who have trusted the Savior and everlasting destruction for those who reject Him. Then, and not until then, when the “mystery of God” is finished, God will rest again.

Two things emerge from this in my mind. First, if you are a believer, but sometimes bewildered and perplexed by the course of the age and tempted to doubt, fear not. “Be…confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ [Phjil. 1:6].” He will finish His work in you even as He finished His work for you. All the redeemed are “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls [I Pet. 1:5-9].” He will finish the work!

Second, we must aspire to finish our work for Him. God has a purpose for every believer in the body of Christ, and our daily plea should be, “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do.?” In general, we are to “shine as lights,” even as the apostle counseled the Philippian believers, “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Do all things without murmurings and disputings: That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; Holding forth the word of life [Phil. 2:12-16a].”

By His grace and for His glory may we able able to say in that day, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing [II Tim. 4:7-8].”

For His glory and our eternal good,

"Pastor" Frasier

Revelation 9 - 2010.11.20

HARDENED IN SIN

“And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.” — Rev. 9:20-21

In the gospel of Luke the Savior gives the account of “The rich man and (the beggar) Lazarus.” The rich man, you may recall, ended up in hell (not because he was rich, but because he was a self centered unbeliever,) and in hell, among other things he became a would-be evangelist. Communing with Abraham and assured that there was no relief and no reprieve for him, he cried, “I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.” Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” “Nay, father Abraham: but if one went to them from the dead, they will repent. And [Abraham] said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they he be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” (Luke 16:19-31)

That this judgment is correct has been proved ever since “One rose from the dead.” Confronted with the testimony of the risen Christ the vast majority of mankind continue to reject the gospel and its awesome testimony. The principle is that the heart of man is conditioned from within, and not from without. That principle applies with reference to our “nugget” for today, which anticipates the condition of the human heart till the very end of the age.

We are often tempted to think that if men will not repent when confronted with the testimony of the unconditional love of God, they may be more responsive if confronted with His judgments. Though now and then there may be exceptions, this passage proves, in general, the opposite.

Here, in context, we are given prophetic insight into the tribulation period. The sixth of the seven angels sounds his trumpet of judgment and a holocaust is unleashed which results in the annihilation of one third of the world’s population at that time. Think of it! One in every three persons on the face of the whole earth will die in a brief space of time. If it happened today, according to “the world population clock,” two billion three hundred million souls would die! Surely that will send the world to its knees!

In fact, the stunning reaction is just the opposite. Just two categories are outlined for us, but they are enough to reveal how the human heart is confirmed in sin.

The first is the persistence of pagan religion. “And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk [v.20]. The living Lord, risen from the dead after having borne our sins in His own body on the cross is consistently rejected in favor of idols associated with the occult and the demonic. We are seeing those trends in our own culture today as Bible based Christianity is rejected by many in favor of religious fantasy, if not overt idolatry.

The second, and parallel category is moral degeneracy. Despite staggering circumstances, there is no moral re-direction in our society as a whole. Murder, sorcery (drug use), fornication (which is the Bible’s general term for sexual corruption,) and thievery will continue to be dominant in the world until the curtain rings down on this dispensation and Christ returns to take center stage.

What does it mean for you and me? For one thing, it means that Christians who entertain the vain hope that spiritual and moral reformation can come to any society through its political process are deluded and either ignorant of the scriptures or not convinced of their veracity.

Second, we should take note that “now is the day of salvation.” If we would see our friends, loved ones, neighbors escape the endless torments of hell, now is now is the time to warn them, and we are the ones who should carry the message to them—from the word of God. While we have the scriptures, and the Holy Spirit present to invest them with power, there is hope for the lost. After the rapture of the church there will be little hope, and those who may be persuaded will have to make their decision under terrible circumstances. Surely, “now is the accepted time.”

For His glory and our good,

"Pastor" Frasier

Revelation 8 - 2010.11.13

FRAGRANCE or FIRE?

“And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense,which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand. And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.” —Rev. 8:3-5

One of the fascinating things in scripture is the revelation of God’s power to use the same instrument to accomplish blessing on the one hand, or judgment on the other. The “two edged sword” of the Spirit, which is the word of God, is a prime example. One edge of the sword is surgical, so to speak, suited to cutting away the cancer of sin and introducing the convicted sinner to the healing power of Christ. But that same word will be the instrument of judgment when men who have ignored or rejected it stand before Christ in the last day.

Much in nature illustrates the same principle. Fire can melt ore and make for the removal of impurities, refining gold and silver, for example, or it can destroy and consume. Water is the same; it is essential to life, but when it comes as a flood, it can destroy life, and everything in its path. Many other examples could be cited, but these serve to illustrate the point. In the text before us there is a striking illustration in the censer in the hand of the angel in v. 3.

A quick review in the Old Testament book of Leviticus will disclose the divinely ordained use of the censer in worship. Aaron was instructed to use it in conjunction with the sin offering on the Day of Atonement: “And he shall take a censer full of burning coals of fire from off the altar before the Lord, and his hands full of sweet incense beaten small, and bring it within the vail: And he shall put the incense upon the fire before the Lord, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is upon the testimony, that he die not [Lev. 16:12-13].” Thus engaged, the censer was an instrument of worship and of life.

In our text for today, it is in this sense that the censer is employed at first, when it ignited the incense and gave a divinely ordained fragrance and significance to the prayers of the saints. It was an agent of worship and blessing in the presence of God. But immediately the same instrument becomes an accessory to the outpouring of God’s wrath upon a prayerless and godless world. Filled with fire from the golden altar which is before the throne of God and cast into the earth, it initiates “voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake,” preface to the awful judgments of the “seven trumpets” of the tribulation period.

A series of convulsions follow, employing the forces of nature on earth and elements in the heavens to bring chaos to the planet and incredible misery to its inhabitants. The Lord Jesus anticipated these things when He said, “Then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved…[Mat. 24:21-22].”

Man ignores the fact, too often also ignored by many a professing Christian, that the God who made the world and its environs has unlimited control over it. A man who identifies himself as a Christian told me today how it took millions of years to carve the canyon at Watkins Glen in Vermont. That kind of thinking comes from faith—faith in the philosophical scientists who, having rejected the idea of an omnipotent God as creator of all, cannot explain earth phenomena without interposing vast reaches of time, vague and unverifiable, to “explain” the undiscoverable. The simple fact is that should He choose to do so, the God of creation could carve Watkins Glen—or the Grand Canyon, for that matter, with His little finger in less time than it has taken to write this sentence. The instruments of His power are “two edged,” and men will experience either their deliverance or their destruction depending on what they have done with the Gospel of His dear Son.

Add your prayers to those of these tribulation saints whose worship will rise as a fragrance to God. Not prayers limited to pleas for physical welfare and temporal concerns, but prayers that incorporate worship and rise for His glory.

For His glory and our good,

"Pastor" Frasier

Apologizes

I want to apologize for not having post the last few newsletters from Pastor Frasier.

I have gotten overly consumed in my own world and have neglected to post what has been sent my way.

My plan is to post the past newsletters and and get caught up todate tonight.

Sorry for letting you and your readers down Pastor.

Godspeed,

Wesley