pray without ceasing (part 2)

"And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come."  (Revelation 4:8)

praying -- like Elijah

"[Elijah] was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months." (James 5:17)

in flaming fire

"The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ"  (2 Thessalonians 1:7)

Noah

If Noah were living in these days, he would probably look a lot like the guy pictured, above.  I'd like you to meet Noah.

insanity -- as judgment

Seeking God for Revival has become the foremost thing in my mind.  In the course of which, I continually give a great deal of thought, not only to the Word of God concerning Revival, but also to the present condition of the world.  The need of Revival seems overwhelming, in the extreme.  Were it not for the fact that God has given us His Word, the situation truly would be hopeless.  It is nothing short of astonishing, to me, that the great majority of professing Christians do not yet demonstrate any real comprehension of the desperate condition of the Church and of the world.  How, then, can they be concerned enough about the need of Revival, to be moved to travail in prayer?

Today, as I have been contemplating the pervasive madness (insanity) throughout society, I happened upon a website which addresses the fact that, in Scripture, insanity is shown to be a judgment of God upon sinners.

the great shaking is near!

It's coming!!  The great shaking is coming!!  

Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand...   Joel 2:1

"Let ALL the inhabitants of the land tremble," saith God!  So, it shall surely happen.  The Bible says that God's voice--

wrath and mercy

The above image is very familiar to me.  I have often seen it, throughout the past couple of years at least, especially, when I have studied the subject of hell.  That one picture seems to capture much--but by no means all--of what I understand about the nature of hell and of its unspeakable torments.  Still, something bothers me even more than to contemplate the realities of eternal damnation:

locusts

a swarm of locusts

So it begins.  'Locusts' of all kinds are arising in swarms to overflow America.  And those swarms are hungry to devour.  As in so many Biblical accounts of God's judgments against rebellious nations, America has at length come under divine sentence of judgment, evidently, involving invading hordes of...

trash

This is what human life means to the vast majority of America's law-makers - and to multitudes of American citizens.  Scores of millions (as many as died in all of WWII) of unborn children - and many who actually were born alive - discarded, like so much unwanted trash.  Yet, many still believe that Americans may nevertheless preserve their own liberty and prosperity, notwithstanding this still-ongoing holocaust of the Innocent.  Such is the madness which possesses the popular mind in America.

God of terror

"Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord..."

2 Corinthians 5:11

I could find no image to represent the main thought of this message; the reality belongs to another dimension, one that far surpasses our ability to comprehend, much less to appreciate.

When was the last time you heard anyone use the above text--from the Bible--as the theme of a sermon?  In all my years as a Christian, I have never heard it used.

The world today is confronted with acts of 'terrorism' which are intended to shock the mind and instill fear.  Yet, as brutal and barbaric as any of those acts may be, they absolutely pale by comparison with the eternal fate of those who stubbornly and foolishly reject the grace of God in Jesus Christ.  The most horrific tortures which man can conceive and inflict upon another person necessarily come to an end in the death of the victim.

But the "terror of the Lord" shall never have an end.  Although apparently few understand why that must be so, yet the reason is rather simple to understand.  Every spirit which God brings into existence--whether it be an angel or a human being--is in some sense indestructible (I think it must have something to do with the nature of spirit, such that persistence of self-consciousness cannot be extinguished).

I cannot in the limited context of a blog adequately explain the difference between soul and spirit.  Suffice it to say, that all self-awareness--which includes all processes of thought, emotion and, importantly, of sensation--consist in the spirit: the essence of which is 'mind'.  In a very real sense, as I believe, much (if not all) of the eternal torments of hell and of the Biblical "lake of fire", occur in the mind of those who are eternally damned.  But that is not at all to say that those sufferings are not therefore 'real'.  For, everyone who dies without Christ is really, and eternally, separated from the beneficent power and influences of God.  Yet, their own self-awareness continues.

In that state of mind, the damned person--though now existing as a disembodied spirit--remains keenly aware of his or her own, continuing existence.  The mind must be furiously active: rapidly moving from thoughts of the impossibility of escape; now to thoughts of horror, being utterly and eternally ALONE in this, what the Scripture calls, "thick darkness", "outer darkness"; now to memories of what once was, and what could have been, if only God's Word had been taken seriously; now to sensations of thirst and hunger, and of longing for companionship--where the only companions may be the spirits of monstrous demons.  But never shall such minds--entirely separated from God and from His Creation--ever know even one moment of peace, of rest, much less of pleasurable existence.  We are not capable of comprehending such a reality.  Madness; insanity; perfect isolation; fear--of a kind unknown to any living person; utter hopelessness; pain--unending, unrelenting pain: all of that is but a foreshadowing of the "terror of the Lord", alluded to in the Bible.

God has prepared a 'place', a realm, specially created to be a prison and a place of punishments--devoid of any mercy, wherein Satan and his angels shall be tormented for ever and ever.  Neither hell nor the lake of fire was created for man.  Nevertheless, because that human persons willfully reject the goodness and mercy of God in Jesus Christ and, so, they align themselves with the spirit of antichrist: therefore, all such human persons too must be confined to that everlasting abode fitted uniquely to imprison God's intransigent enemies, "who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power" (2 Thessalonians 1:9).

People who end up in hell, do so because they don't take God seriously.

And then it's too late.