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12 Minutes God has a prepared people for the coming of the Lord. He describes them as His peculiar people, chosen as His elect and His very elect. Their faith is decisive and determinative and expressed devotionally to God through obedience, suffering, and sacrifice. In this pattern, they are the gathering unto God. They were meant to treat one another with mercy, justice and love in every sphere of life. They are strong in their condemnations of sin. These are the proclamations of the fulfilment of those promises in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our gatherings each Sabbath is an anticipation of the ultimate coming together of God's people around His throne in the new creation. Since we await that final experience of fellowship with God, each believers’ assembly has an 'already and a not yet' dimension. We are already ‘in Christ’ and yet we are not yet 'with Christ'. These assemblies do not involve any essential time schedule. They can and should occur at any time there is interest in studying the truths of God. Isaiah 43:5-11, 21 The scattering was purposed for the carrying forth the messages of God to the world. The gathering is purposed for all who profess Christ. Jesus Christ, at the time of his second presence, will gather the chosen remnant of the people from all parts of the earth. Matthew 24:31 But there is a different time of dividing ahead. It’s called the shaking and the sifting. The experience will be a traumatic one, for we will see some shaken out of this message of truth in whom there was great confidence. There will be others who were thought to be weak in faith who will stand like rocks. There is a sieve of affliction and persecution approaching. Through this experience will be demonstrated which of those who claim to be followers of God would remain. The purpose is to purify a people. God will have a clean and holy people. This world cannot stand much longer. Jesus’ coming is the only hope. Consider the desperate tactics that the enemy is using to cause some to refuse the truth. Fearful days of shaking and sifting are determined for those who claim to be children of God. Remember, God is in control. He may allow the enemy’s participation, but God is now sifting His people. He alone tests their motives, their purposes, their endurance. We may want to restudy God’s word for our time. Could there be an attempt of God to bring us into deeper truth that we refuse to reason with for perfect understanding? The sifting will be much more severe than the shaking. Both are a separating process. Put the rocks and the sand in the bowl. The shaking causes the separation in the bowl of life. But drill minute holes of trouble in the bowl, in the life. As the shaking continues, the sand begins to fall out. Only the rocks remain. Many superficial believers who are lukewarm, feeling much at ease are being shaken out. Watch what causes any kind of separation among the people who once were as one. Most diseases begin within the body. And the nature of the feelings of bitterness is contaminating. The sifting process is the crisis brought on by refusing or neglecting to come to God...to God to reason...if you be willing and obedient. Surface readers are like sifting sand. They will fall out as they refuse to struggle with self. God’s true people resist unto blood. This goes much deeper in experience than just trying. These stand firm for revealed truth. The shaking, sifting, settling, and sealing are all about standing firmly against the opposition to God so that we cannot be moved. These pass through the shaking having resisted unto blood, past the striving in the shaking. These have reasoned with the Lord in the wrestling away of their thinking what is truth, clinging to His every word until the promised blessing has become the realized revelation. In the simplest language, what we must learn to do is to stay in communion with the Lord until the sin of self has been overcome. As God’s people are settled in His truth there is no diversion that the enemy can bring. The enemy’s greatest tactic is to cause your feet to begin to slide from the precept of the word because they were not firmly planted on the truth of God revealed in scripture. And if the enemy can just hold you where you are...!!! If you are claiming to be in Christ, then you are to recognize the privilege and the extreme importance of you revealing every word of truth learned. It will not go well in the judgment for those who are complacent and content, allowing others to stand alone for truth. Many, most, who refuse to call for the truth, will call for the rocks to fall... Please do not think that just because we come together sabbath after sabbath that we are better off than those sitting in the conference churches hearing error. The end-time work means there can be no abandonment of any of the truth of the word of God. That means as watchmen, as servants, as teachers, as hearers, we are to go therefore and teach whomsoever whatsoever is of Jesus Christ. There is almost no subtlety to willingness of too many to follow another other than Christ. Because of the weakness of the people’s sentiments or their lack of personal study and knowledge, they just keep following agents of error. It is our duty to seek out truth and stand for that truth no matter what happens or who diverts from it. It is incredible for anyone to take the attitude that individuals who stay in conference churches will be lost for putting up with error and not standing for truth, while at the same time they are doing the exact same thing in their independent studies. We desperately need to understand that the gathering, shaking, sifting, settling, and sealing process will continue until all of us are in one group or the other. As individuals we must go step by step in the path of truth that leads to the sanctuary watching every way of God in doing His work with our eyes firmly on Jesus. In this last moment of time, many wonderful and terrible things will be happening, and we will need to keep our eyes wide open and be empowered with the eyesalve to discern the events, thereby having wisdom from on high through the unction of the Holy Spirit. How vitally important it is that people individually study to understand the process through which we are going and to see it as a matter of life and death, as it certainly is. Many will come up to one point of faith, draw the line, and go no further. If there is any doubt about the validity of this point, study again how and why Adam made the choice to eat of the forbidden tree, which threw the whole world into chaos. If only he had continued in faith to the doing of every word of God. The sifting process is the powerful spiritual reality that believers will go through. It’s a God ordained thing. It is a good thing. It is initiated by God to allow us to come to maturity. It is the trying of our faith. Notice the end result...a faith more precious than gold. I Peter 1:7 The sifting is biblical. When a believer is in the Word, God begins to do a work in their life. He is preparing them for something. God starts showing up in wonderful ways in your life. You might be brought through a stroke, or a personal tragedy, a firing, the lost of a spouse, or a parent, you might have experienced sexual abuse, or suffered from a brain affliction...doesn’t matter. God showed up! And if you accept His doings you were brought to a higher plain of understanding and relationally with God. And His healing far exceeds any trial endured. He is preparing you to overcome. God may accept us as we are, but He will not leave us as we are. There may be seasons of change that we go through for Christ. Some have already experienced a purifying fire in past seasons. The residue of burnt smoke lingers in their nostrils. Remembered is the trial for the that God brought. Some still sting from the burning process. Why does the enemy so want to sift us? He misthinks that we will fault God. How nearer the mind of Christ, as we have the realization that God is growing us. If we’re to be the last people and to teach the final generation then we must be prepared to be sifted. We will not be exempt from the trials of life. But there is a difference in how we use them to refine us, to change us, to mold us, to chisel us, to transform us, to correct us, to chasten us, to challenge us, to grow us. God is making us more like His Son. God is not so much concerned with our comfort as He is with our being saved. Please understand the purpose of this statement; if you cannot stand for the working of the straight testimony involving the reasoning for truth beyond your little opinions then you will not stand for Christ. Jesus knew that he would soon be gone. He was about to go to the cross. And his goal in the development of his disciples was that they would stand. Hear me please, the disciples would have never been able to withstand all the persecution, the opposition, the trials that they faced including martyrdom had they not learned how to stand. Jesus was about ready to go to the cross. The disciples did not understand why. They would have chosen for Jesus to remain with them and tosetupanearthlykingdom.ButGod’schargesaredifferent. Jesus’mission on earth at that time was to die. And there was no one who felt stronger about that than Peter. Jesus explained this to them...and had to use strong words against Peter. This was a difficult thing for Peter. It was a huge test of his faith! Matthew 16:21-28

7 Minutes Biblical passages all have a similar context...they are truth. And God, by His word and through His people is trying to arouse a deaf world. God has a people who are coming to the end of themselves and back to Christ. And to cause them to sense God’s presence, and also His purposes God reminds us that the earth is His and He will not relinquish control over the events that lead to godliness. God chose a genesis method of separation and association. Time from eternity. Light from darkness. The dry land from the waters. Man from God. Abraham from Lot. Hebrews from Egyptians. Six days for labor from one day of rest. Israel from Judah. His people from the world. Scattering is initiated when man fails to give first thought to God. This is the beginning of depravity. Shame for sin disappears. The sorts of this scattering are rebellion, obstinacy, betrayal, distrust, shamelessness, and greed, comprising an audacious self-centeredness against God and fellow man. These are not the characteristics of a nation that would bring honor to God. Sin is rapidly revealing less of a stigma, and the sense of shame has been slowly replaced by a growing boldness of attitude, a flaunting of sin. Much of that sense of shame has disappeared from the world and in American psyche in particular. This is the kind of conduct the "whore's forehead" pictures. It represents the blatant, audacious sin of the average person who is out in public, openly displaying what she is, promoting herself, and tempting others to engage in sin with her...the Jezebel of today. The whore's forehead represents obdurate practice of sin done overtly with no attempt to camouflage. This relaxed and careless public acceptability of sin did not happen overnight. It gradually became tolerated over decades. Its growth was significantly aided by a so-called Christian church that abandoned its responsibility to "cry aloud and spare not" and show God's people their sins. We must be very prayerful to guard ourselves from succumbing to the temptation of being drawn into the same casual approach. It is our responsibility to overcome sin. This is the condition that leads to God’s rebuke of His people. As part of God's warning to the last day people, He promises to unsteady their ability to understand, reason, and think things through. Confusion of heart for disobeying His voice and failing to observe His commandments and statutes with judgment creates for these a dreadful situation. Deuteronomy 28:29 We must always consider the word of God to enhance our ability to discern rationally and reasonably to come to the real solution of returning to God. For those who ignore the cause and effect relationship God will take away understanding and wisdom. They consider not their disregard relative to their scattering. The great fault that these promote is that it is the enemy of God that causes such scattering. But in reality it shows their discomfort with God’s word. They fail to see that assigning blame to the enemy to provide a measure of comfort for themselves does not leave them victimless. The unstated implication of this notion is that the enemy somehow outsmarted or outmaneuvered God. God promises the scattering because of unbelief. Because of His sovereignty, He is the only One who can bring about what happens to the Babylonish conclave found among the people. On the other hand, the enemy can only do what God allows him to do. God will respond to spiritual neglect among His people. God’s scattering today has been organizational rather than geographical and catastrophic. And we are even more accountable because of our privileged position and also the principle of truth not just made available to us, but given to us. Amos 3:2 Scattering results when God’s people walk contrary to His way. Seldom does God instruct me to write out the scripture that the wise may search them. But review the following verses that are written out here from Deuteronomy 29:22-28... So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the LORD hath laid upon it; And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath: Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger? Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt: For they went and served other gods, and worshipped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given unto them: And the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book: And the LORD rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day. The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law. Consider the people being spoken to. Could this be God’s people whose blood memory is there, and they are now here? Are these words spoken for “generation to come”? Has the restoration of God’s people been completed? The bible understands that it is addressing not only those standing before our day on the east side of the Jordan River, but all the descendants of the children of Israel as well. This prophecy pertains to today's descendants of Israel as noted in Revelation 7:4-9. We must consider and reflect on all things. Contemplate the trials, consider the blessings. And compare the experience. There will be much decadence among the people, but there will be an unprecedented prevalence of faith to appear in God’s stand out people. Jeremiah 31:10 To God, gathering is a purposeful and overt reversal of the current situation. Upon seeing our changing attitude, our repentance, God intervenes by altering His own course, backing out the scattering He imposed earlier. God will go where He needs to gather His people. Deuteronomy 30 Jesus Christ, will not delegate the work of regathering, nor will he gather from a distance. He will be with us always. He will have us go to the nations and gather the elect and the remnant. Christ’s participation is assertive in the gathering process. He sends to us the Holy Spirit to guide us. The scattering actually is the sowing of God. The reaping is His gathering. The evident underlines God’s personal engagement in the gathering underscores the purpose of Christ’s work: for the Son of Man came to seek... The word of God prepares His responsible servants to seek actively for stray sheep, to the point of searching them out. Was the scattering of Israel and Judah beautiful in its time? If we study Lamentations without reasoning with principled consideration of truth concerning God's entire purpose, the situation appears very dreadful. However, reasoning the events, the answer is undoubtedly, yes, it was beautiful and good. Because of the messaging of the blessings and curses, it was suitable for that occasion. What about the scattering of the church? Was it beautiful? The same is true. Because of the messaging to the seven churches our going through it may have been stressful, requiring painful adjustments while enduring to the end, but in God’s expressed time, it will most certainly be beautifully good. Is correction good? Do we really want to continue doing things wrong? If God had not done what He did when and how He did it, how many serious spiritual character and attitude flaws would have gone uncorrected? How disastrous would they have been to the salvation of many? How many people have we fellowshipped with in the past who have seemingly been confounded by revealed truth? The reality may be that they were “tares.” Perhaps they no longer fellowship with God’s people because God delayed their true calling. If not for God’s intervention all would have been lost. It is critical for us to keep in mind always that God knows the end from the beginning. His foreknowledge captures the entire span of events. If we think the scattering has been difficult to accept, we need to be patient because prophecy reveals that things will become much worse as time concludes. Will the descendants of Israel, scattered within the western world, learn that it is not the president, monarch, congress, or parliament of any earthly nation that rules, but that God in heaven reigns over all? We are witness to a continuing erosion of that calling of God that offered salvation to those who would desire to live in the fear of God. A painful reckoning must come. To complicate matters, God has scattered His people all over the western world according to His purposes. One of the results of this is that the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob no longer even know who they really are, and their conduct and attitudes reveal that most do not care. God is seeing His return with weeping and supplication. These are the ones who have survived the sword. Conditions will continue to deteriorate as we approach Christ's return because they must. If God allowed the people to turn away from Him without consequence, their hearts would be fully set in them to do evil. God knows those whose hope is in Jesus and He will cause many to sleep to save them. He loves them too much to allow them to become incorrigible.

10 Minutes Godly sorrow is our conviction that such sorrow of soul is a sign of spiritual health. It is one element in the experience as true believers which we must expect to have. Here is the sadness for today... this felt sense of sin is comparatively rare today. Too many of us no longer grieve over what we are . We no longer weep to think that we are corrupt in heart and blemished in character. Believers speak of human depravity as if it were not a felt infirmity. Sin, if it is confessed at all, is confessed with careless formalism. Sin is more than just a religious term for an evil which believers talk about. Too many think sin not to be a personal experience . Godly sorrow is preparative to repentance and in some sense the cause that will produce repentance. Sorrow according to the will of God is wrought by the Spirit of God. Past sins are not to find pleasure in but are of use to teach us new lessons. Old sins are often a photo-fit picture of our present spiritual deficiencies. Old sins are an index to unobserved infirmities. If we would be familiar with tomorrow's temptations, let us consider well our yesterday’s shortcomings. Sin causes us to lose the joy of our salvation and robs us of peace. We do not feel too saved right then. Anguish of heart, separation from God, loss of confidence. What are we seeking to gratify in remembering past sins? Sensual appetite is that concern of something you thought might be a sin or other violation of the moral doctrine. Suggestion to sin is not an actual sin. Be aware of the devices of the enemy. Actual sin is any willful thought, word, deed, or omission contrary to the law of God. This is where godly sorrow works revenge...the crucial difference is in an action of the will. Suggestions to sin are not actions of the will, but happens without involvement of the will. They are thoughts, emotions, and inclinations that are internal. They come from the world, the flesh, and the enemy, but in particular, our flesh. Entertaining or pursuing such thoughts is against purity...that is sin. In this, God is still faithful and just. He will forgive, He will cleanse...if we confess and repent with godly sorrow. This is why we are admonished to pray without ceasing. Focus on the things of God helps to heal our faculty. Remember, the vice of folly is the thought of foolishness, which is opposed to wisdom, is a sin. Growing in virtue is our learning to govern our emotional life with our spirit and our will as we examine the value of spiritual heartbreak. Being godly sorrow unto repentance requires a deep conscience dive. We should desire that as we repent, the atonement of Jesus Christ becomes fully effective in our lives. Embracing Jesus’ sacrifice is to make a concerted effort to uncover every sin that our prayer for repentance resonants to the core of the soul. This is that way of salvation that brings us inside the life of Christ that we be not separated from God. Godly sorrow is an illustration for the present time, indicating that the gift of God’s forgiveness and the sacrifice of Jesus being offered are able to clear the conscience of the faithful. Godly sorrow for sin and sincere repentance requires a clear conscience that is built upon an honest confession of those things that are plaguing our conscience and a complete surrender to the finished work of Christ on the cross to make us right with Christ and by faith enter into the righteousness of Christ offered to us by God! Living in this dignity of perfection in God’s sight enters us into the abundant life of Christ. It is our time to dive deeper into the most precious and rewarding life of all...the life of Christ...the life wrought in us by godly sorrowness for sin committed and sin justly forgiven by God, thus clearing our conscience. The conflict brought forth by the war for souls centers on godly sorrow as opposed by worldly sorrow. Godly sorrow inspires change and hope through the atonement of Jesus Christ. Worldly sorrow pulls us down, extinguishes hope, and persuades us to give in to further temptation. Godly sorrow leads to conversion and a change of heart. There are many people who long to have a deeper sense of their sinfulness, and then with a certain show of conscientious hesitation, they make an excuse for the exercise of simple faith. That spiritual disease, which keeps sinners from Christ, assumes a different shape at different times. They believed in being self-righteous. In this last day the evil has taken another, and that a most extraordinary shape. Men have aimed at being self-righteous after quite a singular fashion; they think they must feel worse and have a deeper conviction of sin before they may trust in Christ. These do not feel their need of Christ enough; they have no sufficient contrition for their sins and their repentance is not for their rebelliousness toward God. They have lost subordination to God and His Word. In this is found the depth of godly sorrow for the sacrifice of Jesus. There are those who choose to infer truth forming a barrier that keeps a soul from Christ. Doctrinal truth must come against every wall that hinders a soul. When God's word comes home as the sharp sword to many, they attempt to blunt its edge. They don’t want to feel it. If they are sorry because they cannot be sorry enough on account of sin, why they are already sorry. If they grieve because they cannot grieve enough, why they do grieve already. If it is a cause of repentance to them that their heart is very hard and that they cannot repent, why they do repent. All this is saying is that God has given them the way of repentance, but it must be accepted. These will never feel as they ought, until they do not feel what they ought; they will never come to Christ until they do not feel that they can come. They know not that they are to come as they are; come in all their poverty, and stubbornness, and hardness, just as they are now, take Christ to be their all in all. Godly sorrow will remove the weight of original corruption upon their consciences in this last hour. By faith they might find their consciences so purely and sincerely drawn out to God in the repentance they perform. II Corinthians 7:10, 11 These words contain a reason, proving that they had received no damage, but profit by the sorrow that had possessed them, from the nature of it, a "godly" sorrow; a sorrow which had God for its author. Godly sorrow did not arise from the power of free will, nor from the dictates of a natural conscience, nor from a work of the law on our hearts, or from a fear of hell and damnation, but it sprung from the free grace of God. It is a gift of His grace, the work of His Spirit, and the produce of His almighty power. Being such, which by no means, as judgments, or mercies, or the most powerful ministry of the words themselves could effect; it was owing to divine instructions; it was heightened and increased with a discovery of the love of God, and views of pardoning grace and mercy being attended with faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. This godly sorrow has God for its object, as well as its author; it is a sorrow "which is for God", on the account of God, His honor, interest, and glory. It is a sorrow for sin, because it was committed against a God of infinite holiness, justice, and truth, goodness, grace, and mercy; and it is a sorrow "according to God". According to the mind and will of God; it is, as it is rendered "grateful to God". What He took notice of, observed, and approved of; and was also such a sorrow as bore some resemblance to what in God goes by the name of grieving and repenting, in that He had made man without sin, yet because of sin; there being in godly sorrow a displicency with sin, an hatred of it, and a repentance that ever it was committed. Moreover, this sorrow is further described, from its beneficial operation, it "worketh repentance"; it is the beginning of it, a part of it, an essential part of it, without which there is no true repentance. This produces it, issues in it, even in an ingenuous confession of sin, a forsaking of it, and in bringing forth fruits meet for repentance, in the life, and conversation. And this repentance is unto salvation; not the cause or author of it, for that is Christ alone; nor the condition of it, but is itself a blessing of salvation, a part of it, the initial part of it, by which, and faith we enter upon the possession of salvation. This is an evidence of interest in it, and issues in the full enjoyment of it. This godly sorrow and repentance, is such as is not to be repented of; or that is stable and immovable, which "never returns", but remains the same not repented of; for to either of them may it be applied. Salvation is not to be repented of; it is not repented of by God, neither of the thing itself, nor of the way and manner in which it is effected, nor of the persons saved by it, and God’s choice of whom He chooses to it. Neither is it repented of by us, who believe in Christ to the saving of our souls. Nor is true repentance, which is connected with it, to be repented of; God does not repent of giving it, for "His gifts and calling are without repentance". Neither does the repenting sinner repent of it; nor have we any occasion to, since it is unto life, even "unto eternal life", as it is called "repentance unto life". This sorrow is likewise illustrated by its contrary, the sorrow of the world which worketh death; a worldly sorrow is such, as is common to men of the world. It springs from worldly selfish principles, and proceeds on worldly views; it is often nothing more than a concern for the loss of worldly things, as riches, honors or for a disappointment in the gratification of worldly lusts and pleasures: and this worketh death; temporal and eternal death. It may bring diseases and disorders on the body, which issue in death; and sometimes puts men upon destroying themselves. It works in the minds of men a fearful apprehension of eternal death, and, if grace prevent not, issues in it. Godly sorrow is the body and blood of Christ. Sorrow readies the ground. Godly sorrow is a great privilege being with God’s people at the end. This is how God is deserving of all our love. His grace to sin no more and godly sorrow working repentance to avoid the every near occasion of sin that we might be saved. God’s godly sorrow is the kind of good grief that will lead us to repent more quickly and yet not get weighed down with vain regrets. It is a time when God allows us to focus on our souls. We groan for restoration that is at the core of our struggle. Because of God’s promises we find godly sorrow to be God’s caring, His convincing what can never be lost if we stay in Christ Jesus...the deepest expression of His unshakable love. As we dive deep into the valley of our conscience, we find God’s presence and protection as we negotiate the treacherous grief that sin causes. There is no explanation to be given for our sin. Our dependence is upon the forgiveness and cleansing of God. Our hope in this godly sorrow is that it has a good effect and that it brings us to the feet of the Savior.

10 Minutes There is a fierce war happening for our souls. God wins the war, but the battles are ours. Without the whole of the holiness of truth and the vitalness of faith in God, many will be vanquished by deceit. It is when we allow the enemy any advantage through spiritual immaturity or ignorance. There are many who know not how to, or prefer not to reason to check their beliefs prayerfully against the Word of God for fear of being found wrong. It’s a natural heart condition. What the enemy wants more is for you to deny truth, for that is lacking faith and whatsoever is not of faith is sin. Sin is so frightful, so destructive to the soul, that no human thought or act can in any degree diminish its lethal effects. Some regret the consequences of not reasoning to discover truth but regret is futile to pleasing God. Godly sorrow is of so much more sufficient strength to cancel out the offense and to commit to God. Godly sorrow gives us an adequate view of sin that our unceasing gratitude for the grace of God is discovered in the clearing of ourselves. This grace by faith alone enhances the value of godly sorrow by positioning it as a sign of election to heaven. And so, God gives His people repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. It is both a command and a gift. Both lead to life. In one sense, being granted repentance is God’s offer. While in another sense being granted repentance is our decision. But to be clear, God grants this opportunity to everyone. God is in this last day breaking into new groups of people. This being done gives us the opportunity to suffer for the cause of Christ. Godly sorrow for sin, any sin, is a hatred of sin, all sin, and a true grief of the soul for having offended God, with a firm...purpose of sinning no more. Repentance, without excuse, without evasion...the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There's no regret for that kind of sorrow. Sorrow is to express an unbearable sadness for having grieved God who is very close to us in our brokenheartedness. As God searches the heart of the truly repentant, He sees one with a contrite spirit. He chooses him or her as His friend. He desires to remain with that person because the Lord takes pleasure in His people. God’s purpose in His people makes us more than ordinary. In challenging moments, we are to consider circumstances. Yet, what is the point of repenting of a sin while remembering the pleasure that was derived rather than the pain caused, the cost that God paid. Is true repentance never doing those things again? Is this some form of nostalgia of a thing enjoyed? Why can’t we forget our sins? God did not promise that we would not remember our sins. Remembering will help us avoid making the same mistakes again. But if we stay true and faithful, the memory of our sins will be softened over time. This will be part of the needed healing and sanctification process. We are to have a different inner attitude toward sins we’ve committed. This is called repentance. To repent means to view something done against the word of God as sinful. We cannot always make amends with those we’ve brought into sin, however we can determine to live according to God’s will. Faith in the word of God to forgive and to cleanse must be exercised. Freedom from sin does not always mean freedom from guilty feelings. Even when our sins are forgiven, we still remember them. Have the courage to be completely open and honest before the Lord. We are to plead with God to search us. He knows our hearts, our thoughts. He can lead us, if we be willing, in the way everlasting. We are to treat these unwanted memories as accusations. And we are to know that there is One who is pleading for us with his Father. The godly sorrow for the sin done and forgiven is part of that suffering that causes us to cease to sin altogether. Bringing us to a heartfelt conviction of sin, a contrition over the offense to God, a turning away from the sin. Repentance must be rooted in a high importance on God, not a high assessment on oneself. Only then can turning away from sin towards holiness truly be called repentance. When the former pleasures of sin enters the thought we must pray hardily to elevate our souls through divine discipline to God’s glory. Fight mightily for the restoration of one’s experiential communion with God. Having godly sorrow warrants close examination. It is the complete abandonment of evil and the turning to God. It is the heart-rending recognition of embracing God and all that He desires. Godly sorrow recognizes rationalization, the selfish attempt to justify one’s moral laxity. Knowing that even the thought of irrationality is sin and ultimately against God. Godly sorrow is our being so broken as to how we treated God with such disregard that we become blinded to all other aspects or objects of our behavior. If we are not genuinely offended at ourselves then there is no repentance. When God counsels us to have the mind of Christ we are not to enter into a spirit of self-righteousness. That does not give us any moral or spiritual superiority above others. It is that we might daily strive after complete and sinless obedience to God out of His good-pleasure, covenant mercy, and inexplicable grace. We are to rise to a higher measure of faith and perfection and that, only by the fruits of God's common goodness towards us. We are not yet as God would have us be. Old sins remembered but not cherished, are wholesome to the soul to help believers to remember dark facts about themselves as the path to mortifying self is kept fresh before us. Our love to God would be purer because our gratitude would be warmer. Our adoring praise for His electing love would be more full and ardent than it is. We should cause injury to others and to Christ less often than we do. Our heads would hang lower with zealous repentance and our talk would be more exclusively of a cross and of a loving caring Savior. The hate associated with the thoughts of former sin should be for the sin, not for the remembering. We are but brands plucked from the burning. Remember, the God who promises to pardon, promises also to chasten His children. And revisiting with pleasurable thoughts our sins of the past is as being beat with the rod. Not crying out as though in physical pain only, but also the afflicting of our soul as we distress our relationship with God. O, what the meeting of our trials are to accomplish in our welcoming God’s chastening. It is a part of the respect which we owe to God's holiness and love. God's chastisement, after all, is an expression of His anger. It is the anger of a Father, certainly, and not of a Judge. But it is anger nonetheless. Indulgent thoughts of past sins repented of, must be prayed away with profound regret, with the awareness that our present self is to be suspiciously watchful over our own heart, always hungry for more holiness. It is a sign of great ignorance when a believer is at ease with his present state or at too great peace with himself. These thoughts permit us to buffet the heart and the mind and bring it into subjection. Though forgiven, there is still this indwelling sin not yet cleansed from the sanctuary whereby we groan within ourselves. Until our change there is to be a sad recollection of the sins we had committed against Christ before his return. We will not only have this godly sorrow, we will have a gospel sorrow for the sins we have committed in the course of life. Not only for sins done after conversion, but also for the old sins purged of our unregenerate days. Being in godly sorrow, we have not that haunting fear of divine vengeance.

6 Minutes God is not playing with us today. The Potter is not experimenting with His clay. We are His real commendation, and we are a good tribute for His Son, Jesus Christ, in that God is for us as we are His truth declaring that he was sent of God. This is evidenced in our hearts that all may read. There is special revelation, revelation God gives to selected messengers, charging them to bring the message to others. The message may be presented orally or may be consigned to writing, as when John wrote authoritative letters to the messengers of the churches. God reveals Himself in the events of nature and history. We learn of Him from the changing seasons, from the power of nature, from the sun, moon, and stars. In one sense, all of God’s revelation is word-revelation, because it proceeds from God’s own speech, the bible. He enters our experience and speaks to us in human words. But it is in the Person of Jesus Christ where deepest divine revelation is made. He is God’s presence to us. And it is in him that we sculpt the word that others may see him and that their faith response is filled to the capacity to love the truth. II Corinthians 3:2-4 Our hearts are like the ark of the covenant, containing the tables of the law and the gospel, written with the finger, that is, by the Spirit, of the living God. He has purpose in how He is sculpting us, and that should comfort us. He has a plan, and He knows what He is doing. When God puts us on the wheel of circumstance, He means to accomplish something. He has a purpose. Our sculpting the word brings scripture to life. We are to create a visual message not as a graven image, but as a living faith to shape a godly character in the people of God. Because we strive to endure, because we hold fast, because we live out that godly faith, God makes us the ultimate fulfillment of His promises. Those before us had the fulness of faith in that which we will do and be in the power that God bestows. But their faith was the shadow of what is to be. The final remnant of God will have the faith of Jesus and we will come to the fulness of the revelation that results from the atonement. This is the atonement that ends the sacrificial pattern. This is our true joining in this life, with the life of Christ. The worth of Jesus’ work will accompany our conscious at-one-ment with God, our inseparability from God. This is our overcoming that Jesus spoke of. It is our overcoming the belief of separation from God, yet being distinct and individual. We must overcome our “dusty”beginning. Remember the man who washed the clay and spittle off his eyes...remember the man whom God formed of the dust...remember the one born of water and the spirit. This is our overcoming all heredity which separated us from God. Baptism, or washing off the mud, and being born again is the revelation of our atonement. Through spiritual baptism, and regeneration, we put off material beliefs and false individuality. We can be at-one-mind with God without being the same thing as God. Here we find perfect peace. Here is what our life explains; that suffering is an error of sinful sense and truth destroys sin, and that eventually both sin and suffering will fall at the feet of everlasting love. And no power can withstand divine love. Nothing can separate us. Romans 8:38, 39 Here, we denote a full, and strong, and affectionate persuasion, arising from the experience of the strength and sweetness of the divine love. And here we enumerate all those things which might be supposed likely to separate between God, Christ and us, and truth concludes that it could not be done. Not the terror of death or the hope of life. The good angels will not, and the bad angels cannot. The principalities are engaged friends, the powers are restrained enemies. The troubles that are now, nor the fear of troubles that we know are coming. Time shall not separate us, eternity shall not. Things present separate us from things to come, and things to come separate and cut us off from things present; but neither of these will cause us to withdraw from the love of Christ, whose preference for us is interwoven with both present things and things to come. No amount of prosperity, no depth of adversity and disgrace; nothing from heaven above; nothing on earth below. Not anything that can be named or thought of. Nothing but sin. We must overcome every heretical trait. God creating us in His image, His likeness did not make us “like” God. It gave us the connection to love that we be God- ing, the expression of love. We were/are to be practicing being more and more love-ing, and love-ing more and more purely. Being love-ing is doing God’s will, and we cannot help but to do love’s will because it is the only will. It is by the atonement, entered in by the covenant, that we are recipients of the fruit of the blood of Christ that deepens and increases our union. It is Christ, who is our awareness of our atonement with God, that will sustain us in times of trial, temptation, and persecution; to show us what faith has done in days that are past, and what it will do still in similar circumstances...and the sculpted Word made flesh, dwelling in us, full of grace and truth...this is that some better thing provided for us.

7 Minutes When we study the word of God it should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler than what is the truth. We should break things down in order to explain them, and gain insight and knowledge; yet never to the extent that truth is lost for the sake of simplicity. The validity of the thing is never to be compromised. If we are to sculpt the truth of the word, so as to build the house of God upon sound pillars, we must not attempt to break down the complexity of any subject where we lose clarity and meaning, and eventually lose the ability to maintain atrue perspectiveconcerning the subject. Spiritually, we must never sabotage intelligence where it becomes easier to follow the simplicity of not thinking through intricate issues, or to appeal merely to emotionalism; as compared to the willingness to diligently do the hard work of digging deep into God’s word; and therefore grow in faith, as His word instructs. We must be firmly decisioned to study where we actually learn something new, something that gives us greater insight into God, God’s word, and God’s purpose and intent; and in the process becomes a tool for building faith in accordance with hearing the word. “New” does not mean something tantalizing. I’m talking about “new” because the teacher that is willing to dig deep and uncover those faith building insights which are mandated by hard work, and are yet new because we are so superficial in our current culture, will seek to involve the minds that are acquainted with instruction, bringing all into touch with the environment of reasoning unto reality. This is why sculpting the word allows us to feel the power of that reality. It is the superficiality wherein the same old things are said time after time, or people simply regurgitate what the bible says without actually digging deep and exposing the nuggets the Holy Spirit would bid us to uncover and therefore grow in faith. When I say grow in faith, please understand that I am saying that we are to observe prophecies fulfilled which create credibility for the truths spoken, finding knowledge which is beyond comprehension, and gaining wisdom which exceeds human capabilities . Something that builds faith based upon what is written in God’s word. Unquestionable faith is found in God’s word because of the consistency of witnessing phenomenon after phenomenon exhibited in the bible, with the end result being that truly this book could not have been authored by man, but must have been offered by He who can see the ending from the beginning – God Himself, wherein this book deserves our greatest attention as God’s revelation to man. Biblical faith is to be primarily based upon an interaction with God’s word. Faith was created and given wherein as a person study’s the bible, the Holy Spirit opens their spiritual eyes to perceive that which is laid out to reveal there is deep wisdom that is written between its pages. There are internal evidences found in the bible that when crossed- referenced within themselves open up such high paths to greater understanding as to portray God’s orchestration of His creation. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit we cannot merely isolate one passage in presenting God’s revelation to man, it is a teacher’s responsibility to teach and present all of God’s revelation as found in the bible. For in depth study, we must interweave supporting truths wherein the logical flow and dissemination of God’s writings are seen. Hearers suffer great loss when their confidence is shackled by unfortunate and negative interference when ignorance or defiance is introduced to end discussion. It is unfortunate that many people build their faith mainly upon their own experience, rather than preeminently upon God’s word. And yes, there is a place wherein we find ourselves in a situation which aligns itself with God’s word specifically, and we exercise faith in God and our faith grows in the process. This is not what the scripture says nor is it meant to be the main place of gaining faith. Faith is to be gained from the hearing of God’s word. For the chosen of God, studying the word is mandatory. These are participants; hearers and doers that delve into doctrine and those deeper things of God’s word which lead to maturity, understanding, and wisdom. God does not test our love to see if we “feel good”. It did not feel good for God to give up His Son to die for us, nor did it feel good for Christ to give his life on the cross. Furthermore, it will not feel good for us to see others reject the “so love” of God. Have you ever sided with error because you “like a lot”? Please allow me to share this insight; the definition of “like” is “to find pleasant or attractive, to enjoy.” Love means “other centered”, focused on the other person. “Like” is “me centered”, focused on the “me” in self. Love is a decision to always do the right thing...obeying the commands of God, forgiving those who wrong you, sharing with the unfortunate, loving your enemy, converting a sinner. With His finger God wrote the commandments. God writes those same words upon our heart, our mind. He sculpts them as on both sides; our inside that we may know them, and our outside that we may show them. God tests us with suffering to see if we will stay faithful to Him. And God’s motive behind His testing is most assuredly to save us. And that is the power of the word. Whenever God tells us to do anything, we immediately know one thing: we can!!! Therefore, we do, especially since we know it is in our own best interest to be obedient to our heavenly Father. The invitation to come to God our Father to reason in His love is a trial and a test in demonstration. Jacob saw a ladder reaching to heaven with angels ascending and descending on it. You and I are in the Rock-climbing school. And the Rock is Christ. Sometimes we find ourselves hanging on the face of a cliff as sheer as any logic we had ever heard of. We must look to the Word to resolve some apparent biblical contradiction. We must sculpt the word to attain adequate instruction to meet our granite fate. We are to climb the path of truth. By faith we eventually stand on top of the cliff, and guess what? Instead of lamenting how hard it had been to get there, we rejoiced in our accomplishment, looking over at the even higher Rock and saying, “we can climb to that one.” What is the principle? Our trials are tests, and our tests are trials. More precious than gold. The word tests us to see if we are looking to Christ, that beyond all doubt we are his chosen faithful and he is the genuineness of our faith. Sculpting the word of God is literally and spiritually cutting into the power of scripture to discern unexpected illuminations communicated by God to those who are charged to herald the content of His message to an entire people. Sculpting the word reveals something of the content that ordinary discourse cannot claim. If we truly cut into the power of scripture, we understand what Daniel meant by “the wise shall understand”. There are those who actually acquire knowledge through the revelation of how God acts in history to save humanity, how He reveals Himself and what He is doing. Sculpting the word uncovers the unique divine revelation in Christ. It is God making Himself known to specific people through events and inspired words spoken. Sculpting the word underscores the fact that the biblical God is not only personal, but a society of Persons, existing eternally in mutual love and deference to our being brought to perfection. Study the entire 17th chapter of John. See if what is revealed to you is not a sculpting of intercession, of defining eternal life, of restoration of the Son of God, of special prayer for a special people and for their keeping, of divine restraint to keep these from evil, and for the Oneness we are in Christ declaring his Father’s name in the power of love. We are talking about the Word. The Word is the power of God to speak to us. That power to speak is who He is: His Word is eternally with Him, and His Word is His very nature. It is Christ. When we sculpt the Word we see God. Moreover, God reveals Himself to Himself, and His revelation extends into His own being. We marvel at the distinctiveness of how God loves in His all powerful way. The Son of Man, who is God Himself, learned the one thing that his Father, the omniscient God could not know...Son, though he is God, learned obedience from what he suffered. It comes also to the world he has created, and especially to the intelligent creatures of that world: angels, the unfallen, and human beings. Because self-revelation is his nature, he wants all his creatures to know him. The creatures of the world cannot know God exhaustively. One cannot know God exhaustively unless one is God. But creatures receive great benefits from knowing God; indeed, we cannot live without knowing him, for he is the author of life. This is true both of our natural lives and our spiritual lives. It is this wonder of the Persons of God that we sufferingly sorrow for those who reject His revelation, by their unrighteous suppression of the truth. Their ignorance of God is something they have done to themselves. Even God sculpts... Jeremiah 23:29 Hebrews 4:12

7 Minutes The divine sculpting of the sapphire stone tables, in form and content, serve as the example for the firmness of the truth that we receive in the word of God. In form, the word is written and spoken. In content, the word is revelation, inspiration, and providence and it addresses us personally. Like the appearance to the elders seeing God, we too see God in the Word in the Person of the Son. The sapphire foundation and the sapphire throne are one in the same. And this stone was cut out of the throne by God as will be the stone that becomes the great mountain. The stones themselves are the work of God. Both represent the narrative and the foundational importance of God’s law. Exodus 24:10, 11, 12 Ezekiel 1:26 Exodus 32:15, 16 Daniel 2:34, 35, 44, 45 What is meant by sculpting the word of God? We understand that to sculpt is to produce a three-dimensional representation. The first dimension is the gospel in “word” which embraces all truth. The second, the gospel in “deed” validates how one lives, how one loves, and how one behaves. It is the call to join Christ in purpose. Lastly, the gospel in “power” is the presence of the Holy Spirit. This is how the word sculpted designs our character. When we are truly converted, the truths in the word of God will convict us deeply. We will want to understand what it means to be truthful in Christ. We read, study, and discuss the bible and we are often moved by the message. But, by it, do we do the business of God? The most freeing thing we could possibly experience is being willing to put it all on the line for the cause of Christ, whether he asks us to or not. We must be freed from the divided heart. Every word of God is a test and we know the sorrow of the times we are in. When we are moved by the word of God, yet forsake to carry out its principle, we fail the test. Oh, how my heart hurts so much to have to continually write about our difficulties. God gives us the truth of the word in black and white, and then He asks us to come unto Him to reason in His word that we may see the colors in the mirror of truth. God routinely tests His people. Not so that He will learn what we will actually do, because God already knows all things that we have done, are doing, and will do. Instead, it is for the strengthening and purification of the faith of God’s people so we might learn to depend on Him more. We can grow through tests. Furthermore, when God reasons with us, He speaks to us in discovery terms so that we might hear and know that He chooses “now to use us” according to His purpose. The word of God is well supplied with testing verses related to God’s expressions where He speaks in human terms, in human ways, as He reveals Himself to and through His people. The problem we have is that we have “little understanding”. God tests us to find out if we love Him with all our heart. But if God knows all things in the present, then doesn’t He know if we love Him or not? Of course He does. So, this is a problem of our understanding. God is testing us so that the eyes of our heart may be enlightened. This, that our inner moral and spiritual life develop a spiritual character. The heart is the real us. This inner person, who is the real us, sees and knows things that are not identical with what the eyes of the body can see. The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. There is a spiritual seeing, through and beyond natural seeing. There is a spiritual hearing, through and beyond natural hearing. There is spiritual discerning, through and beyond natural reasoning. This is how sculpting the word, shaping and forming it, helps to conceive of the innate knowledge of God and His will as a kind of mold in the human heart. This mold, or sculpted purpose is designed by God in every human heart with a shape, or a form, that corresponds to the glory of God. In other words, if the glory of God were seen with the eyes of the heart, it would fit the mold so perfectly that we would know the glory is real. We would know we were made for this. God, testing us to prove the genuineness of our faith means that the hollowed-out shapes of the mold, which are perfectly shaped for the all-satisfying glory of God, may be packed hard with the love of the truth of His word. If we are to grow in faith, in truth, in wisdom, then we must learn to step up and seek God’s perspective. The word of God does not tell us to look at others. We are to test God’s word while remembering that we belong to God, and we are in God’s hands. The test is not to see if God is right or wrong...God is always right. The test is to see if our love for Him is so accomplished that we can be entrusted to speak His truth. The concept of truth has clearly fallen on hard times, and the consequences of rejecting it are ravaging human society but especially those who are professing to be a people who claim to want to know truth. There are some who receive the word of God as the truth constructed by the Holy Spirit for the purpose of convicting and convincing the faithful in the ways of God. These use collective judgment, reasoning with every line of precept. Then there are some who cynically consider truth to be preference and opinion. Whenever someone tries to dissociate truth from the knowledge of God, they are attempting to escape righteousness. They deny and suppress the essential connection between God and truth. If they had any degree of sobriety, they would realize that truth and knowledge find their coherent significance in the same fixed source, namely, God. When God is the starting point of reasoning and we respond to what is revealed, we will find certainty in the embodied narrative of the word. Authentic godliness invokes God as a witness that He might corroborate the great message of salvation. What if a truth is presented to you that destroys what you thought was true? Would you shield yourself from correction by hardening your heart or condemning another? The reality of truth is that no assumptions can validate it. We need to examine the whole truth. Consider the multifaceted perspectives offered. Regard that there may be a wider picture of the whole truth that you did not see, some of what you’ve come to accept as truth may need to be repositioned. You must determine to accept nothing but the truth. You may have layered your truth with opinions, perceptions, reactions, and conclusions that are not, in fact, consistent with the whole truth. Truth may be packaged in more than one revelation. The master learner begins at a single point and proceeds to produce an acceptance of the truth, revelation by revelation, understanding by understanding. Some truths are deeper and more impacting than others. Trust the truth and knowledge will come to you. Proverbs 18:13 We come together to reason to prepare for what God will reveal to us. There must be a longing in our wanting to be in the presence of God. When we long for God, we go out of our way to worship, to study. When we long for God, we go out of our way to pray, to think about God, to be in conversation with God. And none of these things feel like tasks on a list because they spring out of our love for God, our desire to be in the presence of God. When was the last time you went out of your way to study with God? It is not the schedule that is being tested, it is the heart. Do you ever wonder, if in fact, you do long to be in the presence of God? I do hope that we know that love needs to be cultivated. In knowing that, we might want to also cultivate a longing to be in the presence of God. God wants to draw us closer, deeper into His love and grace.

7 Minutes The wonderful thing about the final cause is that the end goal of a thing actually causes its creation. God created us for His pleasure and to get us there we must be like His Son. Jesus is, by nature, the image of God. Yet being fully human for our sake, and fully divine for his sake. We are, by nature, created in that image, and by grace, being transformed into that same image, being human, yet divinized. And what we will become is intrinsic to who we are now. We are naturally enbued with the spirituality of the Godhead. Our “final cause” is calling us into this transformation, from seed to tree, because that is our end beginning. This cause is intrinsic to our humanity because God has already united Godself to humanity in Jesus Christ. And grace is the liberation given us to affect the final cause. This is the purpose of the mind of Christ. We are to reason with the counsel in determination of the why of the final cause. We are the eternal intent of God. Reason this...God became human so that we should become like Him. And the God who knew before counsel, in counsel, vowed to be human and orchestrated the cause to become human. This body being prepared him, united us in humanity, that in the final cause we can be divinely perfected into the likeness of God . Wait! What? We are being readied for the final cause of humanity that is belonging essentially to us because of what Jesus did and is? Then it follows that something divine already appears in us now in seed form. That seed is our spiritual desire for the transcendent good even when our natural desires are obviously disordered. We cannot have a natural desire for transcendence unless that desire is internal to who we are. So, God, by the Holy Spirit rebirths us as spiritual beings whose first cause now is our end. This is our wonderment in God as if we’re not in awe of this thing caused by “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”. The key here is the divine humanity of Jesus Christ, the God-man, who becomes that which, as God, he always is in eternity and in time. Because God’s Presence is always present, whether in eternity or in time. Why? Because eternity is not “before” anything. Eternity is not on some “before and then later” everlasting timeline. Eternity is timeless and every point in time is immediately present to the eternal now. So we must always start with the One Lord Jesus Christ, human and divine, crucified and risen, and then we say, “this One, the Cruciformed Lamb, is the eternal Word and Son of God, Creator of all things, whose image was the pattern for humanity, and in whose image, humanity is becoming. Because it is Jesus who says “before Abraham was, I am, we reason that He is the divinely human God who descends from above time, from eternity, from outside of time. And eternity is forever indivisibly and directly united with time through the Cross. On this truth we reason “the mystery of Christ” that is the final cause as that done for the sake of which a thing is done. The seed’s final cause is the seed produced by the flowering plant. In the wisdom of God His people do nothing without a reason for doing it, so every single stroke or encounter has a final cause. Following the work of God, and pursuing the ends of the covenant in a spiritual holy way, setting the Lord always before our eyes, and acknowledging him in all our paths, keeping the way straiter on those whom God hath sealed. It is the uncaused cause that purposed the first cause to bring movement in the universe to the final cause. Everything is maintained by Him, and everything is routed by His power. Therefore, by their actions and reactions, the potencies which come from Him dissolve the dark creation and create the light manifestations of the new. The Lord is the cause and also the effect. Thereby, if we be Christ’s, we find contentment not in ourselves, but in the higher spiritual beings that we will manifest. It is because God knows all things, the end from the beginning, that our faith having a backward-looking analysis by which we see the offering of Jesus in the determinate counsel, from the observation of a purpose already achieved, the steps that were necessary to its achievement are reasoned and discovered to give finality to the cause. And likewise, in our cause we must be absolutely deterministic to a fixed observant obedience to every principle of God. This is not a static conformity. It is dynamic due to the increasing causes that a hierarchy of a more perfect likeness of the one divine providence is the conception of God as the destination of the entire universe. The final cause sees the whole universe as a plurality of beings, each endowed with the principle of appropriate charge; higher beings endowed with wisdom and free will under the governance of God, which is shared in measure with all created holies, every one of these beings tends toward its own aim, which is to reflect specific aspects of God's perfection and to contribute to the universal order of the creation that is also His reflection. And we will forever be of the cause because we can never reach the fulness of the infinite God. But none will no longer be subject to chance, corruption, conflict, or sin. We will be the ordained of God. And we know this truth – eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart mind any conjecture of the mysterious divine revelations to be made known in the divine freedoms of determinant love. The principle of the final cause is but the avowed purpose of the pattern of Christ. God is both the extrinsic and intrinsic final cause of all things. All things find their regard in God. This regard serves the unfallen, men and angels as a mirror in which they contemplate certain reflections of God that are found in the spiritual universe. Also, through sharing in God's governance over the universe, the unfallen, men and angels participate in God's creative action. Yet man is the dynamic image of God, perfectly realized in Jesus Christ, in whom the whole visible cosmos is redeemed and consummated. The motive of the incarnation was primarily for the sake of redeeming man from sin and perfecting of the creation of God...the final cause. The events of salvation history all take on their meaning in terms of the ultimate goal, the kingdom of God in which the whole cosmos is subject to Christ and He to God. The thing caused must have a relationship to the cause in order to exist. Christ is our cause. He teaches us that forgiveness takes sacrifice even on our part toward others. The final cause will see the triumph over suffering. Life fully coursed in the obedience of Christ. The complete work of his atonement. God will commit His name to us. We must maintain the absoluteness of the truth; we will accept no compromise. God’s vindication is more important than our face. We will know how to let God. To come to the final cause, we must have a mind fixed on Christ, not our trials or difficulties, is essential for endurance. We must remember the resurrection for it reminds us that Jesus Christ is God. He is the cause to life for all the righteous dead. He is the cause to the eternal change to all those who continue to live. The final cause is holy. The purpose and end for God’s faithful people is the final cause of holiness which is fully manifested in salvation. Explained in the final cause is our end to possess God in full in the beatific vision, to have our powers fully realized, fully perfected, and to find them at rest, in perfect happiness for all eternity. Revelation reaches reality with God’s great deeds in salvational history. The bible is seen as the record of these deeds. We are in the final cause of faith. It has been the foundation and the root of our relationship to Jesus. Faith’s presence is the necessary condition for the sequences we are to follow to affect perfection in God’s sight. By it we receive the grace to overcome. Faith is the cause that changes our status. Being the stone cutout from the mountain by the sculptor, we are now hewed into the stature of Christ. He is the one who makes it happen. The final cause is the purpose for which the thing is made, which in this case is to beautify the purposed beginning in the Garden. In God we see the final cause; we see our Creator, we see our redeemer, we see our rest. The final cause is the self-unveiling, imparted to man, of the God who by nature cannot be unveiled to man. We come to a fulfillment of the inner appeal of the human spirit toward fuller consciousness having new light about the knowledge of God’s theistic properties of omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and His infinite goodness. A final cause happens where faith and grace constitute the transformative power of the authority of God to be a testimonial justification aligning our wills and character with God’s character and purposes. Divine love can appear in such an overwhelming way that its glorious majesty throws one to the ground; it shines out as the last word and the final cause leaving one no choice but to respond in the mode of pure, blind obedience. The final cause is what Christ finished. We haven’t yet, but with him we will. Be at peace...acquaint now thyself with Him...AMEN.

6 Minutes What is the present state of things now in the world, with regard to the people of Christ, and the success of his purchase? God in his providence now seems to be acting over again the same part which he did a little before Christ came. When Christ came into the world, learning greatly prevailed, and yet wickedness never prevailed more than then. God was pleased to suffer human learning to come to such a height before he sent forth the gospel into the world, that the world might see the insufficiency of all their own wisdom for the obtaining the knowledge of God, without the gospel of Christ, and the teaching of his Spirit. And when the gospel came to prevail first without the help of man’s wisdom, then God was pleased to make use of learning as a handmaid. So now, learning is at a great height in the world, far beyond what it was in the age when Christ appeared; and now the world, by their learning and wisdom, do not know God and they seem to wander in darkness, are miserably deluded, stumble and fall in matters of religion, as in midnight darkness. Trusting to their learning, they grope in the daytime as in the night. Learned men are exceedingly divided in their opinions concerning the matters of religion, running into all manner of corrupt opinions, pernicious and foolish errors. Though there are many whom a principle of the fear and love of God does move, yet there are not a few, whom after-discoveries have made manifest, who are acted to that thing by carnal wisdom and policy, for attaining their own base and corrupt ends, such as riches, places of preferment, and livelihood, and ease; and hence mainly hath issued that sin which follows a curse instead of a blessing. They refuse to submit their reason to divine revelation, to believe any thing that is above their comprehension; and so being wise in their own eyes, they become fools, and even vain in their imaginations; they turn the truth of God into a lie, and their foolish hearts are darkened. But yet when God has sufficiently shown men the insufficiency of human wisdom and learning for the purposes of religion, and when the appointed time comes for that glorious outpouring of the Spirit of God, when he will himself by his own immediate influence enlighten men’s minds, then may we hope that God will make use of the increase of learning as a means of the glorious advancement of the kingdom of his Son. Then shall human learning be subservient to the understanding of the Scriptures, and to a clear explanation and a glorious defense of the doctrines of faith. And there is no doubt, that God in his providence has of late given the world such a great increase of learning, to prepare for what he designs to accomplish for his people in the approaching days. None will have grounds to plead ignorance of God’s will and intentions. God's purpose, in this final cause, is not only aimed to improve and make holy, but to destroy and eternally judge. God's purposes are the final causes of all that He creates. And all of God’s causes are crucial. God’s causes may be events, they may be substances, but they all have effect. When we consider the causes of God we must always keep in connection with the principles of His doctrine. God’s people use reason and thought as an explanation to a cause. No one answer may suffice to illuminate the considerations. The attention, the respect, the understanding is not to be notioned as suggestions but rather as counsel. God has a cause out of which a thing comes-to-be and which persists – the sanctuary, the cross. God has a cause that is a patterned essence – His love, His mercy. God has a cause as the primary starting point from which change or rest originates – the teaching of His word, the counsel of a friend. God has a cause in the sense of an end – life lived. The final cause is to explain the why of what is. Example: why do we breathe...to live? Remember, no one answer. Why do we eat...to live? Why is there a tree...to provide wood, to provide food? Why do we obey...to be saved or because we love? Can a cause be external as well as internal? The final cause lies in “intention”. The final cause is the purpose that God has in mind. We breathe to give glory to God. We eat in health to give glory to God. There is a tree created to show the glory of God. We obey, we love, to be patterns of God’s Son. There is no chance, no randomness to God’s ways. Why is this our cause for God? Because God is Divine and God does not need anything and nothing is necessary to Him. God creates but does not need creation and God is self- sufficient without it. This is the necessary truth and possibilities of why His love is so awesomely eternal...we are His choice as He grasps His own divine Being. God knows Himself. God knows His own nature of love and whose Being is grace. His willing us comes from the nature of that Being as love. God’s self-knowledge and what He causes is grounds for knowing everything. True to form is His final cause to ultimately achieve. The final cause is actuality. God is the only entity embodying pure actuality and pure being, and God is thus the only pure formal cause. The cause is what we understand to indicate something that has an effect. The final cause is the goal or purpose toward which a thing is oriented. And all things are to be oriented to Christ. We are, and what we are to be, because of all the events that have preceded us. Our life, our living is in the final outcome stage. And so, the final cause is the first cause. And in this we are to affirm Jesus Christ. The self-existant Being to which every sequence of causes must ultimately go back. And the Lord having declared so much from heaven against the whole land, it concerns us and all others impartially to search into, and to discover the causes thereof, so far as He is pleased to convince and give light therein; and we do in charity, and not without ground, presume the matter of fact to plainly and clearly to declare the interest of the cause of God. And Jesus Christ is the proceeding from that cause where lies the remedy to every prevailing darkness. Horrible looseness and profanity of conversation in all sorts, against the commandments, both of the first and second table, have so abounded and increased, that many ignorant and scandalous persons, and many willfully ignorant, and openly and continuedly profane, have been kept in the fellowship of barren and fruitless religion. The final cause is to be the dissolution of the whole of creation and the cosmic manifestations of all designed to be the deliverance into the unity of every perfection of God. Jesus is the center and the reason for all things that God loves. The final cause and the love of God are His “Beloved”. God through and in Christ, and the Spirit, in us. This is our consideration of the whole purpose of God. It is in the context of faith that we observe, believe in and uphold a final cause of everything that moves to a glorious conclusion rather than a future futility. It is the specific revelation of God in Jesus Christ that points to a transcendent purpose and direction. This faith is based on the revelation of the resurrection of the Jesus, as Son and Word of God, our substance of things hoped for, our evidence of things not yet seen. It is a faith that says all that is beautiful and good is held in the divine presence. The final cause is derived from the essence of what things are. If something is something, there is a truth associated with it being and doing what it does. These are known by Him because He has willed them into existence. God as God knows the origin of that nature and thus understands and knows the truths of the cause of all things. Along with the necessary truths about things, there are related possibilities that stem from what those things are in their nature. God knows things because He has caused them and given them potential existence. All possibilities and truths about things come from God’s own self-knowledge and His essence as love. He knows the arrangements and changes that will follow. God knows the individuality of things and what belongs to that individuality more than simply as an assembly of components. God knows what He has caused. That is the wonder of His love. God has determined the final cause of all things and He has given us the free will in all His causes. God is involved in every event as intervening to touching on things to bring forth a purpose. Something of our consciousness shall survive being changed and embodied in a new way and united with God for whom it was destined from the first. If we know these things we must live and take actions according to such hopes. There is nothing held in reserve in the final cause. The way for our return to God and heaven has no barriers. The manifestation of God's love for His people will prevail to draw many to Himself. As finite, we are to presuppose the lnfinite as the cause from which the finite is derived, and from which it has been finited. The final cause will be the effect of the relationship between the two. The end is realized in man as the last term of the finite series, for in man there is the capacity to acknowledge the Infinite, see the end, effect its realization. The realization is the revelation of the likeness of the Son of man. This is the commencement, the final cause indeed, the glory of God and of Jesus Christ, and life everlasting.

15 Minutes What is this withdrawn mercy? All light in the heavens will be extinguished, and there will be great darkness over the whole earth. God will allow an orchestrated implosion and explosion of evil and corruption. The warning has been given in the midst of great turmoil. The time to call out to lost souls ended with the final test disregarded. God’s patience worn and His warnings were not taken seriously. The Lord was merciful, but of this there could be no repentance. This is the very terrible chapter of humanity. This is the very portion of the wrath of God where there is no measure of repentance acceptable for forgiveness. Unjust and filty are the recipients. These thought it their fancy to escape from God’s divine judgment. Boastful worldlings without prayerful forethought of their vice and prodigality. Thinking their sins safer as to put them out of reach of the knowledge of God. These boast themselves in the glory of their strength, and in the hardness of their hearts. These are the men who sit aloft, thinking to be beyond the reach of the arrows of Jehovah. What folly! No man is at any moment beyond the reach of the vengeance of God. The Lord has but to remember the callous and secure, and straightway the joints of their loins shall be loosed. We know not how many doors of wrath the Lord will come at the guilty, but come at them He will. All are debtors of divine favor but when ceasing to acknowledge the God of heaven you are reckoned an adversary upon whom He will dispense justice. You should have run to God for the power of His mercy. Sinful behavior is the destruction of the wicked. Mercy repeatedly warned the world. But it is time for God to work. The world loved violence, so, God Himself instigates this violence...His wrath. This judgment of God is dreadful, but it is not capricious or arbitrary. It is the consequence of wickedness. Have regard to the truth of God’s Word. This is how God shows His love for His faithful people. The judgment of God and His grace are brought together at the end. God has laid the judgment without mercy upon those who rejected every appeal and His grace upon His obedient ones who ceased to sin. This is how God showed His love for people who had fully deserved this judgment yet found in Christ, the way, the truth, the life. This is the only way that we could see who God is, in His judgment and in His compassion. Ironically, as God’s people, we offered truth to save lives. How providential that truth dismissed or denied could lead to an all destroying judgment. The way of God in history is inseparably joined to His election, and to His judgments over His own people and His own Son. None can deny the unique situation that took place in Calvary on Golgotha at the cross. From here, in both the old and new testament, from the debate in heaven to the expulsion of Satan, from the admonition given at the tree to the eating of the fruit, from the sounding of the three angels message to the Sunday law, earth and heaven viewed the wrath of God so that none are without excuse to turn, to turn. There are some people so hard of character that they are scarcely moved to consider the information concerning God’s wrath. In this they grieve the Holy Spirit. For God and His people, this grief is a sweet combination of anger and of love, for it is the wisdom of knowing the consequence. It is anger, but all the gall is taken from it. Love sweetens the anger, and turns the edge of it, not against the person, but against the offense of sin not regretted, sin not renounced, and sin unrepented of. The Holy Ghost is God, and the inspired word of warning is this; do not excite his loving anger, do not vex him, do not cause him to mourn? He is a dove; do not cause him to mourn, because you have treated him harshly and ungratefully. From these is mercy withdrawn as they ignored the love of the Spirit, the sealing of the Spirit, and entered upon grieving the Spirit. The mercy seat symbolizes God's throne in the holy of holies, where He judges men's conduct, and its name reflects the basic nature of His judgments, which rest on mercy. God designed ways to help men so He can be merciful. There is this principle which is assisted in making natural men sensible of their desert of wrath, it is natural conscience. Though man has lost a principle of love to God, and all spiritual principles, by the fall, yet natural conscience remains. Now there are two things, which are the proper work of natural conscience. One is to give man a sense of right and wrong. A natural man has no sense of the beauty and amiability of virtue, or of the turpitude and odiousness of vice. But yet every man has that naturally within, which testifies to him that some things are right, and others wrong. So, if a man steals, or commits murder, there is something within, which tells him that he has done wrong. He knows that he has not done right. Romans 2:14, 15 And the other work of natural conscience is to suggest the relation there is between right and wrong, and a retribution, a judgment, a justice, a wrath. Man has that in him, which suggests to him, when he has done adverse to right, there comes a relation between that doing wrong and penalty. If a man has done that which his conscience tells him is wrong, is unjust, his conscience tells him that he deserves to be disciplined for it. So, natural conscience has a twofold power; a teaching or accusing, and a condemning power. The Spirit of God, therefore, assists natural conscience the more thoroughly to do this, its work, and so convinces a man of sin. Conscience naturally suggests, when he has done a known evil, that he deserves punishment, and being assisted to its work thoroughly, a man is convinced that he deserves no mercy. Though natural conscience does remain in the man since the fall, yet it greatly needs assistance in order to its work. It is greatly hindered in doing its work by sin. Everything in man is hindered and impaired by sin. A faculty of reason remains since the fall, but it is greatly impaired and blinded when not seated with God’s word. So natural conscience remains, but sin, in a great degree, stupefies it, and hinders it in its work. Now when God convinces a sinner, He assists his conscience against the stupefaction of sin, and helps it to do its work more freely and fully. The Spirit of God works immediately upon men’s consciences. From this the history of salvation progressed that everyone was granted faith to be saved. It is in this designed doctrine that God’s mercy was inherent from the beginning that its richness must be found in His love for His creation made to praise, reverence, and serve God. By accomplishing this we are saved, we are brought into the glory of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Ephesians 2:4 It is the will of God that the discoveries of His terrible majesty, and awful holiness and justice, should accompany the discoveries of His grace and love, in order that He may give to His creatures worthy and just apprehensions of Himself. God is not a God who plays with sin. Neither God nor time can tolerate sin. God is eternal. Time was brought to bring sin to its end. Mercy is granted to the sinner seeking forgiveness, not to the sin. Wrath is upon the one who rejects mercy as the love of God. Continual, persistent, conscious rejection of God's mercy makes men accountable to God's wrath. Simply put, sin is a rejection of God. It is a rejection of God as love, mercy, goodness, beauty, and truth. Because of this, sin is the path to the doorway shut to mercy and opened to the wrath of God. It is the glory of God that these attributes are united in the divine nature, that as He is a being of infinite mercy and love and grace, so He is a being of infinite and tremendous majesty, holiness, and awful wrath and certain justice. The perfect and harmonious union of these attributes in the divine nature, is what constitutes the chief part of their glory. The mystery of divine condescension opens to view God’s awful and terrible attributes in light of sin, and His mild and gentle attributes, reflect glory one on the other, and the exercise of the one is in perfect consistency and harmony with that of the other. If there were the exercise of the mild and gentle attributes without the other, and if there were love and mercy and grace in inconsistency with God’s authority and justice and infinite hatred of sin, it would be no glory. If God’s love and grace did not harmonize with His justice and the honor of His majesty, far from being an honor, they would be a dishonor to God. Therefore, as God designs to glorify Himself when He makes revelation of the one, He will also make revelation of the other. When He makes discoveries of His love and grace, it shall appear that they harmonize with those other attributes. Otherwise His true glory would not be discovered. If men were sensible of the love of God without a sense of those other attributes, they would be exposed to have improper and unworthy apprehensions of God, as though He were gracious to sinners in such a manner as did not become a Being of infinite majesty and infinite hatred of sin. And as it would expose to unworthy apprehensions of God, so it would expose man in some respects to behave unsuitably towards God. There would not be a due reverence blended with love and joy for God. Such encounters of love, without answerable discoveries of awful greatness, would dispose the soul to come with an undue boldness to God. The very nature and design of the gospel show that this is the will of God, that those who have the discoveries of His love, should also have the discoveries of those other attributes. We are to know that to love God is to keep His commandments and to sin is to warrant His wrath. For this was the very end of Christ’s laying down his life, and coming into the world, to render the glory of God’s authority, holiness, and justice, consistent with His grace in pardoning and justifying sinners, that while God thus manifested His mercy, we might not conceive any unworthy thoughts of Him with respect to those other attributes. Seeing, therefore, that this is the very aim of Christ’s coming into the world, we may conclude that those who are actually redeemed by Christ, and have a true discovery of Christ made to their souls, have a discovery of God’s terribleness and justice to prepare them for the finding of His love and mercy. God, of old, before the death and suffering of Christ were so fully revealed, was ever careful that the discoveries of both should be together, so that men might not apprehend God’s mercy in pardoning sin and receiving sinners, to the disparagement of His justice. God is careful even in heaven, where the discoveries of His love and grace are given in such an exalted degree, also to provide means for a proportional sense of His terribleness, and the dreadfulness of His displeasure, by their beholding it in the miseries and torments of the expelled angels, at the same time that they enjoy His love. Even the man Christ Jesus was first made sensible of the wrath of God, before his exaltation to that transcendent height of acceptance in and of the Father’s love. And this is one reason that God gives sinners a sense of His wrath against their sins, and of His justice, before He gives them the discoveries of His redeeming love. To exalt the love of God the Father, in giving His Son to us, and to exalt Jesus Christ by our praise, who laid down his life for us to redeem us from all iniquity. This we say, “how miserable should we have been, had not God had pity upon us, and provided us a Savior! In what a miserable condition should we have been, had not Christ loved us, and given himself for us! We must have endured that dreadful wrath of God; we must have suffered the punishment which we had deserved by all that great sin and wickedness of which we have been guilty.” The word of God will discard us who do not magnify the name of God. The scriptures are very clear that God cannot tolerate sin with the least degree of allowance. In doctrine and covenant we are shown both sides of this issue. The law giver cannot tolerate sin in any way. Breaking commandments is completely unacceptable. There is a deadline that will invalidate God’s mercy. His Spirit will not always strive with man. Each of us must make a choice concerning the final decree, and that choice will be for eternity or for ultimate end. Mercy withdrawn is part of the eternal progression of salvation. When we are willing to continually accept more light and intelligence from God, which can happen because we repent and bring our lives into agreement with His commandments, He will continue to enlighten our minds and bless our lives. Our wisdom will increase. But when we declare, through our disobedience or rejection of truth, that we are no longer interested in progressing beyond where we are, then we start to slide backwards. It is actually God’s mercy that causes this backwards slide. If we know something and don’t live it, then we are held accountable for it. When we can know something and reject the additional light and truth God has available to give us, we gradually lose the ability to comprehend those truths we currently understand, so we no longer hold responsibility to the same degree for the truths we once understood clearly. And we are, however, still held accountable for rejecting the truth. The history of the judgment and the grace of God leads to the coming of His Son Jesus Christ. As the great Substitute, Jesus placed himself under the judgment of God, and in God’s wrath, mercy abandoned. In Jesus, the love of God for man, for the whole of creation was revealed in all its fullness. We are so impressed with God’s mercy that we know that the purposed reason for mercy is the necessity of God’s justice. The promise of entering into His rest stands. For this reason, and for this reason alone, we can love the God who reveals Himself in His word, and entrust ourselves completely to His express will. Mercy withdrawn shows the seriousness of sin and the greatness of our salvation. Ours is the awe, the thankfulness for the love of God. We, who know the truth of God, intertwine the reality of His wrath and the heavenly comparison of His love. And though we do not fully understand God’s wrath, we do know that without it, we cannot have God’s love. God’s wrath forms our indignation for sin that has corrupted human souls in the very world in which we live. And God, in His holiness, hates that sin perverts the creation in which He loves. If His mercy is not withdrawn and His wrath not brought forth, the corruption from sin would wipe out all the inhabitants of the earth. We must reason both God’s love and God’s wrath. They are interconnected. God loves us, and God hates sin. Because of God’s holiness and pureness, whenever we sin, we have defiled ourselves and cannot be in the presence of a holy God. The shock of even brushing against a holy God, sinful as we are, would simply kill us. God wants to dwell in direct and eternal communion with us. He will unleash His wrath. It matters that the faithful people of God talk about God’s wrath. We cheapen God’s love if we don’t show what fate He has spared us from by dying for our sins and allowing us to come into eternity with Him. By talking about God’s wrath, we understand the gravity of our sins. We realize just how much God had to do to gather us home. We have a greater understanding of God’s love and can love Him all the more for it. When we obtain a knowledge of divine love, divine truth, and divine justice, we will speak of divine wrath as a function of our living. In our peace and being perfected we will allow nothing, no one to defile the truth of God’s word. We will withstand all who seek to fault God for His wrath. Love is intrinsic to who God is. And without love at the center of our relationship with God, worship is pretty well impossible. Our love is a response to all that God does. And we have no opposition, no disassociation to any attribute of God. Our love effectively favors the withdrawal of mercy to affect the wrath of God that sin may be forever done away with. In our reasoning with the wealth of biblical texts, we see the portrayal of God in all His long suffering, His graciousness toward us, and the depth of His tender mercies. And we pause in silence that speaks a thousand words to recognize God’s benevolence. Wrath is the inevitable experienced consequences of man’s own actions. Wonderfully, it is the wrath of God that removes the distance that sin caused. Yet it is still the mercy of God that is giving us the time to bring others to wisdom as the day of God’s wrath is yet to come. Wrath is the condition everyone is under but can be redeemed from, due to the loving initiative of the triune God revealed in incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. The written story of the bible is about God performing to redeem, restore, forgive, heal and warn so that those He loves will not face His wrath after the judgment. Let’s personalize our understanding of the wrath of God, taking into account a God who is passionate about justice and personally committed to overcoming all powers that destroy and corrupt His good creation. His wrath is directed against behaviors that are destructively contrary to His eternal purposes. Multiple prophetic forewarnings present individual choice to avert an ultimate self-destructive experience of wrath. That makes wrath a self- chosen cause and effect decreed by God to bring sin to its logical end. It's the outworking of God’s theology of divine sovereignty in the theme of holiness. Hear the conclusion of the whole matter...

9 Minutes God’s wrath is a holy response. It is never out of the control of His wisdom and righteousness. If there was no sin in the world, there would be no wrath in God. God’s wrath without mercy is His settled determination and resolve that sin will not stand. This, because God has offered to all the mercy, the grace, and the forgiveness that can be found in Jesus Christ. God patiently held this door open. For those who suppress or reject any truth of God, He will give them up. We must take to heart the truth of God’s wrath. God doesn’t love us because Christ died for us...Christ died for us because God loves us. God so loved the objects of His wrath that He spent the wrath on Himself at the cross. This outpouring of God’s wrath was the greatest act of love this world has ever seen. The hope for sinners is that between us and the wrath of God stands the cross of Jesus. Sin was laid on Jesus and the Divine wrath toward it was poured out, spent, and exhausted in the darkness of Calvary. And when it was done, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “It is finished!” The wrath of God that will one day be poured out on all sin was spent at the cross with regard to all who are in Him. Cataclysmic wrath will be unleashed through natural disasters. God’s wrath is not abstract. Too many tend to take the images given in Jeremiah outside their original context and misapply this prophetic metaphor. Understanding the meaning of this image helps us to better understand how Jesus later uses the image of the cup. And this for those who say they live in covenant with Him. What of these who suppress any truth of God? Stubborness of heart stores wrath. Romans 1:17-19; 2:5 Jeremiah 25:13-38 Wrath is the final judgment against all those who are accounted as God’s enemies, those who have turned their faces away from God. God is going to have a directed wrath toward willful sinners and His protective love toward His own. Wrath without mercy is not judgment by a flood, it is not levied by plagues, it is expressed by a consuming fire that ignites any cause against God. The reality of God’s wrath is as He says, “vengeance is mine”. Wrath is connected with God’s response to something that deserves vengeance. The wrath of God is never less than perfect, a judicial decree, it is always more than perfect, a judicial decree because it is always full of right and fitting vehemence in response to sin. And then He says, “I will repay.” So, God’s wrath is as a repayment to man for something man has done...those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth. Romans 2:7-11 God’s wrath will not be eternal, it will end; but it will be terrible, indescribable agony; it will be deserved, totally just and right; yet it will have been escapable - through the curse-bearing death of Christ, if those would have only reasoned to take refuge in him. Reality goes beyond words. God is love. We hear those words, but the reality of God’s love must be focused attention on Him rather than on our circumstances. He is working everything out for our good, according to His specific purposes. We are to understand the centrality of that love to our spiritual life. I John 3:1 The opening word, “behold”, doesn’t just mean to look at something, rather it means to grasp it, or to fully comprehend the nature of something and live in light of it. Comprehend the truth of what is said by paying strict attention. The force of the command underscores the importance of grasping the connection between reasoning the love of God and understanding a spiritual walk. God’s love is astonishing, having a superlative quality and quantity at the same time...unmatched in its greatness. It is the love that resides within Himself, that He bestows upon us. It is the knowledge of this love in our relationship that brings us to know that the wrath of God without mercy is warranted upon the wicked who love Him not. The great reality of knowing the love of God is not just that we bear His image, but we also now bear His name as a fully privileged member of His family. It was one sin alone that brought the entire world under the judgment of God. And God offered us the one thing to remedy that...”if you love me...keep obedience to my law”. Consider that any offense and any dishonor to an infinitely honorable and infinitely worthy God is an infinite offense and an infinite dishonor. Therefore, an infinite retribution is deserved. The consequence of rejecting the truth of God – His wrath. Psalms 145:9 There is a people who forfeit mercy by the hardness of their heart. They love sin as sin. Deuteronomy 32:35, 39-43 Those who suspend the truth of God are in a perilous position. God’s love is never divorced from His holiness. Too many lack a clear understanding of God’s hatred for sin. Regardless of God’s word, they misshape the language of God’s character and His nature giving a truncated view to God’s wrath. They fail to capture the severity that God takes toward sin as spoken. And sin will bring about the holy wrath of God. Genesis 2:17 Romans 5:12 God may delay His justice, but He will not deny His holiness. His wrath will be vented fully. God’s provision for His people who are faithful in every word centers on His divine satisfaction through divine substitution. We need to understand that God’s mercy is what declares the sinner righteous by means of Christ’s wrath-bearing sacrifice. It was by reasoning with the truth to understand the wrath of God, having knowledge of His justice and mercy, that Moses began to understand the position of God to change from Sovereign to Servant. Psalms 90 God’s wrath is a form of justice. It has absolutely nothing to do with revenge. God’s wrath is a revelation from heaven in the providences of God. And God’s providences are never by chance. For revealed is the wrath of God from heaven upon all impiety and unrighteousness because clearly the revelation of wrath is in antithesis to the bestowal of salvation. We are saved in righteousness on God's part, by faith on ours. Righteousness is revealed from heaven in the gospel of God saving every true believer, but the righteousness of God without faith is condemnation to endure the wrath of God. It is now revealed from heaven, and existing, and about to be revealed in the future against sin, contemplates a specific class or classes we might say, those who had light and refused it; and very specially is it upon the "children of disobedience. Reason the terrible retribution that is the certainty of penalty. II Peter 2:4 Revealed is the mode of the manifestation of wrath, and its moving cause. God’s wrath is revealed in His righteousness. And mercy cannot be sustained, in that wrath must have its way on all who refuse to yield to the obedience of faith. The whole visible procedure of God in His moral government by which He displays and reveals His divine opposition and hatred of sin, may be said to be the revelation of wrath which would take in the impossibility of escape if we bow not to the gospel. Who are they that refuse to be influenced by God’s truth, holding it in unrighteousness. Romans 1:18 This verse is extremely important for understanding why some people seem so resistant to belief. In short, they don't believe because they don't want to. The problem is not that truth is unavailable; the problem is that truth is being suppressed. Refusing to see what can be known about Him by what He does. I cannot but think that we forget that the time we live in is not an ordered dispensation, but only a period of divine forbearance, ere the execution of threatened and revealed wrath takes place. The gospel message is only provisional: the wrath is the permanent revelation, and is revealed from heaven; and is only held back by God's long suffering, while sending forth a proposal of pardon to those on whom the wrath of God abides and will, otherwise, eventually fall. I speak in this as to the world; the purpose and counsels of God for the glory of His Son, are being worked into effectuation by the Holy Ghost come down: and, looking from the side of God in connection with the evolution of His purpose and grace, a grander revelation is now being unfolded to the divinely anointed eye...the children of God are gathered, the body of Christ formed, the Bride of the Lamb about to be presented to Himself in all her purity when he comes to receive us to Himself. There is thus by grace a little hidden company in the very world that is in open relationship rising up to Christ. Revealed to these was the mercy withdrawn from Christ at the cross as the wrath of God was on display. It is this wrath that makes God’s people so uncomfortable with sin, that their love for what Christ did and is doing is the basis for holy living for each of us.

7 Minutes God’s mercy does not cancel the consequence of sin! Mercy is God leaving the door open for a return of the faithfully repentant. It begins with His love giving us conviction, repentance, and restoration to a fellowship that we run to God. Mercy is being compassionate or forbearing when justice is due. It is the withholding of what is due or owed in a retributive sense as well as giving what is needed in a restorative sense. God is so merciful that He lowered Himself, becoming man, in order to suffer and die in reparation for every sin that would ever be committed by all mankind. In this way, justice and mercy are connected. Justice demands payment for offense, while mercy is knowingly withholding or at least ameliorating the penalty that is deserved. Mercy is the compassion that is based upon the welfare of another. But many grow audacious and presumptuous as it is mercy that prolongs their impunity rendering them insensible of not only the wrath to come, but forfeited life. The identity of God as a God of compassion and mercy is God’s self-identity. He could have described Himself by His other incredible attributes, but He chose to use compassion and mercy. This dispensation of mercy, as revealed in scripture, is not a peripheral theme but is central to God’s narrative throughout the bible. True repentance glorifies the sovereignty of God in His mercy. When we hear Jesus’ sermon on the mount, we hear the guiding principles of moral values. These attributes are set in the context of being those in which God holds in high regard. In fact, He blesses them. These qualities are to be prioritized in the life of Jesus’ followers. Please do not twist the content away from its intent. God’s word is imbued with mercy. The world wants to dominate the people of God and prevent us from being who we were created to be and to live in the freedom that Jesus bought for us. The word of God is the holistic gospel that seeks to liberate the faithful among the people spiritually, mentally, physically, socially and even economically. As much as God’s people realize our being here is due to God’s mercy, we still have a strong sense of justice. And though we have not yet ceased to sin, and are deserving of justice, it is the wounding of the Word of God over and over that is grievous to us. When justice becomes foundational to our faith we will cease to sin. But our desire for justice, as righteous and biblical as it is, should not prevent us from experiencing and extending mercy according to our calling. Entering into a position of judgment literally and spiritually impedes us from being the conduit of God’s mercy and grace. Micah 6:8 Please never fail to reason with God to come to the wisdom of His truths. If we be the people of God, we are to discern the voice of God and speak on God’s behalf. That means calling to repentance every act, every word of violence and violation of God’s law. This is our burden, warning of the justice through judgment. We serve God as we love our fellowman. Upon whose hand will the blood be found? There is this fateful day coming...think on the appropriation of mercy toward us as we look to the justice at the cross. Though we receive mercy, sin is literally killing us. For sin to end, mercy must cease. That is why judgment precedes justice. One truth, however, that is apparent than any other, is that judgments, even the most terrible of them, do not in themselves produce a satisfactory repentance in the minds of men. The terrors of the Lord produces blasphemy, but they did not produce repentance. God’s justice is undiluted in its full strength. There is the cup of life to drink from in the hand of Christ or there is the wine of the wrath of God. God has a cup full of mercy. But He is pouring out that mercy and the sediments remain, the lake of fire, to drink. Psalms 75:8 We who are learned of the portion of justice to be meted out have sorrow upon sorrow for there will not be a no-death mercy extended for the guilty. If these had only looked to the cross of Christ. Jesus was fully engaged in why he had to bear the sins of all mankind. The circumstances he experienced, he endured, his time in Gethsemane, and later, on Golgotha, Jesus willingly bore for the iniquity of us all. It is by his offering that we might see into the window of the heart of his Father. Because of what Jesus did on the cross the most righteous condemnation meets the most gracious pardon. The greatest justice meets the greatest mercy. The fiercest wrath meets the most bountiful favor. And what such love. God does not want people to face this fate, and only by refusing His “salvation” plan through His Son Jesus will some people endure this awful destiny. John 3:36 Even in His wrath, God remembers mercy. God demonstrates His mercy in wrath by never pouring out His wrath without warning. Also in this is the bountiful love of God. Those who love Him and are faithful to His commandments will escape this unfathomable horror to meet unsurpassed beauty of an eternal life. Mercy withdrawn is God giving expression to His wrath. In a concrete way this is His hatred for sin. This is not an emotion that God experiences. It is a focused intensity on the severity of sin that touched all of creation. There is no rescue, no mercy extended in this intensity. Jesus dying on the cross, God was effectively pouring out His wrath on Jesus so that we could be forgiven for our sins. Jesus dies the second death for us and suffered the separation from his Father, yet he did not incur the torment of the lake of fire. The lake of fire is reserved for those who must pay the penalty for their own unrepented sins...Jesus dies not for his sin, for he did no sin. God’s righteous wrath is so intense, so severe that even the Son of God himself prayed that if it be possible to allow God’s cup of wrath to pass from him; not “my will, but yours be done”. The judgment for every sin will match the offense. When the judgment is done, every mouth will be stopped because everyone will know that God judged in righteousness and justice. God has a people who declare their love for His truth, yet attempts to co-fix mercy to His wrath. The wrath of God is His steady, unrelenting, unremitting, uncompromising antagonism to the evilness of sin in all its forms and manifestations. When we speak about the wrath of God, remember that it is the “wrath of God” . So, everything we know about God – that He is just, He is love, and He is good - needs to be poured into our understanding of His wrath. Human wrath is unpredictable, petty, and disproportionate. God’s wrath is none of these. God’s wrath is the just and measured response of His holiness toward evil. The wrath of God is not something that resides in Him by nature; it is a response to sin. It is provoked. God is love. That is His nature. God’s love is not provoked. He does not love us because He sees some wisdom, beauty, or goodness in us. He loves us because He loves us, and we can never get beyond that. Deuteronomy 7:7