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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

11 Minutes We do not yet have the full experience of the glory that is to be revealed with Christ in heaven. God’s considerations for us go far beyond this life and breath. He has delights not yet created for us that transcend the senses of sight and sound and touch and taste and smell. We will experience the richness of these gifts in the elegance and complexity of perfection. It is said that Adam and Eve knew God so well that they recognized the sound of His feet when He walked in the garden. Our perfection will be omni-sensuous so as to know God’s presence is with us always. And so, we must live by faith in God’s promise as we await the final consummation when Jesus returns. We must endure whatever comes by fixing our everything on Jesus. This life is very short in comparison with eternity, but God’s purpose is not momentary. His purpose of perfection for us will be beyond all comparison in spectacular results throughout eternity. If we pause for a moment to reason with this, we might begin to understand the purpose why God asks us to come and reason with Him. Because that better thing is purposeful perfection that we are given to bring others to trust and obey the same mighty God and He will enable them to endure trials in His strength. The difference is not in the people or in their faith, but in God’s sovereign purpose in each of them. To us, faithfulness to Jesus Christ counts more than anything else, even than life itself. Today, our faith is preparation for the hard work to come, being made perfect in every good work to do his will. And our perfection is powered by the purpose of God because He has us in mind and has something better and greater in supernal view for us. This is the motivation and inspiration that renders our faith fuller than those before us, for we have the faith of Jesus himself to sustain us. Heavenly things are now the possession of ours through the union with Jesus Christ. Our conversation is in heaven. The something better for us denotes the reality we have found already in Christ. Looking for more than our own personal satisfaction, we long to see God’s purposes fulfilled on earth. What a privilege to be God’s last day people, accountable to God for the blending of the two peoples of God together in perfection – the righteous by faith awakened from their sleep and the righteous living. A glorious unity of all God's people. The "perfecting" looks forward to that salvation consummated at the coming of Christ. We will be what the scripture declares – we shall be like him. This is the mystery of God’s will. Ephesians 1:9, 10 They are the “these all”, of a good report by faith. We are that “us”, provisioned by the Holy Spirit with that better thing, the likeness of Christ purposed unto perfection. True believers spoken to and of, as partakers of a heavenly calling, chosen of God. The reception of the promised perfection on earth is not the end of the story! The full unfolding of the “better thing” is not yet finished. God has provided a heaven that eye has never seen nor ear has ever heard nor heart has ever imagined as the precious inheritance for His people. An inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. God’s provision will be our possession. What we cannot see or hear or feel by our natural senses we can know for truth, for reality, and for comfort through the Spirit of Jesus in our hearts. O heavenly truth! That the riches of all the promises we possess in Christ Jesus are ours now by faith to behold, to be assured of, to be comforted by, and thus patiently to wait for their complete revelation. The purpose of perfection readies us for the banquets of His grace. It is so important that we apply the truths and lessons learned from all the faithful lives that God has in consideration. This gives us great leverage and tremendous advantage in being made the perfection of the purpose of God. We persevere in prayer. We stand on scripture. We do according to all the law. The divine family of heaven cannot be made up lest they be made perfect. Our lot is cast in these latter days, to bring those which shall complete the purpose of God. We are to be found worthy to perfect His story. God’s purpose of perfection is to increase in depth and power as we get nearer to the final audition for glorification. Is it not wonderful that we, who bring up the rear of the army of faith, are necessary to its completeness? So, we who believe must all come to make them perfect. God help us to hasten in His purpose, for our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake! God’s purpose has no termination. It fully initiates us into the mysteries of the never-completeness of the potential and the probable and the inconceivable of all that is inherent in eternity. There is great spiritual importance to our perfection. It brings to consummation the human experience which Christ must had passed through to be made perfect to become the author of our eternal salvation. It is in our contemplating and glimpsing the excellent worth of Christ in our hearts that we consider our worthiness as treasured by God. Our preference for his worth is our worth. To be worthy of the infinite worth of Jesus is to see and savor him as infinitely worthy. This is not our earning or meriting or deserving him. It is God’s purpose of perfection that makes us a suitable beneficiary of grace as we embrace the infinite value of the Gracious One. How are we ever grateful...our worthiness is our desperate preference for his gracious worthiness over all things as we prefer him above all things. We do not merit or deserve or earn being called to the Lord’s purpose. But in our need, God saw our determined embracing of Christ with a desperate desire and a savoring love to be like him. We prayed to be empowered by the Holy Spirit and God heard our deep groanings while in His counsel. God purposed us in counsel and what God purposes shall stand. For we are called, predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will. And this according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord who prayed for our being made perfect in him. For we are given him, to be with him. This is endurance truth. Consider being made the righteousness of God in Christ and the distinction of being made perfect in Christ. The righteousness of God relates to the legal aspects of the atonement. Christ died for our sins, satisfying the divine law. Made perfect relates to the priestly aspects of the atonement. Christ approaches the presence of God to ask forgiveness for the sins of the whole house of Israel. The atonement of Christ was comprehensive as sacrifice, substitution, and redemption. We are God’s purpose of perfection based on the superior priesthood and sacrifice of Christ. This draws us nearer to God. While we are experientially imperfect, we are positioned perfect because of our union with our representative, our Great High Priest, who himself was “made perfect through suffering”. We are purposed to complete a work. We must embrace a right understanding of the working words of Jesus saying, “it is finished”, that we might come to the conclusion of the whole matter to hear God say, “it is done”. The Father’s and the Son’s most excellent three words in all of language. Perfect purpose pertains to the faithful that lived before the advent, and those that are alive at the advent, since all are one in their faith in the living God, making the unseen visible, the distant near, and seeing the eternal through the transient and ephemeral experience in this life. There is a pause, a halt, an expectancy, an incompleteness, in life till we all come to see Jesus. God has a perfect purpose. He purposed His Son’s destiny from the very beginning and gave to humanity the very desire to seek eternal life through him. Jesus is the only satisfying need we have that will render us perfect. God’s purposed reason for our calling, our existence, is to proclaim Jesus Christ as His Son. We, making known this truth, is to pursue actual perfection before men as a powerful witness of faith to those without Christ and as an offering of thanks and honor to God. The pursuit itself is of great value because we are working in harmony with what God desires for us. God is perfect. Jesus is perfect. We become perfected as we keep our eyes on Him and seek to imitate Him in every choice we make. This, filling our hearts with joy brings us to God’s purpose of perfection... our knowing that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. God expects us to be perfect, yes. But not just because we can be, but because Jesus has been, is, and always will be perfect. He imputes his holiness to us as a beloved child of God. He gives us his Spirit, who works obedience within us to bring Christ glory. And He will see to it that we make it to heaven, where His spectacular promise of perfect holiness will be completed within us. Jesus is the Light of God’s love. A love so bright that the illusions of death will vanish with time. So it is because of our darkness, our sin, that God cannot directly look upon us without making part of us Godlike. This is His purpose of perfection. He creates a special part of Himself that is truth, the way, the life that is His Son...the process for bringing the imperfect beings into Perfection. This special being can interact with imperfection. This special being works in space-time. This special being is, by definition, a redemptive being who is also God and is God's will for imperfection, but who works through time and thus does not immediately destroy imperfection into nothingness and also allows us to learn of him. And this Son is always anchored in the eternity of Perfection. Because Jesus is God and Jesus is us, we are now of the way and the truth, and the life. And because of Jesus this part of us is already part of God. Somehow just our freewill agreement allows God to dwell within us. This is that better thing that had never existed. A glorious company of beings who belong in the expansive, infinite joy of the Perfection that is God. Jesus is in and of Himself an empowering and unifying being whose will is for completion, wholeness, and perfection in bringing us with him to be with God. He brings everyone and everything that chooses God into perfection. He truly is the beginning and the ending. And in making us perfect he is the everlasting, that causes our perfection to ever increase into more joy, more wonder, more awe, more love. What could be better than goodness, except for ever-increasing goodness. God is the Divine Light. And the Word of God is the realm of the Divine Light. For us to know the purpose of God we must come to the word of God. And without Christ we are not purposed by God. And we get only doctrines and teachings with no life. The function of the word of God is to impart God into us; the word of God operates in us as we turn our heart to the Lord and have an exercised spirit of purpose that is perfected in Christ. Jesus is God’s expression. From him we can receive the divine truth to become God’s purpose of perfection in reality. God’s light is unique. In Him is our purpose. Isaiah 50:10, 11 Without God’s purpose we are in spiritual darkness, no light, darker than black. When we are in God’s light, we see what God sees. And God’s light is Jesus. Psalms 36:9 The mystery of God is our purpose perfected in Christ and our perfection purposed in Christ. The heart of the mystery and the fulfilment of God's purpose is the person and role of Christ fulfilled in and by us. Isaiah 49:1-6

7 Minutes God wants His people to thrive in His truth. The purpose of our perfection is the same as having the presence of Christ in the life. May I explain that this way... Perfection is to be an eternal state; timeless, infinite, awesome, all-love. God’s gift of freewill allows us to be imperfect. God, in His design of total love wants us to exist in holiness, but because we have sinned, we are imperfect, so we must have a place to exist that is not in eternity, because imperfection can't exist in an eternal state. So, God has to create a temporary finite place where imperfection is allowed to exist, so that we could exist at all. But because God’s purpose of perfection wants us to exist with Him in eternity, not just this temporary place that due to sin can't last forever, God has to give us a process by which we can become perfect, and thus escape the temporary finite place. Only God can do that process perfectly, so God has to enfold an aspect of God into this finite, imperfect, temporary place in order to bring consciousness into perfection so it can exist in eternity. What is that enfolding aspect...a Son. God is One, and that makes total sense. The most perfectness of Being, a unity of infinite goodness, love, and overwhelming bright power that is of absolute perfection. He is before the beginning. He is everything and there can be only “one everything” because that “everything” contains all things. Can there be anything outside of God? No. But because of God’s unity – His love – there can be a thing “with” God...His Son, Christ Jesus is that enfolden aspect whereby we can be found perfect in this place. Now, if you don’t know how to reason with God, you may have a problem understanding what perfection is...and I cannot convince you of it. My faith in God tells me that perfection is not abstract...it is real in the life of Christ. Love is the primary essentialness of God. And God is Perfect. Love requires freewill and that must have power to make decisions and choices. God created space and time for purpose. Every decision, state of mind, heart and soul can be mapped out into this space at any time. Every being is somewhere in this space of time. One who chooses to not be perfect moves away from God into a spiritual space without Christ for a time. Now, to reason with God to better understand perfection is to know that because He is perfect and all things exist in Him, anything that Perfection touches will be either obliterated or turned Perfect. Love and freewill demands that we can choose. This is the place where we come to both a moral and a providential purpose of God. It does not mean that the things we do are excellent. It means our beliefs and thoughts pertaining to our decisions and behaviors are centered in the mind of Christ. Maturing in the progress of becoming like him. We must mature in our faith, in our wisdom, and in our experience. God wants us to make this choice with a willing heart above all else to be made perfect. We are to process our choices and actions with the understanding of who Jesus is, what he has shown us, and how he lived. We follow his example without the unattainable expectation of being God. God’s people are in a war with sin. We commit sins of commission - doing that which we shouldn't, and sins of omission - not doing that which we should. That is a reality. If we lower God’s expectations for His people, and de-emphasize the seriousness of His command for holiness, we actually cheapen His grace and lose sight of His spectacular promise. In this purpose we are specific and intentional in every relationship. Past performances are no longer on the scale. As true followers of Christ we are being made righteous through his grace and atonement by way of suffering and obedience. Our faith is the assurance and conviction that God will perform in us what He says and what Jesus prayed for. And our lives will attest to our faith’s constancy and prevailing in the face of the severest testing and opposition and thus declare the genuineness of our perfection. Our purpose will be our testimony to affirm that we have seen and heard every word of God. And we will report the same to every person in every event with direct knowledge from the Holy Spirit. Beautiful will be the experience of triumph for God in our lives as we make complete the work of Christ upon the cross. By this, that better thing magnifies the perfecting of God’s people by full communion with Him, mediated by the perfect revelation of the Son and His perfect covenant. The knowledge of the second advent of Christ changes the whole estate of his people. The rightness of every faithful being is dependent on our perfection: their and our perfection was all brought in at the same time, when Christ, by one offering perfected forever those who are sanctified. So that the result with regard to them is due to our excellency in reference to Christ. It is Christ’s having descended into the deep dark region of spiritual space, and by his death doing something so important to win back authority that was lost and ascending up into heaven, that these will enjoy heavenly blessedness, and are waiting with us all who have followed our glorified High Priest within the veil, for the resurrection of their bodies and the changing of ours. This reasoning is strong, and should be effectually prevalent with us all. It is this purpose of perfection that God's pronouncement provide assurance of what He intends to do with, and for us. And it is by our greater faith that we lay hold to the promises of God. Promises that overflow with the reality of divine grace. Because God is faithful and not dependent upon anything we do or fail to do, is the reason we trust His promises. His intentions toward us are perfectly purposed. And it is in the challenge to be holy where God’s purpose for us shows in His essence. This is serious. It is not an option. Jesus is equally serious. We will grow in holiness. We will be conformed into God’s image. He will see to it . I Peter 1:1-25, let’s hear it. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into. Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy. And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear: Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you. Matthew 5:48 In a general sense, this written and verbal declaration made by one Person to another, made by God to me, to you, binds the Person who makes it, in honor, in conscience, in law, to do and forbear a certain act specified which gives to me, gives to you, the one person to whom it is made, a right to expect and to claim the performance of the act – that better thing of being made perfection in Christ. This is why God gave us Jesus. Our perfection is to be performed in the fulfillment of our moral obedience and strict integrity to the word of God, observed by the world as something done for the benefit of God. It is by this that we will cause many to look back at the cross to see forward to the glorious appearing of Christ. These will have opportunity to count on salvation. This is where that measure of faith given to every man is most tested and where it most matters. The purpose of our perfection is to establish a people that the Spirit brings forth as proofs of the vitality of a faith that is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Regardless of our sufferings, our trials, the lengths of our tribulations, the severity of persecutions, we will be the worthies that accomplish distinctive victories for God. We will know destitution, affliction, and torment. But we will hold always to the instancy of our faith made potent by a vision of the imminent things God has in store which we are being prepared to attain while in this world. In the purpose of our perfection will be revealed the promises of the new covenant in Christ’s blood. Ours is complete because Jesus is the perfect sacrifice. We will be perfect worshipers of God.

25 Minutes We are denied what we fervently desire. We are required to continue in a situation which we do not enjoy. We are not to be amazed when we go through hard places with the Lord. We are to rejoice. We are to share in the sufferings of Christ. If we do, we will rejoice and be glad when the Lord returns to earth in His glory. If instead of finding fault with the instruments God uses to save us from our sinful nature, we open to the Lord and sup with him, we will grow spiritually. We will become wiser, stronger, and better able to be there for others. It is necessary now to teach hard things. Yet, we are never to be unscriptural. Let me say at this point that it indeed is hard to remain in the program of redemption. We are still finding it hard to keep the Sabbath holy. We are still finding it hard to let go of worldly recognized months of celebration. We think to have a full month for black history, for women’s history, for hispanic heritage, native american heritage, asian american heritage, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender pride. And don’t attempt to list all the days – beginning with the self worship day called “birthday”. The world has christmas day, family day, even earth day, there is even a zero discrimination day,...nuff said. Do these proclaim to know the Lord? There were three crosses at Calvary; God was crucified in the midst while stretching out both hands offering salvation. One accepted Christ as Lord, the other railed against him. There was one crucified saved at the last moment. And there was one crucified unsaved. It is impossible to go through this life without being crucified in one manner or another. The character of God’s people is compounded from integrity, faithfulness, truth, and honesty.There is too much duplicity among people saying, “here is truth”. You’re either in Christ’s right hand or at his left hand. Any lackness of character, unwillingness to deny self, will make it hard to be saved. God has a reason for the hard way of salvation. The wicked are facing fires so intense, so painful, and so terrible that we need not worry about the justice of God. God is putting His people through painful experiences now so He will be free to judge the wicked at a later time. Otherwise, Satan would point the finger at God and accuse Him of permitting His elect to practice wickedness without retribution. God has a rod for measuring the building, the gathering of His people in times of trouble and calamity that are foretold. It is for our reformation that we might have no deficiency according to the true model. We must be measured to determine whether we make God's glory our end and His word our rule, in all our acts of worship and of life. And whether we come to God with suitable affections, and whether our conversation is as becomes the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the gospel of the kingdom. There are those among God’s people today who are in doctrinal, and consequently moral chaos. This is because they reason not with the hard sayings of God that they might come to the greater truth. One will forfeit salvation when one’s character deteriorates from rejecting truth. Choruses are changing from what is pleasing to the ear and sensual, to more rugged modes and meters presenting hard words that speak of the kingdom of God and of righteousness. There is to be wielded the two-edged sword of the Word of God. The traditional “just reading” the scripture is far too tame to counteract the moral depravities of the world. Let the word of God cut, that we may understand the essential of the written word. That it may be lively in seizing the conscience of the hearer. God’s truth is vital light. It is to convince powerfully the whole truth of God as it performs critical dissection of God’s wisdom from man’s wisdom. It cuts off ignorance from the understanding, rebellion from the will, and enmity from the mind, which, when carnal, is enmity itself against God. Here is how reasoning in the word of God must be...its sharpness is tempered, hardened and softened, to mortify sin while comforting the soul to unveil the most secret and remote thoughts. It will discover to men the variety of their thoughts and purposes, the vileness of them, the bad principles they are actuated by, and the sinful ends they act to. The word will turn the inside of a sinner out and let him see all that is in his heart. Now such a word as this must needs be a great help to our faith and obedience. These cuts are for our salvation. We are sons, daughters of God, and God does not want us to be condemned when He judges the world. It will only be a little while. We are not in a grave, only on a path, and we have the light to show the way. Be not fearful of the trying fire. Only the bondages of sin will be burned away. Christ is Alpha and Omega. What He commenced in our life, He will complete in a most glorious fashion. We will come to know His faithfulness, just as did Job, Abraham, Daniel, and all the faithful others who went and will go through difficulties for a season. We can drink of this cup. And with that truth we come to understand the hardest thing about being saved is seeing ourselves in every word of God. With open face we are to behold the glory of the Lord that we may be changed into the same image. Because all have sinned it seems hard to overcome condemnation. Though unworthy and undeserving we are so loved of God. And in that love we discover that Christ has paid the price for our salvation, and we immediately begin to walk in that light. That is the power of God’s Word. It works through the mirror principle. That means doing this hard thing – seeing ourselves as God sees us. It’s hard to be saved when we give others the power to determine truth for us. It is hard to be saved when we ignore biblical conviction in consideration of another. It is hard to be saved when we accept distorted beliefs of truth. It is hard to be saved when we cling to the old pattern of thinking and behavior. It is hard to be saved when we do not accept God’s free gift of love and grace. Where there was darkness we will be given light, where there was doubt, we will find faith, and where we feel despair, we will have hope. All of the sadness we felt from a life half-lived will turn into a joy of a purpose-filled existence. Life won’t be easier, it will get harder in the trials we go through but it will be brought closer to God in Christ. The hard way of salvation is not a deterrance. But it is the way that only a few will come to endure. We cannot be saved if we do not endure to the end. Many cataclysmic events will occur in our final time. Christ prepares us with truths to be revealed: family division, persecution, violence, suffering, false teachers, hypocrites, social, and environmental unrest, unfaithfulness and lack of love by many in the church. It is hard to be saved if we seek to use these things as valid excuses for falling away. Matthew 7:13, 14 Now we should consider the essence of why it is hard to be saved rather than feeling lowly concerned about what it entails. We should be looking instead at all God does to open the gate for us. Before the world was created it was already planned out who was going to be the Christ and how salvation was going to be realized through his blood. God also had a plan for who was going to be saved, those who through faith are found in Christ to be blameless. Then there is the unimaginable: God sacrificed His Son for us. We know this, but has the concept dulled through repetition? Feel this in your gut. God killed His Son so we could live. The most famous passage in the bible: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. How much does He love us? How much does He want us to be saved? He gave His Son. It is hard to be saved because of ourselves. Romans 5:5-10 How can there be any doubt about God’s love for us. Notice especially how we are described in these verses. Weak. Unable to save ourselves. Lacking the strength. Ungodly. If being godly means being toward God, having God as our focus, living our lives for God, then being ungodly means being against God. Working against His counsel. Sinners. Offenders against God. Having missed His mark. Having fallen short. Then we are all called enemies of God. Weak, ungodly, sinners and enemies. That’s who we were when Christ died for us. He did that to reconcile us to Him and open the door to salvation. Now here is the truth of God. In giving us His Son to die for us should make it easy to be saved. We think the sacrifice ended at the cross. But not only did God give us His Son, He gives us all things. That’s why it is hard to be saved. Because we know not, we do not accept these all things. We hear not. Romans 8:32 Ephesians 1:19, 20 Jeremiah 7:13, 25 What other things does God bestow upon us? All things that He sees to be needful and necessary for us, all good things, and more we should not desire. All things that could possibly be in a life of eternity. He has designed us for the inheritance of sons, of daughters. It is hard to be saved by comparison of all that God does for us and how little He asks of us. He asks that we believe when we hear the word, that we confess Him as Lord and Jesus as Christ, that we repent of our sins and be baptized for the remission of those sins and that we live holy lives before Him. That’s all. And yet we will dispute His truth in the face of what He says rather than do the simple things. After all He’s done for us. That is not saying the way will be easy. It won’t be because Jesus said the way was hard. We will be ridiculed, or worse, by unbelievers if we live our beliefs. We have to work to learn His word. We have to worship according to the pattern. The way isn’t easy, but think of how much He did to open the way for us. This is why it is hard to be saved...the nature of choice - some will choose not to follow God. Some will choose not to live holy lives. This is not what God wants; He wants all to be saved, but the nature of choice is that some won’t follow Him. Don’t be one of those who make the wrong choice. Isn’t it a wonder how our consideration of being saved meets with both a wonderfully profound and yet troubling thought. Christ did it all for us and yet we are told that we must strive, make every effort. Thank God that this effort does not at all minimize grace. It is hard to get through a narrow gate while it is opened and Jesus says it will be closed. And no convincing argument will open it. Salvation is not easy and it is not cheap. Take up your cross and see at what cost the count is...and ask yourself these hard questions...is it hard for me to be saved, and what must I do to be saved?

25 Minutes Most of us understand that we are justified by faith. But then we have a difficult time comprehending what that means. I Peter 4:18 Jesus Christ kept the law of God perfectly. He demonstrated perfect righteousness, and a life lived in the presence of God. Jesus was righteous and he earned righteousness for us in earnest to be drawn on at a later time. For that, he experienced for a brief pause, the substitutionary role of the guilty sinner, the penalty for breaking the law of God, which is separation from the presence of God. He became sin for us. The righteousness and life that Christ earned for us are still in the bank of heaven. Whosoever chooses to do so, may, by faith, in the name of Jesus Christ, draw righteousness and life from that account. We call this being justified by faith. By faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we can receive perfect righteousness in God’s sight with the hope of eternal life. In order to be free legally from our own obligation to the law of God, we must count ourselves as having died with Christ on the cross. We must portray this death. We must be born again. Many of us have been baptized by water and by the word. But not all of us have counted that as the end of our first life, our first personality. Many continue in the erroneous belief that God is going to save them as they are. God is not going to save anyone as he or she is. For us to be saved we must allow God to crucify us with Christ, we must die daily that we might have the newness of life in Christ. Until we and God accept the fact that we have been crucified with Christ, we are still under the law. We are not free to draw righteousness and life from the bank of heaven. We are to understand that salvation is not a one-time event. Salvation is a program of accessing faith to enter into grace. But find truth in the path of faith given in measure, for that faith is proportioned according to our abilities to measure to the full stature of Christ. Romans 10:14 It is hard to be saved if you do not believe the word of God. Salvation is dependent upon hearing, upon knowing the right word of truth. That right word is Christ. Most think the word of God means simply the bible and this causes many to loose their way making it hard to be saved. The word of God is the bible. And it is also and most certainly words that are prompted by the Holy Spirit to some who are chosen to preach, to teach the truths of God. The word of God is pure, and it is the seed of God. And those who teach, teach with words that cannot be broken from scripture. Many of the word of God is spoken that is not written, giving much increase to the truth of the word. Acts 4:31; 6:7; 12:24 Those that teach the word must do it according to the proportion of the grace of faith. There is the measure of faith dealt to every man. Let him that teaches set all the faith he hath to work, to impress the truths he teaches upon his own heart in the first place. And these expressed words of faith are manifestation of the truth as they bear record and testimony of Jesus Christ and of all things that are shown by God through reason and revelation. Jesus is the Word. That is who we teach. And to what end can the truth of Jesus come. As most people cannot hear well the word of God, so teachers cannot teach well, without faith in every word of God. Let him first believe and then speak. And the teacher must remember the proportion of faith. Though all were given some faith, a great many have become beside themselves. And therefore we must allow others to have a share of knowledge and ability to instruct, as well as we, even those that in less things differ from us. Have faith to thyself; and do not make it a ruling directive to others, remembering that ours is but our proportion. Our teaching must be according to the proportion of the doctrine of faith, the word, as it is revealed in the holy scriptures of the old and new testament. There are some staple-truths, plainly and uniformly taught in the scripture, which are the touchstone of teaching, by which we must prove all things, and then hold fast that which is good. Truths that are more revealing must be examined by those that are of more faith. And these truths are then entertained when they are found to agree and comport with the analogy of faith; for it is certain one truth can never contradict another. Here is what ought to be the great care of teachers, to teach sound doctrine, according to the form of wholesome words. It is not so necessary that the revelation be according to the proportion of the logic and rhetoric of another; but it is necessary that it be according to the proportion of faith as is measured by every word: for it is the word of faith that we are to teach. The works are to teach and to exhort. And this is proper to be done by the same person at the same time. And let him that teach, wait on teaching. Teaching is the bare explaining and proving of gospel truths, with practical application, as in the expounding of the scripture. Teaching and learning should not be of a different faith. Now he that has a faculty of teaching, and has undertaken that province, let him stick to it. It is a good gift, let him use it, and give his mind to it. He that teaches, let him be frequent and constant, and diligent in it; to apply gospel truths more closely to the case and condition of the people, and to press upon them that which is more practical through reasoning. Teaching requires a clear head and a warmer heart. God will only meet us at the cross. It is here where boldness is given us to come to the throne. A holy God who condescended to change to be like us that we might change to be like Him. Our change is into the image of Christ, and our entrance into untroubled rest in the center of God’s Person and will. Our change into the image of Christ comes about as the Holy Spirit puts our sinful nature to death, and Christ is formed in us. Neither is the easypath...it’s hard to be saved. We need the wisdom and the power of the Holy Spirit. We will have to enter into the suffering of Christ and God is going to allow Satan to place us in trials. Here is to be the patience of our perfection. And we need not wait until we have been perfected in our relationship to Jesus Christ, or are in his image, or are dwelling in untroubled rest in God’s will, in order to serve the Lord in the roles and tasks assigned to us today. It is our responsibility today to move by faith progress toward spiritual maturity. Spiritual maturity is the ability to judge what is good and what is evil, and the willingness and strength to embrace the good fervently and totally reject and renounce all that is evil. So why is it hard to be saved? The righteous are in contrast to the ungodly and the sinner. The righteous is the one who has put his faith in the blood atonement made by Jesus Christ rather than in the letter of the law and is laboring to live a godly life. This is not an ungodly, or a sinful person, though still a sinner, but a righteously justified person. We cannot overemphasize imputed righteousness. There are many professing believers who are wicked, who do ungodly things. There also are people who do not yet know Christ, for one reason or another, who practice righteousness. God will bring such to Christ in His time. God has a people who obeys the laws of conscience, places faith in Christ when Christ is presented to them, and then obeys the commandments of God as did Christ. Saving is a transforming morally, spiritually, and it has its beginning and ending on earth. It is to be released from the person and works of Satan, to have Christ formed in us, to be in the moral image of Christ, to have the Father and the Son dwell in our transformed inner nature, and to dwell in untroubled rest in the God’s will. It is to be released from the love of the world, from the lusts of the flesh, and from self-will and disobedience to God. God’s people are in a difficult task because of the means God uses to effect such transformation. Our sinful nature is reluctant to respond correctly to the sufferings that God employs to change us from Satan’s image to God’s image. The word informs us that judgment has begun in the house of God, and that this judgment consists of intense suffering, suffering designed to save the believer. We are saved by these fires of Divine judgment because they burn out of our personality what is of Satan. We find this program of salvation by judgment difficult because our sinful nature seeks continually to find its life in and of the world, in the lusts and passions of our flesh and soul, and in our self-will and personal ambitions. We find this program of salvation by judgment difficult because we desire to blame people, and even God Himself, rather than to humbly submit ourselves to God and remain in the prison of suffering where He places us for a short while. These trials are not punishment because we are continuing to sin, but are necessary for our purification because God desires to perfect our spirit. I Peter 4:1, 2, 12, 13