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Why is it Foolish to those who hear?::By Zachary Everett
A nudge from the Lord Jesus Christ to share something in these final days of this age. The world is racing to the abyss, even as I write this the war in the Middle East has now expanded further into the Red Sea. We can only imagine how long it will be before Israel and Hezbollah unleash their weapons upon each other and bring chaos to the Middle East. At every turn it seems wars… economic collapse… natural disaster… and social meltdown are nearing the tipping point.
One can wonder why… why when one hears the words of salvation from the Bible and what Jesus Christ did on the cross for our sins… they… the lost reject it. Even as the world burns around them the cross is considered foolish to them. “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)
Can any one of us imagine why even as everything falls apart around those who hold on to this world they still will not turn to the salvation that Jesus Christ offers freely. Maybe its pride, the love of sin, ignorance, philosophical standing, or it’s just something they can’t wrap their mind around… that God Almighty in his infinite wisdom saw the cross as the only way to bring salvation to every mortal soul on this earth. That no other way would suffice…
If you are on the fence on what the cross means to you and why God Almighty chose this path for your salvation… let me share this with you from an artist who recently became a born-again believer in Jesus Christ and who came to understand the debt of sin.
“None of us is capable of comprehending the deep sinfulness of our minds, the cosmic divide we willfully cause between us and God. Every day we spit in the face of the perfectly just, good and righteous Creator, who made us and all things, by preferring pointless pleasures in life over His glory. We Prefer everything in the world over him. We prefer ourselves over him. We lie, we covet, we’re angry and envious and self-exalting and proud.
But even the tiniest trespass against an infinitely Holy being would deserve an infinite judgement. Then what about the never-ending torrent of sins we commit, daily? An infinitely just and Holy being would cast all such creatures as far away from himself as possible, for all eternity.
What can any of us do to repay our sins and earn a place with God? Nothing, No amount of finite “good deeds” as offerings can pay off that infinite mountain of sin debt we build ourselves. Sins of infinite severity can only be atoned by something of infinite value. And the only thing with infinite value is God.
And thus, because the almighty God is not only a perfectly just God, but a loving, merciful God, he has freely given us the atonement. By sacrificing His eternal son Jesus the Christ, God himself in the flesh. The lamb of God, who willingly went to be crucified in our stead for our sins, and rose from the dead conquering death itself.
No works can earn you salvation, only the free gift of mercy that is given by admitting our sinfulness, through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ the Lord and Savior.”
-Minna Sundbeng
The signs are all around us! This age as so many brothers and sisters have said is rapidly coming to an end. Time is very short, 2024 is here and events are moving faster then many thought possible. Don’t stay on the fence and think the message of the cross is foolish. The Lord Almighty has offered you a path to an amazing future beyond your wildest dreams through his son Jesus Christ.
Remember… Tomorrow may not come… but with Jesus Christ you will have eternity!
God Bless
Zachary
Sodom-likeness Grows
The homosexual lobby in the days of Lot in Sodom, according to the nineteenth chapter of Genesis, must have indeed been in control of city government—and of all other aspects of city life. This is likely because Lot was a high official in city government. He sat in the gate to Sodom as a judge, a position from which he adjudicated business matters and, I presume, other matters of judicial interest.
The homosexual men of Sodom showed no deference to or regard for Lot in surrounding his home and demanding that he send out the man’s visitors who appeared as men, but were angels sent by God to assess what was going on in the wicked city. We can therefore assume that these blatant, would-be rapists were fully in charge and unafraid of consequences for their rapacious activities once the sun went down. A city judge’s (Lot’s) guests were to be their victims.
The comparison I wish to draw between America today and ancient Sodom is that the homosexual lobby, although insignificant in constituting a percentage of the American population, has become a powerful influence over everything from business and law to entertainment and government, and even religion. Most troubling is that the homosexual lobby is becoming a devilish intrusion into American family life.
We know of the stories of the current presidential administration allowing—or instructing—the FBI to investigate the matter of a number of public schools introducing pornographic sexual curriculum to minors. The salacious material is not just heterosexual in nature, but it more and more involves homosexual inculcation.
The Sodom-likeness part of all this is that the FBI agents, in many cases, aren‘t sent into the school boards and other forums to investigate those who are introducing these inappropriate themes to under-age kids without parents’ permission. Rather, the agents are sent to investigate and charge (with various levels of domestic terroristic threatening) the parents who object to the wickedness.
Government and the homosexual-controlled cabal are often intricately linked. A growing number of officials are like the ones must have been in the city government of Lot’s day. They join in moving ever farther into evil conduct, against which the Lord is bound to bring judgment at some point.
A pertinent report and analysis grabbed my attention in considering all of the above. It is quite telling as to where we stand on God’s prophetic timeline, I think.
Biden wants to essentially ban Christians from adopting foster care children based on their religious beliefs and opposition to radical LGBTQ ideology. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has proposed a new rule that would prohibit families who do not support LGBTQ ideology from caring for foster children.
According to the Social Security Act, federally funded foster care agencies must provide “safe and proper care” for foster children. The United States Administration for Children and Families (ACF), a division within HHS, proposed that foster families meet three specific criteria to ensure that LGBTQ-identifying children are in a “safe” and “nurturing” home.
Those criteria essentially force Christian parents to affirm a child’s pretend gender as opposed to supporting children truthfully based on their biological sex and providing them appropriate support and resources to move away from the radical leftist ideology that pushes hormones, sex changes and mutilation of children to conform to its extreme sexual agenda.
“Responding to the radical proposal, 19 Republican attorneys general are pushing the Biden administration to back down on a new rule they say will effectively exclude Christian families from fostering kids and jeopardize the foster care system nationwide,” Fox News reports.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, along with 18 of his GOP colleagues, sent a letter Monday to the Department of Health and Human Services alerting them that a new proposed rule that alters requirements for foster care families violates the Constitution and discriminates against people who practice the Christian faith. (“Joe Biden Wants to Ban Christian Families from Adopting Children in Foster Care,” Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com, November 28, 2023)
This proposed new rule hits home particularly hard with my wife and me. Although we weren’t given official foster-care responsibility because we were the age of grandparents rather than parents, we were asked a number of years ago by local government people to temporarily care for a young girl because of her family’s terrible situation. We still think of her as a grandchild, although she is now twenty years old.
We saw firsthand the public education and its effect in less-than-favorable light when, at eleven years old, she informed us she should be a boy, not a girl. This is what she was told by those in authority at school. And ours is a small city in the South, and quite conservative.
Of course, we had quite a bit of conversation and loving counsel with our little girl. She grew up and out of that inculcation she had received, although she still suffers from that time of such teaching in public schools—adding to her biological family’s troubles.
Today, my wife and I would probably be charged with some kind of criminal neglect, at the very least, for going against some teacher’s instructions, the way things in America are going with such teaching by some still allowed, and with proposed rules such as that above.
This illustrates how very important is the need for Christian influence, thus Holy Spirit restraint, in this age, during which the Antichrist spirit is growing exponentially.
Just like in Lot’s day, the Lord of Heaven must be on the very cusp of calling believers to Himself in the clouds of Glory. I believe with all that is within my spirit that every child below the age of accountability will go to Christ when He summons His Church (see Revelation 4:1, when the Apostle John was so summoned.)
Be sure you are part of that blessed throng of believers who are caught up in the Rapture. Here is how to be certain you will:
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10:9–10)
God’s Prophecy Not Enough?
People have, over the years–following the completed Word of God, with its 66 books–made predictions based upon dreams and, less frequently, upon visions. Despite all of the twisting of logic and rewriting of historical record, both recent and of the past that is far removed from the present, the non-biblical dreams and visions have proved to be non-events.
Oh, people can find things supposedly fulfilled within the quatrains written by the French “seer” Nostradamus. His and others’ “prophesies” are declared by many as having come to pass, as demonstrated by the rise of Adolf Hitler and the advent of other “foretold” regimes and events.
I have heard stories of blazing fires in the major cities of the U.S., “prophesied” by both well-known and lesser-known preachers of various stripes. America was going to be judged and destroyed by God’s mighty hand in the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. Now there are predictions –and I get them constantly through e-mail–of the most horrendous fate imaginable for the United States, based upon dreams of the most detailed variety. As one example, dream date-setters missed January 23, 2006, on just such a prediction. A married couple saw at the time all of the things we’ve been warned about –American cities aflame, getting exactly what she deserves. They saw the dreams that were almost identical, so the story goes. January 23 of that year was to be America’s judgment day. Defenders of the couples missing the target proclaimed at the time that their appeals for prayers that the Lord would spare the nation and give America another chance were likely the reason the dreams didn’t become reality.
Now, folks, may I say this as gently as possible? What sort of fodder does such dream stuff –which is always claimed to emanate from the very throne of God—give Satan’s army in this fallen world that he so effectively rules already? Is it not time to stop disseminating these bad cases of nocturnal indigestion during somnolence –or whatever is prompting such utter nonsense? Do we never learn that these are not from the Lord our God, after every single one of the “prophecy–dreams” have failed to produce a single proof of their validity?
I get them every week. If every one I’ve been sent just since January 1 of this year came true within the time allotted, you wouldn’t be reading this. But, I wouldn’t be writing it, either! We would all be finished! A bit of prayerful and well-studied speculation is within the realm of being good “watchmen,” as Jesus exhorted in Mark 13: 37 and Luke 21: 28.
We are sometimes given insights –even “visions” that validate a Bible prophecy yet future, I’ve come to understand since my own near-death experience of Good Friday, April 22, 2011. In that case, the Holy Spirit has reinforced my understanding from the Bible that the Pre-Trib Rapture is the Truth regarding God’s future Plans for His Son’s Bride, the Church. (My book HeavenVision: Glimpses into Glory, details that fully-documented event in my life. Click here to view on Amazon.
But dreams and visions that are extra-biblical –that give some “prophetic utterance,” not found in the Bible, are not right to either issue or receive. They are either bad spaghetti, absolute falsehoods, or “dreams and visions” that emanate from somewhere other than from the throne room of God.
God’s “dreams and visions,” you see, ALWAYS COME TRUE! They do so through God’s Omniscient Foreknowledge and timing, not man’s!
My apologies for seeming to scream at you in this cyber text, but we’ve got to realize that dreams and visions that are not already in God’s Word–the Bible—are, well, not from His Son, Jesus Christ, the Living Word. His prophecy ALWAYS comes true –every time, without exception. And that prophecy is based upon the consistent principles laid out plainly in the Word He left us in the form of God’s great love letter, the Holy Bible.
“We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction” (2 Pet. 1: 19-2: 1).
I know the cry that will be forthcoming. “That same Bible says: ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams’” (Acts 2:17).
Agreed. Very strong proof text that these dreams will again be in effect, following the Bible’s completion, when the last prophet wrote the last prophecy.
But, to understand Acts 2:17, we must also understand that the following, in this New Testament passage, is taken from the Old Testament, which puts it in proper context.
“And it shall come to pass afterward, [that] I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams” (Joel 2:28).
This is what is meant by the above Scripture, “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.” Scripture must be interpreted by Scripture. Scripture must be looked at in total context; it cannot be dissected and used any way the user wishes.
So what does this earlier passage in Joel say, to give context to the latter in Acts? The key is given by the words: “And it shall come to pass afterward…” Specifically, the operative word is “afterward.”
The Word of God plainly teaches in the preceding 27 passages and before that the day of the Lord–the tribulation–must first have taken place. These wondrous “dreams and visions” for a time yet future are for the glorious days of the millennium!
Still, I realize I will get all kinds of arguments about this. So, let me just ask those who would do the rock throwing: “Where are your dreams and visions that have come 100 percent–or even 10 percent–true, by Bible standards, God’s standards?”
These exercises in hyperbole and sensationalism must stop, for the sake of the Gospel of Christ. Let us simply watch and try to determine the times and seasons we are in, so far as God’s prophetic timeline is concerned. But, let us do so through God’s microscope of Bible truth. Let’s not try to build personal reputations upon false prognostications –or bad pizza.
Terry James Prophecy Line 