Days & Hours

[dave c]

HEALING SHELTER MINISTRIES #131v Re-Written 31JAN09 http://groups.msn.com/AHealingShelter/welcome.msnw

Save Me Today—Part Twenty-Two: Days And Hours

by rev dave c

The First Chapter of Romans contains a scathing indictment against a people of 2,000 years ago that fits our contemporary body politic like a three piece suit: 18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen. 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. 28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them (NIV).

“Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” Currently, many of our Federal Courts are an exercise in the dictatorial corruption of existing law—an exercise that advances a cultural agenda to loose the god of confusion, destruction and despair upon us all by reversing the intent and meaning of what is “good” and what is “bad.” Their rulings born of contemptuous pride are an endorsement, an empowerment, and an enforcement of practices that violate Holy Scripture, the basic tenets of common sense, and the legal traditions of this country. What ex cathedra judicial decree will be that one too many public declaration that sin is this nation’s normative behavior? What black-robed autocrat will bang his gavel in the humanistic arrogance of eclectic pragmatism one too many times and bring upon us the Divine judgment we so richly deserve?

God in His goodness does look away as we persistently drive Christian faith from out of the public arena for anything other than the feeding of the media lions of deception. God in His righteousness does not turn His head as we teach our children to be homosexuals and as we make a mockery of marriage. God in His holiness does not close His eyes as we literally worship the Devil through our insatiable lust and as we murder the resultant millions of innocent babies upon the surgical tables of his evil sacrificial altars. The wages of sin is death (Ro 6:23; NIV), and there are those in our country who are diligently working day and night to earn the just rewards of their wickedness. As per the heart’s desire of unbelievers to free themselves from the commands of God, God is setting them free— free to die by the sword, plague and famine (Je 34:17; NIV).

There is a day coming (perhaps today) when Jesus Christ, our risen Savior and Lord, will return to gather the children of God and to take His disciples out of this fallen world. When that day arrives (or, when our individual time to embrace the first death has come upon us), it will be too late for those who do not choose life. There will have been one too many days of prideful rebellion and God will honor the decision of all those who choose to spend eternity in the agony of a hell that was designed for Satan and his fallen angels. Regarding that day, Jesus tells us in Matthew 24:27, For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.... ...24:36 "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man (NIV). ..."Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour (Mt 25:13; NIV). Let us continually prepare out hearts and minds for that great day and that great hour with the prayer of David from Psalm 19:12-14, Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then will I be blameless, innocent of great transgression. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer