Please remember that you bless us with your presence, and may the Holy Spirit bring you His comfort and His peace. Join us!!!
Zoom Link:
For Study, Prayer and Fellowship - 8:00 AM PDT on 07/12/2025:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82968961343?pwd=LzcwVjJKcWVESDRURlhDcXlNV0JUdz09
Meeting ID: 829 6896 1343
Passcode: 77299ere:
07/12/2025 – Prologue - [Rom. 12:2] “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.” This verse encourages us to resist conforming to the culture and mindset of the world. Instead, we are called to be transformed by the renewing of our minds through the truth of God’s Word. By aligning our thoughts and beliefs with God’s truth, we are able to discern and understand His will for our lives. This involves actively seeking to understand and follow God’s ways, rather than being influenced by the culturalnorms and values that contradict His truth.
History, like individual life, is essentially the drama of warfare between good and evil. Time began in [Gen. 1]. “In the beginning God created heaven and earth. [Gen. 1:1] However, history began in [Gen. 3]. “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden.’?” [Gen. 3:1] Evil is not trivial. Therefore, its first inventor cannot be trivial. Christ took Satan very seriously. If fear of Satan is foolish, and if Christ taught it, and if Christ is God, then God is foolish. Christ gave us only one prayer and its concluding line is, “but deliver us from the evil one.” (In Latin – sed libre nos a malo.) [Matt. 6:13b]
Real evil is magnetically attractive. He is not in disguise as a silly character – red skin, horns, a leer and a pitchfork. He comes masquerading as, “an angel of light.” [2Cor 11:14] He is more formidable than anything we have seen in this world. Martin Luther tells it very correctly in his iconic hymn, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Yes, Satan is formidable and doomed! Everyone knows Satan whether consciously or unconsciously. We cannot underestimate Satan. The real presence of Satan is warlike hate. It is important to listen to the content and delivery of the progressive left. Coarse, demeaning, bellicose, provocative. The real presence of Jesus is peace and love. Satan is a darkness that worldly light cannot comprehend and cannot overcome. Jesus is a light that worldly darkness cannot comprehend and cannot overcome. [John 1:5] Look at the 20th C. It was a century of genocide. A century in which 100 million lives were taken by despots: Auschwitz, Hiroshima, the Gulag, Ukraine, Armenia, Rwanda, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Sudan. Stalin famously said, “One death is a tragedy, ten million is a statistic.” He was referring to his famine in Ukraine. In reality this is the work of the devil because there is an absolute absence of remorse in those guilty of such outstanding evil. Satan does his part through human instruments and then disappears, meanwhile the killers feel no guilt, it is as if they are mere spectators.
Saints are filled with an overload of human goodness. It follows, though not generally recog-nized, that the persons who committed the atrocities above are filled with overwhelming human evil. Paul said, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” [Gal. 2:20] Hitler, Stalin or Mao could have paraphrased Paul, by saying, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Satan who lives within me.” We must also be aware that these atrocities did not happen in some remote backwater, the Holodomor, Ukraine 1932 -33, (holod – hunger; mor - extermination) and the Holocaust, Germany 1938 – 1945, (holo - whole; caust- to burn) happened in the heartland of Western civilization. The Germans were not shocked over the disclosure of the Holocaust.
Fast forward to 01/22/1973 and the approval of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. That was the beginning of the abortion era in America. Since then, in 53 years 63,000,000 babies have been killed. Could we call that the American Holocaust? Perhaps a more accurate name would be Holomor (holo – whole; mor - extermination). Vast portions of Americans are not even shocked by the magnitude of that slaughter. This lack of shock is an even greater victory by Satan. He is more pleased with killing consciousness than killing bodies. “To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted.” [Titus 1:15] Some claim the century (20th), a century of killing, is behind us. But is it? Could we change directions in the 21st C.? Is there a revival in our future? Only God knows the direction of our culture.
As we entered the 20th C. (1900) some church leaders were touting the coming century as the Christian Century. How did that prophecy turn out? Coincidentally, we had already learned Satan’s lessons. The first lesson is that success brings forth failure. We had given up on the martyr’s blood of our Savior, as the church became fat, comfortable and successful. We lost sight of the fact that the martyr's blood is the seed of the church. Whenever humans gain power, they gain corruption and they forget that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. What happened to ancient Israel happened to modern Christianity. There is a line that can be drawn through repentance and obedience, which turn into blessings, which turn into luxury and pride, which turn into destruction and misery. Strangely the misery turns us toward repentance and the cycle repeats itself. What happens if we are aware? We realize we are as indestructible as Satan.
Here are some staggering examples. China opened its doors to Christian missionaries at the beginning of the 1900s. Some fifty odd years later China gave rise to the maddest of all killers Mao Zedong who led the Chinese to: overthrow the Chiang dynasty, a closed society and the killing of 80,000,000 Chinese. As Mao rose to power there were 2 million Christian Chinese. When he died there were 50 million Christians. Persecution opened the floodgates of Christian conversion. In Catholic Poland when under the anti-God communists took suppressive control the Poles knuckled under to most of the oppressive regulations, but they refused to take their crucifixes out of the classrooms – even when lives were threatened. Today in a free Poland, the strident demand is for Abortions. In self-indulgent America, where everyone claims the right to freedom, but not to virtue, the most popular song on the lips of those entering hell is, “I did It My Way.”
The second lesson is that we must divide and conquer. The church was one for a millennium. However, 1000 years after the death of Christ – 1054 AD the church split in two, but the most successful attack came in only one-half of a millennium later in 1517 when that division caused the eruption of 20,000 different denominations. Evil divides and conquers because it is easier to divide than to unite. But what will happen in the third millennium? The first millennium was unity; the second was disunity; and the third ???? Logically – what if two churches contradict each other, two contradictions cannot both be true and we are unable to unite a true and a false. If they compromise they are further weakened. Pushed to its extreme the number of individuals and churches will be equal. No nation can win external battles while a civil war rages. And the challenge becomes more intense: division between churches is just one of three; The next division is within each church between the faithful and the dissenters. Had the dissenters left they would not have been as effective. Now the dissenters stay, committing random acts of sabotage – unfortunately that has been more effective. To Be Continued! AMEN
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