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Two Questions That Jesus Asked
TWO VERY IMPORTANT QUESTIONS BY JESUS
‘. . .many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.’
‘Then said Jesus unto the twelve, ‘Will ye also go away?’ (John 6:66-67)
‘And the Lord said. . . ‘when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?’ (Luke 18:6a, 8)
A FALLING AWAY IS COMING!
The apostle Paul wrote about the final days in 2 Thessalonians 2: 1-3
‘Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
A falling away of Christians from their faith is already here and will escalate until the return of Christ. There will be NO revival before the tribulation, though many pastors believe otherwise. The end time revival in the Bible refers to the saints in white robes that John saw in heaven, who were martyred and ‘came out of great tribulation’, the saints who did not worship and take the mark of the beast (Rev 7:13-14). Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible suggests this falling away group of 2Thess 2:1-3 are the fallen Christians who worshipped the beast, took his mark and their ‘names are not written in the book of life. . .’ (Rev 13:8).
Fallen away Christians abandon Biblical truths and accept a false gospel and/or forsake and renunciate their Christian faith. Many volumes of books have been written on the subject of the end time apostasy and sermons have been preached on this phenomenon taking place before our eyes. The falling away has been occurring in America and world-wide over the past decades and is escalating in our day. The Barna Group reports that churches in America and throughout the world are experiencing declining church membership. They say that although the majority (71 percent) of those polled in 2016 claim to be ‘Christian’, only one out of three is a ‘practicing Christian’ according to their criteria, which includes church attendance at least once a month. More and more churches are nearly empty and many are closing, shutting their doors and hanging a sign ‘Church Closed’ like in a vision I saw a few years ago.
Jesus is asking us the same two questions today and I believe the answers to these two questions will probably go like this:
‘Will you leave me also?’ ‘I sure hope not!’
‘Will I find faith on earth when I return?’ ‘I sure hope so!’
ARE YOU AT HIGH RISK FOR FORSAKING CHRIST AND FALLING AWAY?
A brief checklist of high risk Christians includes those who:
- Trust man’s teachings without knowing what is in God’s Word, the Holy Bible.
- Prefer mainly feel good sermons, but not sermons speaking against sin.
- Accept a church which adapts to the changing American culture and world views, but not stick with the Truth.
- Are comfortable with LGBT ministers preaching and/or LGBT musicians leading worship.
- Have little personal interest in reading/studying the Bible, and having a prayer life.
- Enjoy worldly church entertainment; ‘love the world and the things of the world’ (1 John 2:15).
DECEPTION AND IGNORANCE OF GOD’S WORD
In Matthew chapter 24:4, 5, 11, 24, Jesus warned that deception would abound before His coming. The deceivers are charismatic and smooth talking Bible teachers and prophets that move in our circles. They are among us as tares mixed in with the wheat, as goats among the sheep; they are wolves in sheep clothing. These false teachers will be teaching and preaching from our pulpits and will deceive many with false doctrines and turn many away from Biblical truths. Ignorance goes hand in hand with deception. Many will believe a lie because they have no knowledge of the Truth; if they knew the Truth then they would recognize the false. The armour of God in Eph 6:10-18 would serve no good purpose without knowledge of having a weapon and knowing how to use it. The ‘sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God’ (Eph 6:17) completes the whole armour needed to wield and put the enemy to flight. The only protection from deception and falling away from our faith is our knowledge of the scriptures that relate to our ‘blessed hope’, our salvation, and assurance that we will be ready to join Christ at His Coming.
‘Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needed not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.’ (2 Tim 2:15)
Since Jesus has not returned yet, there is still a chance to REPENT, RETURN, AND REMAIN with Him, but after He comes back as He promised He would, it will be too late to accept Him.
Please read more about Apostasy and Deception in the Church-
www.barna.com/research/state-church-2016/
Barna Group research on churches
Please GOOGLE title- ‘Last Days Revival or End Time Apostasy’ Congregation Shima Yisrael, Oct. 11, 2012
Please GOOGLE title- ‘What is apostasy and how can I recognize it?’
Also go to blog TOP BAR
Please see TABS– DECEPTION HOT LINE, END TIMES TEACHING- Deception,
SHOFAR EBOOK- CHAPTER 7 Watchmen on the Wall https://heulu.wordpress.com/2012/11/06/repent-return-and-remain-with-god-shofar-ebook-chapter-7/
WHY DO PEOPLE RESIST GOD?
Why do people resist God? They have eyes, but don’t see!
Edited 7-26-15
This post concerns those who “have eyes, but don’t see and ears that don’t hear” (Mark 8:18). It is about NON-BELIEVERS, especially about those family members, relatives and close friends who are not yet in the sheepfold. Many are ‘good people’ and could even be your own family members who have dismissed God from their conversation and not let Him have any part of their lives. They could be others who know little or nothing about God, some even from their youth to adult life. They have either purposedly avoided any talk of religion around you, not included Christians in their social circles, or have had any kind of Christian or religious talk they heard to ‘go in one ear and out the other ear’. Many non-believers are not hostile to God necessarily, but would take personal offence and brush off anyone wanting to pursue any talk about God or the salvation message, saying something like “I don’t need that” and cut off the conversation right away.
I believe that it takes more faith to NOT believe in God than to believe in Him. When I was teaching elementary grades in a church school there was a book in our classroom library that drew the attention of the students in the beginning of the school year. This was before I taught them the Bible account of the creation of man. It was a very old volume of the Reader’s Digest History of Man. The page that was opened up showed the evolutionary stages of man. I am sure it was more than the naked human body that fascinated fourth-graders. The centerfold displayed an adult chimpanzee/gorilla on all four’s rising up, losing his fur coat in stages, becoming a hairy and grotesque cave man, to standing as homo erectus, a primitive big headed and wild looking specimen of the homo sapien human species of which we were said to belong to. The debate about the history of man still continues today among the most learned men in the world. But with believers in Christ it is a simple matter of faith in God’s Word, that the creation of the world and creation of man took place as God said it did in Genesis.
Why do some people plain outright resist God’s grace? This is what Drgold and I have been discussing lately. We talk about these folks who debunk Christianity, do not acknowledge God, and simply want to not have anything at all to do with God. They made it on their own thus far and have no need for Him, neither does it appear that they have any interest in their mortality or afterlife that they would speak of. That is what they say, but they do believe in doctors and medicine to stay well and to deal with their health issues, and they want to prolong their lives for as long as they can with diet, exercise, etc.
Non-believers are really believers. Non-believers believe in something; they believe in THEMSELVES. Though they may not say it, they believe “I am my own god.” Their god is themselves. They are consumed with the spirit of secular humanism which has pervaded the minds of all non-believers in this present generation living today. This particular life philosophy is about elevating self interests and self motivations above all else. It means to consider ‘self first, others last’; it means ‘do it if it feels good’, ‘charge today and pay later’, ‘live for today’-that kind of thinking. All of the problems in our personal lives, homes, churches, jobs, communities, nation and the world can be attributed to replacing God’s will for one’s own self will and not obeying God. This is what the Bible says is of foremost importance, from Mt 22:36-40:
“Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Dealing With A Non-believer. My husband and I have talked about how a close relative whom we have interceded for 40 years and tried to speak to about Jesus, still rejects God’s precious gift of salvation and eternal life. He claims to be an atheist. He is an intellectual and retired scientist who recently has had serious health conditions that put him near death’s door. He ‘tolerates’ my husband’s prayers for him, but dismisses any talk about God and salvation. Before his latest major surgery we implored him to trust God and accept Jesus as his Savior, but he said he doesn’t believe in God so ” I cannot do it”. According to the Bible, he is a FOOL for “The fool says in his heart, there is no God” (Psalm 14:1; 53:1) Why does he resist God? I think he is fearful, afraid to open his mind to FAITH when in his whole life he has been guided by human reason, his own intellect. He is likely to struggle with Hebrews 11:1 which says, “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” Rom 1: 18 states,
“For the preaching of the cross is foolishness to them that perish; but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God.”
Unbelievers are FEARFUL FOOLS who resist God because they have “eyes that don’t see and ears that don’t hear.” Spiritual blindness is the ‘spiritual disease’ of those resisting the truth. Many people can be so dead set in their anti-God way of thinking that they cannot be persuaded to believe or consider another perspective. They are afraid to think otherwise. Even when Paul was preaching Christ with King Agrippa, the king said, “you have almost persuaded me to be a Christian.” (Acts 26:28) There is no true atheist who does not believe in a god. An atheist does have his own religion. He has made himself his own god. He believes in himself as his god. And as far as God goes, he believes there is no god that he knows of that has been proven to him to be God. Until God reveals himself to him, so-called atheists will claim atheism or more accurately, agnosticism.
God is able to save our unbelieving loved ones and friends so that they will not spend eternity in hell and the lake of fire! There is hope for those with spiritual blindness. There are many testimonies of those who rejected God’s will for their lives, but were rescued from going the broad way to hell. God knows how far we can go before He will rein us in as He did with Saul of Tarsus who became the great apostle for God, and as the prodigal son who ‘came to his senses’ and returned home to his father. (Luke 15:17-18) Saul of Tarsus, a religious zealot and murderer of Christians whom God saved became a firebrand in evangelizing the known world in his time. He was spiritually blind, struck with physical blindness, then given his sight back so he could go forth to reveal the TRUTH. Jesus came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10). God is long suffering, desiring all to be saved and none lost (1 Tim 2:4). We continue to pray for and stand on God’s Word that God will intervene and our fearful, foolish, and spiritually blind relatives and friends will be spared from the fires of hell and will be added to God’s family before it is too late!
Read testimonies of God’s love and grace: https://heulu.wordpress.com/2012/09/02/the-man-who-was-mad-at-god/ https://heulu.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/my-testimony-and-an-amazing-story/ https://heulu.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/how-to-live-forever-the-90-year-old-man/
NOTE: 7/26/15 SEE ‘More On ‘Why Do People Resist God?’ https://heulu.wordpress.com/2015/07/26/more-on-why-do-people-resist-god/
God's Enduring Love 