Jesus said, “The words that I speak to you, they are spirit and they ARE LIFE!” (John 6:63). If one really and truly believes that he will be drawn to the Word of God like a moth in summer is drawn to your burning porch light. The Word of God is like the radio signal beacon that guides a pilot flying by his aircraft’s instruments. It keeps the believer on course to God and eternal life. Many who say they are “believers” merely believe Jesus Christ is God’s Son and died to save them. But that’s about as far as their faith, or belief, goes. It really doesn’t dictate how they live their lives. They pass through life carried about by whatever wind of doctrine popular at the time.
Some of the first counsel Jesus gave His followers was to warn them to “beware of false prophets!” Many seem to think a false prophet, preacher, or minister must be flagrantly false. If the guy has a diamond ring on each finger, drives a Rolls-Royce and lives in a three million dollar mansion, then he must be a false prophet. But what if he drives a beat up Chevy and lives in a modest home? Jesus said, “By their fruits you shall know them.” A prophet or preacher’s fruit is primarily his message, what he says. But one must have a good understanding and knowledge of God’s Word himself in order to rightly determine if the message he is hearing is what God’s Word actually says and teaches. Through His prophet Isaiah, God says, “If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (See Isaiah 8:20). But one must know that Word in order to gauge whether someone is really saying what God’s Word actually says.
It should become apparent to the thinking person that God really isn’t trying to “save the world” at this time. Do you honestly think that earth, mankind in general, has witnessed God’s best efforts to save the world, that all who have lived and are now living have already had a full and fair opportunity to avail themselves of establishing a relationship with their Creator? Do you think that through the likes of Jesse Duplantis and Benny Hinn God is offering those who hear such charlatans their only opportunity to escape eternal death and be granted immortality? How was a Mohawk Indian living in what is now upper New York state in the 17th Century to determine if the village medicine man was really a true prophet of the Great Spirit? How many BILLIONS of humans lived out their relatively short lifespans having no knowledge whatsoever of a nation called Israel, a book called the Bible, or a Jewish rabbi named Jesus. What if you were born a Chinese peasant in the 9th Century, or a Persian warrior in the 8th Century B.C.? What if the day Jesus was born in Bethlehem you yourself were born in the Congo, or on a South Pacific island? Twenty years later your circle of life ended and you died knowing absolutely nothing of the one true God or the possibility of living forever. What would be your fate? Folks, don’t you see the call to come to God for all such would have to be a future call? The offer of eternal life to all such would have to be future!!!!
It is in the world to come God promises “I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy, and I will say to them which were not my people, ‘You are my people,’ and they shall say, ‘Your are my God.'” (See Hosea 2:23). When God says, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy” in Romans 9:15 many stop reading at that point and remain unaware that in Romans 11 God promises that eventually He will “have mercy upon all!” (See Romans 11:32). Someday all the Jewish people now cut off from God will be grafted back in to the house of spiritual Israel. Yes, even all those millions slaughtered by Hitler’s Third Reich! Folks fail to read the Hebrew prophets carefully. “And MANY NATIONS shall come, and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths,’ for the law shall go forth out of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” (See Micah 4:2). “For the earth (India, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, etc.) shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (See Habakkuk 2:14). False religion will be a thing of the past. A Christianity divided into dozens of denominations will be no more.
The light of God’s Word addresses such issues marvelously. But most live the whole of their lives without pondering the words of God spoken through His prophets, His Son, and His apostles. They are mostly interested in the now and the material. Eternal things are beyond their scope of interest. But such is the human condition. But to those of us who are NOW called to have our minds opened, God demands our loyalty and obedience. And, if more time is needed for us to get it together, to get our houses in order, so to speak, more time will be given and our lives extended. God help you to understand.
Christ’s Faithful Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),
Donald Wiley