In the Old Testament the Israelites often needed divine help and protection. They were surrounded by unbelievers who attacked them and wanted to take away their land. Our situation today is more serious. As Jesus said it, and John told us literally in the first epistle which he wrote, many antichrists are all around us today. Satan is using them to try to wipe out the true church by false doctrines, and pretty soon by the powerful violence of the Antichrist who is coming and will cause the members of that true church to starve to death. For they will not be allowed to buy or to sell. Look up Revelation 13:16, 17 .
We need not fear the outcome. As our God says through Moses in Deuteronomy 33:37 , "The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them."
Take hold of that truth. Our eternal and almighty God has not for one split second of time ceased being our God. That means that He constantly gets His way. No one at any time or in any way spoils His work. His eternal counsel, His sovereign plan of what will and must happen, is always, in all that happens, being fulfilled in the smallest detail. His everlasting arms sent His Son into our flesh, but also to that cross. This was not a slip of His power. It was the work of His wisdom and love to realize our salvation.
Do not then have any fear as to what lies ahead. We are safe. And when the time He eternally decreed arrives, Christ will be sent back by Him to bring all the elect to the glory of His coming kingdom. The enemy may kill us physically, but that will serve to bring us out of all the vale of tears and sorrows and to bring our souls to glory. It will be a step in the way of sending His Son with that complete glory which He promised us.
Read: Psalm 46 .
Through the Bible in One Year
Read today:
Isaiah 33 ; Isaiah 34 ; Isaiah 35 ; Isaiah 36:1-22
Galatians 5:13-26
Psalm 64:1-10
Proverbs 23:23
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Quote for Reflection:
“For inasmuch as it (baptism) is given for the arousing, nourishing, and confirming of our faith, it is to be received as from the hand of the Author himself. We ought to deem it certain and proved that it is he who speaks to us through the sigh; that it is he who purifies and washes away sins and wipes out the remembrance of them; that it is he who makes us sharers in his death, who deprives Satan of his rule, who weakens the power of our lust; indeed, that it is he who comes unto a unity with us so that, having put on Christ, we may be acknowledged God’s children.” ~ John Calvin, The Institutes
