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Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name. (Revelation 3:12) |
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Philadelphia was one of the better churches as measured by its works. |
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Christ appeared to this church as the Holy and True, the Holder of the Key of David, the One with the authority and power to open and shut regardless of the efforts of people. |
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Maybe we are in this church today. Maybe the emphasis today is on holiness and truth. |
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We do see in the churches what may be an unprecedented emphasis on binding and loosing in the Spirit. But holy behavior and truth must come first if we are to avoid the spirit of the False Prophet. |
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The power of Christ must never be exercised apart from the moral image of Christ. |
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We don't have to worry about the doors for missionary work being closed. The problem today is with the churches. When we repent and begin to live righteously, seeking the Presence of the Lord instead of running off to try to do the work of the Kingdom in our own strength, every door will open that Christ wants open. |
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There are numerous people in our churches who have every appearance of being "Jews," that is, members of God's elect. (We are not speaking of Jews by race.) |
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Peter and Jude have much to say about the deceivers among us. When Jude speaks of the Lord coming with His army of saints to judge the wicked he is referring to the wicked in the churches. Check the context! |
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We do not like to think about it but just about every Christian assembling has Korahs and Absaloms in it. |
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As John says, they go out from us because they never were of us. Socially this is very difficult to adjust to. Let me tell you this. The people who will remain in your assembling, if it really is an assembling of the Lord, are those who are related to Christ and His Word. All who are part of the assembling but related to it on a social basis or for some other reason will finally be offended and leave. The Lord knows those who are His. His holy fire will discover and burn away the chaff. |
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In the Christian assemblings there are many who are present for social and other reasons, and then there are the victorious saints. Periodically, there come divisions between the two kinds of believers. Because of the social bonds between the two groups there is much grief and pain over the rending and tearing that occurs. |
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You can imagine the ripping of the social environment when Korah and a number of leaders of the assembling defied Moses and Aaron. Even after the ground swallowed up the rebels the congregation grumbled and gathered together against Moses and Aaron for harming "the people of the Lord." Can you imagine? How dumb could they be? |
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To be continued. |
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Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee. (Revelation 3:9) |
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But Korah was well liked and highly respected. Dathan was always ready to help older people with putting up and taking down their tent. Abiram was a roly poly little guy who loved kids. He would make animal sounds and amuse the babies. His wife, Adah, was known for visiting the sick and bringing them soup and other things they needed. (You realize, of course, I'm making all this up. But it was something like this!) |
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The Jews saw the ground tremble and then open. Their beloved friends and neighbors with their small children fell into the chasm screaming. |
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"Moses was sore at them because they wouldn't do everything he said. He always wants to be the bigshot. Look what he's done to our friends!" |
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And then Absalom. Look how ready the Israelites were to forsake King David! Talk about stupidity! But then Absalom was tall and handsome. The Bible says he did not have pimples or anything like that, and he had glossy black hair that fell down over his shoulders. He always had a kind word and a handshake for everyone, rich, or poor. Absalom was smooth! |
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Did Absalom really think he would begin to prophesy and write psalms once he was king? And why were the Jews so willing to forsake the greatest of their kings? |
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As Joab pointed out, David was more concerned over his faithless son Absalom than he was over the rest of the Israelites. These kinds of uproars happen and they test our relationship to the Lord. |
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The Lord's people are blind and as ready to follow a self-serving deceiver as they are a true servant of the Lord. It is the people of Israel, the Lord's elect, who stone the prophets. |
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The day will soon be here when we will be able to distinguish between those who have been faithful to the Lord, and the Korahs and Absaloms. |
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Before the Lord returns all that is false will be removed from the Bride. God will do it, so we do not have to destroy our joy by fretting over the deceivers in our midst. |
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The "synagogue of Satan" will yet worship God in the presence of the true saints and realize to their horror they have harmed those whom Christ loves. |
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There is coming an hour of temptation (if it is not already here). Sin will be so approachable, so accessible, that numerous believers and their pastors will fall. The availability of pornography on the Internet, for example, is an illustration of unprecedented temptation. |
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Who will be guarded by Christ? Those who have kept the word of His patience. The exercise of infinite patience is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the true saint. As we have stated before, the man or woman of God is made in the period of time between the onset of a desire and its fulfillment. Those who cannot wait for God are not among the true saints of the Lord. |
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To be continued. |
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Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. (Revelation 3:10) |
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If we are willing to guard the word of Christ's patience Christ is willing to guard us during the hour of temptation. The majority of believers will turn away from God in the last days because of the abundance of available sin. |
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The Lord always comes quickly. To us it seems forever, as we wait for Him. But just compare the few miserable years of our life with the scope of eternity. Be patient! |
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You were given eternal life, a portion of Christ, and a crown of glory when you received the Lord. Your task is to hold your position in Christ. |
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All day long a chorus of voices will ask you, in one manner or another, to come down from your high place in God. It is the highest of all places in the spirit realm, but on the earth it is seen as a cross. |
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Satan and his demons will use every device they can think of to get your eyes off the Lord, to get you down from your high place, your place of rulership. It is your responsibility to use all the grace God is offering you to hold your position. |
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"Come down! Look at this! Isn't this wonderful! If you only had this! They are coming to kill you in the night! Do you think you are going to keep on being a Christian, what a laugh! This brother is going to harm you! That sister is gossiping about you! God wants you to be happy! Have fun in the Son! Everybody is doing it! Don't you care about your relatives? You are not going to be able to pay your bills! That pain you feel is cancer! They are gaining on you. |
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"Come down! Come down! Look at what the devil is doing! Avenge yourself! Don't let them get away with that! Make people see you are right and your accusers are wrong!" |
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On and on it goes. Men will take your crown if you let them. The only solution is to keep your gaze riveted on Jesus. Have the peace of God. Let the Lord justify you. Let Him bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday. |
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One time the Lord gave me the verse, "Who is he who can harm you if you are a follower of that which is good?" |
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Isn't that wonderful? The Lord has all power. He has promised to shield us from all harm if we will keep on doing good and not in any manner be concerned about those who would harm us. Every person will come to his or her proper end and we do not have to lift a finger. |
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The fact that we stand fast together in the Gospel is a sign to those who oppose us that they will be destroyed but we shall be saved. Therefore we are not to be frightened by our enemies. |
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To be continued. |
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Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name. (Revelation 3:12) |
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It was in a little Assembly of God Bible school in San Diego, in 1948, that I first came across Revelation 3:12 (above). It so impressed me that I wrote it in large letters in the back of my Rotherham Bible. That copy of Rotherham is now tattered but in the back is still the crude drawing of a pillar and the words of the verse. |
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Almost fifty years ago and that verse is as new and fresh today as it was then. |
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Think of it! To be a pillar in the eternal Temple of God! |
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Anyone who has studied the Old Testament knows the importance of each pillar in Solomon's Temple. To remove one pillar would be to destroy the strength, the symmetry, the beauty, and the symbolic meaning of the entire temple. |
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To be a pillar in the Temple of God, the dwelling place of the Father that is destined to be His home for the eternity of eternities, no one could ever ask for a more marvelous inheritance than this! |
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Compare the reward of becoming a pillar in the Temple of God with that of going to a mansion in the spirit Paradise. Would you rather get a house from God or be made the house of God? Our traditions certainly do not come up to the standard of the Bible! |
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"He shall go no more out." I love this. It means that wherever we are in the universe we are the house of God. God is in us for eternity governing and blessing His creatures. Here is eternal security. |
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The name of God will be written on the overcomer just as the mark of Antichrist is placed on the worldling. The name of God written on us means we now belong to God. All who see us will say, "This is a member of the royal priesthood. This person represents the rainbow throne!" |
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If was for this reason that we were born that we might be the dwelling place of God and His representative throughout His creation. You want to know your destiny? This is it if you prove to be faithful. |
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The name of the city of God, the new Jerusalem, will be written on the overcomers. This is because the new Jerusalem is a living city. Wherever you are, this is where the new Jerusalem is. All that is true of the new Jerusalem is true of you in miniature. You will bring the light of God wherever you go. This is Heaven come to earth. You will come down out of Heaven to the earth and be "God with us" to the saved nations. |
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The new name of Christ will be on you as belonging especially to Him. We will have a new name, as we said, because we have become a new creation. Christ also will have a new name because the eternal Logos has become a human being Son of God and Son of man. His name will be on you because you are married to Him, an eternal part of Him. |
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How do you like these apples? Sure got living in a silly mansion beat coming and going! |
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To be continued. |
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And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; (Revelation 3:14) |
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If we are not already in the church in Laodicea we certainly are close to it. Look at the issues Christ raises (above): "the Amen"; "the faithful and true witness"; "the beginning of the creation of God." |
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The term Laodicea may come close to meaning "the rights of the people." If so we certainly are talking about America of today. The worst sin you can commit is to take away someone's "rights" even though for them to have their "rights" protected is to have everyone else's rights destroyed. We must protect the individual even if society is imperiled. It probably will take the installation of some kind of totalitarian government in America before this race toward anarchy is averted. |
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For everyone to have his "rights" means everyone will lose his rights. |
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An excellent example of this is the destruction of the rights of the baby so the "rights" of the mother may be preserved. |
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"The Amen" means that Christ says amen to the Word of God. Today the Word of God is watered down when it conflicts with human "rights" and pleasure. The substitution of the term reverence for fear is an example of humanism. Reverence and fear are not at all the same thing. But who in America wants to actually fear God? Certainly not the humanist or the Christian who has been influenced by humanistic thinking and sentiment. |
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Another example is the unwillingness of today's teachers of the Bible to acknowledge that the believer who lives in the appetites of his flesh stands in clear danger of losing his appointed inheritance if not his very soul. Although there is much scriptural support for the terrifying punishment of the Christian who buries his talent, or the timid Christian, we cannot accept this. We cannot say amen to it. But Christ says amen to it! |
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Christ is the faithful and true witness of God. If anything is needed in the Christian churches of our day it is a faithful and true witness of God. |
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The reason we do not have a faithful and true witness is that we are trying to build churches instead of saints. To build a church you find out what the people want and give it to them. It doesn't matter what God wants or what Christ has said or is saying, "we must not offend the people or they will leave." |
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One minister reasoned with me that if you drive off the people by saying hard things then you can't help them at all. Isn't that cute? With this kind of thinking the minister will never get to the point of telling his congregation what Christ demands of His disciples. (Eventually this man's congregation split and he was stuck with those who will never do what Christ has commanded. We heard that the believers who wanted to serve the Lord went somewhere else.) |
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The New Testament does not emphasize church growth but it does emphasize the growth of the saints. |
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To be continued. |
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Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: (Revelation 3:17) |
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It is up to those who teach and preach to bear a true and faithful witness of Christ. In so doing they may have to accept a much smaller church than the minister who is hustling the Gospel and giving American people what they want. On the other hand the preacher may bear a true witness and have a large following. It is not the size of the congregation that is at issue, the main consideration is the faithfulness to what the Spirit is saying today. |
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The Spirit is not saying love, love, love, grace, grace, grace, but repent, repent, repent. Pray and see if I am correct. |
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How miserable to be a false witness of Christ! Some of us may be "ministering" to people when we ought to be bearing witness to them. |
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Christ is the beginning of the creation of God. I know some theologians may disagree but it is my thinking that at some point in eternity past Christ came forth from the Person of God and then, through Christ, God created the spirit world and eventually the physical world. This is not to say that Christ was created but that He created all things from the beginning. |
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Christ also is the beginning of the new creation in that He is the Firstborn from the dead. |
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In any case, God has determined to make Christ the Center and Circumference of the whole creation so that all is summed up and finds fulfillment in Him. |
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The American believer is often lukewarm. He is not on fire for God and not on fire for the devil. He or she is determined to be vomited from the Lord's mouth (so much for eternal security!). |
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You never in your life heard a church say it was rich and increased with goods. Every church has its hand out because Christ is broke. So if the Laodicean church is saying it is rich it is because the government is subsidizing it. |
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I see an attempt on the part of the presidency of the United States to appear as Christian and to ask Evangelical leaders for their counsel. No doubt some Christian leaders will fall for this because they are so anxious to get everybody to love them. |
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In the day that the President does like the rest of us, repents of his sins, takes up his cross, and follows Jesus, standing against the moral sins of the nation, then I will be persuaded he has been born again. |
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But deliver me from a secular political attempt, combined with an ecclesiastical political attempt, to dupe the American sheep into thinking that somehow the government will finally become Christian. |
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The Christian Church is the lampstand of God. Its job is to bear witness of the Person and will of God. It needs no assistance from the secular government. |
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If the Church will do its job of witnessing and the secular government will do its job of punishing evildoers and rewarding the righteous (according to the Bible definition of evil and righteousness) we will get along just fine. But there is to be no mixing of the two! The government and the Church have different roles from God. |
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To be continued. |
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As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. (Revelation 3:19) |
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Some day the Lord of the Church will flip the United Nations building with His little finger and it will fall into the Hudson River never to be seen again. |
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We have a funny idea of Christ's wealth and power! |
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In many instances the American churches are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. Is your assembling like this? |
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We are wretched because we are smug and self-satisfied. |
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We are miserable because we are not serving the Lord with our whole heart. |
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We are poor because we are building our own houses and not the house of the Lord. |
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We are blind because we are not adding virtuous character to our personality. |
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We are naked because we are not receiving the sparkling white linen of righteous conduct. |
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But we don't know it! |
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We don't need help from the government. We need help from God! |
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We are to buy gold tried in the fire. This is faith refined by suffering. |
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"Oh Brother Thompson, haven't you heard? We are not supposed to suffer. If the Apostle Paul had had faith, he would not have had to suffer. |
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"We are all going up in the rapture in our Sunday clothes, the little girls in their party dresses. We practice every Sunday for the rapture by jumping up and down next to our pews. We always carry warm clothes in the car because it might be cold when we get a few miles up. |
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"We understand that Christians of all ages and even today have suffered and are suffering. But we are God's pets. We are going to disappear and then all the cars are going to crash into each other. |
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"We will be sitting on clouds in air-conditioned comfort while the poor Jews face Antichrist without the Holy Spirit. Isn't it marvelous? Here we are eating popcorn in perfect comfort while a hundred and forty-four thousand Jewish evangelists are being slaughtered. They are preaching the Kingdom but cannot enter it because they haven't been born again. You see, the Holy Spirit left with the Gentiles. Praise God for His grace! Can you say amen?" |
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The crazy stuff that is preached today makes you weep and laugh at the same time. |
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For those who are waiting for the unscriptural rapture to deliver you from trouble, you may find that it's late in arriving. You better do what the Bible says and arm yourself to stand in the evil day. |
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Pure faith can be refined only by suffering and temptation. But its worth is far above all we can imagine. |
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White clothing is woven by righteous, Christ-filled behavior. |
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Our blindness can be removed only as we turn to the Lord, take up our personal cross, and follow Jesus. Only the personal cross of the believer can prevent deception. Bible study always is a help, but only the cross can guard against deception. |
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If we do not act on the Lord's counsel we will be poor, naked, and blind in the day of His appearing. |
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To be continued. |
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