The Daily Word of Righteousness

The True Vision of God

Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; Having your conversation [manner of life] honest among the Gentiles [nations]: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. (I Peter 2:11,12)

The true vision of God has been removed from the Christian churches and the people are being destroyed. Righteous conduct, that which God always emphasizes to man, is not being emphasized in today's Gospel preaching.

Unless God turns His face toward us and gives us the ability to repent, to cast out these false doctrines from the house of God, to begin living for Jesus as though our eternal life depended on it, the present generation of believers will face an angry Christ when they pass from the earth.

No doubt God soon will visit the wealthy nations of the earth with severe judgments. They are wasting the resources of the earth on their sins and comforts while hundreds of millions are starving spiritually and physically.

Where are the Christian churches in this picture? They will receive the greater judgment because they have the Word of truth and eternal life and yet are not setting an example of godliness to the world. They are not bearing a true witness of the Person, will, ways, and eternal purpose of the God of Heaven.

By stressing the grace of forgiveness at the expense of the grace of godly living we have extinguished the light of the testimony, the light of the lampstand of God.

Instead of the light of "good works" we are guiding the nations with our self-love, covetousness, immorality, and our willingness to seek the assistance and approval of men rather than the assistance and approval of God. The nations understand this type of behavior and so they are not moved to "glorify God in the day of visitation."

Where are God's prophets, His witnesses who cannot be bought with money, who care little for the assistance and approval of men but very much for the assistance and approval of God?

Where are the people who walk in prayer, who live in godly fear and brokenness of spirit before God? Where are those who know the joyful sound of the God of Israel? Where are God's holy people? Where are the saints?

It is time for God to turn to His own people by race—the Jews. But what are we giving to the Jews? We are giving them Gentile fables in place of God's plan of redemption, in place of the Kingdom of God. We are informing them that God will take the Gentiles to Paradise while the Jews without the Spirit of God face an enraged Antichrist.

How have the mighty fallen! How has truth perished in our land!

Is our generation lost to Christ or is it possible to dig out the Scriptures from the rubble of tradition and teach them once again?

Adhering to the truth of God's Word in a day when our institutions are teaching error will cause turmoil. There always have been consequences when people have chosen truth over popular error. It is our conviction that men and women of integrity do not waste time thinking about the consequences once they have been persuaded of truth.

Let each of us cast from himself as a filthy cloth the unscriptural traditions that have accumulated. Let us first assure ourselves that the traditions indeed are not scriptural, and then let us hurl them from us with boldness and the authority of the Word of God.

Any teaching that does not promote, as its first priority, righteous behavior, holiness of personality, and stern obedience to God through faith in the Lord Jesus, is not of God.

Let us turn again to the Lord. Let us cease teaching and preaching lies. God is to be feared as well as loved. Christ is to be feared as well as loved. The righteous shall walk with God; they can stand in the Fire of His Presence. The unrighteous cannot stand in the Presence of God, in the Presence of Christ, in the Kingdom of God. (from It Is Time for a Reformation of Christian Thinking)