The Daily Word of Righteousness

Eight Appearances of the Victorious Saints, continued

That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. (Colossians 2:2,3)

God is ready to move in the United States. But it will be in the churches first. The churches need to repent. Having repented they are to present the true Gospel of Christ, the Gospel of turning away from sin, taking up our cross, and following the Master.

Will the true Gospel drive multitudes of spoiled believers out of the churches? I can't say it will or it won't. It doesn't matter. Better to have twenty people who love the Lord than twenty-thousand who are attending because the church is "interesting and exciting."

Twenty-thousand of today's believers will do little more than stand in line to have their diapers changed, in the meanwhile grumbling about the inconvenience. But twenty dedicated disciples of Jesus will make an eternal impact on the present generation.

Yes there are true spiritual depths in Jesus Christ horizons of splendor against which the psychedelic orgies of the drug-inspired appear as rancid garbage.

But we will not experience the spiritual wonders of Christ until the churches become centers of glorious worship and pageantry, holding forth a Word of Life that feeds the saints and causes sinners to fall on their faces. This can be accomplished only by constant, fervent prayer and stern obedience to the Spirit.

The problem is not with the secular realm it is with the churches. Babies are collecting more babies. Let the godly pastors and teachers step forth and begin to bring up the babies until they attain the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Then the secular realm will turn and pay heed to the vision of Christ appearing before them.

We have titled our essay "Eight Appearances of the Victorious Saints." There may be more than eight appearances of the victorious saints. For example, the "great multitude" of Revelation 7:9 may be one such appearance. However we feel more certain of the eight we have selected.

There are two major points we wish to make in this brief article. One point is that there are the churches and then there are the victorious saints within the churches two defined groups. The second point is that at no time are the victorious saints shown to be in mansions or in the garden of God mentioned so often in our traditions and described by those who have had visions or near-death experiences.

We feel it to be of the utmost importance that today's believers come to recognize that the average lukewarm church-attender will not participate in the sublime rewards offered to the overcomer. Also that our goal is not eternal residence in a "mansion" in the spirit Paradise.

Our Evangelical teaching is so weak, so threadbare that in many instances the believers are choosing to go back under Judaism where there at least is some substance that the worshiper can work at each day. The current "make a decision for Christ," "profess Christ and there is nothing else to do but tell others to profess Christ and then wait to go to Heaven to live in a mansion doing little of significance," does not satisfy the diligent individual who wants to find more in his or her church than an aerobics class.

To be continued.