The Daily Word of Righteousness

Being With Christ Where He Is, continued

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (II Corinthians 4:4—NIV)

Today 10,000 black young people marched in New York. Violence broke out. What has been accomplished—more hostility between the races?

God will work in the hearts of individuals no matter what takes place. Some will come to know Jesus. Others may find themselves in prison. Do the sponsors of the march understand this—that it is only what is going on in the heart of the individual that matters, how he or she reacts to the situations of life?

What if the nations of the world stopped their mad rush to the Day of Judgment and listened for the sweet voice of Jesus. What would happen then? Would anything of significance be lost? You answer that, if you will.

But it shall not happen. Why not? Because the spirit of Satan moves the nations and Satan is determined to prove that only his way of behaving will result in the kind of kingdom people really want. The nations cannot help themselves. They will continue to destroy each other until finally a one-world government is established. Then peace will come, but it will not be God's peace. When such manmade peace occurs the trumpet of God shall sound and the end of the Church Age will be here.

Am I pessimistic. Not at all. I am merely pointing out that the world of the group dazzles and distracts but is only an environment for that which is truly significant. It is the world of the individual, where God works with the human being, young or old, infant or octogenarian, that has eternal, worthwhile meaning.

The events of today are merely a continuation of the group world. But none of this is significant. What is significant is the actions and the development of the personality of individual people. We may read that 200 individuals died in a flood in Pakistan or India and be moved but a little. Or 5,000 may die of starvation in some part of Africa, and we can't picture such tragedy. We file the information somewhere in our brain. We may be worried about the financial collapse of Russia because it affects us. We may be wondering how the present scandal in the United States government will turn out and may feel strongly about it one way or the other. We are gazing at a large tapestry and feel somehow if this were changed or that were addressed something good would come. Perhaps it would.

But in this whirlpool of human suffering, all that actually matters is what is taking place in individual lives. The mother in Africa clutching the skin and bones of a dying youngster. God looks down. Has this mother heard the Gospel? In Southern Sudan she may well have. Is it time now to receive the desperate woman and her baby to the grassy slopes and flowers of Paradise?

It is this event in the lives of two very "insignificant" people that actually is of towering significance in the eternal scheme of things.

To be continued.