"Not by works of righteousness which we have done,but according to His mercy, He saved us...." -Titus 3:5

As Christians of the western world we are generally contented in our faith. Many of us have become satisfied with what we have been told.

"Jesus has done it all. Therefore there is no call on me to do anything in response."

The blood of Christ has been shed, the atoning blood of Jesus/Yeshua is the complete and finished sacrifice, the issue of the price of our redemption is settled. The matter of the covenant, paying the purchase price of our redemption, is finished. Our great salvation has been paid in full by the Sacrificial Lamb of G-D.

Our free ticket to heaven just fell out of the sky. Grabbing it, we do not stop to think on what this means. We are rich and popular and in need of nothing. We are jam packed full of religion, yet we do not know our G-D. Continuing to compromise with the powers of this world, we dodge the higher calling of our faith, unaware of the perilous situation we are now in. Enticed and seduced by Mammon, we proceeded to re-process, re-engineer, and re-package the message. The Gospel is now a "product" for sale to the masses. In order to sell our message it must be cooked, artificially sweetened, repackaged and rendered palatable and appealing to the average middle of the road carnal "Christian".

God is at work in His people even now. And in the fullness of time the true Bride of Christ will emerge. She is in the world now. She must go up onto center stage in the times to come. There she will bring her testimony before kings and rulers. History demands it.

"And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come." Matthew 24:14

So we as Christian believers are not passive in the covenant. We are His witnesses.Our Christian witness to the Good News is our side of the covenant. This response we have to the indwelling Christ comes by a ministry of His divine grace. It is not a matter of our "works". Our witness to His Great Salvation flows out of the blessings of the covenant. Our power to witness comes as we open our hearts to Him. And our witness is a response He produces in us by His Holy Spirit.

It is a response to His wooing. It is a response to His love.

This is the "rest of the story".

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.... In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." John 1:1-3

"...the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him....." John 1:10-13

God doesn't value earthly success, prosperity, human skills, or large crowds as we do. Instead, He seeks out the weak and lowly who would best demonstrate His strength and wisdom. As Paul wrote,

"...not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty... that no flesh should glory in His presence.” 1 Corinthians 1:26-31

Only a few poor shepherds heard the angels' joyous announcement and saw the newborn King. The highly respected men of Jerusalem neither heard nor saw the fulfillment of the long awaited prophesies. Content with their world and committed to their ways, they were oblivious to history's most momentous event and to the times in which they lived.

Much like today.

"In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ." 1 Peter1:6-7

Testing the Genuineness of our Faith
Pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon, 1834-1892

Untested faith may be true faith, but it is sure to be small faith, and it is likely to remain little as long as it is without trials. Faith never prospers so well as when all things are against her: Tempests are her trainers, and bolts of lightning are her illuminators.

When a calm reigns on the sea, spread the sails as you will, the ship does not move to its harbor; for on a slumbering ocean the keel sleeps too. Let the winds rush and howl, and let the waters lift themselves, though the vessel may rock and her deck may be washed with waves and her mast may creak under the pressure of the full and swelling sail, it is then that she makes headway toward her desired haven.

No flowers are as lovely a blue as those that grow at the foot of the frozen glacier; no stars gleam as brightly as those that glisten in the midnight sky; no water tastes as sweet as that which springs up in the desert sand; and no faith is so precious as that which lives and triumphs in adversity.

Tested faith brings experience. You could not have believed your own weakness if you had not been compelled to pass through the rivers; and you would never have known God’s strength if you had not been supported in the flood. Faith increases in quality, assurance, and intensity the more it is exercised with tribulation. Faith is precious, and its trial is precious too.

Do not let this, however, discourage those who are young in faith. You will have trials enough without seeking them: The full portion will be measured out to you in due course.

Meanwhile, if you cannot yet claim the result of long experience, thank God for what grace you have; praise Him for that degree of holy confidence you have now attained: Walk according to that rule, and you will still have more and more of the blessing of God, until your faith will remove mountains and conquer impossibilities.

Days of testing are coming. Will you be able to say with confidence:

"When He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold. My foot has held fast to His steps; I have kept His way and not turned aside. I have not departed from the commandment of His lips; I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food." Job 23:10-12

According to the Mayan Calendar

the earth as we know it will be destroyed in December, 2012. The Bible however tells us otherwise:

"Do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by signs in the sky, though the nations are terrified by them." Jeremiah 10:1-2

"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" Matthew 24:36

The Word of God - the Bible - tells us that someday Jesus will return to earth and before His return momentous things will happen upon the earth. But, He is not coming to destroy the earth but according to His promise we are looking for a new heaven and a new earth - a place where righteousness will dwell.

We are not to fear, but be encouraged to live lives worthy of God and to be ready for that day.

We must understand that one day, the world for us will end - 2012, 2019, 2020, but it will end - and after that will come judgment as we stand before the Throne of God.

"Then I saw a Great White Throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence heaven and earth fled away... and I saw the dead great and small, standing before the throne, and the
book[s] were open; and another book was opened, the Book of Life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the book[s], according to their deeds. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds." Revelation 20-11-13

I have been judged, I have been found guilty and I was sentenced to death - BUT GOD...

"Do this; knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep, for now Salvation is nearer to us than when we believed." Romans 13:11

"Behold, God is my Salvation, I will trust and will not be afraid. For the LORD GOD is my strength and song, and He has become my Salvation." Isaiah 12:2

"My own faith is rooted in the unshakable belief in God... and an awareness of a constant and holy spiritual presence in all people, all life, and all things." Former vice president, Al Gore

"...when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them... [then] your heart is lifted up and you forget the Lord your God. ...you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.’ ...if you by any means forget the Lord your God, and follow other gods... you shall surely perish." Deuteronomy 8:10-19

Jesus said: I AM the Way, the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through Me." John 14:6

But --- "I am a Christian.... I believe that there are many paths to the same place.... I am a great admirer of our founding charter... and its resolve to prevent disruptive strains of fundamentalism from taking root in this country.... I think Gandhi is a great example of a profoundly spiritual man who... never slipped into intolerance or dogma." Former senator, now president, Barack Hussein Obama

"And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Genesis 6:5

"...they obeyed not, nor inclined their ear, but walked every one in the imagination of their evil heart..." Jeremiah 11:8

No Place for Truth:
By Dr. David F. Wells

“To whom then will you liken Me, Or to whom shall I be equal?” says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and see Who has created these things...By the greatness of His might and the strength of His power." Isaiah 40:25

"...the shallowness of modern life derives not from its banality but from its having lost its moral bearings. ... Christ seems to offer little of what this world is asking for. It wants whatever is new; it looks for the next step in the journey of the human spirit...."

"It is this holiness of God, then, without which the Cross of Christ is incomprehensible, that provides the light that exposes modernity's darkness for what it is.... Evangelicals turned from focusing on God's transcendence to focusing on His immanence [pervading all creation] -- and then they took the further step of interpreting His immanence as friendliness with modernity....
"The loss of the traditional vision of God as holy is now manifested everywhere in the evangelical world. It is the key to understanding why sin and grace have become such empty terms....

Divorced from the holiness of God -

· sin is merely self-defeating behavior or a breach in etiquette...
· grace is merely empty rhetoric, pious window dressing for the modern technique by which sinners work out their own salvation....
· our gospel becomes indistinguishable from any of a host of alternative self-help doctrines....
· our public morality is reduced to little more than an accumulation of trade-offs between competing private interests.
· our worship becomes mere entertainment.

"The holiness of God is the very cornerstone of Christian faith, for it is the foundation of reality... this God, majestic and holy in His being... has disappeared from the modern evangelical world. He has been replaced in many quarters by a God... whose Word is a plaything for those who wish merely to listen to themselves, whose Church is a mall in which the religious, their pockets filled with the coin of need, do their business.

We seek happiness, not righteousness."

"I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings.... And one cried to another and said: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!' And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. "So I said: 'Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” Isaiah 6:1-5

Zephaniah is noted for having one of the most graphic portrayals of the Day of the Lord in the Bible. Such a passage is Zephaniah, Chapter One.

But we must not stop there – continue reading the Book of Zephaniah for it is within the pages of this small but powerful book the author has called us to an anguished confession of sin and humble devotion to God so that we may escape the horrible Day of the Lord coming on this world:

"...before the decree is issued, before the day passes like chaff, before the LORD's fierce anger comes upon you! Seek the LORD, all you meek of the earth, who have upheld His justice. Seek righteousness, seek humility. It may be that you will be hidden in the Day of the LORD's anger." Zephaniah 2:2-3