Submitted by Dr. GP
- John’s second and third brief letters, while altogether different from the first Epistle are nevertheless of great importance.
- They bring before us guiding principles that have often been overlooked, but are needful if the people of God are to walk in a way pleasing to God.
- In 2 John a Christian lady is warned regarding false teachers. Through John’s warning we learn what our individual attitude toward all anti-Christian propagandists should be.
- In 3 John the message is the very opposite. We learn through the apostle’s instruction to Gaius what our behavior should be towards those who are lovers of Christ and who go forth proclaiming His truth.
- These Epistles are charming in their simplicity, and give us a wonderful insight into the heart of a man who speaks of himself as an elder rather than as an apostle, even though we know he was that.
- John deals primarily, as we have seen, with truth concerning the family of God.
- Peter’s letters deal chiefly with the government of God.
- Paul’s Epistles are concerned mainly with the church of God.
- But in these last letters, written many years after both Peter and Paul had sealed their testimony with their blood, we get instruction regarding church fellowship that we cannot afford to ignore if our fellowship is to be real.
Should US Presidents be pardoned or should they be held accountable to the law way.
I man say nay and Presidential hypocrites should do the time for their crime.
Rubadub Revolution
Bunny Lee & King Tubby’s Dubplate Special
Johnny shiite!
Georgie Porgie has to be arrested for being a christian-fascist.
A christian-fascist suborning sedition in Washington and spreading corruption throughout the world.
We are coming to make the kind of citizen’s arrest Trump suggested to a group of slave catchers. Watch yuh head!
Trump showed the world how racist and ignorant white America still is in these times which is a bad thing that needs to be wholly eradicated and also showed us who are the dumb ass house negroes with their watermelon smiles when slave master spits in their eye.
GP’s mad rambling prophecies are plucked out of his backside and have no holy solid foundation and crumble like apple pie.
I preach to teach and reach with speech and lyrics from God above. The world is not ending GP is just tripping again.
As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.(2 PETER 3:16)
An art enthusiast displayed on the walls of his office a collection of etchings, including one of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Every morning he noticed it was crooked, so he straightened it. Finally one evening he asked the cleaning woman if she was responsible for moving the picture each night. “Why, yes,” she said, “I have to hang it crooked to make the tower straight!” In a similar way, some people have the habit of twisting the Scriptures to make their imperfect lives look better or to justify their own opinions. The apostle Peter warned his readers about the kind of people who do not approach God’s Word with honest motives and respect for its authority, and who distort its message. They will incur God’s judgment (2Pe 3:16, 17). Unless we review the Bible prayerfully and humbly, we may get a wrong message and be drawn away from our steadfastness in Christ. God gave us His Word as a light to guide our steps. If we obey it each day, we will find it to be an unfailing source of strength and truth. Distorting the meaning of the Word of God to fit our preconceived ideas is a dangerous practice and a terrible sin. Let’s be careful how we read and interpret the Bible. –H G Bosch (Our Daily Bread,)
O send Thy Spirit, Lord, now unto me
That He may touch my eyes and make me see;
Show me the truth concealed within Thy Word,
And in Thy Book revealed I see Thee, Lord. –Groves
We must align ourselves with the Bible,
never the Bible with ourselves.
Stop that shiiite talk.
Tell us why a man like you aint locked down at Guantanamo Bay for suborning christian terrorism etc.
LET US NOW EXEGETE THE PHRASE “TO THEIR OWN DESTRUCTION’: pros ten idian auton apoleian:
T0 – This is the Greek preposition “pros” which means toward or before and so pictures such action as placing men face to face with their ruin.
OWN (idios) intensifies the idea even more – their own personal ruin. And so in their futile attempts to distort and destroy the Bible, they end up destroying themselves. Note that their own ruin is not due to the nature of the Scriptures but rather to their own deceitful handling of the Scriptures for evil purposes. Evil men will always be prone to utilize passages that are difficult to understand to promote their own ungodly purposes.
To their own destruction – Perversion of the Scriptures insures perdition.
DESTRUCTION (apoleia from apo = marker of separation, away from + olethros = ruin, death but not annihilation <> from ollumi = to destroy)
Apoleia specifies the eternal, utter, hopeless loss of well-being and all that gives worth to existence. In context, apoleia is the ultimate “destruction”! Some twist the law into a way of salvation rather than a revealer of sin while still others make water baptism the door to heaven. They do this not only with Paul’s writings but with other Scriptures as well. And those who blindly twist the Scriptures do so “to their own destruction.”
Apoleia in one sense means the destruction that one causes as the result of disregard for the value of that which is destroyed or “wasted” (see apoleia used this way by the disciples — Mt 26:8, Mark 14:4).
The more common sense of apoleia is as a description of the destruction which one experiences, when man instead of becoming what he might have become by redemption through the blood of Christ (new creature/creation in Christ – 2Cor 5:17), is ruined (“spiritually bankrupt”, in a state of “eternal disrepair”) suffering loss of value or usefulness (ultimately usefulness to God – this is sad beyond words and even as I write this note tears well up in my eyes for the plight of these men and women, created in the image of God.) Think of the picture of a once beautiful edifice which has suffered the ravages of time and circumstances and all that one sees is the useless, collapsed, disintegrated remains.
In short, apoleia speaks of the loss of everything that makes human existence (in time and eternity) worthwhile. The idea is not loss of being, but loss of well-being!
Apoleia – 17v in NT – NAS translates it as – destruction(13), destructive(1), perdition(1), perish(1), waste(1), wasted(1).
Mt 7:13; 26:8; Mk 14:4; Jn 17:12; Ac 8:20; Ro 9:22; Php 1:28; 3:19; 2Th 2:3; 1Ti 6:9; He 10:39; 2Pe 2:1, 3; 3:7, 16; Re 17:8, 11.
And so in this sense apoleia describes utter ruin, complete loss and is used especially of the eternal destruction (the second death – see chart below) visited on the ungodly. It is the wasteful end of earthly existence with no chance for a fulfilling future existence. Note however that there is a sense that the ungodly have “wasted” their one life on earth.
What a tragic picture irregardless of how much wealth, pleasure or power they might have experienced while they were alive.
Notice that Peter was not writing about Christians who have a difficult time interpreting the Word of God, because nobody understands all of the Bible perfectly. He was describing the false teachers who “tortured” the Word of God in order to prove their false doctrines.
Another way to put this is that the PROPER interpretation of Scripture is a matter of life and death. (Jas 3:1)
the eternal destiny of the people hangs on how they interpret the Scripture.
GP
You quoted scriptures to foretell your personal wish that Trump would win and you would laugh your ass off at all the stupid blacks on BU.
Can you not see your own hypocrisy x 999,999,999,999
LET US NOW EXEGETE THE PHRASE ” WHICH THE UNTAUGHT AND UNSTABLE DISTORT”: tina os hoi amatheis ka asteriktoi streblousin (3PPAI) :
UNTAUGHT (amathes from a = without + mantháno = learn) means those who are unlearned, uninstructed, uneducated or ignorant. It is used in secular Greek writings to describe “incompetent” interpreters.
Amathes points not so much to their lack of knowledge BUT to lack of training. It denotes a mind untrained and undisciplined in habits of thought, lacking in the moral qualities of a balanced judgment. They are untrained and unrestrained in their interpretation of the Scriptures. Being ignorant of the fundamental principles of hermeneutics (study of the methodological principles of Scripture interpretation), these individuals have little appreciation for the inductive approach to Bible study, especially disregarding the importance of context in accurate interpretation. Note that their interpretation is not due to faulty manner of writing but rather to their faulty manner of reading.
UNSTABLE (asteriktos from a = without + sterizo= confirm, establish) means unsettled or unsteady, describing those whose habits are not fully trained and established.
Peter has the only other NT use of asteriktos describing the influence of the false teachers who were skilled in “enticing unstable souls” (2Pe 2:14)
These individuals are vacillating in their spiritual character. They lack the spiritual stability and are thus unable to adhere to the moral demands of the Lordship of Christ, which conflict with their inner desires for self-indulgence.
Both “untaught” and “unstable” are united by one article which identifies a single group exhibiting both of these characteristics. These individuals take difficult passages and “wrest” them to their own ruin. Contrast Peter’s description of the believers as those who had been “established” (see 2Peter 1:12)
DISTORT (strebloo from strepho = twisted) means to wrench, to torment, to twist or to distort.
A stréble was a winch, an instrument that produced torture by twisting or pulling one’s limbs out of joint. Thus one meaning of the verb strebloo was to put to the rack.
In one secular writing strebloo was used metaphorically to describe one who was “tortured by anxiety” and thus spoke of inward pain or torment.
strebloo originally meant to…‘twist, make taut’ of cables (“to draw the cables taut with windlasses”, “to screw up the strings of an instrument”), then in various senses of wrenching dislocated limbs for the purpose of setting them, and of the use of tortuous devices in the course of inquiries (Arndt, W., Danker, F. W., & Bauer, W. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature)
Metaphorically, strebloo meant to pervert as one who wrests or tortures language to a false sense. Peter thus chose a singularly graphic word to picture the tortuous perversion of the Scriptures.
The untaught and unstable “twisted and tortured” the Scriptures. the writings of Paul producing distortion and perversion of his intended meaning. It was the continual practice (strebloo is in the present tense = habitual action) of the “untaught and unstable” to take Paul’s statements and twist them like victims on a rack to force them to say what they wanted them to say.
THIS VERSE APTLY DESCRIBES WHAT OCCURS HERE EVERY SUNDAY BY A NUMBER OF UNGODLY MEN AND WOMAN
BEING ABLE TO DISCUSS AND DEBATE THE ISSUES PRESENTED, THEY RESORT TO DOING ONLY WHAT THEY ARE CAPABLE OF DOING ……..DISTORTING AND WRESTING THE SCRIPTURES………….AND THEY ARE ENABLED SO TO DO
CERTAINLY 2 PETER 3;9 IS VERY TRUE
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
GP suffers from
Apophenia
illusory truth effect
Credulity
Cutting and pasting shit is very niggarish
Reedit
Remix
Re-Dub
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nVaMA3KTk0
The Rapture Doth Cometh
Hip Hop Music Don’t Stop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGawFIonDjg&list=PLM2H53FAIlLQOxAWt-AQZmrpZhW6WNUF3
@ GP at 12 :04 PM
Thank you very much, Dr. GP. One of the better reditions of this hymn that I have heard for a lomg time.
Vincent CodringtonJanuary 17, 2021 4:19 PM
SAD THAT YOU SHOULD SAY THAT BUT FROM THE UTUBE SERVICES FROM BIM THAT I HAVE LISTENED TO, IT SEEMS THAT ONLY ST MICHAEL’S HAVE A PROPER CHURCH CHOIR THAT CAN COMPARE WITH THE ANGLICAN CHOIRS OF THE 60’S
EVEN CH CH CHOIR HAS GONE TO THE DOGS, ALTHOUGH I SEE THAT THERE ARE THREE OF MY PEERS FROM THE 60’S STILL IN THE CH CH CHOIR, ONE OF WHOM ROBBED FOR THE FIRST TIME ON CHRISTMAS DAY 1962 ALONG WITH MY BROTHER AND I
HE ALSO WENT THROUGH CONFIRMATION CLASS WITH US AND WE WERE BECAME CONFIRMED SINNERS ON ADVENT SUNDAY 1963.
A thoughtful reading of the Bible will raise questions. Peter said that Paul’s writings contained “some things hard to understand” (2 Pet. 3:16). Sometimes we see only one side of a truth, or we come across what seems like a contradiction. Then there are the bigger prob¬lems—divine election and human freedom, the origin of evil, the reason for pain and suffering. But these perplexities need not undermine our confidence in the Bible.
God wants us to study the Bible, and a questioning mind is fertile soil for learning. Some things, however, will remain a mystery, and we must humbly accept God’s right to withhold knowledge from us. No matter what problems we have in understanding the Bible, we can thank Him that He has revealed sufficient truth to win our hearts, guide our steps, and bring us to heaven. —D J De Haan (Our Daily Bread,)
John 7:53-8:11 is one of the most common textual variants in the Bible.
A textual variant is a passage of Scripture with disputed validity.
The story of the woman who was caught in adultery. Jesus had gone to the Mount of Olives in the night to pray and rest. Early in the morning, a crowd of people approached Him, and he sat and began teaching.
Then the religious leaders, including scribes and Pharisees, brought Jesus a woman who had been caught in adultery, acknowledging that Old Testament law commands adulterers to be stoned.
Jesus responded to them saying, “Let him who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
The crowd slowly began to disperse, one at a time, as everyone recognized that they were not sinless. Everyone left until it was only Jesus and the woman standing together. Jesus and the woman acknowledged that no one was left to condemn her. He concluded by saying, “Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin.”
This text seems like a straightforward example of Jesus showing love, grace, and forgiveness to an outcast of society.
This woman was sentenced to death, yet Jesus came to her aid. This is a prime example of Jesus seeking and saving the lost race.
Is this common in society today???
Whites like vincent codrington and georgie porgy can always be reliably depended upon to revere the fictitious ancestors of others.
This is the central eponymy psychologists and psychiatrists have long associated with the madness these self-hating niggers represent. It is a phenomenon set be bedeviled the Great Mother unless a “cutting-off” happens.
Pachamama,
Strange then that I became more loving of self in that environment. Strange then that I blossomed and flourished in that environment. Strange that I found healing in that environment.
God can be found anywhere if you look hard enough.
There are many like you who find comfort in the worship of your master’s fictitious god. Even your satan has her followers just as satisfied as you appear to be.
Donna.
@Pacha
What is your definition of the figurehead that represents the spiritual anchor in your life?
Afrikan philosophy is not dependant on a any single figurehead.
The Ancient Afrikans thought that the greatness of the Creator could not be so limited. That there is no difference between the Creator and the created.
As a subsystem, Afrikan spirituality focuses on communion, conscious and intuition, as internals, and as connected to the ancestors and everything else.
@Pacha
There both are belief systems rooted in a faith based approach?
David
No faith is required. There is no requirement to believe. It is not a religion.
You always come back to that point.
Religion and Spirituality is not a book or a set belief it is everything and is an evolution of yourself and your purpose in this life and earthly human existence as a spiritual being.
The point though (Kiki and Pacha) is that until the story of the creation is scientifically proved there is a large dose of faith that must be applied to how we live our lifes.
David
If the Afrikans have told you that there is no difference between The Creator and created, what faith do you want and in whom or what.
Faith is an artificial construction of the Catholic Church.
The Africans who conveyed the message were human?
David,
No. They were God!
😊
There is one God and all religions have the same but different messages like Jackson 5 wearing same but different costumes.
Jews believe in olden traditions and diet. Muslims believe in regular practise of praying together in masses. Christians believe God is manifested in ALL man, woman and child. Hindus believe in several deities and Gods and traditional stories. Buddhists believe in dao practise of meditation and exercise to tap into universal holy fire. Sikhs can practice mantras and yoga for their spiritual vibrations. Scientists want to understand and control the powers of Mother Nature, the Universe and it’s forces and possess the power of God the creator and his/her loving kindness.
David
Will forward study later.
Two researchers from a prestigious university, harvard or mit we seem to recall, and based on dna studies have recently conjured that they were the real humans or something like that.
Highest form of energy for communication with God is love and the alchemy of sexual energy which all the animal kingdom practise
Yes, we understand. To ask titularly Black people to see God in themselves is anathema. She must be seen as Michael Angelos’s cousin.
Maybe the Indians, Chinese, others, have a point of view. And then we wonder about the state Blacks communities are in all over the world.
Black people had their religion taken away from them, but the point is each person has to look and find their own individual relationship with God and learn to love themselves and be best friends.
Religion and spirituality are two different things.
Ancient Afrikans never thought in religious terms as today understood.
@Pacha
We know the two are different, to be clear we are discussing a belief system in a creator that is not human.
It is more about exploring what is.
Native Americans lived a peaceful life in another world in tune with mother nature and opened the doors of perception with hallucinogens that allowed the synapses of their brain to process several more hundreds of signals per second to awaken their senses. They were warriors who thought it better to die to go back to their world than live with the ghosts.
David
You and another are misstating what we’re saying.
That case is not that any human/s were the Creator, in Afrikan philosophy
We said they saw no difference between the Creator and the created. In other words, that the human was an expression of the Creator in their philosophy. This certainly does not equate to the simplistic notion imposed, does it? Just like everything else was considered an expression of the Creator – buildings, dung beetles, etc.
This is better understood alongside what Albert Einstein, others, was talking about in his general theory of relativity.
@Pacha
Who created the people and the world then?
Rastas believe in One Love ❤️
and are the new age hippies
and the original followers of Christ
and all the other people that people read about in their books of fantasy pages of history
and are the same followers of Christ in this manifestation and reincarnation
they are nothing new under the sun
and discriminate against all false doctrines
and systems to hold you and control you and hold you down in this time
How La = All is well, all is good and getting better
Here is an internal practise to tap into the healing energies all around you and expand into the blue skies and stars above
There are always blue skies and stars and heavens above when you fly high up above higher than the rain clouds and beyond
David
Afrikans were the first to create a God consciousness. The first to suggest the presence of a Creator.
If that Creator made man in his image, as your book states, and given that Afrikan peoples, seven types, were on earth for hundreds of thousands of years before anybody else, maybe its fair to assume He/She looked like those created.
You seem to have no problem with fiction of “Hesus” as a human being and God at the same time, once he White. Heru, the Afrikan was the first such personage on earth. About Him you know nothing.
Afrikans are the first to have invented the thinking on which this Jesus, who never existed, was imposed. If this subject has any importance one should look to the original sources not rely on plagiarized/fictionalized narratives.
The question you asked requires the truth be told. That truism will never be found in the Book of Lies – the bible
@Pacha
Forget what the blogmaster likes or believe – attack the argument please. Africans then and now were/are human beings who found the world as it exist or did they create it.
Jesus was white? Tossed that out first time I looked at a Bible map.
It would surprise Pachanama that I was asked once asked to write and perform a piece about our first missionary to Africa. So before a big audience of the Anglican Church and other “dignitaries” at the Frank Collymore Hall I presented a dramatized monologue that spoke of a mutual exchange between the parties. In the background were my two “African guides” onstage with only instructions to go with the flow. I presume they were making fun of me, the missionary, behind my back because there was hearty laughter from the audience.
This monologue seemed to drop from the sky. I wrote it at very short notice after Wendell Smith cancelled on them at the eleventh hour. When I got on stage I could not even remember it and had to wing it on the spot.
That was twenty years ago. I was exposed to Anglicanism. I found God there. He/she taught me to respect my Africanness.
Africans are the best at telling stories to get their values passed on.
Nothing wrong with stories.
David
We’ve answered this question previously, as based on Bantu philosophy
@Pacha
The blogmaster rest.
Le Sony’r Ra, shortened to Sun Ra (after Ra, the Egyptian God of the Sun), claimed to be an alien from Saturn on a mission to preach peace, he developed a mythical persona and an idiosyncratic credo that made him a pioneer of Afrofuturism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGy5My_4dqo
The universe is nearly 15 billion years old.
The earth is about 4.5 billion years old.
No humans are found that old by a long way.
Fossils
Space is the Place :
When the Black man ruled this land, Pharaoh was sitting on his throne. I hope you understand. When the Black man ruled this land, Pharaoh was sitting on his throne. I hope you understand…
We travel the space ways the space ways the space ways from planet to planet from planet to planet from planet to planet. We travel the space ways the space ways the space ways from planet to planet form planet to planet from planet to planet….
Prophetika / Centennial
Sun Ra
2 / 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFw6ziwipyo
David,
And that is the crux of the matter. It still takes faith. The Africans came up with their stories according to their understanding. Every culture finds its way to enlightenment. There is a common thread running through them.
“Every culture finds its way to enlightenment.”
… or it is achieved at the individual level…
… if you don’t find enlightenment in this life you might achieve it in the next life…
… until you reach nirvana … enlightenment in the final life…
… suffering in life is one way to build good karma and be rewarded when you pass…
Donna
If there were different stories, yes. But when there was straight plagiarism, outright thief, to damage those stolen from. Now that represents an entirely different picture. An Afrikan picture many still don’t know, have a clue about.
In fact because the euro-gentiles had no history of their own lies needed to be told. Lies most of us believe today.
New Year’s Day
The name of Fernando de Magellan is not so well known as it should be. ‘Tis over 350 years ago since he first discovered for us the Pacific Ocean, and to reach it he had to go through the Straits which have ever since borne his name–straits extending hundreds of miles, sometimes narrowing to the breadth of a broad river, and again expanding to the breadth of seas. What a day that was when, after long windings to and fro, his ships entered the waters of the Pacific! These were the first keels which ploughed it. His ships came back, but their brave commander never did; the silent sea which had beckoned him on lured him to his death. Is it much different with the boom of the clock which tells us we have entered on the unknown stretch of a New Year? I think not; we are all voyaging, and no ship has gone in advance into the New Year. What lies ahead of us? No one knows, and no one needs to know. The important thing is, that with all our tacking to and fro we are seeking to drop our anchor at last in the good haven. If that is our aim, and we are prayerful and earnest about it, it matters little what the year has in store for us: all will prove well and rightly done in the end. Bend heart and head to this, and leave all else with God. (J. Reid Howatt.)
Testimonies to the Bible
“In this book,” said Ewald to Dean Stanley, “is all the wisdom of the world.” “That book,” said Andrew Jackson, as he lay on his death-bed, “is the rock on which our republic rests.” Said the great chemist Faraday, “Why will people go astray when they have this blessed book to guide them?” “If we be ignorant,” say the translators of 1611, “the Scriptures will instruct us; if out of the way, they will bring us home; if out of order, they will reform us; if in heaviness, they will comfort us; if dull, quicken us; if cold, inflame us.” Hooker said, “There is scarcely any part of knowledge worthy of the mind of man but from Scripture it may have some direction and light.” Theodore Parker said, “The literature of Greece, which goes up like incense from that land of temples, has not half the influence of this book of a despised nation. The sun never sets upon its gleaming pages.” Heine, the infidel, said, “What a book! Vast and wide as the world, rooted in the abysses of creation, and towering up behind the blue secrets of heaven. Sunrise and sunset, promise and fulfilment, birth and death, the whole drama of humanity, all in this book.” (Sunday School Times.)
Study of the Scriptures
The Abbe Wincklemann, a classical writer on the fine arts, after descanting with great zeal on the perfection of sculpture, as exhibited in the Apollo Belvedere, said to the students, “Now go and study it, and if you see no beauty in it, go again and again, go until you feel it, for be assured it is there.” So we say to the Bible student,
“Go and study the Scripture, and if at first you discover no beauty, go until you feel the power of its glorious truths, for be assured it is there.” (J. Bawden Allen.)
The Scriptures a safeguard of a nation
If we wish to know what the Christian tradition has done for us, we must examine the moral standards of nations who have differed from us in not having it. For example, we must look at the Greeks of the fifth century before Christ, or the Romans at or after the period of the Advent. The Christian faith and the Holy Scriptures arm us with the means of neutralising and repelling the assaults of evil in and from ourselves. Mist may rest upon the surrounding landscape, but our own path is always visible. (W. E. Gladstone.)
The inestimable value of the Scriptures
Dr. Smith, of Edinburgh, preaching recently, said the Scriptures were an unalienable treasure of the Church, and urged his hearers to make a more diligent use of them. He told of an Australian farmer, who for years tried vainly to make a competence out of his soil. He transferred it at a low price to a neighbour, who shortly discovered a priceless mine upon the property. “So,” the preacher said, “we are apt to forget that underneath the newspapers and novels which cumber our tables, lies a small volume which is worth inestimably more than all of them.”
The Scriptures a winding splendour
Passing from Bonn to Coblentz, on the Rhine, the scenery is comparatively tame. But from Coblentz to Mayence it is enchanting. You sit on deck, and feel as if this last flash of beauty must exhaust the scene; but in a moment there is a turn of the river, which covers up the former view with more luxuriant vineyards, and more defiant castles, and bolder bluffs, vine-wreathed, and grapes so ripe that if the hills be touched they would bleed their rich life away into the bowels of Bingen and Hockheimer. Here and there there are streams of water melting into the river, like smaller joys swallowed in the bosom of a great gladness. And when night begins to throw its black mantle over the shoulder of the hills, and you are approaching disembarkation at Mayence, the lights along the shore fairly bewitch the scene with their beauty, giving one a thrill that he feels but once, yet that lasts him for ever. So this river of God’s Word is not a straight stream, but a winding splendour–at every turn new wonders to attract, still riper vintage pressing to the brink, and crowded castles of strength–Stolzenfels and Johannisberger as nothing compared with the strong tower into which the righteous run and are saved–and our disembarkation at last, in the evening, amid the lights that gleam from the shore of heaven. The trouble is, that the vast majority of Bible voyagers stop at Coblentz, where the chief glories begin. (Christian Age.)
In his book Miracles in Black, Dr. John C. Wengatz tells of an African convert who was left at a new mission station to carry on the Lord’s work with a cannibal tribe. It was the dry season when Joao Mbaxi took over, but soon the tropical rains would be coming. Month after month went by, however, without a cloud appearing in the sky. Then came the time for the normal dry period. By now everyone was suffering, and many were on the brink of starvation. In all the years they had worshiped their ancient gods, the rains had never failed them, and so Joao was told that he must leave the country and take “the white man’s God” with him. The courageous Christian refused to go. Then, flushed with anger, the chief sullenly warned, “If your God is as good as you say and so powerful that He rules the sky, why doesn’t He send us the needed showers? If it doesn’t rain by sunrise tomorrow, we will drink your blood and eat your flesh!”
Recalling the Biblical account of Elijah, Joao went to his hut and prayed for divine help with the same urgency as that of the ancient prophet. Meanwhile the members of the tribe waited for the dawn when the Christian leader would become the victim of their horrible feast. Just before daylight, thunder was heard in the distance, lightning flashed across the sky, and abundant rain refreshed the entire region! As a result, the believer was able to continue his work for Christ.
Real Time America
The King Is Dead
Long Live The King
Isaiah 53 lyrics