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These are perplexing days for everyone, including the Christian. It is said of the Christian, “The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way,” Psalm25:9. Nevertheless, such is the spirit of the days that are beginning to break forth upon us, many believers are at a loss to know what to expect or what is happening!

Within a lifetime, the basic standards that governed the behaviour in our land has been overturned completely. Truly, there has been a calling “evil good, and good evil”, a putting of “darkness for light, and light for darkness” and a putting of “bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” Isaiah 5:20.

Compass

The moral compass and map of God’s Word has been cast aside and the nation is adrift on an ocean of depravity and degeneracy with no knowledge or understanding of what is taking place!

Governments and churches are swept along by this tsunami of wickedness. Even fundamentalist denominations have felt the power of this spiritual earthquake and many within their ranks have faltered and lost their footing and stumbled from off the “old paths, where is the good way,’ Jeremiah 6:16.

Few pulpits seem able to define what is happening and what it is the people of God should be expecting to break forth all around them!

That ought not to be so!

It ought not to be so for the Lord has given us clear and precise descriptions of these days so that we ought neither to be surprised nor alarmed at what is happening.

I want to set before my readers just three of the many portions of God’s Word which reveal what it is that is taking place all around us, in every nation!

I. THE FIRST OF THESE HAS OFTEN BEEN QUOTED BY ME.

“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. . . . . ,” 2 Timothy 3:1. The word translated “perilous”, ‘chalepos’ appears in only one other place.

“And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way,” Matthew 8:28.

It is translated in the above verse by the word “fierce”!

So, Christian, there are to come ‘fierce” times in the last days!

1. The “fierceness” manifested by the two men who encountered the Lord in “the country of the Gergesenes”, was the result of their possession by many devils. The hatred of the devils for the Saviour was seen in that the two men “met” the Saviour. The word has a military and hostile connotation! It was a warlike spirit toward the Saviour that they manifested. Indeed, that was their disposition toward all men for “no man might pass by that way.”

2. We must never forget that the “devil . . . was a murderer from the beginning.” “He abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it,” John 8:44. He is the embodiment of all evil and where he is is a most “perilous” place!

Where the devil is able to possess men and women, there you have a most evil society, marked by every form of debauchery and cruelty! (more…)

“«To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.»

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament (the vault of heaven above) sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,” Psalms 19:1-4.

The creation is the ‘hand work’ of God. The Psalmist endorsed this truth. “Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands,” Psalm 102:25. David said of the creation: “I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands,” Psalm 143:5.

Obviously David knew that such was the creation structure as to set forth the glories of God’s wisdom and power and mercy! By meditation he could draw out great truth and light and so educate himself in the ways of God.

What the Bible teaches, creation illustrates. It is God’s picture book of illustrations.

In my experience, the creation is the perfect ‘graphic design’, to which we may refer children, in order to set forth and demonstrate the meaning of Holy Scripture.

The whole process involving the labouring of the earth to bring forth food wonderfully portrays for us the gospel work the Lord is engaged in. The making of the creation a many-paged picture book, that confronts us in an inescapable manner, illustrates that the Lord would have us take note of the gospel message. How often the Lord Jesus said: “And he said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” Mark 4:9.

Again, surely we must see the love of God in that He is most desirous that we heed and learn the gospel lesson! How earnest and ardent is our ‘Divine Teacher’ that we grasp the truth set forth in Holy Scripture and gloriously illustrated in the large volume of ‘nature’?

THE TERMINOLOGY OF THE BIBLE INDICATES THAT THE HARVEST DOES INDEED PICTURE THE LORD’S  GOSPEL WORK.

1. From the first of the year to the last, all is ordered that the earth produce a harvest and we see in this a parallel in the work of the gospel.

Thus the Saviour teaches us that the work of grace begins with the sowing of the gospel seed. “And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow,” Matthew 13:3. (more…)