SOME OF THE WORDS OF GOD.
“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving,” 1 Timothy 4:1-4.
“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” 2 Timothy 3:1-5.
“I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry,” 2 Timothy 4:1-5.
“This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance: that ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour: knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation,” 2 Peter 3:1-4.
AN EXAMPLE OF THE CONTRARY WORDS OF MEN.
“We must build a better future for our people, those we agree with and those we disagree with.”
(Gregory Campbell, Democratic Unionist Party MP, just elected ahead of the Sinn Fein candidate by 179 votes)
When illness overtakes a loved one, amongst their friends there is the hope and prayer that a recovery will take place and a healing wrought by the mercy of the Lord. But as deterioration continues, it becomes evident that recovery is becoming less likely for, in the providence of God, life’s ‘allotted span’ is coming to an end.
For the child of God of course there is the glorious hope of being carried into the immediate presence of the Lord and the end of all of earth’s woes, trials and sorrows.
It is not so for those who must face death in their sin. For them it is as was the case with the rich man in the Saviour’s account of his death. “The rich man also died, and was buried; and in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments,” Luke 16:22-23.
This world is as the ‘rich man’, a rejector of the merciful offer in the gospel of Christ. Christ plainly stated the eternal destinations of the believer and the unbeliever. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him,” John 3:36.
Mankind is collectively travelling down the dark path that ends in hell for, with the exception of the small remnant of believers amongst the nations, there is a universal rejection of the Word of God and an increasing embracing of every form of perversions and evil practice that depraved man can invent.
After some 6000 years of mercy rejected I believe the ‘day of grace’ for the sinner in this age is drawing to a close. Of that inescapable day, both for individuals and for mankind generally, the Lord has repeatedly warned throughout the scriptures.
“Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD: they would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil,” Proverbs 1:24-33.
Ulster, after a generation of plain warnings of the wickedness of ‘Ecumenism’ and its drive to reunite Protestantism with Popery, has persisted in following the deceivers and charlatans who lead the main denominations away from God and His Word.
Ulster is today eligible for the dreadful denunciations which fell on Judah from the lips of Jeremiah, God’s servant.
“Moreover the word of the LORD came to me, saying, Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the LORD; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown. Israel was holiness unto the LORD, and the firstfruits of his increase: all that devour him shall offend; evil shall come upon them, saith the LORD. Hear ye the word of the LORD, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel: thus saith the LORD, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain? Neither said they, Where is the LORD that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt? And I brought you into a plentiful country, to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof; but when ye entered, ye defiled my land, and made mine heritage an abomination. The priests said not, Where is the LORD? and they that handle the law knew me not: the pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not profit,” Jeremiah 2:1-8.
“Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit. Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the LORD. For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water,” Jeremiah 2:11-13.
Who can deny that the same pattern of rejection is evident in Ulster over the last half century!
I suggest the thoughts of ‘a better future for our people’ in the wake of the general election that has just taken place, with the resultant fallen crowns and humbled egos of many who dared to fly in the face of God’s truth and who defied the Holy Scriptures, are akin to that born of the blindness afflicting Judah in the days of Jeremiah!
I believe that it is vain and foolish to speak of ‘a better future for our people’ in the wake of the international defiance of God that is everywhere evident. Building ‘Babylon’, for that is what nations and false religions are busily engaged in at present, will NOT bring about ‘a better future for our people’! Rather, such boasts and claims display an ignorance of the plain warnings of God — that what a man and a nation sows it will reap (Galatians 6:7-8). Our land is enthusiastically embracing those practices which God abominates and following the false prophets of ecumenism and popery and the other cults and religious ‘deceits’ dear to foolish men, and it can only lead down the road to a Christ-free future!
The DUP of Mr Gregory Campbell, has abandoned its former avowed belief in God’s truth and has pursued the promotion of the vilest of today’s innovations. Within its ranks sodomy, lesbianism and the various derivatives of these two perversions, have found support. At least one of its local council representatives is a pervert yet she has been repeated endorsed by the party and its followers. The recent election surely was a demonstration of God’s disapproval of the DUP’s defiance of Him!
Such a party cannot lead a people to ‘a better future for our people’ but rather to will lead them to a disastrous confrontation with the Lord of Glory which can have only one outcome for those who put their trust in such empty and deceitful and arrogant claims.
The devil, when he tempted the Saviour, took “him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve,” Matthew 4:8-10. The Saviour recognised the emptiness of the devil’s promise and the blasphemous nature of his demand and dismissed him with a rebuke from God’s Word.
To speak of building ‘a better future for our people’ on the basis of the rebellious, God-defying policies of the Democratic Unionist Party, or any other of the schemes blinded men are claiming will bring better times, is to attempt to build a house upon sand. When the inevitable “rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell,” great will be the fall of it, Matthew 7:27.
Mankind’s plans for “Peace, peace; when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14) will have a much publicised end. God has plainly told us how the vain efforts of those who reject Christ’s Word and try to build ‘a better future for our people’ will end.
Here is but one such revelation.
“And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double. How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.
Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.
And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more,” Revelation 18:1-11.
Here are the politicians and the merchants who swallowed the lie of the devil and pressed it upon their supporters, suffering the consequences of their rejection of God’s truth.
Mr Campbell is a professing Christian and it is all the more reprehensible for him to speak of building ‘a better future for our people’ by the putting into practice the policies of his party when those policies bear all the marks of the ‘Babylonianism’ which God says has it nemesis in everlasting damnation.
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
Saturday 6th July 2024