Podcasts about when christ

"Notwithstanding you have well done,that you did communicate with my affliction."  At first glance, this verse appears to besimply a "thank you" for a financial gift. But it is much more thanthat. Paul is introducing a wonderful truth that we might call the grace ofgiving. Noticewhat he says first: "You have done well." Paul commends thePhilippians. He isn't praising the amount of their gift. He is praising thelove that motivated it. God has always been more interested in the heart thanin the size of the gift. Jesus reminded us of that when He watched the poorwidow place her two mites into the Temple treasury. Others gave much more, butJesus said she had given the most because she gave out of her poverty whileothers gave out of their abundance. God measures giving differently than we do.He measures sacrifice. He measures love. He measures faith.  ThenPaul says something very interesting: "You did communicate with myaffliction." Today we usually think of the word"communicate" as talking or sending a message. But that is not whatPaul means. The Greek word is koinōneō. It means to share, to participate, orto have fellowship together. The Philippians were not merely sending money.They were sharing Paul's burden. They were entering into his suffering. Thoughthey were hundreds of miles away, they were saying, "Paul, you are notalone. We are standing with you." Isn't that what Christian fellowship isall about? Theword koinōnia, which is translated "fellowship," appears at the verybeginning of this letter. In Philippians 1:5 Paul thanked God for their"fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now." Now, at theclose of the letter, that same fellowship is still evident. Their partnershiphad not ended. It had continued through prayer... Through encouragement... Andnow through generous giving. True Christian fellowship is much more thanenjoying a meal together or shaking hands after church. It means sharing lifetogether. Romans 12:15 tells us, "Rejoice with them that do rejoice,and weep with them that weep." When one believer hurts, we all hurt.When one believer rejoices, we all rejoice. That is the family of God. ThePhilippians could not remove Paul's chains. They could not release him fromprison. But they could stand beside him by sharing what God had given them. Andthat made all the difference. The same is true today. Not everyone can become amissionary. Not everyone can preach. Not everyone can travel around the worldsharing the Gospel. But every believer can have a part in God's work bypraying, encouraging, and giving. When we support those who are taking theGospel to others, we become partners in that ministry. We share in the workthat God is doing through them. Ioften think about the people who faithfully pray for missionaries around theworld. Others give faithfully each week to support God's work. Some writeencouraging letters. Others quietly meet practical needs. None of those actsmay seem very spectacular. But God sees every one of them. Every act of love isan expression of His grace. That is why I like to call this section "TheGrace of Giving." Giving is not something God wants from us. It issomething His grace produces in us. ThePhilippians did not give because they were pressured. They gave because God'sgrace had filled their hearts. Theirgenerosity was evidence of God's grace at work in their lives. The same is truefor us. When Christ has our hearts, He also has our hands, our time, ourtalents, and yes, even our resources. Giving is never about losing something.It is about sharing in what God is doing. Perhapstoday God is giving you an opportunity to share in someone else's burden. Maybethrough prayer. Maybe through an encouraging word. Maybe through meeting apractical need. Remember, when we share the burdens of others, we arereflecting the heart of Jesus Christ Himself. Let's ask God to make us thatkind of believer.

When Christ came into the world, He didn't come so He could be served—He came to serve. As Christians, we have the same purpose, but our tendencies toward self-centeredness and independence can easily get in the way of how Jesus wants to serve others through us.In this message, Jill Briscoe gives some practical ways for us to break free from our selfishness, step into dependence on Jesus, and live lives that have a lasting, eternal impact on those around us. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1141/29?v=20251111

Send us Fan MailBefore your spouse can faithfully hold your heart, God must have it first.In this opening episode, we uncover the foundation of every thriving marriage: a heart fully surrendered to Christ. Discover why God isn't after your performance but your heart, how we've unknowingly asked our spouses to carry what only God can, and why right order changes everything. When Christ becomes your first love, marriage becomes the beautiful overflow- not the source- of intimacy. Support the showChelsey Holm | the Wife Coach "I help Christian wives surrender fully, live Spirit-led, and be set apart according to God's design in marriage, motherhood, and life."First step? Grab the 30 Day Guide: War Room RESET: daily action to regulate, realign, and reconnect. 

DECLARE LIGHT | Weekly Prophetic Prayer | JULY 2026 | GRACELIFECOMI| CHIMDI OHAHUNA They Shall Not Be Ashamed That Wait for Me | Isaiah 49:23 What happens when God decides to honor those who refuse to give up on Him? In this week's powerful episode of DECLARE LIGHT, Chimdi Ohahuna continues the prophetic exposition of Isaiah 49:23, unveiling the divine promises reserved for those who patiently trust in the Lord. Through rich insights from the original Hebrew text, this prophetic prayer session reveals that waiting on God is not passive resignation, it is an active posture of faith, hope, and confident expectation. Discover the significance of the Hebrew word “shâchâh”, meaning “to bow down or prostrate”, and learn why God's promise that ”kings shall bow down to you” points to a divine elevation that only the King of kings can accomplish. When Christ reigns over your life, He positions you above circumstances and causes influence, favor, and unexpected helpers to recognize His authority upon you. You'll also uncover the meaning behind the phrase ”they shall lick up the dust of thy feet,” a prophetic picture of supernatural service, honor, and divine assistance. God is able to raise men and women of influence to support His purpose for your life. The episode further explores the Hebrew word “qâvâh”, translated “to wait”. Waiting on God means to look for Him, hope in Him, and expect Him to intervene. It is a lifestyle of unwavering confidence that refuses disappointment because God's timing is always perfect. Finally, you'll be encouraged by the promise that those who wait on the Lord shall never be ashamed. The Hebrew word “bûsh” reminds us that God will never allow those who trust Him to end in disgrace, disappointment, or confusion. Every season of patient expectation will culminate in undeniable testimony. Join this week's prophetic prayers as you receive grace to: “ Wait on God with unwavering faith. “ Keep your hope fixed on Christ alone. “ Expect divine intervention in every pressing situation. “ Walk in supernatural favor, honor, and kingdom influence. “ Enter a week marked by testimonies instead of disappointments. Step into this week with confidence, knowing that your waiting is not wasted, your hope is not in vain, and your God will not fail you. Declare it by faith: “”I shall not be ashamed because I wait on the Lord. Kings and queens shall serve God's purpose concerning my life, and I will return with undeniable testimonies in Jesus' Name.”“ Subscribe to the GRACELIFECOMI Podcast and join thousands around the world as we declare God's Word, pray with authority, and experience His transforming power every week. Jesus is Lord.

When Christ came into the world, He didn't come so He could be served—He came to serve. As Christians, we have the same purpose, but our tendencies toward self-centeredness and independence can easily get in the way of how Jesus wants to serve others through us.In this message, Jill Briscoe gives some practical ways for us to break free from our selfishness, step into dependence on Jesus, and live lives that have a lasting, eternal impact on those around us. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1141/29?v=20251111

In this message we discover what the Bible reveals what happens to believers after death, and the great change accomplished by Christ's death and resurrection, which made the New Birth possible, by which our spirits are made perfect, and so are fit to enter God's heavenly Kingdom. As a result our spirits in Christ now go to Heaven, when our body dies, whereas the Old Testament saints went down to Paradise in Hades, to await the coming of the Messiah. When Christ rose from the dead He preached the Gospel to the Old Testament saints in Paradise (1Peter 4:6), so they could be born again, making their spirits perfect, and then He took them up to Heaven in His first Ascension (Ephesians 4:8), so these spirits of just men made perfect are now in Heaven (Hebrews 12:23). Jesus has won the victory for us over the power of Hades, so that the Gates of Hades will not prevail over us, when we die (Matthew 16:18).

In this message we discover what the Bible reveals what happens to believers after death, and the great change accomplished by Christ's death and resurrection, which made the New Birth possible, by which our spirits are made perfect, and so are fit to enter God's heavenly Kingdom. As a result our spirits in Christ now go to Heaven, when our body dies, whereas the Old Testament saints went down to Paradise in Hades, to await the coming of the Messiah. When Christ rose from the dead He preached the Gospel to the Old Testament saints in Paradise (1Peter 4:6), so they could be born again, making their spirits perfect, and then He took them up to Heaven in His first Ascension (Ephesians 4:8), so these spirits of just men made perfect are now in Heaven (Hebrews 12:23). Jesus has won the victory for us over the power of Hades, so that the Gates of Hades will not prevail over us, when we die (Matthew 16:18).

Armored Against Demon Invasion (audio) David Eells – 7/15/26 Bundle of Serpents Attacks  John David Feagin - 10/31/2011 (David's notes in red) In the brief dream I had, there was a bundle, like the old-fashioned bundle of wheat that was being passed down from two others in line to me, only this bundle was a bundle of serpents. I could tell that they were very venomous serpents, like sea snakes, cobras, mambas, or coral snakes. They tried to bite my arm and, naturally, I did not like this. I did remember that we are immune to the bites of serpents if we are covered in the Blood of Jesus, so this is where I put my trust. I was no longer so concerned and set them aside. At the time I awoke, this was puzzling to me, but now, after some thought, I believe I understand it more fully. The snakes involved have neurotoxins, which attack the brain, that is, our thoughts. We are strictly warned to take captive our every thought (that is, against the knowledge of God's Word) and this now means much more to me than it ever has before. I am certainly no expert with such things or spiritual warfare, but I do know that demons associated with pornography, bitterness, criticism, faction, etc., are very powerful and deadly. I also know that demons can be transferred by men, and inadvertently opening doors, even with the best of intentions, can invite personal attack. I personally believe this was a warning to be very careful, but it may also be a general warning to others as well, and may be applied to all sorts of demonic or thought influence. If the enemy can truly read our thoughts and insert them, as has been shown in a previous UBM study, then this is particularly devious. It is difficult to reject such thoughts if you think they are your own.  Then, this morning, as a sort of confirmation, I saw the UBM update about the bug detector and casting such thoughts to hell immediately in the name of Jesus. I also noticed that when I was praying, in the Word, and seeking wisdom in such matters, my thoughts were clear, but when my guard was down, my own thoughts and emotions in the matter, no matter how well-intended, were somewhat intoxicating. So, forewarned is forearmed. God bless always in His service.  Be careful of slander and criticism for the purpose of making disciples. It comes only from demons, and those they can use, and it comes for only one reason -- to impart demons and poison minds against someone the devil hates. Demons impersonating aliens to turn the world to the mark of the beast to destroy Christianity. The Word for “heresies” or “parties” in Galatians 5:20 means “a self-willed opinion leading to division”. The word for factions among these works of the flesh means separating followers through selfish ambition. Demons impersonate righteous indignation but are actually criticism or new revelation. {Jas.3:14} But if ye have bitter jealousy and faction in your heart, glory not and lie not against the truth. {15} This wisdom is not [a wisdom] that cometh down from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. {16} For where jealousy and faction are, there is confusion and every vile deed.   Bluffing Demons & Spiritual Authority  Sandy Shaw 11/09/2011 (David's notes in red) The way this dream starts is that I'm walking into this room, and I'm watching a group of men (some I know, some I don't know) who are turning around and leaving the room. I ask the ladies there, “Where are the men going?” (These men are the chosen.)  The women who are there tell me not to worry because they need to go -- they have to go. The Lord wants them to go. When this happens, I feel like all the women are in unity that the men needed to go. (The spiritual catching up to the throne anointing of those who will return as the Man-child reformer ministry.) I then grab Tina's hand and ask, “Don't you feel the winds of change?” She answers, “What?” Then I say, “The change. The winds of change. Don't you feel the winds of change?” (From this point on, everything will change both positively for those who love God and are called according to His purpose and negatively for the wicked; a separation of the wheat from the tares. Tina ended up going factious, the opposite of Sandy.)  Then I go from there to an ancient-looking town square or plaza. People are walking all around. There are archways all around the square leading into different hallways, buildings, or rooms. It looks and feels like it's an ancient city. (Archways were made famous by the ancient Romans, who were the first to apply the technique to a wide range of structures. We are seeing a revival of the iron and clay of Daniel's end-time vision of the 10 toes of the world beast kingdom. There is no dispute that the iron is the seed of the Roman Empire.) As I'm walking slowly through this square, I'm praying. I'm praying continuously because I can feel the presence of evil so strongly there. (Great darkness is about to descend as the principality of the old Roman Empire prepares to take charge and make the covenant with many, as spoken of in Daniel 9:26,27.) As I'm looking at some of the people, they look human, but for a brief moment, I can see certain demons that are controlling them. (As we watch this progressive revelation, the people who belong to the body of the beast become less and less human and more and more demon, just as those who belong to the body of Christ become less and less human and more and more sons of God. Those from among the people of God who do not forsake their evil will go with the wicked. {Rev.22:11} He that is unrighteous, let him do unrighteousness still: and he that is filthy, let him be made filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still: and he that is holy, let him be made holy still. In the days before the coming of the Lord, at the end of the tribulation, Jesus will come in and then with His saints. {2Th.1:7} and to you that are afflicted rest with us, at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of his power in flaming fire, {8} rendering vengeance to them that know not God, and to them that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus: {9} who shall suffer punishment, [even] eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might, {10} when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be marvelled at in all them that believed (because our testimony unto you was believed) in that day.) As I'm praying, some man grabs my arm and pulls me into one of the hallways. As he is pulling me into the hallway, I hear someone in the square saying, “We gotta find her. We gotta find her. We have to stop her. Her prayers are reaching the throne of Heaven!” (These voices are the demons speaking through men). (Our prayers do reach the throne when sent by faith, and the demons' plans are thwarted. {Psa.10:17} Jehovah, thou hast heard the desire of the meek: Thou wilt prepare their heart, thou wilt cause thine ear to hear. {Rom.10:13} for, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. {Jer.33:3} Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and will show thee great things, and difficult, which thou knowest not.) So the man pulls me into this room, and there are mostly men and a few women there. This room is full of uniforms of all different kinds. The people are trying to figure out which uniform to put on. Some of the uniforms are military. As they are excited about finding the right uniform to wear, they are trying them on. I know in the dream that these people are Christians. (The “Christians” will be worried about how to appear to the world in this dangerous time and what lifestyle to put on besides Christ's. A military uniform indicates a militant lifestyle in dealing with this beast system, which will be disastrous since “they who take the sword will die by the sword”. We must put on the uniform of the new man, who is in the image of Jesus and His actions, according to the knowledge of the Word. {Col.3:9} lie not one to another; seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings, {10} and have put on the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him.)  I tell them that they have it wrong and that the full armor that they need to put on is the full armor of God, not one of these physical uniforms made by man. The people just look at me, not receiving anything I'm saying (as apostate patriotic Christians). A man asks me to sit down and take a look at this uniform. Then this man puts on some kind of uniform with a jacket. The jacket and uniform cover his legs, feet, and everything. There is a hood to the jacket that covers his whole head with a face-covering mask. The material of the jacket is a material I've never felt before. They then pour chemicals over it, resulting in no damage. Then they turn a blowtorch on it, and the torch doesn't burn or damage it. (As a volunteer fireman for Exxon, they gave us shirts that had metal woven into them to reflect heat.  Our government is allying with alien impersonating demons like the galactic federation or alliance in hopes of profiting from their “higher technology.” But these hate Christians and will help to bring about the mark of the beast to be rid of them.) They are really excited about the uniform/jacket and are picking it to be the one they will use. (There is no safety outside of God's will. He sent the curse, and no man can defend from it. {Jer.17:5} Thus saith Jehovah: Cursed is the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from Jehovah. ... {7} Blessed is the man that trusteth in Jehovah, and whose trust Jehovah is. {8} For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, that spreadeth out its roots by the river, and shall not fear when heat cometh, but its leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.) I tell them again, “No, you have it wrong; it's the full armor of God that you need to put on. There is nothing manmade that will help you. You only need the full armor of God”. I then get up and walk out of there into the long hallway. As I walk down the hallway, it is full of men lining up to put on the uniform they think is going to help them in the battle ahead. {Psa.33:16} There is no king saved by the multitude of a host: A mighty man is not delivered by great strength. {17} A horse is a vain thing for safety; Neither doth he deliver any by his great power. {18} Behold, the eye of Jehovah is upon them that fear him, Upon them that hope in his lovingkindness; {19} To deliver their soul from death, And to keep them alive in famine. {20} Our soul hath waited for Jehovah: He is our help and our shield. ... {Psa.34:7} The angel of Jehovah encampeth round about them that fear him, And delivereth them. {8} Oh taste and see that Jehovah is good: Blessed is the man that taketh refuge in him.) After leaving the “Christians” in their false confidence, I kept walking and went back to the square. The ground in the square has changed: it's all dirt now, and I could see through the dirt. I see under the dirt different piles of bones all over the place. No one knows that those bones are there, and no one sees them either. I'm not quite sure why I'm seeing them. (The hidden bones represent those who are martyred behind the scenes because they are not prepared for the battle by putting on the Lord Jesus Christ, as in Romans 13:12-14. Notice that putting on Jesus IS putting on God's armor or protection. Notice that it is always called the “armor of God” because it is God Himself. {Eph.6:11} Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. {12} For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual [hosts] of wickedness in the heavenly [places]. {13} Wherefore take up the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand.  {14} Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, {15} and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; {16} withal taking up the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil [one]. {17} And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: {18} with all prayer and supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the saints. Notice that putting on all of these attributes: truth, righteousness, the Gospel, and salvation are manifestations of the Word, Who is Jesus. Putting on Jesus is putting on God. It is the armor of GOD Himself.) I'm walking through the square again, and I'm praying because I need to get to the other side of the square. (Contrary to popular opinion, we will all have to pass through this time of the revived Roman beast with America at the head.) As I'm walking and praying, the people that I saw with demons controlling them, I now see as full-blown demons, but to the natural eye, they still looked human. (The worldly people will be totally possessed, though they appear to each other as normal, and we are seeing more of this happening now. The D.S. can only be picked out by their leftist demon doctrines.) There was one demon that would walk really fast. So fast that it seemed as if he was flying. This demon went right in front of my face, standing right in front of me but he could not see me. He was really angry and talking with authority, telling the other demons, “We have to find these people who are praying! NOW! NOW, I say! Find them! (Prayer by those who believe in its power will be both destructive to Satan's kingdom and defensive to those who walk in the Lord's Kingdom. {Jas.5:16} Confess therefore your sins one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The supplication of a righteous man availeth much in its working. {17} Elijah was a man of like passions with us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain; and it rained not on the earth for three years and six months. {18} And he prayed again; and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.)  I was standing right in front of him, praying, and the demon had no clue that I was there. (In other words, I was hidden in Christ.) So, I keep walking and when I get to the right-hand corner of the square, I look. I stop, turn around, and I'm looking! I'm watching these people. And the room is not really a room. The way that it feels is completely off, like when you walk into a room, and you can see the light, yet you can see shadows behind things. This was now completely reversed. There was light where shadows would normally be. There were bits and pieces of light. It was completely off, completely out of order. It just didn't feel or look right. (When the light is dark, and the dark is light, it is when good is called evil and evil is called good. This is where demon-possessed society is and has been going. {Isa.5:20} Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! We see this with demon-possessed people now.) After I walked through there, I saw what looked like some kind of old train depot-type thing. I know it's some kind of old transportation system. I'm in this room where there are two big fences with gates -- a cement-type fence. There is a gate, and people are going in and out of the gate. And then there is like a middle part where a lot of people are walking -- a lot of traffic. (To get where they want to go, Christians can't walk where the masses do in their bondage, spiritually speaking. {Mat.7:13} Enter ye in by the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many are they that enter in thereby. {14} For narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life, and few are they that find it. We must be conformed by the Word within.) On the other end is the same kind of gate that people are entering this place from somewhere else. When I go there, I'm waiting for Tina, Sam, and my mom. I feel like Tina and Sam went to get my mom wherever she was to bring her here. I knew that it hadn't been very long since I had seen Tina and Sam, but that I hadn't seen my mom in a while. Tina and Sam were getting ready to go through the gate that's on the other side to go to the middle. My mom stopped them and said, “No, we can't go that way. We have to go the other way”. (Sandy said that she felt that if they had gone into the middle, they would have died. This warning was not taken seriously by them and they spiritually died. They did not listen. This is where the people of God need to go from the worldly to the spiritual; there cannot be ‘a halfway', ‘a lukewarm'. This would mean spiritual death to them in this time and a spewing out of the body of Christ. {Rev.3:15} I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. {16} So because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth.) If you walked all the way around to the end, there was another part that was covered by the fence. They did not walk in the middle part. They had to walk all the way around to where I was. (The path of least resistance, or the shortcut, is the wrong way. The worldly church offers many of these. Just listen to them, and they will show you the quick and easy way to get saved and fly away, but the end is death.) They were almost down to that part, and there was another little gate to walk to the middle. My mom stopped and turned around and told Tina, “Grab Sam. He cannot walk in the middle. There is no middle; he can't walk in the middle”. (None of those who are lukewarm, middle-of-the-road walkers will spiritually survive.) As Sam goes toward the middle, Tina grabs him and they walk all the way around to where I was. I greet them and hug them. (This awakening was temporary.) Then I tell them, “Things are not what they seem to be”. My mom then says, “It's okay, it's okay, because everything that is happening is according to God's will. We just need to stay in constant prayer. {Pro.14:12} There is a way which seemeth right unto a man; But the end thereof are the ways of death. We just need to stay in constant prayer”. (In the days of strong delusion and deception, there's much advanced technology now using AI, CGI, and programming through drugs, mind control and manipulation, etc., we cannot walk according to our carnal mind or senses, or we will stumble. Prayer without ceasing is our command.) So, I'm walking ahead of them. Tina is walking on one side, my mom on the other side, both holding Sam's hand. Sam was not as old as he is now. He looked to be eight or nine years old. (We will have to help guide those Christians who are not yet mature in discernment. God will hear their prayers, too. Samuel is Hebrew for “God heard” or “God's name”. Shem is a variant of Sam, meaning “name”. Shem was the father of the people of the name, as Christians are now. Shem was the father of the Israelites.) Sam was trying not to act afraid when there was the presence of evil all around us. Even amongst all the evil, we knew we were under the protection of the Lord. There was no safe place other than the arms of God. I bent down to talk to Sam in his ear, saying, “It's okay to be afraid; you just fear the Lord. Don't fear anyone else or anything else. Nothing can harm you because they have to go through the Father first. Don't be afraid”. (Fear permits faith to be robbed and the enemies to take advantage of us. It is faith in reverse. {Psa.23:4} Yea, thou I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; Thy rod [of correction] and thy staff [of direction], they comfort me. {5} Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou hast anointed my head with oil; My cup runneth over. (With this anointing of the Holy Spirit, we should give the good confession.) {6} Surely goodness and lovingkindness shall follow me all the days of my life; And I shall dwell in the house of Jehovah for ever.) Then we started walking back to the square. The dirt has changed again. The dirt now seems like it's a mud-like consistency. But to the natural eye, it looks just like dirt. I still see the piles of bones now with the mud going between the fingers, toes, etc. But now I also see something like a circle; it's a tunnel and I can see it at weird angles and kind of far. The things that I'm seeing in these tunnels are body parts with the flesh. I'm seeing arms cut off, legs, face, head, all different kinds of body parts. They look to be freshly cut off from the body because I can still see the blood. The blood is still wet. I can see the nerves on some of these parts still shaking and moving. (The ‘powers that be' have made many underground tunnels connecting cities, where the military and special forces have found remains of countless people who were murdered by satanists. According to other dreams and prophecies I have seen, it is in these tunnels that the saints will be expected to renounce Jesus or die. It behooves us to walk carefully so we fill out both our days and our ministry.)  I'm getting ready to step, and I stop. I put my hand out to stop my mom, Tina, and Sam as I watch the details of the body parts freshly cut off. It was gross. I then asked them if they saw those parts. Tina and my mom saw it; Sam closed his eyes. He didn't want to see it. I then asked, “But it's not there?” My mom said, “Oh, but it is there under the dirt”. We stopped then and there, and we started praying. We were praying in tongues. While we were praying, I told Tina to take my mom and Sam to the outer part of the square, find a place, and begin praying and interceding. And that's what they did. (As with the Nazi persecutions in the death camps of World War 2, many will deny for the sake of soothing their own conscience that these persecutions are happening, but they will be out of sight and out of mind, “under the dirt”.) I was taking very small steps as the Lord was guiding me and telling me to. (Every step in these days will need to be according to the Father's will because of the dangers. {Eph.5:15} Look therefore carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but as wise; {16} redeeming the time, because the days are evil.) And I was just praying and praying and praying. As I was starting to pray, I saw the people in the square now completely as demons. I no longer saw them as humans. (The righteous will be able to see in the spirit realm those who have been displaced by demons.) As I was walking, I felt as if they were trying to find me, and they were bumping into me, but didn't know they were hitting me. I kept praying more and more. I prayed out loud, and they could hear me but couldn't see me. (Invisibility in the spirit realm makes for peace from the flesh realm.)  That big demon I saw earlier that walked really fast was now there, and there were more demons of his stature and size. They were frantic, upset and mad. One of them said, “Now there are more praying. Do you hear them praying? We have to find them NOW! I'm telling you, their prayers are reaching the throne room of Heaven. Things are going to change. Find them NOW!” There was such an urgency to find us. I walked all the way to the end of the square and I turned around and asked, “Okay, Lord. What is it that You want me to do?” (Truly, “things are going to change.” Walking to the end of the square represents that the saints will go through this beast tribulation and bring the Gospel to the whole world. Watch volume one of Hidden Manna for the End Times.) I don't know where the Lord took the men whom I saw at the beginning of the dream or what had happened, but I just knew that they were coming back. The demons were still looking really hard for the people who were praying. Not just us, but they were looking to stop everyone everywhere from praying. The Lord told me to step a foot back in the square, and I did. When I stepped back in the square, I was speaking the Word out loud. Everything that the Lord was saying to me, I was speaking out loud. The demons could now see me and were in my face, trying to intimidate or scare me. I knew that they could not touch me. They were telling me to shut up, be quiet, that my prayers were dead, and I was doing no good. “Don't you know we can kill you? We can take you out! You are nothing!” Many of them kept saying those things to me over and over. (Demons are full of threats to discourage the prayers and works of God, but most Christians don't recognize them as coming from demons, but feel they are their own thoughts and are defeated. The knowledge of God's Word will enable them to defeat the deceivers. {2Co.10:3} For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh {4} (for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds), {5} casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.) I said to them, “I am nothing, but through Christ Jesus He is everything. He is my all and all. Everything that I need, God is. God is the source. God is the strength. God is the great I AM! One of the demons was so close to my face that I could smell his stench. So close that he was almost touching me. I told him, “You are nothing! You can't do anything other than what my God allows. You are nothing! (God is sovereign over all, but He will allow many things that we allow because He has delegated authority over all the power of the enemies. {Mat.18:18} Verily I say unto you, what things soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and what things soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. {19} Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father who is in heaven. ... {Luk.10:19} Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall in any wise hurt you. {20} Nevertheless in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. I heard a noise behind me, and I turned around and saw all the men who had gone out, and there were more with them coming, and with what looked like Christ in the middle. Everyone was dressed in white. When Christ and all those men came on the scene, some of those demons became smaller and smaller. The ones that were already small were trying to run, but they couldn't go anywhere, as you have seen in cartoons, only this was not a cartoon; they were liquefying before me into a puddle on the floor, and then they were gone. I was backing up as the men were going forward. I went with Tina, Sam, and my mom to this place where I saw a lot more people who were praying and interceding. Then I woke up. (Who are these men whom the demons fear? The Lord is in the Man-child ministry to raise up many in the image of the Lord. These are coming to wreak havoc on the spiritual hosts of wickedness. Hallelujah!)  After I woke up from the dream, I heard the Lord say, “Write this down: “You have all power and authority in the name of Jesus Christ. Understand and know the power of His blood. For you are adopted, therefore you are entitled to everything. Hear Me! Understand Me! Know Me! For then the enemy cannot deceive you for what's ahead.”   The Men Whom the Demons Fear Seven spiritual shepherds who are sent by the Man-child to minister to the seven Churches, which is mentioned in Hidden Manna for the End Times. First, Jesus is coming to be manifested in the Man-child ministry. (Mic.5:2) But thou, Beth-lehem Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting. Obviously, this is Jesus. (3) Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she who travaileth hath brought forth (the man-child body): then the residue of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel. Jesus left because of rebellion and will return in the Man-child who is born of the travailing woman in Revelation 12. As Jesus fed the former rain woman in a body of flesh, so He will feed the latter rain woman in a corporate body of flesh. (Mic.5:4) And He shall stand, and shall feed [His flock] in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord His God: and they shall abide; for now shall He be great unto the ends of the earth. The Jesus of the former rain was revered by the disciples and feared by His enemies, but because of apostasy, this has not been true for many centuries since because they have had “another Jesus.” The Man-child body and those disciples who follow in His/their steps will restore this, and He shall be “great unto the ends of the earth”. The Man-child's teaching will bring peace to the seven churches that are at war with the beast and harlot. (5) And this [man] shall be [our] peace, When the Assyrian shall come into our land, and shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds and eight principal (Hebrew: “princes among”) men. The corporate body of the Man-child is “this man” who brings peace to the corporate woman with his teachings, which enable her to resist the beast invasion. He brings peace because the “Prince of peace” is in his heart. Spiritually speaking, we are the “land” with the “palaces” that the corporate beast is trying to invade. (1Co.3:9) For we are God's fellow-workers: ye are God's husbandry (Greek: “tilled land”), God's building (“palaces”). As we shall see, the beast is a corporate spirit from the abyss (Rev.17:8) that inhabits the body of the wicked (3) and seeks to inhabit the righteous and mark them. Notice that the “Assyrians” are called “him” which shows that they are seen as the corporate body of the beast. Since the Assyrian beast kingdom passed away over 600 years before Christ, they could not have been connected with Jesus or the Man-child. Therefore, God, as usual, was using the beast of that day to represent a particular aspect of the end time beast. As the Assyrian beast did not conquer Jerusalem, so the end time beast will not conquer those spiritually abiding in the New Jerusalem. (Mic.5:5) ...Then shall we raise against him seven shepherds and eight principal (Hebrew: “princes among”) men. The Man-child Jesus raised up twelve apostolic shepherds primarily to restore those of the “twelve-tribes of Israel” who would listen (Mat.10:5; Act.26:7; Jas.1:1; 1Pet.1:1). In exact parallel, the corporate Man-child will raise up “seven” corporate apostolic “shepherds” primarily to restore the “seven churches”. The Man-child's primary job is to feed the unleavened bread of the Word to disciples in order to manifest Christ in them. These will be the new leadership for the seven churches in the last 3 1/2 years. These “seven shepherds” are not sectarian religious leaders but one man in Christ and are inhabited by one “prince of peace”, Jesus, hence “eight princes among men”. In the next chapter of Micah, we will see that even after the Man-child Jesus' 3 ½-year ministry, He promised to be with the shepherds in spirit “unto the consummation of the age,” (Greek: Mat.28:20) hence “eight princes among men”. These princes are sons of the King and have authority over His realm of the seven churches. The seven churches of Revelation are a type of seven different types of Christians in the Church. (Isa.4:1) And seven women (the Church) shall take hold of one man in that day. The “one man” here is Jesus manifested in the Man-child. Then He will be manifested in the seven shepherds and then in the true Church. One of God's solutions to the apostasy in the Church is new leadership. (Isa.1:26) And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counselors as at the beginning. The same type of counselors in the former rain will be given in the latter rain. Here is another confirmation of the Man-child giving His revelation to seven shepherds, who passed it on to the seven churches. When the Man-child Jesus sent His shepherds out, He called them “apostles”, meaning “one sent forth”. In other words, the shepherds were the Man-child's messengers to the churches. As a type of the Man-child, John on the Isle of Patmos was “a partaker with you in the tribulation” (Rev.1:9) when he was caught up to the throne of God and given a revelation of the coming tribulation to give to the seven churches. (4:1) After these things I saw, and behold, a door opened in heaven, and the first voice that I heard, [a voice] as of a trumpet speaking with me, one saying, Come up hither, and I will show thee the things which must come to pass hereafter. (2) Straightway I was in the Spirit: and behold, there was a throne set in heaven, and one sitting upon the throne. Like Jesus, he was given a revelation of the apostasy in the Church and told to send it to the seven churches by the hand of seven angels. (1:11) ...What thou seest, write in a book and send [it] to the seven churches.... (Rev.2:1,8,12,18; 3:1,7,14) To the angel of the church in Ephesus (and so with Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea) write.... “Angel” in these cases is the Greek word angelos meaning “messengers” and is also used of ministers in the New Testament (Example: Luk.4:24,27; 9:52). The equivalent Hebrew word in the Old Testament is translated “messenger” when speaking of priests (Mal.2:7), John the Baptist, and Jesus (Luk.3:1). Since it doesn't make sense that John sent the revelation by angels, he must have sent it by seven minister messengers to the seven churches. This is exactly what Jesus did as Man-child. He shared His revelation with minister messengers, who shared it with the seven churches.

Introduction: Beware the Pious OnesIntroduction: Beware the Pious OnesMy dad used to warn me, "Be careful of the pious ones." That puzzled me for years. Piety should be about loving God, pursuing God. So why would anyone warn you to be careful of pious people? Then, I noticed that the most pious in Christ's day received His sharpest words. Christ warns the pious that they are shutting people out of the kingdom. In fact, in all their evangelistic zeal, they are only creating disciples of hell. That should make us pause and contemplate true piety.Acts 5 gives some insight into this problem. We discover that there are self-proclaimed pious people actively working against the work of Christ. So the real question is: how do we know what piety we're actually pursuing? The Community's Power (Acts 5:12–16)Word spreads about Ananias and Sapphira, and the healing of the disciples. The crowds do not discern the truth, but hold the apostles on some superstitious pedestal. They bring their sick to the disciples, hoping that at least a shadow will fall on the sick and bring healing. However, they don't want to get too close because people die in this community. The problem is that people look to the apostles for healing rather than to Christ. We have seen this with the crippled man. He clung to the apostles, and not his savior. The apostles made it very clear that the Lord brings healing. So, the Apostles continue to preach the gospel. Tragically, the crowd misses the point of the signs. The signs are not self-promoting signs that the false prophets use to promote their own significance. Christ warned his disciples about these false prophets before going to the cross (Mt. 24:24; Mk 13:22; Luke 21:8). No, these are signs that gave the prophets credibility and authenticity to confirm their message. It was not to compete with the message. Unfortunately, they would rather watch for a miracle than find their wholeness in Christ. It takes time to be progressively transformed by His word. This helps us see true piety versus false piety. True piety looks to our God. False piety looks to the tangible in this world. God's Power Play (Acts 5:17–26)The high priest and the Sadducees move against the apostles out of jealousy. The Sadducees deny the supernatural. They claim that there is no resurrection, no miracle, nothing supernatural. They believe that Scripture is an ethical handbook rather than the living and abiding Word of God that confers life. They are jealous that the Apostles are gaining traction. They cannot tolerate a movement built on a risen Christ. A movement with credible healings and miracles. The apostles' ministry is a radical existential threat to their power. So, they react by assuming that if you silence the messengers, then you silence the movement. So, they try to silence the apostles by locking them up in jail. An angel quietly opens the prison at night. There is no disturbance outside the prison, so the guards assume everything is fine. The Lord sends the apostles right back to the temple with a simple charge: go speak all the words of this Life. The next morning, the council sends for the prisoners and finds an empty locked cell. The word returns to the senate that the "prisoners" are already preaching at the temple. God dismantles the power play without raising his voice. The glorified and resurrected Jesus of Nazareth will be proclaimed. Who Really Holds the Power (Acts 5:27–42)The Apostles are escorted from the temple to the senate. The apostles are accused of trying to put "this man's blood" on them. Please keep in mind that this senate is the same group of people who once told Pilate, "his blood be on us." Peter's answer is direct: "We must obey God rather than men," and he pointedly calls God "the God of our fathers.” The Apostles are in the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob because they embrace Christ. This means that the pious ones, who deny Christ, cannot claim the same historic identity. Where Pentecost's crowd was cut to the heart and repented, this council responds with rage.Gamaliel, a Pharisee, then offers a test: movements built on mere men collapse when their leader dies. This happened with Theudas. He rose up, and Rome executed him, silencing his mission. Judas the Galilean led a tax revolt, and Rome executed him, killing his movement. Two clear movements that were not from God rose up and died almost immediately. The movements had no power beyond the leaders. So, if the apostles are from God, there is no way that the Sanhedrin/council can stop it. However, if it is merely a man-made movement, then it will die. So, let history unfold. Praise be to God! We worship the same resurrected and ascended Christ that the Apostles proclaimed. The movement continues by the Lord's continued providence and care.Conclusion: True Piety Points Away From ItselfSo, how do we know if we're pursuing the right piety? Luke 18 answers it: the Pharisee's sin wasn't effort, it was trusting in his own righteousness. There's nothing wrong with looking back and thanking God for how he's sanctified us. However, when it becomes look how good I am, Christ has quietly left the stage. The Pharisees make their own disciples (Matthew 23:19). They are not making disciples of Christ, but disciples of their theology. When Christ gives the great commission, the disciples are commanded to teach and disciple in all that I have commanded you. True piety asks, “How do I glorify Christ?” It is the assurance that I only draw near to God because I am in Christ. He has lived, died, been raised, and ascended to glory. He rules me/us by His Spirit from heaven. True piety seeks to glorify Christ rather than self. That's the whole difference between the pious ones my dad warned me about and the true pious. May we distinguish true piety and desire to please our Lord, who has redeemed us. Then, I noticed whom Christ reserved his sharpest words for in the Gospels: the most pious people of his day. Christ warns the pious that they are shutting people out of the kingdom. In fact, in all their evangelistic zeal, they are only creating disciples of hell.Acts 5 gives some insight into this problem. We discover that there are self-proclaimed pious people actively working against the work of Christ. So the real question is: how do we know what piety we're actually pursuing?The Community's Power (Acts 5:12–16)The Apostles continue to minister the Lord's gospel. The problem is that people look to the apostles rather than to Christ. We have seen this with the crippled man. His attention was called to Christ as the crippled man clung to the apostles. It is the Lord's word that brings the healing.This is where we see the true piety versus the false piety. The true piety looks to our God. False piety looks to the tangible in this world.Word spreads about Ananias and Sapphira, and the healing of the disciples. The crowds do not discern the truth, but hold the apostles on some sort of a superstitious pedestal. They bring their sick to the disciples, hoping that at least a shadow would come into contact and bring healing. However, they don't want to get close because people die in this community.Tragically, they miss the point of the signs. The signs are not self-promoting signs like the false prophets who use the signs to promote their own significance. Christ warned his disciples about these false prophets before going to the cross (Mt. 24:24; Mk 13:22; Luke 21:8). No, these are signs that gave Moses credibility and authenticity before Pharaoh. Unfortunately, we see that the crowds are still the crowds who lurk rather than join. They would rather watch for a miracle rather than find their wholeness in Christ, being progressively transformed by His word.God's Power Play (Acts 5:17–26)The high priest and the Sadducees move against the apostles out of jealousy. The Sadducees deny the supernatural. They claim that there is no resurrection, no miracle, nothing supernatural. Scripture is an ethical handbook rather than the living and abiding Word of God that confers life.They are jealous that the Apostles are gaining traction. They really are not going to allow a movement built on a risen Christ. A movement with credible healings and miracles. This is not a competition for them, but a radical existential threat. Their existence is about to be completely undermined. So, they react by assuming if you silence the messengers, then you destroy the movement. They lock up the apostles in jail.An angel quietly opens the prison at night. There is no disturbance outside the prison, so the guards assume everything is fine. The Lord sends the apostles right back to the temple with a simple charge: go speak all the words of this Life. The next morning, the council sends for the prisoners and finds an empty locked cell. The word returns to the senate that the "prisoners" are already preaching at the temple. God dismantles the power play without raising his voice. His life message will go forth. The glorified and resurrected Jesus of Nazareth will be proclaimed.Who Really Holds the Power (Acts 5:27–42)The Apostles are escorted from the temple to the senate. The apostles are accused of trying to put "this man's blood" on them. Please keep in mind that this same group of people once told Pilate, "his blood be on us." Peter's answer is direct: "We must obey God rather than men," and he pointedly calls God "the God of our fathers.” The Apostles are in the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob because they embrace Christ. This means that the pious ones, who deny Christ, cannot claim the same historic identity. Where Pentecost's crowd was cut to the heart and repented, this council responds with rage instead.Gamaliel, a Pharisee, then offers a test: movements built on mere men collapse when their leader dies. This happened with Theudas. He rose up, and Rome executed him, silencing his mission. Judas the Galilean led a tax revolt, and Rome executed him. His movement died. Two clear movements that were not from God. We know that because the movement died. It had no power beyond the leaders.So, if the apostles are from God, there is no way that they can stop it. If the movement is only in their power, then it will cease. So, let history unfold. Praise be to God! We worship the same resurrected and ascended Christ that the Apostles proclaimed. The movement continues by the Lord's continued providence and care.Conclusion: True Piety Points Away From ItselfSo, how do we know if we're pursuing the right piety? Luke 18 answers it: the Pharisee's sin wasn't effort, it was trusting in his own righteousness. There's nothing wrong with looking back and thanking God for how he's sanctified us. However, when it becomes look how good I am, Christ has quietly left the stage.The Pharisees make their own disciples (Matthew 23:19). They are not making disciples of Christ, but disciples of their theology. When Christ gives the great commission, the disciples are commanded to teach and disciple in all that I have commanded you.True piety asks, “How do I glorify Christ?” It is the assurance that I only draw near to God because I am in Christ. He has lived, died, been raised, and ascended to glory. He rules me/us by His Spirit from heaven. True piety seeks to glorify Christ rather than self. That's the whole difference between the pious ones my dad warned me about and the true pious. May we distinguish true piety and desire to please our Lord, who has redeemed us. Amen.

Most of us spend enormous energy managing how things look on the outside while neglecting what is happening on the inside. In Ephesians 3, Paul drops to his knees and prays not for better circumstances but for something far more transformative: that Christ would dwell in the hearts of believers. The Greek word for dwell means to settle in and make a home, not simply to visit. Jesus is not interested in seeing only the clean, presentable rooms of your life. He wants access to the locked door, the hidden place where shame, bitterness, or unresolved pain has been kept out of sight. He knocks not to condemn but to redeem. When Christ truly makes His home in your heart, there is no vacancy left for guilt, anxiety, or bitterness. The peace you have been searching for is not waiting on the other side of fixed circumstances. It is waiting on the other side of a surrendered heart.

When a community gathers united in Christ, healing takes place. When we bring each other closer to Christ, sins are forgiven. When Christ sees our faith as a united family, He blesses us, forgives us, and heals us.

In John's gospel, we explore how John reveals the essence and significance of Jesus' life for all humanity. Today, we will examine Andrew and Philip proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah and the ripple effect of their testimonies. Their example reminds us that we are not called to change hearts—we are simply called to introduce people to the One who can. The power of sharing our faith does not come from persuasive words, extensive biblical knowledge, or sinless lives, but from the transforming power of the gospel at work within us. When Christ changes us, our greatest testimony is simply pointing others to Him.Support the show

When Christ is our highest priority, we rejoice as God advances the gospel through every circumstance.

The whole purpose of 1 John is to give us confidence in who we are, whose we are in Christ, and where we will spend eternity. John reminds us that we can have confidence in our access to God because when we ask according to His will, He hears us. We pray boldly not because we always receive what we ask for, but because we know who is listening and trust His will. John also reminds us to have confidence in our adoption. Because we belong to Christ, we can rest in the victory He has already won and encourage one another through prayer and loving accountability. His final command, "Keep yourselves from idols," is the natural result of knowing who we are and whose we are. When we know who we belong to, we will never be satisfied by a substitute. The answer to temptation is not more willpower but filling our hearts with the knowledge of Christ, His love, His Word, and His will until there is no vacancy. When Christ is magnified, everything else shrinks.Check out our video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/lSTDT2ksIwkSubscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/8wmeCwBf_zkLearn more about us at chestnutmountain.orgFollow us on Facebook & Instagram @chestnutmtn_

How do we bring our Catholic faith into our everyday relationships?

Friends of the Rosary,Today, July 1, the Feast of St. Junípero Serra (1713–1784), we read in the Gospel (Matthew 8:28-34) how Jesus confronted the demonic torment of two possessed men.The most unsettling part was not only the presence of evil but the reaction of the townspeople: after witnessing Christ's power, they preferred that He leave. Grace has arrived, but they experience it as a disruption and prefer to remain attached to security and possessions.Jesus came not to make our compromises more comfortable, but to save us.Today's saint, St. Junípero Serra, a Spanish Franciscan priest known as the "Apostle of California", lived with missionary urgency. His motto was: “Always forward, never back.” That is a fitting answer to this Gospel.When Christ enters with authority, the Christian response is not retreat but movement toward Him, even when His grace unsettles what we have grown accustomed to.Only Jesus can bring true peace, because only Jesus has authority over sin, fear, and evil.St. Junípero Serra left Europe at age 35 to become a missionary. He founded the first nine of 21 Spanish missions in California, spanning from San Diego to San Francisco. His work helped spread Christianity and shape modern agriculture in California.Ave Maria!Come, Holy Spirit, come!To Jesus through Mary!Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will.Please give us the grace to respond with joy!+ Mikel Amigot w/ María Blanca | RosaryNetwork.com, New YorkEnhance your faith with the new Holy Rosary University app:Apple iOS | New! Android Google Play• ⁠July 1, 2026, Today's Rosary on YouTube | Daily broadcast at 7:30 pm ET

When Christ purchased us from spiritual slavery, He did not do it to bring us into another form of bondage. He frees us from the penalty and the power of sin, and He will one day free us from the presence of sin. The post Freedom: The Heart of God, Part 1 – God’s Grand Purpose appeared first on Reston Bible Church.

The whole purpose of 1 John is to give us confidence in who we are, whose we are in Christ, and where we will spend eternity. John reminds us that we can have confidence in our access to God because when we ask according to His will, He hears us. We pray boldly not because we always receive what we ask for, but because we know who is listening and trust His will. John also reminds us to have confidence in our adoption. Because we belong to Christ, we can rest in the victory He has already won and encourage one another through prayer and loving accountability. His final command, "Keep yourselves from idols," is the natural result of knowing who we are and whose we are. When we know who we belong to, we will never be satisfied by a substitute. The answer to temptation is not more willpower but filling our hearts with the knowledge of Christ, His love, His Word, and His will until there is no vacancy. When Christ is magnified, everything else shrinks.Check out our video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/FB7mXfNOEgwSubscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/8wmeCwBf_zkLearn more about us at chestnutmountain.orgFollow us on Facebook & Instagram @chestnutmtn_

Jun 28th | The prayer on Sunday  | Revelation 3:15-22What does it look like to truly invite Jesus to the table of your life?In this powerful message, Pastor Matt Darby explores Jesus' words to the church in Revelation 3 and the familiar invitation: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." While often applied personally, Jesus originally spoke these words to a church that had become busy with ministry but had drifted from His presence.Through the picture of a family gathered around the table, Pastor Matt reminds us that prayer is more than asking God for things—it's how we welcome Jesus into our lives, our homes, and our church. When Christ is at the center, we find the true source of refreshment, healing, and spiritual life.This message is a call to examine our hearts, turn from the things we've allowed to replace Jesus, and return to Him through repentance, consecration, and prayer. As we make room for His presence, we discover that He isn't content to remain outside—He desires to sit at the table with His people.Whether you're longing for renewal, seeking God's presence, or simply wanting to deepen your prayer life, this message will encourage you to open the door and welcome Jesus back to the center.Do you know JESUS? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.nbgilmer.org/do-you-know-jesus⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Need PRAYER? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.nbgilmer.org/pray⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support through GIVING: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.nbbctx.org/giving⁠ 

Jun 28th | The prayer on Sunday  | Revelation 3:15-22What does it look like to truly invite Jesus to the table of your life?In this powerful message, Pastor Todd Kaunitz explores Jesus' words to the church in Revelation 3 and the familiar invitation: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." While often applied personally, Jesus originally spoke these words to a church that had become busy with ministry but had drifted from His presence.Through the picture of a family gathered around the table, Pastor Todd reminds us that prayer is more than asking God for things—it's how we welcome Jesus into our lives, our homes, and our church. When Christ is at the center, we find the true source of refreshment, healing, and spiritual life.This message is a call to examine our hearts, turn from the things we've allowed to replace Jesus, and return to Him through repentance, consecration, and prayer. As we make room for His presence, we discover that He isn't content to remain outside—He desires to sit at the table with His people.Whether you're longing for renewal, seeking God's presence, or simply wanting to deepen your prayer life, this message will encourage you to open the door and welcome Jesus back to the center.Do you know JESUS? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.nbgilmer.org/do-you-know-jesus⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Need PRAYER? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.nbgilmer.org/pray⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support through GIVING: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.nbbctx.org/giving⁠ 

Jun 28th | The prayer on Sunday  | Revelation 3:15-22What does it look like to truly invite Jesus to the table of your life?In this powerful message, Pastor Peyton Coker explores Jesus' words to the church in Revelation 3 and the familiar invitation: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." While often applied personally, Jesus originally spoke these words to a church that had become busy with ministry but had drifted from His presence.Through the picture of a family gathered around the table, Pastor Peyton reminds us that prayer is more than asking God for things—it's how we welcome Jesus into our lives, our homes, and our church. When Christ is at the center, we find the true source of refreshment, healing, and spiritual life.This message is a call to examine our hearts, turn from the things we've allowed to replace Jesus, and return to Him through repentance, consecration, and prayer. As we make room for His presence, we discover that He isn't content to remain outside—He desires to sit at the table with His people.Whether you're longing for renewal, seeking God's presence, or simply wanting to deepen your prayer life, this message will encourage you to open the door and welcome Jesus back to the center.Do you know JESUS? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.nbgilmer.org/do-you-know-jesus⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Need PRAYER? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.nbgilmer.org/pray⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support through GIVING: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.nbbctx.org/giving⁠ 

Topical Sermons / Speaker:Berry Kercheville Can We Change Habits, Orientations, & Addictions? Introduction: Last year, my wife and I took our three young grandchildren to the local library in Glendale, AZ. While my wife was playing some games with the kids and choosing books, I was looking at the children's books prominently displayed on the top of book shelves for 5-8 year olds (the age of our grandchildren). The books were promoting the LGBTQ community. I scanned each of the books, but read one book completely. In the book, two adults were trying to get a 6-year old to join a Pride parade. The girl was quite hesitant, but her adult companions kept urging until she joined in. The book ends with her being happy about her decision and enjoying all the dancing and frolicking in the parade. Obviously, there were numerous drawings throughout the book, including “trans,” drag queens, and even nudity. The adults even told the child that the wonder of the parade was that everyone be whatever they want to be.  This is only one of many events in which the LGBTQ community pushes corporations to advertise and demand that people accept them and cheer for them. Of course, they refuse to accept anyone who disagrees with their beliefs, but instead calls them haters and racist. The foundation of their beliefs and activities resides in the belief that they were born with whatever desire or orientation that they have and that it is unfair and unloving to expect them to change.  Therefore, the question: How can God expect us to change habits, orientations, and addictions that in many cases seem to be things we were born with and identify us.  The Nature of Sin 1 Corinthians 10:13-14 “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.”  No one has a unique temptation. While each individual may not have the exact same temptations, your temptations and my temptations are also common throughout all people in the world. Therefore, no one can say, “You just can't understand how difficult my temptation is.” No, there is nothing “special” about the sins that you struggle with.  God has restraints on Satan (just like in the book of Job) that keep him from giving you temptations that would overwhelm you or make it impossible for you to overcome. God takes into account your ability, which would include where you are in your spiritual growth. God will be faithful to you by providing you a way of escape so that you can endure the trial. Therefore, with every temptation there is an “out,” a means by which you can defeat Satan's trial. Satan is strong, but he is not so strong that you cannot defeat him. If you rationalize your sin and say that it is impossible for you to overcome it, you are accusing God of being unfaithful.  Verse 14 offers one of the ways to escape: flee! The desires for sin will be greatly weakened if we will limit our exposure to it. Idolatry is the root of every sin. Temptations always urge us to bow down to them, give them priority, and understand that without the sin we cannot be “whole.” In fact, without the sin we will be miserable the rest of our lives! Proverbs 6:27 “Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned?” Can You Become What God Intended You to Be? 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you.”  There is no question from this text that no one who practices these sins will inherit the kingdom of heaven. To think otherwise or to rationalize that you were born with some unique desire that means God will give you a pass, is to be deceived. It is also clear from this text that there were Christians who in their former life practiced a wide range of sins. For some, sexual immorality and adultery were part of their lifestyle. These sins are what defined them; it is who they were and how how they desired to live. And we know that these sexual sins are strongly addictive. Others, were alcoholics. Scripture never says that alcoholism is a disease or illness. It is a sin; a strongly addictive sin. It is the primary reason that we should stay away from it. Some were thieves and swindlers. We know about people like that. They are always looking for a way to get something for nothing. They are always trying to find a way to cheat someone. It isn't an easy lifestyle to change. Some in the church at Corinth practiced homosexuality. Just like heterosexual adulterers, that was their orientation. But no matter, all of these sins listed were part of the mental desires and addictions that a wide variety of people had, even in the NT churches. Now notice the concluding sentence: “and such were some of you.” The past tense is notable. These are the sins some of you “practiced,” not just committed, but practiced as a lifestyle. Does this mean that once they came out of the waters of baptism the desires they had suddenly vanished? Of course not! But what did happen was that a stronger desire replaced their old desires. And as long as they pursued and built on those positive desires, the old desires would fade into the background. While it is true that none of us can forget our sins, as we grow in Christ the former addictive sins become more and more despicable to us. It is a major error for any of us to reason that just because I still struggle with certain desires (as all do), it doesn't mean it is too difficult to overcome those sins or that God should just understand and accept me the way I am. God's Key to Change Is the Mind (Colossians 2:21–3:10) One of the primary keys to this text is the contrast between 2:21-23 and 3:1-4. Submitting to outward rules that seems to give a message of holiness (like simply praying and attending a church) without truly pursuing God, will not solve that desires of the flesh. The Catholic example of Lent would be an example of this today. But we can make the same mistake when we think being “faithful” to attend church and pray to God regularly will solve our “desires of the flesh” problem. Thus, Paul's first answer to the indulgences of the flesh is to “seek the things that are above.” This is absolutely the first and primary failure of those who finally cave into their struggle with sin, and then excuse themselves and say, “I was just born this way.” Seeking what is “above” is a rejection of seeking what is below! It is impossible to seek what is above while seeking that which is earthly. That is what James called “double-minded.” Therefore, what do we expect when at the same time we are going to church and praying, we are still telling ourselves, “this is just how I was born?” When I decided to pursue God, rejecting earthly passions and pursuits, even those that weren't inherently sinful, was absolutely necessary.  Second, Paul added, “Set your minds on things above…” First seek, then get your mind set on the things above. That means our minds are permanently immovable from what is above. It is the highest pursuit and primarily what we think about, desire, and love. That naturally happens because, God and all that he offers is far more satisfying than anything on earth. As God said in Isaiah 55, “My ways are higher than your ways.”  But there is something else that must happen when we seek and set our minds on things above. We need to reboot and reconfigure our minds. Paul uses the words “be renewed in the spirit of your minds” Ephesians 4:23). Therefore, the key to the reboot is seen in Hebrews 4:12-13, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” Paul gives one other key to getting our minds on things above: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” In other words, quit thinking that you are living your life. It isn't your life. Your life is gone. That “you” is dead. These words identify the problem when a person goes out to find themselves or discover their identity based on their personal feelings and desires. This isn't your life! You are owned by the one who created you and gave his life for you as a ransom for your sins. Quit thinking about the dead “you” and put your mind on the “you” in glory. Note the words in verse 4, “When Christ who is your life appears…” That's the key. Christ is your life. Verses 5-10 give us the crowning point. “Put to death therefore what is earthly…” Now when you read that and then read the sins we are to put to death, do you feel like giving those sins up and relegating them to the grave forever? Of course not! But if you do put those things to death, your feelings will follow. You cannot wait for your feelings to get into gear before you start obedience! If you hope for that, you will wait forever! God Causes Transformation—Practical Applications 1 John 5:2-3, “His commandments are not grievous/burdensome.”   Matthew 11:25-30  Vs. 25 “…you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes Father, for such was your gracious will.” The key to change is humbling ourselves as little children. We need complete trust, ridding ourselves of pursuing our own wisdom and understanding. Vs. 28 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden…” Is that not our condition when we are in the midst of being overwhelmed with our own desires and addictions? Jesus will give us rest!  Vs. 29 “Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jesus has compassion for us in our struggles against sin. Vs. 30 “…my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” What Jesus is asking of us is not too hard. What he is asking is “light” in comparison with living our way and following Satan. Clarification: Does this mean that I can rid myself of all evil desires so that I never have to struggle with them again?  Not only is that not going to happen, it is not the goal. None of us forget the sins of our past.  We all suffer the consequences of our past sins in that once we ate the forbidden fruit, we developed a memory and taste for it. In other words, sin inflames our desires, and the more those desires are fulfilled, the more difficult they are to overcomes. Addictions are real no matter the sin!  When God is pursued and becomes our number one passion, sinful desires weaken over time, but not immediately! It takes time for the mind to be “renewed” just as it took time to create the strong desires. Berry Kercheville The post Can We Change Habits, Orientation, and Addictions? appeared first on Woodland Hills Church of Christ.

What does it mean to truly receive Jesus? In this sermon from Matthew 10, we explore Christ's promise that those who receive His disciples receive Him—and through Him, the Father. As followers of Jesus, we are first called to receive His grace, His Spirit, and His life, so that we can faithfully share His love with others. When Christ lives in His people, even the simplest acts of kindness become signs of His Kingdom at work in the world.

In this episode of The Reformed Brotherhood, Tony Arsenal walks through Jonah 1–2, focusing on the remarkable prayer Jonah offers from the belly of the great fish. Far from a simple morality tale, the Book of Jonah presents a complex, deeply theological portrait of a disobedient prophet who nonetheless clings to the Lord in his darkest moment. Tony explores the Hebrew literary features that shape how we read Jonah's prayer, the doctrine of divine sovereignty as it operates through human agency, and the rich typological connections between Jonah and the death and resurrection of Christ. Most importantly, the episode grounds Jonah's experience in the Westminster Confession's teaching on sanctification — offering genuine hope to believers who feel buried under besetting sin, assuring them that salvation, from beginning to end, belongs entirely to the Lord. Key Takeaways Jonah is not the hero of his own story — he functions more as an anti-hero whose failures actually make him a more useful and relatable example for ordinary believers. Divine sovereignty operates through, not apart from, human agency — the sailors freely threw Jonah overboard, and yet Jonah rightly says God cast him into the deep; both are simultaneously true. The sequence debate in Jonah 2 matters theologically — whether Jonah prayed before or after being swallowed affects how we read the book; reading it as a strict cause-and-effect sequence risks turning the gospel into a quid pro quo transaction with God. Jonah's "yet I will see your holy temple" is a confession of eschatological faith — in the midst of near-certain death, Jonah expresses confidence not merely in earthly rescue, but in his ultimate destiny as one of God's people. The deep is a Genesis image — Jonah's descent into the primordial waters deliberately echoes the formless void of Genesis 1 and the undoing of creation in the flood, placing his experience within the grand arc of biblical cosmology. Jonah is a prophetic type of Christ's death and resurrection — his three days in the belly of the fish, his descent into the pit, and his emergence onto dry land anticipate and foreshadow the resurrection, as Jesus himself confirms in Matthew 12. Sanctification is real but imperfect — drawing from Westminster Confession Chapter 13, Tony argues that the up-and-down nature of Jonah's spiritual life is not an aberration but a description of the normal Christian life, in which the flesh and spirit remain in perpetual war until glory. Key Concepts Eschatological Faith in the Pit One of the most striking moments in Jonah's prayer is his declaration in 2:4 — "Yet I shall again look upon your holy temple." Tony argues that this is not merely a hope of physical rescue and a return to Jerusalem. Jonah believed he was dying. The waters had closed in to take his life; he was being dragged into underwater trenches that the ancient Semitic mind associated with the very gates of Sheol. In this context, Jonah's declaration is better understood as eschatological faith — a confession that even if God takes his life in judgment, he will still see the Lord face to face in the heavenly temple. It mirrors Job's cry, "Yet in my flesh I shall see God," and anticipates the kind of faith that says, with the father in Mark 9, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief." Sovereignty and Human Agency Working Together Tony uses Jonah's descent as a teaching moment on the Reformed doctrine of concurrence — the truth that God's sovereign decree and human free will are not in competition but operate simultaneously on different levels. The sailors made a free, agonized decision to throw Jonah overboard; and yet Jonah rightly attributes his casting into the sea to God himself. Tony draws the parallel to Joseph's words to his brothers in Genesis 50: "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good." This is not a philosophical sleight of hand. It is the consistent testimony of Scripture that God governs all things — including the underwater currents that dragged Jonah to the ocean floor — without reducing human beings to puppets or eliminating their moral responsibility. Sanctification Is Real, Imperfect, and Guaranteed Perhaps the most pastorally significant thread of the episode is Tony's application of Westminster Confession Chapter 13 to Jonah's experience. Jonah makes genuine progress in faith — his prayer is theologically rich and demonstrates real trust in God — and yet he almost immediately slips back behind the curve, making vows the sailors had already made before him, and later in chapter 4, sulking over a dead plant. Tony refuses to read this as a failure of the text. Instead, it is the text faithfully portraying the reality of sanctification: real throughout the whole person, yet imperfect in this life, with an irreconcilable war between flesh and spirit. The hope is not that we will finally overcome that war on our own, but that through the continual supply of the sanctifying Spirit of Christ, the regenerate part will overcome. Salvation — including sanctification — belongs entirely to the Lord. Memorable Quotes Jonah is constantly behind the curve, but for this little moment, for this glimpse in the very center of the book, the pinnacle of the book is Jonah finally catching up to the sailors. All outside visible indicators said he was going to die and he was going to hell. Yet he trusted in the Lord that he would see his holy temple again. God redeems our life from the pit. From the very depths of hell itself, he snatched us like brands from the fire. Full Transcript [00:00:08] Tony Arsenal: Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it. For their evil has come up before me." But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.  [00:01:24] Storm and Sailors [00:01:24] Tony Arsenal: But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. So the captain came to him and said, "What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god. Perhaps the god will give us a thought that we may not perish." And they said to one another, "Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us." So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, "Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation, and where do you come from? What is your country, and of what people are you?" And he said to them, "I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land." Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, "What is this that you have done?" For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. Then they said to him, "What shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us?" For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. [00:02:36] Cast Into Sea [00:02:36] Tony Arsenal: He said to them, "Pick me up and hurl me into the sea. Then the sea will quiet down for you. For I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you." Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to the dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. Therefore they called out to the Lord, "O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood. For you, O Lord, has done as it pleased you." So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea. And the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. [00:03:15] Fish and Prayer [00:03:15] Tony Arsenal: And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, "I called out to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the dep-- into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me. All your waves and billows passed over me." Then he said, "I am driven away from your sight. Yet I shall look again upon your holy temple. The waters closed in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped around my head." At the root of the mountain I went to the land, whose bars closed upon me forever. Yet you brought my life up from the pit, O Lord my God. When I-- when my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I, with a voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord.  [00:04:23] Jonah Not the Hero [00:04:23] Tony Arsenal: And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land Jonah is an interesting book because, as I commented a year ago, Jonah is not necessarily the hero of the story. Uh, if anything, he is kind of the villain in, in some senses. But nevertheless, I think as we'll see today, Jonah still gives us a good example to follow in a sense, and that I think is really the centerpiece of this prayer, is that even as Jonah's going through all of this, his prayer is still remarkably filled with faithful sayings and trust in the Lord. We learned early on in Jonah that Jonah was a prophet during the time of the kings. Uh, he, uh, he seemed to have been a sort of a court temple. He was in the presence of the kings in Jerusalem itself, and he received a calling from the word of the Lord, and this phrase, "the word of the Lord," seems to imply a pre-incarnate, uh, visible manifestation of the second person of the Trinity. So we're not just talking about a, a disembodied voice. We're not just talking about some sort of sense or impression, but the word of the Lord itself, himself, came to give Jonah this mission, to give Jonah this task, to commission him as a prophet to Nineveh. And Jonah gets up and says, "No, thank you," and he goes the opposite direction. We see in that first section there the repeated phrase, "He goes to Tarshish. He boards a ship in Tarshish." The author here, who we, we think is Jonah, is hammering that he did not go where he was supposed to. He went the opposite direction. He went to Tarshish instead of Nineveh, which is 180 degrees the other direction from, uh, from Nineveh on the map. And he boards the, he boards the ship in order to flee the presence of the Lord. He pays, probably buys out the entire ship itself. He pays the fare for the whole ship, and the Lord hurls a great wave, uses the language of weapons. He hurls this storm like a spear. He weaponizes nature itself to correct and chastise and judge Jonah for his disobedience We get to verses seven through 17, and everyone on the boat is crying out to their chosen deity except Jonah. Jonah is asleep in the hold of the ship, oblivious to everything, totally dead to the world and dead to his Lord. The sailors begin to seek divine li- divine wisdom after they wake Jonah. He comes to the deck of the ship, and they cast lots to identify by divine, uh, revelation, sort of a strange practice in the Old Testament or the old, uh, world. Divine revelation that shows them Jonah is the source of this wickedness that is being wrought upon them, at least their impression of it. So they ask Jonah, "Who are you? Tell us who it is that has caused this great calamity." And he says emphatically, "A Hebrew am I." He identifies himself with God's people, and he says, "The Lord is my God, and he made the heaven and the earth and the sea." There's no small amount of irony, and it explains why the sailors are so afraid when he says that God created the heavens where the storm was. He created the sea where they were about to die, and he created the dry land where they were trying to get to. And so this one phrase that Jonah uses almost casually demonstrates that the Lord has total and utter sovereignty over what is going on, which is a theme that we'll see come back again and again through the book The sailors say, "Well, what do we do about this?" And Jonah says, "Throw me into the ocean, because I know that if you do so, then the storm will calm down and you will be saved." Whether he knew this because he's a prophet and it had been revealed to him, or whether he just was surmising that this was the case, we don't know. But the, uh, sailors are hesitant to do so, and we talked about how it was a little bit strange that these, uh, pagan sailors from cultures that d- had no qualms about human sacrifice were suddenly, uh, unwilling to throw Jonah over the sea a- as a, an appeasement offering to this Lord. And we came to the conclusion that they had been regenerated. They had come to faith in this God who created the heavens and the sea and the dry ground. And so they knew intrinsically that this was wrong, that there was a moral imperative not to do this. So they tried to row back to the land. They jettisoned all of their, uh, all of their goods, all of their cargo. They were making for land as best they could, and when it finally became clear that they couldn't do this, they sought the Lord's mercy in saying, essentially, "We don't understand how this is, but please don't put this man's blood on us, because you, Lord, have done as you please," right? The sovereignty of the Lord again comes to the forefront. They finally cast Jonah into the sea, and this is, this is important. They cast Jonah into the sea, and then they worship, they vow vows, and they vow to sacrifice. They offer sacrifices. They seek the Lord, they acknowledge his s- his sovereignty, and they worship him with what they have left. And then rounding out the chapter, the Lord appoints a great fish to come and swallow up Jonah. And we talked about how this, this swallowing of Jonah, although our popular children's books and VeggieTales and other stories we might read to our kids paints the fish often as the vehicle of judgment, it's actually a vehicle of deliverance for Jonah. There's this interesting grammatical feature that happens where in 1:17 the fish is masculine. The, the, the gender of the word is masculine, and then when we get to 2:1 it switches over to the feminine, almost as if to indicate that the whale was pregnant with Jonah, that Jonah was in the whale and was about to be reborn into the world in a new way And that brings us to our passage here today.  [00:10:21] Sequence Debate [00:10:21] Tony Arsenal: I'm gonna read, uh, 1:17 even though that's a little bit outside of our scope. I'm gonna read it along with 2:1 to, to make the point here. It says, "The Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the whale, of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish." When you look at the Hebrew text, 1:17 is actually verse 2:1 and 2:1 is then 2:2 and so on and so forth. In the original Hebrew mindset of how this book goes together, these two things were linked together, him being swallowed by the whale and being in the belly of the fish and then him praying was linked together in this sequence. There's a feature in the Hebrew that's called a vav consecutive. You don't need to remember that. Nobody is gonna care about that. But it's, it's a little grammatical feature where it adds this little character to the front of the verb and it indicates a sequence. It's the narrative storytelling. When you look at Genesis 1 it's, "And then God said, 'Let there be light,' and then there was light." It tells you the sequence of events. Sometimes it indicates that it is a strict sequence of events. This happened and then that finished and then the next thing happened and then that finished. And many of the commentators use this passage to justify a perspective of Jonah where Jonah is this rebellious, stubborn prophet who holds out his stubbornness until the very last minute. He's swallowed by the whale, he's getting digested by stomach acid and he sort of finally relents to the Lord and cries out for deliverance and the Lord acquiesces in response to his prayer. That's certainly a possible interpretation. There's lots of good reasons in the, the text here to think Jonah was kind of a chucklehead and was not paying too much attention to what the Lord had for him The other option is to see this as a way for the author of the text to situate this prayer in contrast to other prayers that are not necessarily talked about directly in this text. And I'm gonna take that later view here, and I think it's important. This makes good sense of the text, and we'll explain exactly why that is when we get to the next little section here. But it also protects us theologically if we understand it this way. Jonah is already a book, uh, as I've alluded to, that tends towards a sort of crass moralism or fabulism. We tend to read it as sort of an allegory of if you do the wrong thing, God punishes you, and when you finally do the right thing, He blesses you. And there's a certain level of common grace wisdom to that approach, right? The whole book of Proverbs is-- are these proverbial sayings that if you do this, then the God-- then God will do this. If you raise up your children in the way they will go, they will not depart when they are older. But we also learn in the Book of Job and the Book of Ecclesiastes that those proverbial sayings, although generally true, it's not a magic formula. And so we have this tendency to read Old Testament literature as though it was this sort of like equation, that God punishes us when we're bad. He, uh, He relents from His punishment when we say we're sorry, and we have to be careful about that. If we understand what I'm about to teach from the next section here, that this is not a strict sequence of events, that Jonah began praying before he was swallowed by the whale, and this is simply recording the prayer that was actually within the whale. It helps protect us from seeing Jonah in this sort of quid pro quo, this for that kind of thing. I think we should simply understand this as saying Jonah was in the water, he got swallowed by the whale, and then when he was in the whale, he prayed. It doesn't say anything about whether he was overly stubborn or whether his stubbornness held out. It simply tells us that he was in the pray-- in the whale when this prayer occurred [00:14:23] Sheol and Descent [00:14:23] Tony Arsenal: He says in verse two, he calls out to the Lord out of his distress. He, and God answers him. Out of the belly of Sheol, Jonah cries, and God hears his voice This here tells us that he began praying, right? He was in the water, he was in the deep. All of this descriptive language we're gonna see later on about how deep he was, how quickly the current took him. He was wrapped up in seaweed, his life was fading from him. It was in the midst of all of that that he cries out in his distress. It's a pretty distressing situation. And Jonah, like all of us would, like even most atheists would, cries out to the Lord, even just out of instinct. I think it's kind of crazy for us to think that this man who's now been cast overboard and is being swept to the bottom of the ocean is sure he's gonna die. Somehow, he overrides all of his instinct and his entire life teaching and refuses to pray to the Lord. It just doesn't make sense, and it doesn't make sense of what the text presents here Jonah was in the belly of Sheol. He was in the very, the very womb of Sheol. And there is this interesting contrast that he goes from the belly of Sheol into the belly of the whale. This phrase, the belly of Sheol, is probably roughly equivalent to our phrase about being at death's door, right? It, it may or may not come from some sort of Mesopotamian, um, mythology. It may be a phrase of sort of co-opted into Hebrew, kinda like our phrase at death's door is actually co-opted in from Greek mythology, where there were actually literal doors to the underworld, and people would go there and when they were about to die. Jonah's point is that this was not a small thing. When we watch VeggieTales, he gets thrown in the water, and, like, 13 seconds later, the, the whale comes up and takes him. Jonah was swept down into the water almost supernaturally quick. He was drawn down to the very bottom of the ocean. We talk about the miracle of him surviving in the whale, and it was miraculous for sure, but the miracle of him being swept to the bottom of the ocean and not being crushed by the weight of the water, by the pressure, is equally miraculous. It's no more difficult for God to do that than it is for Him to preserve him in the whale or to raise Jesus from the dead or to create everything from nothing He finally starts to catch up with the pagan sailors. A theme in Jonah is that everyone around Jonah who shouldn't know any better somehow gets to the right conclusion before he does, right? The sailors begin to worship the Lord. They recognize this is divine wrath while Jonah is still asleep in the hold. Later, we'll see that, uh, the, the Ninevites recognize God's mercy and grace and thank Him for it, and Jonah is still mad because the plant he was sitting on d- uh, dies, right? Jonah is constantly behind the curve, but for this little moment, for this glimpse in the very center of the book, the pinnacle of the book is Jonah finally catching up to the sailors. [00:17:34] Sovereignty Explained [00:17:34] Tony Arsenal: He recognizes that it was God who cast him into the depths. This teaches us something about the doctrine of sovereignty and how it relates to human freedom, right? We, we often ask the question, what, what causes rain? Well, you can answer that by saying tiny particles of dust collect water in the air, and once they have enough weight, they fall out of the sky 'cause the air can't hold them up anymore. That's true, and it's good, and that's what nature teaches us. It's also equally true that God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike, and those two things are not contradictory. So when Jonah says, "You cast me into the sea," he's recognizing, like Joseph does in the Book of Genesis, that what the sailors in this case meant for good but what the brothers meant for evil, God purposed and caused for good. What the sailors did by their own volition, their own free will, they exercised their own, uh, autonomy in the, the horizontal sense to cast Jonah into the sea, God also cast him into the sea As I said, the text here uses language that we may not catch in our English translations to indicate that it's not just the sea here that's the problem. God's sovereignty continues to affect and act on Jonah. The word that we read here as the, the water or the flood, other places refers to the current of a river. The, um, the Euphrates itself is sometimes referred to this, the large- sort of the largest river apart from the Nile that the Egyptian or the, um, Israelite mind would have is the Euphrates, right? This underwater river, this underwater current, the undertow sucks him to the bottom of the ocean. It's like if you're swimming at the beach at the ocean and you get caught in the undercurrent. There's not a lot you can do about it. Y- sometimes even the strongest swimmers can't overcome this, and Jonah in all of his Middle Eastern robes, all of this stuff, probably with all of his baggage, his, his own equipment, things he had on him, is caught in this undercurrent that sucks him to the bottom of the ocean. And it's not just below the surface of the water. He's dropped down into the heart of the sea, the very core. We're seeing this language of him being pulled to the depths. In, in chapter one he goes down, down, down, and now he's being drawn into the belly of the ocean, into the pit of Sheol, into the heart of the waters The picture here is that Jonah doesn't just get thrown in the water and sink. He is actively pulled down to the bottom. This is not just a judgment where perhaps he can swim to the top. Just as the mariners hopelessly tried to reach land, Jonah would've been hopelessly trying to swim against this. We don't actually have any indication he tried, but had he tried, there would've been no chance He goes on to say that the God's breakers and his waves roll him. This is the picture we see if you ever watch surfing competitions on the ocean, where a surfer will get hit by the wave and he just gets rolled over and rolled over and rolled over, and it can be incredibly dangerous. That's why they have like the little lifeguards on the jet skis that zip out there to get them. Because when you get caught in that breaker, you just get rolled over and rolled over and rolled over, and soon you lose track of which direction is up, and even if you did, you couldn't get out This process is not just the forces of nature doing what they do. This is, again, the Lord weaponizing the forces of nature to execute judgment on Jonah This tumultuous and supernatural rapid descent showed Jonah that this is not only the moment in which God wanted to take his life, but was actively casting him away from the g- from the presence of the Lord [00:21:47] Yet I Will See [00:21:47] Tony Arsenal: It says here, um, in verse four, Jonah says, "I am driven away from your sight If you do a word study on this, you start to see that Jonah is pulling language from the creation account. He's pulling language from the fall. He's pulling a lot of language from Genesis itself. He's also pulling from the Psalms, which are pulling from the Genesis account. This word driven away could also be tran- translated as banished. He's cast out of the presence of the Lord. Just as in Genesis 3, we read, "God drove the man out at the east of the Garden of Eden. He placed cherubim and flaming swords." He drove the man out. Genesis 4:14, Cain says, "You have driven me away from the ground." And in Jonah 1:3, we see that Jonah was trying to get away from the presence of the Lord. And I wonder if there was this moment where he goes, "Ooh, I guess I got what I was looking for." Now, the second half of Jonah f- 2:4 here does something a little bit weird, and it's hard to translate. I think we should be honest at times. Hebrew is a language that in some senses is mysterious to us at times. There are still parts of the Hebrew Bible that we're not always 100% sure of. This verse here could be translated... In, in Hebrew it's just a statement. It's, "I, um, I shall again see the holy temple, or your holy temple." How that fits into the text itself is tricky. Some read it as, uh, as a question. "How shall I see your holy temple?" It's actually a statement kind of reaffirming the doubt and the fear and the idea that God was banishing him Most translations translate it as sort of a contrast. He says, "I was driven away from your sight, yet I shall again look on your holy temple." The force of this is even though you're driving me away, even though you're casting me out of your presence, I have faith, I have confidence that I will again see your holy temple The question here, and this is where I think Jonah becomes our example It's certainly possible that Jonah was asserting his belief that he would be rescued from this calamity and he would make his way back to Jerusalem and he would return to the holy temple. I think that what he says in the rest of this, he's recounting what he was praying. What he was praying in this context is not that he would return to the temple. He was confident God was taking his life. He says in verse five, "The waters closed in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped around my head." The other way that the phrase holy temple is used in the Old Testament is to refer to the place that God lives in heaven. Jonah was asserting faith that even though he was being cast out of the presence of the Lord in this life, even though he was being justly punished for his sin, even though he was about to enter the belly of Sheol and to enter the pit, the very abyss, that he would see God again in His holy temple. This is a statement of Jonah's belief in his own destiny as one of God's people, destined to be saved by faith in God. In this moment, Jonah trusts the Lord despite all of the appearances that God was out to get him It's not all that different than when we read in Mark chapter 9, where this father brings his, uh, demon-possessed child to Jesus, and Jesus says, "I can heal him." And he says, "If you can do anything, Lord," I'm paraphrasing here. He says, "If you can do it, please, Lord." And he says, "If? All things are possible for me." And the father desperately cries out, "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief." It's this raw, unfiltered statement of just the human condition on this side of glory, right? I believe in the Lord, but there's always that little part in the back of my head that isn't sure, because we're never going to be perfect. Now, I've said before, and, and this is becoming my new catchphrase, I think, I'm not here to rob you of your assurance of faith. Our, our confession, the Bible, this church, our Reform, broader Reform tradition, the assurance of faith of the Christian is the rightful possession inheritance of every person in this room who trusts the Lord. But it is a reality that at times that assurance is shaken. And if there's ever a time for your assurance to be shaken, it's when you're being dragged to the bottom of the ocean, right? One of the words in here, I don't have it-- I don't actually have it in my notes for some reason, but one of the note, words here, uh, s- about the roots of the mountain, I believe, in the next verse. It's not just that he was dragged to the bottom of the ocean. This word root of the mountain is like the word that's used to cut. He's not just being dragged to the bottom of the sea, he's being dragged to the bottom of a deep sea crevasse. He's literally being pulled into the pit, right? Many, uh, in the ancient Semitic world would have seen these underwater pits. They would have theorized or thought about these underwater crevasses as the actual entry into Sheol. And Jonah sees himself being drawn down into these things. Yet, he believes he will see the good presence of the Lord We read a similar statement, I won't, uh, I won't make us go there for time. We read a similar statement in Job. Job goes through this long speech about all the things that God has done to him, and at the very end of it, he says, "Yet I will see the Lord with my eyes, and he will stand up next to me on, on the earth." Right? Even though Job was going through this unimaginable grief, and we know that Job didn't deserve it in the strict sense, he still was saying, "I'm gonna be destroyed. God is shooting arrows at me," right? "His sword is in my side. He's targeting me. He's sending hornets after me." All of these terrible, vibrant images that he's using to show what God is doing to him, and yet he still trusts. I would say that he trusts that he would see the Lord in the flesh. This is not only Jonah's faith, it's a-- or Job's faith, it's a prophecy of Christ This is alien to our modern mindset. We've been talking about this in the Psalms. Weston's been leading us through the, the lament Psalms We often think that suffering and trials and difficulties are the opposite of blessing and favor. And we might recognize that in some sort of way that in God's economy, one thing leads to another. And again, there's an element of truth to that. James says, "Count it all joy when you face trials of every kind." He's not saying that the trials you're facing are in themselves joyful. You don't have to love when you get sick. You don't have to, you don't have to man up and put a smile on or s- pull yourself up by your bootstraps or whatever analogy you wanna use. It's okay to be sad when bad things happen. It's actually good, right? If we're to weep with those who weep, there's an element of sadness that must come with that, not to mention the one who's weeping is not chastised. But the idea that that only leads to this, that that's just one step in the chain, that's not really the mindset the Bible has. All across the Psalms, in the lament Psalms, all across the prophetic literature, the Book of Lamentations, Habakkuk has this long prayer at the end that's very similar, the entire Book of Job, suffering and sanctification, trials and joy and restoration, they're all sandwiched right there, and there is usually this statement in the middle of it that God will do what is right This is Jonah's example for us, and what an example it is. We'll talk in a little bit about all the ways that this whole scenario is typological of Christ. We'll, we'll get to that. But just for a minute in the middle of this book, Jonah is not such a bad guy. And it's because he still has all his faults that he can be this example for us [00:30:26] Genesis Deep Imagery [00:30:26] Tony Arsenal: As though it wasn't clear enough, Jonah in verse five says that the purpose of the waters closing over him was explicitly to take his life. He's now in the belly of the sea. He's being dragged down to the very roots of the mountain, to the very core of the earth in his mind. He, he thinks he's going to hell in the, the Hebrew mind. There's both this idea that God is dragging him to hell in a very real sense. The Hebrew mind, Sheol was a physical place that people went to, and we learn more about it and that becomes clarified as revelation is progressive, not contradictory, but as, as it's clarified But he uses this word deep, and this is where he's drawing again from Genesis. Genesis 1:2, he says, "The earth was without form and void. The darkness was over the face of the deep." The deep is this sort of like unformed chaotic water. It's what exists before God makes everything orderly and good. And in the fall, and especially in the flood in chapter seven, uh, chapter seven verse 11, the f- the flood itself is a sort of undoing of the order. God opens the floods from beneath, from the bottom of the earth, from the wellspring of the deep, as well as the chaotic waters from outside the firmament, and it all pours back in together and the entire world becomes again this deep, primordial, chaotic water And just as in Genesis God separates the land, in, in Genesis 7 or in Genesis 8, he separates out the land by drying it up, drying up the water. We also see that Jonah has this trust that he will return to the dry land. Again, he's the God of heaven and sea and dry earth. We could even read this phrase, depending on the context, as the abyss, which is this, a- again, is some borrowed language from Greek here that the Hebrews use. But it's this deep, watery, murky place th- full of shadows and darkness. Sounds familiar, I think, right? Christ says that those who are apart from him who refuse to obey will be cast into the outer darkness. This is the imagery that Jonah is seeing. All outside visible indicators was that he was gonna die and he was going to hell. Yet he trusted in the Lord that he would see his holy temple again Apart from God's gracious intervention, Jonah was right. So although God is the one that's bringing him to the depth, bringing him to the pit, dragging him down, using the very currents of the sea, weaponizing these underwater currents that only thousands of years later do we understand, and even then only this much, he also graciously rescues him from this by miraculously appointing a whale or a great fish who comes and swallows Jonah, takes him whole, and keeps him there in his own belly, keeps him there in her own womb when we get to chapter 2. In chapter six, or in verse six, Jonah makes this pivot. Again, he says he's brought to the very bottom of the sea, to the roots of the mountain, which is these deep underwater trenches. He conceptualizes himself now in this locked city behind bars. Again, this jail imagery, this pit imagery, it's all meant to evoke this idea of the final punishment of the wicked. This place of murky, gross water, this place of darkness and, uh, limitations of freedom, he's being taken there. This is the section here where people would actually argue that Jonah dies. He actually dies and is resurrected when he's swallowed by the whale. This comes from language where it says God does not prevent him from going to the pit. God actually draws him to the pit and then raises his life up from the pit. Now, I'm not convinced, um, that we should think that Jonah actually died. I don't, I don't think that the text fully supports that. But it certainly is using this imagery [00:34:45] Christ Typology [00:34:45] Tony Arsenal: This is where we get to some typology about Christ. This is where Jonah really shines as a prophet. Sometimes people wonder why the Book of Jonah is considered a prophetic book, and this along with it is part of that. Jonah, although the sign of Jonah in Matthew and in the other Gospels refers to the belly of the whale, that just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights, so also Christ will be in the heart of the earth, the pit, for three days and three nights. When we're talking about typology, we can't get too tripped up on the details. We're not talking about strict allegory where this figure is that person and this signpost represents that thing. This isn't Pilgrim's Progress or Chronicles of Narnia, which is not allegory, but it's similar. Topology functions often on sort of these big picture concepts, right? Although there are some typological references that are super detailed, there are also some that are just sort of evocative The idea that Jonah died and was raised to life and sort of incubated in the earth, in- incubated in the whale and sort of reborn into the world, that certainly sounds a lot like a picture of the resurrection And I think we should see it that way. When Christ says that the sign of Jonah is roughly His resurrection, He is tying it to the three days and three nights, but He's not limiting to that Jonah comes to this pivot, and now he starts to reflect on the context of his deliverance. This whole s- this whole prayer should be seen sort of in the light of the thanksgiving psalms. There's a situation in which Jonah is in, and then God rescues him, and he begins to praise him for it. There's elements of lament, but it's really a thanksgiving psalm that he's drawing on here or that he's, he's writing In 2:7, Jonah is either dead or he's actively dying. I don't know about you, but if you've ever, uh, dove into a pool and got a little deeper than you thought you were, and you-- there's that, like, two seconds before you get to the top where you're sure the lights are going out and you've really only been underwater for, like, 45 seconds, but everything in you tells you if you don't get there, you're gonna die. Every instinct you have is to scramble for the surface. Think about how long it took Jonah to be dragged to the bottom of the ocean. Even at this accelerated pace, we're talking about a long time. And we have no reason to believe, and lots of reasons to think otherwise, Jonah was not preserved from the pain and the terror and the difficulty of feeling like you're drowning because he was drowning. He was without oxygen. His life was fading away. And it is in this context of him being on the brink of death, at death's door, in the belly of Sheol, being drawn into the very pit itself, that his prayer reaches the Lord in His holy temple. Right? This gives further evidence to the thought that Jonah is not talking about the temple in Jerusalem. There was, there was theology, and I, I think it's fine theology, that God lived in the temple in a special way. This is the reason that Daniel faces Jerusalem when he prays. There is a sense in the Old Testament that God's special place of presence is the temple in Jerusalem, and that the prayers of the people physically go to that place to be received by God. But Jonah doesn't know which direction the temple is. He's underwater. He's been tossed around by breakers. He has no sense of geography at this point He knows that his prayers are reaching the Lord in his heavenly temple. And they reach him in his heavenly temple just as his life is being lost in the pit. And it is from this moment that God raises him to life, or preserves his life, depending how you read it, and appoints the well to come reach him And some read this next verse as a little bit of a step back for Jonah, and it may be.  [00:39:02] Vows and Idols [00:39:02] Tony Arsenal: He reads, "Those who pay vain regard to i- regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. And what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord." Jonah didn't see the sailors on the ship vow their vows and offer their sacrifices. That happened after they threw him into the pit and the current sucked him under So we may read this with a little bit of a, "Thank God I'm not like that tax collector," kind of a lens. And there's probably some wisdom for us in that, to recognize that Jonah still hasn't quite gotten there. But it's also very common in the Old Testament to recognize that God treats His people differently because they are different. God brings people to a place of sanctification, and through that process of sanctification, they cease to worship vain idols. And it is absolutely true that those who worship vain idols forfeit their hope of steadfast love from the Lord. That's straight out of the Ten Commandments, right? He visits the iniquity of, specifically of idolatry. He visits the iniquity unto the children to the third and fourth generation. But for those who love the Lord, He loves them with a steadfast love unto thousands We can recognize in Jonah that although he had made great progress in faith, that he still wasn't there yet. And we can recognize that in him because we can recognize that in ourselves. Jonah is the example in this because he is not perfect, because he has not arrived, 'cause he doesn't do a 180 about-face and get everything right going forward We can read this in light of Jonah in chapter four, where he takes big steps back Or we can read this as the regular up and down progress of sanctification in the life of all believers everywhere It is also ironic again, we're back now to Jonah being a little bit behind the curve. He was sent to Nineveh to evangelize the heathens, some of the worst enemies that Israel was going to face, and he ignores that call. And he, instead of going to Nineveh, he goes to Tarshish. He goes the opposite direction, and he does something that would be unthinkable to most Israelites. He goes out on the open ocean. That's just insanity to someone living in the ancient world He should have recognized that the sailors were fearing the Lord when they refused to throw him overboard. I think we all have a sort of innate sense when someone's behavior suddenly changes, and I think most of us, and not in some sort of strange, kooky, charismatic sense, but I think most of us can sort of go, "I think I know why that is." Right, when you, when you see someone at work that suddenly stops lying about everything and stops backbiting and stops taking credit for other people's work, and then you find out a little while linger- longer that they've come to faith in Christ, if we're being honest, we're not all that surprised. But Jonah doesn't get it. Jonah here promises the same things that the sailors already did, so now we're again back behind the curve [00:42:37] Sanctification Confession [00:42:37] Tony Arsenal: To wrap this out, I, I wanna, um, I wanna ground this in something that I think is really vital for us to understand. As I said, Jonah is an example to us because he demonstrates the limited nature of sanctification, but he also demonstrates in a certain sense the fact that sanctification is real and has real effects. So this is a little out of the ordinary, but grab your Trinity Hymnal from the pew in front of you. If you happen to have a copy of the Confession, you could use that if you'd prefer. But open with me to page 927 I have, um, I've been, uh, broadly Reformed most of my Christian life and didn't realize it until I got to seminary. And since I discovered the Westminster Confession of Faith a decade ago, it's not new, uh, not new to me, um, I realized how valuable this resource was. This is essentially a search engine without the internet. And so I wanna just read a little bit out of chapter 13 here, which is our Confessions chapter on sanctification. I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but the, the first, uh, the first section here essentially says that sanctification is real, and it happens throughout the whole person. We talk about total depravity, and there is a sense in which the Christian remains totally depraved after regeneration, in that there still is, there still is corruption within our entire being, uh, that is depraved. There's also an equal sense in which we can say we are totally sanctified in Christ because sanctification is throughout the whole man in which we are renewed after the image of God. So that's section one. And then section two says, "This sanctification is throughout," again, throughout the whole man, "in the whole man, yet imperfect in this life. There abiding still some remnant of corruption in every part, whence ariseth a continual and irre- irreconcilable war, the flesh left lusting after the spirit, and the spirit lusting after the flesh." Now, that may feel like just a crushing burden if you stop reading there, but it lines up with our experience, right? This is Paul in Romans 7, "The good things I wanna do, I do not, and the bad things that I, I kn- I do not want to do, I somehow do. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." We shouldn't read that as though somehow our spirits are purified entirely and our bodies are what's really causing us to sin. This is a picture of the spirit being, uh, our, our spiritual part of us. The part of us that's regenerated is willing, but the part of us that remains corrupt is our flesh And our confession goes on to say, "In which war, although the remaining corruption for a time may much prevail, yet through the continual supply of strength from the sanctification- sanctifying spirit of Christ, the regenerate part doth overcome." And so the saints grow in grace, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. This is revolutionary in our broader evangelical world. The storybook Bible, Jonah did a bad thing and he gets punished, and he did a good thing and so he gets better, cannot understand this concept. This is why I think we have to be so careful when we choose what books to give to our little ones, right? I, I make jokes about VeggieTales. I loved VeggieTales when I was in VeggieTales age range. I probably would sit down and watch VeggieTales with Augie when he gets old enough. But we have to be so careful not to let those messages come to our children, or to ourselves for that matter, uninterpreted by the scriptures first and foremost, and our Reformed tradition that we all believe. Amen.  [00:46:49] Assurance in the Pit [00:46:49] Tony Arsenal: This is vital for us When all is said and done, salvation, whether we're talking about justification, sanctification, glorification, resurrection, all of the different stages and phases of our salvation, it is entirely of the Lord. And it's for this reason that Jonah says, "I, with a voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will pay." Salvation belongs to the Lord So this is the application of the sermon, loved ones. No matter how close to or actually into the pit itself we have fallen The, the chapter on assurance of faith, I won't go there, but the chapter in our confession on assurance of faith is very honest with us that our assurance will be shaken, and at times we may not feel as though we have any assurance at all But even when we have fallen that deep into the pit of despair, even when we feel as though we are in the very depths of hell No matter how much our spiritual or physical life is fainting away as we starve for spiritual breath, as we feel that impulse in us that recognizes we're moments away from losing the faith entirely. No matter how much the remnants of corruption in every part swirl around our heads like seaweed, how often do we feel wrapped up in sin? Whatever it is, I don't need to get specific 'cause I'm sure all of you are thinking of something in your head right now that has been swirling around you for years. Maybe it's months, maybe it's years. Maybe you've never felt, since coming to Christ, you've never felt like it wasn't wrapped up around you like seaweed. Besetting sin is something that we need to be serious about, and it's a good cause for us to think hard and deep about our status as Christians, and to go to our pastor and seek the elders' assistance in this. But besetting sin is not, is not a mark that excludes you from, from Christianity. Right? We're justified by faith alone, in Christ alone, by His grace alone. Not because we've overcome our besetting sin alone, right? That's not one of the five solas God redeems our life from the pit. From the very depths of hell itself, he snatched us like brands from the fire And though it is the case that we often are shaken, and at times God, just as he let Jonah, he let Jonah go to Tarshish. God had every ability to stop him from doing a stupid thing, and sometimes he does that, right? I'm sure there's plenty of times we can think about in our lives where we were heading towards sin and God just pulled a U-turn on us, and we are thankful for that. But there are times that he does not, and he lets us, he lets us do that. He lets us suffer the consequences, and he does that to chastise us and bring us back to him And even in the context of that, it is through this continual supply of the sanctifying Spirit of Christ, right?  [00:50:19] God Beautifies His Bride [00:50:19] Tony Arsenal: Christ was anointed by the Holy Spirit from the womb beyond measure. That's in the Book of John. There was never a time where Christ did not have the totality of the infinite sanctifying Spirit of the God, of God. We do not have the totality of the sanctifying Spirit of God. Now, we can get into a discussion after the service about divine simplicity and all the complexity of that, but the reality is that God sanctifies us more and more and more, and He does it by giving us the Spirit more and more. Might be more accurate to say He gives more of us to the Spirit. He gives us to the Spirit more and more. He gives us to Jesus more and more. We are Christ's inheritance. We are His bride. And just as the bride, as they're approaching the wedding, is made more and more beautiful, they start their, their beauty treatments weeks and months ahead of time, right? They're already making their hair appointments. They're already doing what they need to do to feel as beautiful as they can and to be as beautiful as they can on their wedding day. If that's the way we treat human weddings; guys do it too, just not as much. If that's the way we treat human weddings, how much more does God treat the heavenly wedding of His Son to His beloved bride? He's beautifying us, Church. Doesn't always feel like it. Doesn't always look like it, but He is. 

Send us Fan MailIf you've ever wondered whether God's grace can really cover the full weight of your sin, Romans 5 answers with a shockingly strong phrase: “much more.” We follow Paul's contrast between Adam and Christ and argue that Jesus doesn't merely repair what was broken in Eden, He surpasses it. That theme drives everything we talk about: assurance of salvation, the finished work of Christ, and why the gospel isn't God doing 90% while we scramble to supply the last 10%. We unpack why Christ first fulfills the law in perfect obedience, then dies as both expiation and propitiation. Those words matter because they clarify what the cross actually accomplishes: sin is removed, wrath is turned away, and our guilt is not left hanging in the air. When sin is imputed to Christ and carried into the grave, it stays buried. When Christ rises, His righteousness is credited to us, grounding justification and peace with God in what He has done, not in what we can maintain. That leads straight into the question people debate endlessly: can a true Christian lose salvation? We push the logic all the way through. If you must obey any part of God's law to earn or keep salvation, what did Christ fail to obey that you now have to complete? Along the way, we address the “license to sin” accusation, talk about gratitude-driven holiness, and end with a practical biblical anchor: being sealed with the Holy Spirit as a mark of God's ownership and protection, with a thought-provoking connection to Revelation's language about marks and allegiance. If this conversation steadies your faith or challenges your assumptions, subscribe, share it with a friend who wrestles with assurance, and leave a review so more people can find it. What line of reasoning hits you the hardest?Support the showBE PROVOKED AND BE PERSUADED!

JUN. 16, 2026Understanding the kingdom of God."The kingdom of God is within you." Lk 17:21 NKJVIn one sense, the kingdom of God is future, eternal, and heavenly. When Christ returns to set up His kingdom on earth, the prophecy will be fulfilled: "The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!" (Rev 11:15 NKJV). What a glorious day that will be for all of God's redeemed children. But until then, Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is within you." That means as a born-again believer living in this world, you're called to demonstrate what it means to live under the rule of the King of kings and Lord of lords. Winston Churchill famously quipped: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried." All human governments are flawed and ultimately destined to fail because they are made up of flawed human beings. So as citizens of the kingdom of God, we are called to be "light" that illuminates darkness and dispels ignorance, and "salt" that flavors, cleanses, heals, and enriches the lives of those we come in contact with (see Mt 5:13-14). We are called to practice the principles of God's kingdom in the marketplace of life.Whether you work in education, transportation, medicine, politics, agriculture, IT, sales, manufacturing, etc., you are called to demonstrate the benefits of living under the rule of Christ and by the guidance of His indwelling Holy Spirit. "The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord." When Christ returns, that promise will be totally fulfilled. Until then, Jesus said, "Occupy till I come" (Lk 19:13 KJV).Understanding the kingdom of God "Occupy till I come."Share This DevotionalSend us Fan MailSupport the showChanging Lives | Building Strong Family | Impacting Our Community For Jesus Christ!

As we continue our summer corporate gatherings, Michael reminds us that God's desire has always been the same: a people who belong fully to Him. Throughout Scripture, God calls His people a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and a people set apart for His purposes. Worship is one of the primary ways we respond to that calling.   This message challenges us to see worship as more than singing songs or participating in a gathering. Worship is the exaltation of Jesus in the place of our affection, loyalty, attention, and desire. Every person is a worshiper. The question is not whether we worship, but what or who has captured the highest place in our hearts.   This message calls us to examine what has been competing for our devotion and to lift Jesus back to the highest place. When Christ is exalted, everything else finds its proper place. This is an invitation to become a truly priestly people whose lives declare the greatness of God both inside and outside the gathering.

Send us Fan MailIn this episode. Pastor Dom teaches about Godly living. Colossians 3:1-111 If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. 2 Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. 3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. 5 Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, 7 in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them. 8 But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, 10 and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, 11 where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.Matthew 6:1919 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.Deuteronomy 8:1818 But you are to remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth,…2 Corinthians 5:1717 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.Romans 7:1515 For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. Romans 6:1414 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.Matthew 12:3434 …For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.Romans 12:22 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.2 Corinthians 5:2121 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Pastor Mike Jurek teaches that finances are not simply a practical matter but a spiritual one. God invites us to trust Him fully, including with our resources, and to allow our money to become a tool for His purposes rather than a source of anxiety or control. Healthy stewardship begins with obedience and grows through faith.This encouraging message highlights how generosity strengthens both individuals and the church community. By placing God first and giving as He leads, believers can develop greater trust, overcome a scarcity mindset, and participate in the work of God's kingdom. When Christ is at the center of our finances, we discover lasting freedom and purpose.#GoodHopeChurch #PastorMikeJurek #DealingWithMoney #BiblicalStewardship #FaithInAction #Generosity #KingdomLiving #ChristianFaith #SpiritLedGiving #TrustGodSermon Notes: https://link.goodhope.ag/dealing-with-money-mjGiving Information: https://goodhope.ag/givingSTAY CONNECTEDYoutube: https://youtube.com/GoodHopeChurchInstagram: http://instagram.com/goodhopemnFacebook: http://fb.com/goodhopemn 

What does it mean to find joy when everything around us seems to be falling apart? This powerful exploration of Philippians 1:12-26 challenges us to reconsider how we view our hardships and restrictions. We discover that Paul, writing from prison and chained to a Roman guard, doesn't see his circumstances as obstacles but as opportunities for the gospel to advance. His singular focus—that Christ be preached—transforms his perspective entirely. The very chains meant to silence him become the means by which the entire imperial guard hears about Jesus. His imprisonment doesn't discourage other believers; instead, it emboldens them to proclaim the gospel without fear. Even when rivals preach Christ from impure motives to stir up trouble for Paul, he rejoices because the message is still being spread. We're invited to examine our own restricted situations—whether at work, school, home, or in difficult relationships—and ask: What if God placed us here intentionally? What if our hardships aren't accidents but divine appointments? The passage culminates in one of Scripture's most profound declarations: 'For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.' This isn't mere religious rhetoric but a revolutionary way of understanding existence itself. When Christ becomes our life, death loses its sting and becomes entrance into something even better. Yet Paul chooses to remain for the sake of others, prioritizing their spiritual growth over his own comfort. This challenges us to complete the sentence for ourselves: 'For me to live is...' Whatever fills that blank reveals what we truly worship and what we would lose if we died.

Death, Resurrection Power and Revival (1) (audio) David Eells, 6/14/26 Coming Baptism of Death Unto Life Pearl Harbor James Kehrli (David's notes in red) In December of 1984, about a week after I purchased an old 1940 Cadillac sedan, I was driving around thinking about times gone by, particularly the time before and during World War II. Suddenly I heard the Lord say to me, very softly, “It's 1940 and Pearl Harbor is coming up for the Church”. I thought about betrayal, warfare, death and awakening! I prayed to the Lord about it and He began to reveal to me more about Pearl Harbor. He reminded me of a scene from the film Tora Tora Tora in which one of the Japanese military leaders remarked, after their attack on Pearl Harbor, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve”. I thought about the Church finally waking up to her true condition. I thought about the terrible price our country paid in the 1940's to wake up to the realities of the world political situation. The price was human life, suffering, and destruction. But we did wake up. I thought about December 8, 1941, when we declared war against the Axis powers. Before that time, we were sending arms, supplies and money to our allies, but we were not sending men to help fight. We watched China, the Pacific Islands, France and much of Europe fall to Germany, Italy, and Japan, but we were not personally affected so we did not enter the warfare. It took a catastrophic event to wake us up. (His reference to waking up a sleeping giant reminds me of Tommy Hicks' End Time Vision and it becomes millions of people all over the world.) I prayed about and meditated on what I had heard until May of 1985, when I again heard from God during a baptismal service in our Church. The person to be baptized was an older lady who was quite concerned, even a little frightened, about being fully immersed. But she, after fifty years of disobedience and rebellion against God, desired to be baptized for the first time. Right before I was going to enter the water with her, a message in tongues came forth from my wife. The Lord gave me the interpretation by means of the following vision. This vision describes a future time of great hardship and great blessing for the Body of Christ. He showed me a deep harbor with blue-green water that was clear and calm. There was a Person in the water. This Person was not swimming or standing, but just floating in an upright position. He was motionless, like a sailing ship listing in a windless sea. Many Japanese Zero aircraft came in from the east and proceeded to dive-bomb and strafe the body in the water and the body began to slowly sink. Eventually, the body was entirely under the water. As he went down, I could see that there were many little people on this Body. As this Body sank deeper into the water, many of these small people jumped off just before they were about to enter the water. There were thousands of people jumping off and swimming away from this slow but steadily sinking Body. Some of these people jumped onto beds, which the Lord made clear to me were beds of adultery, and floated away, off to the left. Others jumped onto whiskey bottles and paddled away; still others jumped on books, while others swam off on their own strength. All of the people were floating, swimming or paddling in the same direction. I looked over in that direction, which was to my left, and I saw an extremely beautiful, gigantic woman, with skin and clothing of a deep reddish purple hue, standing solidly on the harbor floor. She stretched out her arms toward the sinking Body and got the attention of many as she very sweetly, seductively, and sincerely called out, “Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you WHAT YOU WANT!” (As we know, God separates His people, and the tares and goats go to the left, as in this vision. This is the Great Harlot of Rev 17:1-5 And there came one of the seven angels that had the seven bowls, and spake with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee the judgment of the great harlot that sitteth upon many waters; 2 with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and they that dwell in the earth were made drunken with the wine of her fornication. 3 And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness: and I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. 4 And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stone and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations, even the unclean things of her fornication, 5 and upon her forehead a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF THE HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.) The people who were jumping off were in a panic, like rats leaving a sinking ship. Some scurried to higher ground on the Body, going from the shoulders to the ears and finally jumping off the top of the head right before it went under. It was clear that THEY DID NOT WANT TO LEAVE THIS BODY, but it was equally clear that they were not going down under the water with it either. The Body was now completely under the water, sinking steadily toward the bottom. Some of the little people hung on as it sank, but after a few seconds of holding their breath, they gave up, swam for the top, gulped a mouthful of air, and swam off toward the woman. The apparently lifeless Body sank deeper and deeper into the clear blue-green water. As it sank, I could see at the bottom of the harbor a beautiful, large, perfect Pearl - obviously of great value. It was supernaturally large and beautiful, lustrous, pure and round. As I watched, I could see the Body change shape from that of a single being, with little people desperately hanging on it, to many little individual people swimming deep enough to get to this beautiful Pearl. As they went deeper, many chose to quit and swim to the surface for air and life and then go over to the beautiful woman. All who quit diving eventually swam over to the beautiful woman. (The water puts to death the old man. They don't want to give up their fleshy life and die to self and follow Jesus.) Finally, I saw a number of these small people swim to the Pearl and touch it, and embrace it. But to do this, everyone who dove down reached a point when they realized that their own natural ability to hold their breath and dive deeper would not be enough. Those who dove down and touched this Pearl all came to understand that they would have to expend all of their natural strength before they touched and embraced the Pearl of Great Price. This did not keep them from diving down though, because the closer they got to the Pearl, the more of His beauty they saw. I saw many touch and embrace the Pearl and then immediately shoot straight up. As each of these little people shot up from the floor of the Harbor, each had the Pearl. As this group of individuals rose higher and higher, they all became one Body again. By the time these Pearl-laden people reached the surface they burst forth from the waters as one Body, the Body of Christ. These people were manifestly His own possession and they, in turn possessed the Pearl of Great Price, Jesus Christ Himself. (Gal 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: …) As the Lord was showing me this beautiful picture, He spoke to me and said, “Even as Jesus came out of the waters of baptism, so My Body will come out of Pearl Harbor with a new and powerful anointing of My Holy Spirit, and a new and deadly power to fight the enemy”. He said that there indeed would come upon the Church of Jesus Christ a Pearl Harbor experience like the United States experienced on December 7, 1941. He said that when the Body of Christ begins to sink under the water, because of a soon-coming, devastating attack of the enemy, MANY will choose to desert our Lord Jesus Christ because they do not esteem the Pearl of Great Price (Jesus Himself) worth the price - death to their own selfish desires. They will not make the selfless effort of love to dive deeply enough to embrace Him because they do not love Him more than their own lives. Many will choose not to identify with what they assume is a defeated individual or group. They look upon themselves as winners and will not identify with a Jesus Who is apparently being defeated. They will choose to identify with the beautiful woman of the harbor who gives them what they want. As the vision revealed, many who leapt off the sinking Body because the woman of the harbor promised them success. Because of this, they went to her. Many others did not feel that it was necessary to pay such a high price to apprehend Jesus, and they felt that the beautiful woman would give them Jesus on their own terms. (This is the great falling away and like the parable of the seed and the sower; only one of the four held fast to the Word and bore fruit, 30-60 and 100-fold.) As the Body of Christ came out of the waters of death, the Lord said that His Body was now fully alive and would now fight the enemy with purpose and real anointing. (the coming Latter Rain anointing. Hos 6:3  And let us know, let us follow on to know Jehovah: his going forth is sure as the morning; and he will come unto us as the rain, as the latter rain that watereth the earth.) Also, His Body would now use only supernatural weaponry. He spoke so clearly to me about the weapons. He said, “Even as the United States entered the Second World War using conventional weapons to fight the enemy, and ended the war with the atomic bomb, a weapon beyond their comprehension; so My people will begin this spiritual war with conventional weapons in the Spirit, but by the end of this war to end all wars, they will be using atomic bombs of the Spirit”. The Lord made it clear that we will come out of the water equipped with God-given anointing to REALLY heal the sick, work miracles, and deliver those in demonic bondage. He also made it clear that before the warfare ends, we will be moving in a dimension of spiritual warfare that is unimaginable to us now. We will do greater works than Jesus did and we will see the demon hordes routed like never before. After this message in tongues and interpretation was given, my attention turned back to the woman who was to be baptized. Then the Lord said that the Pearl Harbor experience for His Church would be similar to this woman's baptism. I closely watched this baptism to see what the Lord meant. The woman was very nervous and quite afraid of going under the water. I assured her that she would be all right. After several moments of prayer and a short teaching on what baptism represented, she was plunged underneath the water. She came out of the water with her hands lifted up, praising God. I had not told anyone what the Lord told me about this woman's baptism, because I did not know exactly what was going to happen. When she recovered her composure, she began to testify about what had just happened to her. She said that she was extremely fearful at first, but that when she got under the water, a Beautiful Peace swept through her, and all her fear was gone. This beautiful peace became joy as she came out of the water, and she praised God for His great comfort, love and mercy. I believe that God was showing us that we need not fear what He will put us through. His purpose is to bring us peace, joy, cleansing and power. He was also showing us that His Church will go through a baptism. It is a baptism of the Body of Christ. It is a death and a resurrection. We must trust Him to bring us out of this watery tomb of death and into the glorious resurrection power of His Son. We must understand that a harbor is a place of SAFETY and REFUGE. (As we have been shown. Those who reject death to self will not find this place.) God's people who are involved in these events will need to be safe and protected. The Harbor of the Pearl of Great Price is the only harbor that will provide refuge and safety, and ALL who believe will be more than willing to pay the price of dying to their own desires. Pearl Harbor is the death and resurrection of the Body of Christ, being prepared to do His work in His way, with His heart. It is the final separation of David from Saul - the David Church being purified and separated from the Saul Church. It is the final AWAKENING blast of the trumpet of God to rouse His people for battle. It is the judgment that begins with the house of the Lord. It is the refining fire that separates the gold from the dross. It will be preceded by the Lord dealing with His true people to both survive and desire this final preparation for battle. It is the promise of unmatched power and purity: power over sin, power over the enemy, power to live a much more virtuous life, and power to glorify our Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Even now, God is dealing with those in the David Church, even as God dealt with David. Whenever David would start to fall asleep to God's purity and purpose, the Lord would abruptly DEAL with David to AWAKEN him. God did not waste this kind of effort on Saul because Saul CHOSE to be asleep to God and His desires. Pearl Harbor is a warning of betrayal and disaster. The Church in the past has gone through many Pearl Harbors of betrayal and disaster. Jesus was betrayed, killed, and rose again. English Puritans experienced Pearl Harbor in the early 17th century and survived because they could not obey the law that the Church of England tried to force them to obey. They fled England and eventually sailed to the New World, where they laid the spiritual foundation for what eventually became one of the greatest revivals in the history of the world. John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim's Progress at the bottom of the harbor as he was betrayed by his own country and thrown in jail for not attending the services of the Church of England and for preaching in a way that did not conform to this church's liturgy. Had he given in and done that which they asked, he could have been a free man. But for conscience sake he chose not to do so. Because of this uncompromising obedience to the Scriptures and to God Himself, he was able to rise to the highest place in the history of Christian literature. Today, he still blesses us with the fruit of that resurrection power. To those who are not awake and prepared, Pearl Harbor will come suddenly and tragically, as a thief in the night, and they will be swept away to Great Deception. (As we are seeing.) To those who are more open to the will of God than they are to pleasing religious men, it will be an expected ordeal, a call to arms, and a prelude to great victory. The initial stages will be the harbinger of the greatest move of God in history: the Greatest Revival and the greatest manifestation of Christian Unity that the world has ever known.   The Pearls of Great Price Marie Kelton - 1/6/23 (David's notes in red) In this dream, I was in Chicago, and I was walking away from my old house on the sidewalk. (Leaving the house of our mother Church is a sign of growing in spiritual maturity.) I met Thaddeus (God's gift) and Greg (watchful or vigilant), two people I went to school with. (God gives us helpers along the way, like the fruits of the Spirit and wisdom; we must listen to them.) Thaddeus was to my left and Greg was to my right. As we were walking, I asked Thaddeus what had happened to him because I saw that he had a cut on his finger. Thaddeus said that he had a paper cut. I said to him, “Those are the worst.” (Our gifts can suffer when we go contrary to the Word which is written on paper and is a sharp two-edged sword.) We were going across the street and there was a tan van waiting for us to cross so that it could turn right. A red truck was behind the van, waiting also. As we were crossing, I felt an evil spirit grab the back of my shirt to keep me from continuing to cross the street. Thaddeus and Greg continued walking across the street. (We shouldn't get separated from our spiritual gifts by any demon or fleshly influence.) The person in the tan van was getting impatient and turned and hit me with their car. (The demons will try to hold us back so that we fall under judgment.) In the dream I told the Judge (representing the Father) about the car that hit me. The license plate on the front of the van had 333 in it. (Jer.33:3 Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and will show thee great things, and difficult, which thou knowest not.) (This is on the front or before the van hits, so to stop this, we must seek the Lord for His direction and wisdom!) The scene changed and I was in a car. I don't know if I was driving or not. I realized I was wearing an old necklace, and I heard a voice say, “Pearls.” (If our treasures have become tarnished from age or the curse we must sanctify them with repentance and faith and drawing near to Jesus.) In the dream I thought of the parable of the pearl of great price. While in the car, the Lord was supernaturally changing the radio stations to speak to me through the songs. Every time He would change the song, one of the old pearls from the necklace I wore would burst and break and a new pearl would be in its place. (As we seek His face and ask for wisdom, He will give us new born again beauty and values.) I was so excited and asked the Lord to keep speaking to me through songs on the radio. (The Lord's Words are melodious, pleasing Words to our spirit man.)  Mat.13:45-46, Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant seeking goodly pearls: and having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it. An Experience of Power G. W. - 10/17/22 (David's notes in red) I was going through a time of what seemed like reflection. I kind of felt like my life had no purpose, kind of meaningless. I've been waiting so many years, and it seems like nothing is happening. I didn't feel sad or condemned by it, but rather just wondering what God's mind was on everything. (The Word had the answers but he couldn't stay under it for long and would seek a simple message that did not demand death to self.) So, I was just questioning what God's purposes were for me in my life and if I was missing something. I was really earnestly seeking God and wondering what am I doing? Is there something I'm supposed to be doing that I'm missing? I don't want to waste any talents even though I don't see myself as having any great talents or anything, but I know the Lord has given us all some. I want to be able to use them. Before I went to bed, my wife and I prayed to the Lord about these questions. I woke up in the middle of the night and went to lie down on the couch. As I was lying down on the couch, I don't know if I fell asleep or if I was awake, to be honest. I'm assuming I fell asleep for just a few minutes. It seemed like a dream but I could feel everything happening in my body like it was real. I could hear myself say to myself, “You are such a loser” (I felt like it meant that I was not good for anything, meaningless life, etc.). (“We can do nothing without Him” but “We can do all things through Him”. His power is made perfect through our weakness. This revelation comes before the experience below.) Immediately, after that was said, this incredible Force picked up my entire body. Not even the strongest human on Earth would be able to resist this Force. My body was powerless, as I had no control over my motor functions. However, my consciousness was still there, and I was completely aware of everything that was going on from an observing point of view. This Force was moving me across the ground, as if I were a floating object. I then noticed something that the Force was moving towards. As I got closer, I knew that it was a shadow in the shape of a man. As the Force brought me directly over the shadow, I shot up in the air like a rocket! The Force moved me with such extreme velocity and an incredible amount of G-Force. It felt like my body was shaking like an earthquake (The Lord was showing him that He comes in those who will, through death to self, give themselves over to His Word and power.), as I was going straight up into the air. It seemed like the shadowy figure was what made the Force shoot me directly up in the air. I was shaking so excessively that it seemed to be contorting my face, as if soaring up through the air. I then seemed to come either out of the dream or into an earthly reality. I started to think normally, and I thought, is something wrong with me? What is happening to me? The Force started to wind my body down, and it began to become less intense. It shook me so hard that I could still feel it in my physical body, as I either woke up or came into complete consciousness. I started meditating on what had just happened. I thought about the shadowy figure. The only thing that kept coming to me was Trump. I have no idea why I felt this way. It might have looked like him, I'm not for sure. I don't think about Trump a lot, so it was very unusual for me to think that. (He is typed by Cyrus, who conquers DS Babylon, just when the Man-child is anointed over the Kingdom by the King. Cyrus is a shadow of Trump. Cyrus makes it possible for the Latter Rain Man-child to come and release the captives, as in Isaiah 61. So the shadow person could represent both of these entities ruling under God as the verse he received. The refuge here will be formed and our new provisions to reach the world will come.) I have a Bible App that I check every morning and it sends me a verse of the day. I opened the App and looked at the verse, it said “whoever dwells in the shelter of the most high will rest in the shadow of the almighty”. I was amazed that it had the word “shadow” in the random daily verse!   Resurrected Back to Life D. L. - 05/24/2016 (David's notes in red) In a dream, I was observing a group of about 12 people standing somewhat together. All of them had grey hair that was tending more toward the white. (This could be the 12 Man-children from UBM we have had many dreams about and who have been spiritually resurrected.) Then in walked a tall man who walked directly to the group and to a woman in the middle, whom I understood to be his wife. But he had died some time ago and had been buried at that time. (This is a repeat of history called the “out resurrection” by Paul in Phl.3:11 If somehow I may attain unto the out-resurrection from the dead. This is in the most accurate Numeric English New Testament. Here it is in history. Mat.27:50 And Jesus cried again with a loud voice, and yielded up his spirit. 51 And behold, the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake; and the rocks were rent; 52 and the tombs were opened; and many bodies of the saints that had fallen asleep were raised (Many of these were just dust by the time of this out-resurrection. All of these have a purpose in God's work); 53 and coming forth out of the tombs after his resurrection they entered into the holy city and appeared unto many. 54 Now the centurion, and they that were with him watching Jesus, when they saw the earthquake, and the things that were done, feared exceedingly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God. What a witness of the resurrection to these people! This partial resurrection will be worldwide. As a witness G.C. was resurrected after being dead and buried for 8 ½ months. He came walking into his kitchen to greet his wife. Six people were resurrected that day in a moment.) D.L.- Now, she was no longer a widow, but no one showed any emotion. (These men would have also been resurrected, so it's no surprise to them.) He just walked over to where she was and started talking to her. In the next scene, they were in a room off to my right, standing there talking. Then I woke up and it was almost 4:30 am. As I was waking up, I was still in the dream state and heard a knock at the back door, which is near the bedroom, and I opened the door. It was light outside and there stood my brother Darl, who had been dead since October of 2009 and was cremated. (Cremation is the fast oxidation of the body. The normal rotting of the body is slow oxidation. Both are just dust but God can bring them back.) He had brown hair but the last time I saw him it was white. He said he was on his way to Charlotte, NC to see his daughter and just stopped by to let me know he was around. He said he had a car and plenty of money to do what he had to do. Then he walked away and when he got about 20 feet away, I asked him if he was going to see our five children. And he said yes and that it was in his schedule. End of dream. (They have a God-given schedule for the revival. Could this be a secondary meaning to Paul's words? Php.3:10 that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death; 11 if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead [Numeric pattern is in “the out -resurrection from the dead”]. 12 Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus. Paul and others of his caliber will be among them.)   What's the Motivation of Your Heart? Sandy Shaw - April 2016 (David's notes in red) In this dream, the first thing I see is a white brick fence. People are walking on the fence. Some jump on the left side, and then they jump back on the fence. Some jump on the right side, and then they go back to the fence. And this is going on continually with people walking the fence. Then I realized the left side is the way of the world and the right side is the way of the Lord. When I realized that, I heard, “I will spew you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:16). (Which God spoke to the lukewarm.) Then I noticed a man was standing next to me. I didn't know who he was until he spoke and He asked, “How does this edify Me?” I immediately felt conviction and asked the Lord for forgiveness for having my own agenda. Then I saw a little girl in a house. (A little girl represents immaturity.) She was looking out the window as she saw her friends outside. She was sooo anxious to go with them. She ran to a closed door in the house and knocked on it. And on the other side of the door was her mom. She said, “Honey, I'll be out in a minute”. At this point, the little girl turned and looks out the window and turned around and knocked on the door again. And her mom said, “Wait for me. I'll be out in a minute”. The little girl ran to the big window and saw that her friends are in the next yard. She ran to the table and saw paper and a pencil. She wrote, “I'll be back in a little while. I'm going to play with my friends”. So Mom comes out and called for the little girl and saw that she is not there but she saw the note. Time has passed, and the little girl comes back and she says, “Hi, Mom!” And Mom says, “Honey, come and sit down”. The little girl says, “Mom, did I do something wrong? I left a note; didn't you see it?” “Yes, I did. But I asked you to wait.” “But my friends had gone to the next yard”. Mom said, “Now I know I need to give you punishment. First, because you didn't wait and your plans are not my plans for today. Therefore, you did not listen”. Next, I saw a big tree. I was sitting under it with the same man next to me. He said, “Examine the motives of your heart. Are your desires My desires? Are your desires lined up with My Word? Examine the desires of your heart. Is the agenda of your heart yours or Mine? Your motives, your heart, your agenda -- are they lined up with the Word? Am I your All-in-All?” Pro.16:2 All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; But the LORD weigheth the spirits. 4:23 Keep thy heart with all diligence; For out of it are the issues of life. Mar.12:30 and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. Psa.27:14 Wait for the LORD: Be strong, and let thy heart take courage; yea, wait thou for the lord. Isa.55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith The LORD. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.   Surrendering Brings Swift Victory T.F. - 1/14/23 (David's notes in red) Suddenly, I felt the Lord's presence so strong in the spiritual realm. I then saw at that very moment, that in an instant, God could remove all the filth in my flesh and soul 100%, quicker than I could think, and He could manifest His presence 100% in my body and soul. I saw that it had already been done, and the manifestation could be done instantaneously. (The manifestation is progressive but it can be finished quickly. Php.1:6 being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ. Psa.81:13 Oh that my people would hearken unto me, That Israel would walk in my ways! 14 I would soon subdue their enemies, And turn my hand against their adversaries. 15 The haters of Jehovah should submit themselves unto him: But their time should endure for ever.) I know many other brethren pray for God to manifest Himself in us fully (Eph.3:19 to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.) We all want to be 100% dead to self, and my soul desires it so much for all of us. We know that, by faith, it has already happened and we will see it manifest in the physical realm. But, in that moment, when I saw He could do it all right then, my flesh got so terrified because it couldn't handle the presence of God that strong and that intensity so quickly. I desire it, and I know it will happen. But there is so much that I still have to let go of that isn't Christ, that God hasn't even revealed to me yet; so many hidden things. But God will reveal those things in His perfect timing, and I desire to let go of EVERYTHING that isn't Holy. I have thought that the complete removal of self in an instance would hurt because it is all I have ever known and His holiness replacing it would hurt if it happened without me being fully prepared. I felt that it had to be a gradual thing. I must let go of things bit by bit, and then the Lord can come and fill those spots, until there is nothing left but Jesus. I must keep letting go of my own carnal thinking, reasoning, and understanding and filling it with the Word and His Holy Spirit. (This is why God told the Israelites that every place that they set their foot in the Promised Land, He would give them. Because if He had wiped out their enemies all at once the land would have been overrun with wild beasts. So, He ordained that they conquer it a little at a time. Exo.23:28 And I will send the hornet before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee. 29 I will not drive them out from before thee in one year, lest the land become desolate, and the beasts of the field multiply against thee. 30 By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land.) I have felt and experienced what I would describe as my flesh surrendering bit by bit to the Spirit and the Word, but some parts still haven't surrendered completely and if it happened instantaneously, possibly my mind and body couldn't handle it. God's timing is perfect and we need to be prepared every day for an increase of Him in each of us in our soul and physical body. When we surrender to His Spirit willingly and surrender our whole heart to Him, it is so much easier for our body to submit. (1Co.9:27 but I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage: lest by any means, after that I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected.) Yes, I want the complete manifestation and deliverance from all evil in my soul and body, but I realized that it is a progressive thing, so that my physical body can handle it. God doesn't give us more than we can handle. God wants His Son to completely manifest in each of us. I can see Jesus growing and increasing in the brethren more and more, and it is so beautiful to witness. After experiencing this, I have felt so much closer to God and that every day we are getting closer and closer to Him manifesting in us fully. Every day, whether we see it or not, we are dying to self in some areas and He is coming into us more and more than the previous day. (Joh.3:30 He must increase, but I must decrease.) Everything is His grace and can only be done by His grace. It is all because of Jesus. ALL Glory and praise to Our Father and Lord Jesus forever and ever! Lord, let us all willingly surrender to Your Spirit in all areas of our existence. Allow us to love You more and to rest in You, accepting Your grace and allowing You to flow through us. Thank You Lord, that Your grace is beyond anything we can comprehend. Thank You that we can do nothing without You, but we can do everything through You. Thank You that it's not us living, but Christ living in us. Thank You that we are dead to self and alive unto You, God in Christ Jesus. Thank You that Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death! Thank You, God that it is all You for all eternity! (My husband prayed and saw a young fruit tree - ambitious to bear hundreds of fruits, but not yet mature to do so. As the branches grew, buds formed all over and flowered. In time the tree was able to bear the amount it could handle.) Empty Me, (for Jesus) Debbie Fensky – 10/24/19 On Wednesday morning, October 23, I was awakened at 4:13 a.m. by a loud voice. I had fallen asleep on our sofa, and Denny was in the bedroom. My first thought was that he was yelling to me to get up. But when I looked at the clock, I saw it was too early to get up to get ready for the morning meeting. My mind cleared enough to realize that it was not Denny's voice. It was the voice of God or the voice of an angel of the Lord. And what He spoke was not in words I recognized. And it was really loud! It sounded to me like two words were spoken. I asked Father to let me know what He was saying through these words. I immediately heard, “Empty,” and He continued speaking. “This is the word for you, My people. Empty! The time is now to be empty! I am still uncovering hearts. Will you spend time with Me? For your hearts, your very life, is the temple in which I dwell. Do you know that you represent My authority? Do you truly know? Know this, that I know your name, for you hold My Name. I am going to bring back much truth to remembrance and reveal spiritual to spiritual. (The disciples related that this happened after Jesus died and was resurrected.) You are My spiritual people, and I want to continue working a spiritual work and a deep work in you and among you. And My authority will be upon you as you allow the spiritual light and truth to pour forth into your heart, and your mouth will speak deep things of My Spirit; things I have taught you. And people will know these things are true. But, My people, there is still some emptying out that needs to take place. For yea, I am cleaning you up. I am making you clean. Only be empty. Empty your hearts and yourselves of all your belongings, longings, and your trifles. Yes, even your own nothingness. What you think of yourself is not important. Glory only in that you are in Me, and that I am everything in you. I have a job to do through you. I have chosen you to be My humble, My emptied out, and cleaned up vessels. But I am letting you know the time is short. And I still need room for total residence.” I was moved by what Father said. And I was intrigued and wanted to know how “empty” was pronounced in the Hebrew. And I wondered if it was two words. So I tried something - I looked things up, asking God to lead me. In Hebrew, “empty” is “tohu bohu.” That was about the length of the words that I heard spoken to me so loudly. Some “empty” definitions: decant, lay bare, empty, raze, spill Strongs Hebrew 7386 adj; rake, empty, vain. Much that we give ourselves to is nothing; only vain. Strongs Hebrew 8414; formless, confusion, unreality, emptiness, desolation, empty space It said, properly spelled, it is, “tohuw bohuw.” And somewhere in all of this belongs, “tohu wa-bohu.” And this meaning (Heb), wasteness, that which is laid waste, desert, emptiness, vanity. But, “tohu bohu” is parallel to Isaiah 34:11, confusion, emptiness. Speaking about God's wrath against the nations, which we want to have no part of. So God is still telling us to get things of Egypt out of us. Isa.34:11 “But pelican and hedgehog will possess it, and owl and raven will dwell in it; and He will stretch over it the line of desolation and the plumbline of emptiness.” Father, may we desire to become completely empty of ourselves and our personal correctness, all that is vain, so that Your plumb line finds us measuring up to the fullness of Your likeness in us, so that we do not fall behind and even become as one of the nations. God, we need You to help us give it all up. Thank You for Your grace to do what You are being so long suffering in telling us to do. We do want You fully and totally residing in us. Lord, in Jesus name, help us to keep the end in view! Amen. Eph.4:12-13 “until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” 1Th.5:6 “so then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us be alert and sober.” Get Ready for God's Great Reset! The One Word Order - Kolyah - September 14, 2021 Rhema Word … 9.13.21 … entrusted to Kolyah … released just prior to Yom Kippur “Little ones, are you ready for My hard reset of your world? It is best that you prepare now, for in an instant, of My choosing, the brakes on this runaway world will suddenly be applied down to the floor … to the foundations; bringing this global wickedness to an abrupt halt. When that happens, there will be a hard tossing about, with slamming, banging, and pain for those who are not braced, awake, and aware. (This reminds me of Eve's Dream of the US/China Train coming to a sudden halt.) Do you remember the report of the loud shrieks of horror and mourning that arose in Egypt's night, at the death of their firstborn? Truly, I say to you, it shall happen again on a worldwide scale, as I bring forth the disclosure of the truth that will shatter hearts, minds, idols, and strongholds by the power of truth that will not be held back, modified, or contained behind closed doors. The cries of anguish and despair will finally bring the level of breaking necessary for the people to realize how wickedly they have been deceived, and how eagerly they have ingested the poisons promoted by the deceivers. (On both sides. This could be the EBS that Trump and the Alliance have been planning, revealing the DS satanic crimes and the false Christian leadership.) They will think that ALL IS LOST, as they see the price that they have paid for their blindness, stubbornness, pride, and fear. As no household was untouched by the grief arising throughout Egypt at the time of the first Passover, so shall it soon be in your day. Only the households that heeded my warning and those, who obeyed My voice, will be spared the depths of the pain. The righteous will mourn and grieve for those around them. They will weep for those across the world, who will be writhing in unspeakable agony of soul in the realization of the pit into which they have fallen. I will allow the righteous to feel the pain of seeing the losses among those whom they love, but I will not allow them to go into the deepest depths of soul pain; only into the depths of intercession that will lessen the pain in others. My compassion will undertake. Have I not said that those who did not LOVE the truth would fall into deception? Too few believed My word regarding that matter. As I am the first Truth, whom they are to love, those who have had a shallow, fickle affection for Me will find out the grave consequences of being casual about truth and without true love … and the results of accepting, as fact, only those things that fit into their own grid … into their prideful grid of comfort and human knowledge. They will feel horrifically betrayed, and well they should. Their own souls have betrayed them, because their love of My truth, and of My reality was only partial. In the pain of their consequences, they will have the opportunity to exchange an appreciation of truth for a committed LOVE of the truth. Not only am I Truth and Love, but I am also Justice and Commitment. Human justice and convenient human commitment will be humiliated through what is to be revealed soon. The deep falsehoods in the human premises will be shattered as My truth comes down like a hammer. Truth will not come down as a soft rain, for rain requires years to erode rock and to move mountains from their place. There is no time for that now. A rock smasher and a mountain crusher are needed to awaken the sleepers and to expose the truth before all is lost. The Enemy has been working his plans with wicked brilliance. I have allowed it to unfold in order to entrap him, and all those who are in league with him. The lies, which have provided the glue to secure their wicked plans and mandates of unholy power, are about to be changed into a slime. That slime will be powerless to hold their deceptions together. The road, which has been cemented into place through their deceit, will begin to sink and separate. Where then, will they walk in their prideful power? Who will join them on that slimy road, once the truth is exposed? All this will come … but first the howls and the tears must come to soften the hardened hearts, and to bring them to the melting point in the laser light of hot Truth. My way is righteous and wise. You must trust Me. The fear of Me has been replaced with the fear of man. The awe of Me has been replaced with the awe of inventions and technology. The awareness of human vulnerability has been replaced with an awe of intellectual prowess and confidence. All of these strongholds of wicked false worship, and of arrogant disregard of Me … all the strategies designed to supplant and to replace Me … will be brought down into dust. (What? No Med-beds? The use of AI, CGI, and high-tech devices.) It is good to be down on your knees in this hour, as the final round of increased shaking takes place. On your knees, you will be properly positioned before Me. Those on their knees will not be knocked down as the world rocks. Their personal kingdoms will not fall down upon their heads. The posture of submitted humility will be the place of safety for those who seek Me, and who abide in Me. But be advised: what is about to take place will greatly disquiet your souls. Do not allow the pain you see manifesting in the multitudes, nor the shrieks of those you love, cause you to mistrust or to despise Me. Trust Me that the process I bring forth will set My Great Harvest into place. Go to your knees soon, and remain in a spiritual posture of humility before Me as these days unfold. The Enemy of your souls will put up an even greater fight to retain power, and to seize even more. I have already declared the boundary set against this advance and have put that boundary into place. It will not be moved by him, nor by any of his associates. It will stand firm, for I have decreed it. (The boundary is the Bride. As in my vision of 2007, the boundaries of the catastrophes were the refuge.) Get out of the way of what I am about to allow and do. Move into a place of safety as I direct you. Do not fear and do not depend upon your own survival strategies. Simply abide in Me and be well. I will not allow more than you can handle. Have I not entrusted the words of truth in Psalm 91 to be a holocaust blanket, and a sure safety to surround you? Declare those words and find safety in the shelter of those promises. Know that the wailing of the masses will seek to disquiet you; to take you into fear and doubt. Don't go there, but rather profess your faith and stay in the Spirit at all times. Lock down in Me and hold. Gather in those who are standing, but who are weakening. Be a support of faith for each other. Share the treasure and the provision which I have given to you for this hour. What I provide will be more than enough. Entrust your troubled heart to Me. I will hold it securely and will fill it with all the love and hope you will need. Know this: I am fully in control. There is NOTHING out of My hand, plan, or notice. There will be many who have been on the fringes of faith, who will declare that My way is NOT GOOD. They will feel the horror of the unveiling, and then cry out that I am cruel for allowing such things. I AM MORE compassionate and patient … more loving and kinder than any of you can fathom. My path is a hard one, because the rebellion is very deep and widespread, consuming a great portion of humankind. (Stripes that wound cleanse away evil.) Unless there is a clearly visual manifestation, revealing where the influences of rebellion and deceit have taken your world, the changes in hearts will be only temporary and shallow. There are lessons to be learned. There are people to be reborn. There are powers of great evil embedded into every facet of human life that must be disclosed and stripped. As a result, these painful measures are necessary. I will allow only the smallest level of suffering required to bring the vital changes. The length and depth of human suffering will be determined by the speed at which the hearts and minds submit to the purpose of the shakings. See to it that you lovingly, clearly, tell the ignorant and the arrogant the truth about what is happening, and about what will yet happen. If you do not speak the truth to them, the hollow spaces formed within their human souls because of the shaking will be quickly filled with more lies, bringing more rebellion and more defiance against me. Cooperate with My plan to bring a Great Awakening, and see the Glory come to your world as a result. Hold on tightly to Me. The most violent shaking is about to come. (Spiritual and physical! In the warfare that is coming, there will be violent earthquakes which they are very capable of making; to say nothing of the nukes going off.)HOLD! Rest in Me, and do not withhold the truth from the terrified and perishing. The deceptions that have held them are about to crack. The trauma and terror of it will bring forth good fruit as we work together. All will be well. Trust, stand, obey, and believe. I am with you, and I am in charge. In the final analysis, you will bless Me for what I am about to allow, as well as that which I am about to bring forth from My own hand. Hold, and thank Me in advance for the glory which is soon to come to your world to change everything.” At the time we received this last revelation in 2021, a year after COVID-19 and the DS death jab. We prayed for people who took the shots and saw healings. We prayed for those who were infected by those who got the jab and saw healings. We know worse plagues than the DS's vax are coming. We have prayed for lost friends and seen healings. Some people who got the shots got placebos and showed no infection. Some only got the first shot and show less trouble. Cry out for mercy and God answers. The revival of the Man-child ministries will heal many when they believe. Mark 11:24 is still true. Mar.11:24 Therefore I say unto you, All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. Like Esther, intercede for your family and the people of God that they repent and accept God's word and turn this thing around for them. Many times God changes a decree when touched by faith. Pray for your loved ones and cover them. All things are possible to him that believeth. Like the woman who, in rebellion, finally decided to get baptized, and shared her experience of the extreme fear she felt before she was submerged in the water, which was replaced by a beautiful peace and joy. That's what's coming for those who obey and surrender to the Word of God. The power of the Holy Spirit will fill those who repent and obey.   Prepare, I Come Quickly Eve Brast – 8/20/18  Yesterday, as I was working, around 11 am, the Lord spoke to me very clearly, “I come quickly... Go, My daughter, and write the things I speak and warn My people.” So I grabbed my notebook, and He said, “In a very little while you shall see Me. I come quickly. Tell My people to enter into the secret places of their hearts and cry unto Me for purity and holiness; to press into the voice of My Holy Spirit. Listen to My voice in the quiet place. Soften your hearts to My corrections. Cleanse yourselves of all defilement of flesh and spirit. If your hearts are pure and willing, I will fill you with My power to overcome. Separate yourselves from distractions and the useless things of this world and this life. There is so little time left. So little time!! Seek Me with all your mind, will, and strength and I will be found of you. Don't faint in the day of adversity! Many judgments and terrible things are coming. Do not get weary of seeking Me daily. Do not grow weary of sanctification. Be diligent to be found in Me. When I return and judgments fall, will you be found in Me? Your adversary is increasing his activities, especially against My holy ones, seeking to deceive and destroy as many as will listen to his lies. All idolaters will fall. Wherever idols are found, the enemy will gain access to your souls. The idol of self is the biggest deception. You sit on the throne of your own hearts and are deceived by your own mind, will, and emotions!! Put on My whole armor and fight! Do not let down your guard even for a minute. Understand your enemy's tactics! He will use your friends, even your brethren, your family members, and your phones and electronic devices to keep you from obeying this word I speak to you. Resist the distractions and the cunning deceptions and lies. Do not listen to lies! Cast down every vain thing, every vain thought, or these will take root in your heart and mind and exalt themselves above Me and My Word. Then shall the scales cover your eyes and your ears will be stopped, and the deceptions will overtake you! You will not even recognize it. Go forth in intercession, void of distractions. Don't be slothful! Pray without ceasing and I will lead you to victory. You will be found in Me and the devil will have nothing in you. In this way you will live in the light of My truth. I will lead you forth in victory, conquering all your enemies. I have provided everything you need, but you must use it!” I asked Father for a text for this word by faith at random and my finger was on the phrase, “there is no respect of persons” in Colossians 3:25 (in context 1-25) Col.3:1 If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. 2 Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth. 3 For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with him be manifested in glory. 5 Put to death therefore your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry; 6 for which things' sake cometh the wrath of God upon the sons of disobedience: 7 wherein ye also once walked, when ye lived in these things; 8 but now do ye also put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, railing, shameful speaking out of your mouth: 9 lie not one to another; seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings, 10 and have put on the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him: 11 where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is all, and in all. 12 Put on therefore, as God's elect, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, longsuffering; 13 forbearing one another, and forgiving each other, if any man have a complaint against any; even as the Lord forgave you, so also do ye: 14 and above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfectness. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to the which also ye were called in one body; and be ye thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts unto God. 17 And whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. 18 Wives, be in subjection to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. 19 Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them. 20 Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing in the Lord. 21 Fathers, provoke not your children, that they be not discouraged. 22 Servants, obey in all things them that are your masters according to the flesh; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing the Lord: 23 whatsoever ye do, work heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men; 24 knowing that from the Lord ye shall receive the recompense of the inheritance: ye serve the Lord Christ. 25 For he that doeth wrong shall receive again for the wrong that he hath done: and there is no respect of persons. Deborah Fensky - 8/29/18 God started speaking this to me last week in a couple of the morning meetings and last Friday night's meeting. Since last Friday, after I was done receiving this word, several things were shared here and there that matched up with or seemed to me to confirm things in this word. I had been questioning God about Him being bitter. But then He reminded me that He hates, and how in so many places in the word, God expressed what and who His soul hates. He let me know that He can be bitter too. Then on the last conference call Michael asked everyone, “Can God hate?” Along with other things this week that have been said, I felt God was confirming this word to me. But I did ask Him today to confirm with 2 heads if I should share this now, or wait. I know other words have been spoken that we need to remember. Yet, today I tossed and immediately got 2 heads. “I am bitter toward My people. I am bitter with anger. Listen, My holy ones. Have I not said that I come quickly? I come quickly, with a strong vengeance. For My people disregard Me. They disregard My ways. They refuse to seek Me out, but stubbornly adhere to their own likes and desires. Yet, though I am bitter with anger towards My people, My mercy will cause Me to hear their cries of repentance. Hear My cry, My holy people. I need you. I need you to pray and fight for My lost and stubborn children. And I need you in this day to continually draw close to Me. Live in love and faith, and in the wisdom of My Word and by My Spirit. For though living in an evil day already, as I have warned, dark evil is soon to descend upon all the earth; a darkness so gross that the light of My Glory to shine forth, penetrating that darkness, drawing My lost people out of the world to the light. I am the Light. My holy ones, you are the Light. You in Me and I in you. The dark and evil day is upon you. Thrust all your faith in Me and Me alone. There can nothing be of yourself. Yes, the day you are about to enter is a day of deep darkness, but a day of My power. It is the day My Glory will be fully revealed in My holy ones. Have I not said, I come quickly? I need you to trust Me. I need you to make yourself ready. Make yourself ready!”

X2M.251 Lisibilité — The Mystery Made Readable Series: CR20 Place De La Concorde Psalm 2 opens with noise: nations raging, rulers plotting, systems conspiring against the Lord and His Anointed. Yet heaven does not panic. Heaven laughs. The Father answers rebellion by installing His King on Zion.¹ This is **Lisibilité**: the restoration of readability. The signal becomes clear again. The mind untangles. The heart remembers the Father. The vessel becomes legible to heaven. The decree is sonship: “You are My Son.” “Today I have become Your Father.” The crisis of the nations is answered by intimacy with the Father. The enemy's strategy is disconnection — to wrap seaweed around the mind until the soul believes it has been cut off from the temple of the Lord. Jonah becomes the inner parable. He runs, descends, is swallowed, and finally remembers: “Salvation belongs to the Lord.” When the mind becomes clear, the fish releases him.² Seaweed is the unreadable mind: confusion, accusation, idolatry, self-protection, false narratives, and the belief that something other than God will save. Colossians 2 becomes the apostolic lens. Paul struggles for the church so their hearts may be knit together in love and brought into the knowledge of the mystery of God — Christ Himself. The mystery hidden for ages is now revealed: **Christ in you, the hope of glory.**³ This is not secret knowledge for an elite class. Not Gnostic ascent through hidden codes. Not self-made narrative. Not religious performance. Not angelic spectacle. Not legalistic control. Christ is the open mystery. Gnosticism says knowledge saves. Christ says union saves. Gnosticism elevates the self. Christ fills the body with the fullness of God. “For in Him all the fullness of deity dwells bodily, and in Him you have been filled.” That is the correction. The body is not trash to escape. It is a temple to be inhabited. The mind is not a theater for counterfeit stories. It is a place to be renewed. The heart is not an idol-factory. It is Zion, the holy hill where the King is installed. Paul warns against anything that pulls the believer out of union: reasonable-sounding arguments, human tradition, elemental spirits, false humility, religious regulations, body-hatred, and fascination with lesser powers.⁴ These things may appear wise, but they create noise. They make the soul unreadable. Lisibilité is the reversal. When Christ is central, the mind settles. Sin-consciousness loses its throne. Social-consciousness loses its grip. Fear loses its script. The Father's voice becomes clear. Love becomes readable again. In **Place De La Concorde** architecture, X2M.251 is the readability event: the old head of confusion is removed, and the true Head restores order in the public square of the heart. The remnant becomes clear. The signal becomes clean. The vessel becomes legible. The King is installed on Zion within. Glorification | The Final Frontier Going boldly where the last man has gone before! Decrease time over target: PayPal or Venmo @clastronaut Cash App $clastronaut X2M.251 Lisibilité is not about secret knowledge. It is about seeing Christ clearly — the Father's decree made readable in the Son, the seaweed removed from the mind, the body filled with glory, and the heart restored to holy agreement. **Footnotes** ¹ Psalm 2: rebellion answered by the installed King. ² Jonah's seaweed images a mind tangled in disconnection. ³ Colossians: Christ in you, the hope of glory. ⁴ Paul warns against systems that sound wise but pull believers out of union. ⁵ Lisibilité means readability: clear perception restored in Christ.

Manifesting Sonship (1) (Audio) David Eells, 6/7/26 Parable of the Persecuted Man-child David Eells - 01/18/2012 This came to me in the middle of the night of 1/18/12 and I hurried to write it down before I forgot it. Joseph took care of his father's flocks with his brothers before he was anointed to reign. His brothers became jealous of him and hated him and could not speak peaceably to him. The Father's favor was on Joseph, Who gave him a coat of many colors, symbolizing the attributes of light, since a prism breaks down light into the seven main colors. This represents the seven attributes of Jesus in 2 Peter 1:4-8, called divine nature. Joseph had dreams from God of being anointed to be over his brothers. His brothers hated his dreams and slandered them and God Who gave them. The brothers also hated and slandered Joseph. They agreed to throw him in a pit with plans to kill him. As traitors and Judases, they sold him into bondage for personal gain. They also wanted to inherit the flock as their own. They treated him as their own possession, as though God did not see their evil deeds. However, He saw and considered it as evil against His Son: (Mat.25:40) Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, [even] these least, ye did it unto ME. They took Joseph's coat of many colors and tore it between them and put the blood of a goat on it. This symbolizes their slandering his integrity and imputing to him an evil nature. (This was as the Pharisees treated Jesus. These apostate brothers did not know Jesus either, and their beast parted his garments, too.) These leaders of the harlot church proclaimed an evil beast had done this and in this, they were right. In this captivity, Joseph was then slandered by the harlot of Potiphar, the chief executioner, and thrown into a spiritual prison. Joseph was not deterred. His interpretations of dreams fulfilled prophecy as men's fates were decided. As with the butler and baker, some were resurrected from their prisons, and others were eternally destroyed. Because of his gift of understanding dreams and the future, Joseph was promoted and anointed to reign. He taught the people how to store up their treasures in the kingdom so they might be provided for from there. The seven years of plenty came to an end and seven years of famine came, and there was famine all over the world. The Father then sent Joseph's brothers to him so that they might not starve with all the flocks. They did not recognize him because he looked like any worldly Egyptian on the outside. Although all the people came to Joseph for spiritual sustenance, these leaders still did not know the one on the inside. Because of this, they reaped what they had sown and were tried by Joseph's words and falsely accused as they had done to Joseph. (Isa.54:17) No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness which is of me, saith Jehovah. In the fullness of time, Joseph revealed himself to them, and they were greatly saddened for their failures, which had caused them and their families much grief. Joseph comforted them, telling them that they meant evil against him, but God used it for good to save many people alive. All of the types of the Man-child were slandered before and after the anointing came. The Psalms are full of this in David's experience, which was a type of Jesus' experience, which was a type of Jesus in the end-time Man-child ministry's experience. This parable above is in the process of being fulfilled. It is easy to see ‘who is who' in this parable of God just before the seven years of famine begin. Repent while there is still time. Joseph is not in prison alone. Some will end up like the butler and some like the baker, by His Word.   Death of the Davids Eve Brast - 11/25/2012 (David's notes in red) In the dream, David Eells (representing the David/Man-childs) and I (Eve, representing the bride of the last Adam) were in an Army barracks on a base on the second floor. I walked into the room where David was sitting. He was sitting at the doorway, teaching a rebellious man who was sitting at his feet, about not fighting in the flesh because he really wanted to teach his son to rise up and fight the government with guns and weapons. At first, my eyes were focused on the rebellious man, but then I looked up at David and saw the condition of his outward man. He was feeble and old but the voice coming from his inner man was very strong and youthful. (2Co.4:16) Wherefore we faint not; but though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day. (17) For our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory; (18) while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.) I was shocked when I saw him. He was wearing a long-sleeved white dress shirt, and it was soaked with bloody sweat, just like Christ in the garden just before His crucifixion. He had been laboring in great travail and prayer while teaching this rebellious man who had been sitting at his feet. (I have discovered that teaching the rebellious man is a wonderful way to be crucified of self at his hand.) When I looked at him, he motioned to me with his finger by pointing to his mouth and then pointing to me and indicating to me to read his lips because his old man could not speak anymore. (The tongue is a good indication of whether the old man is dead. (Jas.3:2) For in many things we all stumble. If any stumbleth not in word, the same is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also. A perfect man is one who is dead to self.) When I read his lips, he said without a sound, “It's time.” And then he pointed at R. S., who was his personal secretary/nurse in an office to his right. He wanted me to alert her. I didn't understand what was happening and I became concerned because he looked like he was going to die! (Please read our book, How Shall We Die, to know the way of death to self.) Then he pulled his blood-and sweat-soaked shirt open (like Superman does) and I saw a bright red scar running down his sternum. Then I understood that he had recently had a heart transplant and now it was time for him (the old man) to pass away. (A heart transplant is in effect the death of the old heart and resurrection of the new.) I ran and got R.S., who was a white woman in this dream. She jumped up and ran to catch his body as it slumped in his chair and passed away. She said, “We've been waiting and preparing for this to happen for quite a while now”. She reached David just in time to catch his body and lower it down to the floor. I was sorrowful that he had left us, as the brethren took his body away. I felt the way the disciples felt after their Shepherd, Jesus, had been crucified. (The Davids are going through a crucifixion and death of the old man.) I then went back to another barracks where I also taught the revelations the Father had given David to others, and where we all slept. (The Bride will pass on the Man-child's teachings in the tribulation.) It was dark outside, and on the way back, I heard a radio broadcast in my right ear. The disc jockey was criticizing me and slandering the good news teaching that I had been sharing with others. I didn't realize that anyone knew about me or that I taught the good news to others. I then smiled and said to myself, “I don't care if they don't like me because I know what I've taught is the truth of the Word”. (Persecution will come on the bride, as it did on the Man-child, so the bride too can walk in death to self and share the same gift with the world.) A confirmation: This is a small portion of a dream I had on the morning of 11/26/12, confirming the “death of David.” In one part of the dream, David's voice is heard teaching out of a very large stone fireplace with a blazing fire burning, which was inside a white homeschool convention center. (I have had several dreams with fireplaces, but this is the first one that actually had a fire going in it.) David was sharing a dream from a UBM brother with us then afterward, he was going to share a dream I was given. (Fire represents tribulation, which burns up flesh. The Davids are in the fire, which will purify their Word and make it effectual for many more people, implied by the “white homeschool convention center.”) At another point in the dream, I was out in the foyer of the convention center, in front of the two huge, carved double doors of the entry into the center, when my son, Elijah, who was 10, ran up to me and asked, “Do you think I can have David's ministry when he's dead?” (I am sure that when the Davids manifest death, many will inherit from them their mantle and ministry, especially all of the witnesses, typed by Elijah.) I said, “I don't know. You will have to ask him, but I'm sure it's okay”. I then looked way up high above the double entry doors and saw very large, red music notes, edged in gold, mounted on the wall. I thought, “Enter into His courts with praise!” (The color red represents the “sacrifice of praise.”) (The Davids should complain about the fire less and praise the Lord more, in great appreciation for this unmerited and gifted ministry to come!)   Sonship or Persecutor? Golda Meyer - 05/14/2006 (David's notes in red) Children, carry forth this message, for truly, the time is no more. Hours in the day are crunched. Mercy time is crunched because of My chosen ones. For long you have walked in the wilderness, hoping for more, groaning for more, and crying for more. I have seen your tears, and I know of the cries in your hearts. Children, the time is here. Like Mary accepted the seed of the Holy Spirit in her womb, so did you. But travail came in a terrible way in her young life, but she rejoiced in the Birth of the Sign - Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Sign, but even the Sign had to be fulfilled in the Promise. And this is happening. Children, it is happening still, for the Promise is fulfilled with many sons of God coming into Sonship. Children, this is that time now. It is Sonship time. Now you will see the true Sonship. Men and Women of God on this earth truly walking like Jesus did. By this, you can see who the sons are and who are not. Discernment will be so easy, and the works wrought by their hands in perfection are driven by Love. And this Love is from God; for no man, it does not matter how long and hard they try, can muster this Love up from their own will. These sons are sent by God, and cannot by their own will achieve anything. They have died and given over fully their wills to God. Deep in the river do they abide, knowing only the Love and Strength and Life of their God. You will see them appear - all of them. From the quiet and the secret places are they coming forth, and in great strength, for all in them is from Me. And they shall rule in the way I want them to rule. No tolerance for evil or flesh will they be able to show, for the mere idea stinks with rot to them. For I AM in them, fully employed and in Power. They will not tolerate any mediocrity either, and harsh will be their words sometimes, but it is for healing only, motivated by Love. You shall see their strength and their beauty in the LORD. Only those who abide in the LORD can follow this road. Abiding in the Vine, the Vine of all Life-giving. Only those can move to Sonship, for in the fellowship and intimacy of God, only herein could they grow into maturity. That time of maturity is here. And they will mature simultaneously, in great numbers, to impact this world. This world will know of the Glory of the Lord, for it will be shown in great and splendid public display. How shall this be? Oh, you shall see, for ALL will be healed in the Presence of God, in Mine Glory and ALL shall be delivered in the Presence of God, of those that will accept the LORD Jesus Christ as their Savior. The Healing and Deliverance is for ALL who will receive Me. For ALL. They will walk, talk, and do like Jesus, and even more so. For much splendor will I bestow on this earth, and great is the Glory of God, for My Presence will fill this earth, and even the sinners will know that I AM God. So children, have eyes wide open, for those that will see, shall see, and those that will hear, shall hear. The others shall be veiled, unless My intercessors intercede and stand in the gap for those who are lost. Children, hear your Father's Heart. I will not, that anyone go astray, so stand in for those that you know are not with Me. For I long to feel them in My Heart, for I have created them in Love. Don't let them die, children, but pray for them to Live, and have Life abundantly. You are greatly blessed with the Light; now shine that Light unto others, so they may live. (Joh.6:39 And this is the will of him that sent me, that of all that which he hath given me I should lose nothing, …) Dearest children, this, your Father asks of you today, to be merciful unto others as I AM merciful to you. Pray earnestly for those, and I shall save them, for the prayers of the righteous avail much. Love Me first and love others as you love yourself, and truly, your rewards are great in Christ Jesus. Now then, My beloved, pray for unity, for I want My Church together in great strength, for in unity there can be no division, and if no division, then comes forth great Strength in Christ. Accept them, each other, and do not cuddle dominion loyalty, but be loyal to your God and to each other. As I AM, so you shall be. Now see My sons, for you shall truly say: How long have I been in your midst? See then Me, in My sons, for this is who I AM. ALL in ALL. Dearest ones, be faithful to My commands and be blessed in Christ Jesus, for truly, great is the time upon you. Great is the Grace upon you, and great is the Glory of God upon this earth. So it shall be. AMEN. Rom 8:16 Rom The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God: 17 and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with him. 18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward. 19 For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God. Rom 8:29 For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren: 30 and whom he foreordained, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. Let's look at some scriptures concerning our persecution and the reasons, and if we endure, the rewards. (Mat.5:4) Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.   Obviously, we mourn. The world is full of laughter and enjoying everything that's going on around them, but like Lot (2 Peter 2:7-8), we're grieved in our hearts. When we put the Word of God in our heart, the Jesus Who is in us is grieved at the things that go on around us, is grieved at the advantage that the wicked take of us, is grieved at the persecution that they bring against us. Losing your life can be painful, of course, but if we obey Jesus' commands, He will make it as quick as possible. Thank You, Lord! Needless to say, there is a place of mourning because of the persecutions and the tribulations that come upon us through the wicked people around us. Jesus told us in (Luk.6:21) Blessed [are] ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed [are] ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh. (22) Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you [from their company,] and reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake. We don't see that as a blessing, but it's listed here as one of God's blessings because when we're hated of the world, that means we're loved of God. If we weep because of what we're giving up in the natural, because of persecutions that we're suffering and enduring for Christ's sake, persecutions that we endure because of the crucified life, this is good.  The Lord is going to bless us for this. (Mat.5:10) Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Another Scripture tells us, (2Ti.3:12) Yea, and all that would live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. If you're going to live Godly, as Jesus walked, you are going to suffer persecution, and it's for the purpose of crucifying that old man. But notice He said, “Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake” because if we suffer for doing evil, we don't receive glory or gain any advantage for that (1 Peter 2:20, 3:17). And many of us do suffer God's chastening for doing things that are contrary to His Will, but that's because He loves us and wants us to turn and go the other way. (Mat.5:11) Blessed are ye when [men] shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. We don't like to suffer persecution, or people speaking lies against us, and so on, but God said, “Blessed are you.” This is more of God's humbling process, that we should accept what's being spoken against us. Jesus told His apostles, (Joh.15:20) Remember the word that I said unto you, A servant is not greater than his lord. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. If they did it to our Lord, they'll do it to us, and so we should be rejoicing in our persecution. In fact, look at what the very next verse says in Matthew. (Mat.5:12) Rejoice, and be exceeding glad (Notice that's our command from the Lord.): for great is your reward in heaven… We're going to receive a reward because of all the things that the wicked do; things the wicked Christians and wicked worldly people say against us. We're going to get a reward for that, and so He tells us to rejoice and give thanks to God. I don't believe when we're on the other side of our trial, looking back, brethren, that we're going to think, “Boy, I'm sorry I went through that!” It says in (Heb.12:11) All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness. Obviously, we're going to see the results of God's blessings and the things that He's provided for us because we have gone through that, and because of the peaceable fruit that God is working in our hearts by our going through this. No, I believe we're going to thank God and we will be rejoicing! (Deu.28:7) The Lord will cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thee: they shall come out against thee one way, and shall flee before thee seven ways. In the midst of the trial, “hearken” unto the Word. Accept the good report, and the devil won't know what to do with you, and neither will your physical enemies (Numbers 13:30). Our physical enemies come against us as persecutions and a matter of crucifixion, so the best thing to do is lay down your life. Stop trying to save yourself by man's methods. Put your trust in the Lord and “hearken diligently” unto His Word.   Will You Eat with Chickens or Fly with Eagles? G. W. - 10/06/2008 (David's notes in red) I had a dream that was very clear. I found myself in a school classroom full of students and everybody was there learning. David Eells was teaching about this great event that was going to happen, almost like it had to do with dinosaurs. (Many think the Biblical events of the disciples walking as sons of God to be extinct, but they are coming again now to repeat history.) I was so excited about this event, and I watched and studied everything David did and said. It was as if the rest of the class took it lightly and didn't really pay close attention as much to the things he was saying. I then watched him as he and some students were outside, and one of the students lit a firecracker that went into a tree and exploded. In my mind, I realized that David had the authority to stop this, but he let the student do it anyway. (The tree is America, and some will rebel and fight against her in the flesh, which will separate them from the true disciples. This is a test, like many other things.) Then David and I were in front of the class, and he said, “It's time.” Nobody in the room knew what he was talking about but me, and even I didn't really understand, but I was filled with excitement. In front of the class, he then pulled out this ring that was about the size of a car tire and put it over my head. I then disappeared in front of the class and found myself going up to heaven. (The ring over the head represents the authority of the King manifested through the renewed mind.) I thought to myself the whole time I was floating up to heaven, “Wow, David was right, and I'm so glad that I listened”. (This is the authority to walk above the laws of the earthbound in the kingdom of heaven on earth.) I then realized that I was still on earth and now I had the power to fly. I then began flying around all over the place and around people, but they could not see me. But then I began to think in my mind that flying wasn't as fun as I thought it would be, and I thought there would be more to it. (Overcoming the gravitational draw of the world is not fun or painless for the flesh.) I then flew around a public swimming pool with people in it and the swimming pool pulled me into the water with the people. (The water of the worldly bound represents their carnal teaching. “Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers”. “Be not deceived: Evil companionships corrupt good morals”. “A little leaven leavens the whole lump”.) I tried to fly again, but I could not fly; it felt like the water was kryptonite, and I was powerless to fly. I only had the ability to do what everyone else was doing in the pool. (Their worthless teaching and sometimes faction makes one powerless to overcome the world, and instead, they will walk after the mind and works of the flesh, thinking it to be the normal Christian life.) Then everyone could see me, but they never knew that I could fly before. (Their teaching takes away the power to live like Superman, and the manifestation of Sonship cannot be revealed to them through you because you are just like them.) I then went back to the school to find David. He was there grading papers and talking to a student whose paper he had just graded. I wanted to talk with David, but he was busy grading other papers, and I wondered why he was back there and not in heaven. My whole view of him changed from that which I had in the beginning; it was like now he was just a normal schoolteacher. (When one walks and thinks in the flesh, they are not able to see and associate with those who walk in heavenly places while on earth. The Pharisees didn't recognize Jesus or His disciples as sons of God.) I wanted to speak with David very badly and waited for him to acknowledge me. Then a sixth-grade student, whom I taught when I was an Elementary schoolteacher in real life, said to me with fear, “Everyone saw you disappear in class, and now you're back”. I realized everyone was filled with fear about this, but I was sad that I was back and didn't understand why I returned. (If we fall, we have to start school all over again to learn to be an overcomer by being obedient to the Word. This should put the fear in others not to make this mistake and lose fruit and time to bear it. This is a warning to the body to not mix the worldly teachings and spirits of the apostate church into our life, or we will have no strength to walk in the Spirit as sons of God, as the Man-child and Bride. Sadly this happened and he never flew again.) The Darkness is Closing In So Walk in Jesus' Steps Marie Kelton - 3/27/21 (David's notes in red) I had an open vision a couple of days ago while standing on my front porch. The sky had a reddish-orange color to it. (Representing warning or danger) I was looking in the direction of the stepping stones in the grass. (These stepping stones represent the steps already laid by Jesus, Who is the Word.) 1Jn.2:3-6 And hereby we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. 4 He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; 5 but whoso keepeth his word, in him verily hath the love of God been perfected. Hereby we know that we are in him: 6 he that saith he abideth in him ought himself also to walk even as he walked. These stones help us navigate the straight and narrow path, over our flesh nature, that leads to the manifestation of eternal life in Christ.) I was wearing a long, white skirt with a white top and a white head covering. (This is the Leukos or white garment of those invited to the marriage supper. Rev 19:9  And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they that are bidden (invited) to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are true words of God…14  And the armies which are in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white (leukos) and pure.)  There was a thick darkness (representing demons) coming towards the stairs up to the left of me and a thick darkness (also representing demons) coming to the right of me. Isa.60:1-3 Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of Jehovah is risen upon thee. 2 For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples; but Jehovah will arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. 3 And nations shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. So, seek to walk in the light saints and escape the darkness. Then, while standing there, I saw Jesus Who was walking on the stone pathway, but it was no longer a stone pathway but a white light. Psa.119:105 Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, And light unto my path. He stopped and held out His hand for me to take it. I was standing on the white pathway on my porch. I knew Jesus wanted me to walk with Him on the pathway of light in the midst of the darkness. (Here is an exhortation to those who aspire to be in the bride. Isa.52:1-12 Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean. 2 Shake thyself from the dust; arise, sit on thy throne, O Jerusalem: loose thyself from the bonds of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion. 3 For thus saith Jehovah, Ye were sold for nought; and ye shall be redeemed without money. 4 For thus saith the Lord Jehovah, My people went down at the first into Egypt to sojourn there: and the Assyrian hath oppressed them without cause. 5 Now therefore, what do I here, saith Jehovah, seeing that my people is taken away for nought? they that rule over them do howl, saith Jehovah, and my name continually all the day is blasphemed. 6 Therefore my people shall know my name: therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak; behold, it is I. 7 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation, that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth! 8 The voice of thy watchmen! they lift up the voice, together do they sing; for they shall see eye to eye, when Jehovah returneth to Zion. 9 Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem; for Jehovah hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem. 10 Jehovah hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. 11 Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; cleanse yourselves, ye that bear the vessels of Jehovah. 12 For ye shall not go out in haste, neither shall ye go by flight: for Jehovah will go before you; and the God of Israel will be your rearward.   Your Way Is Marked Sandy Warner - 10/17/2005 I have heard your anxious worries over walking to the tune of My Spirit and walking with others of like minds. I know who and what has been missing in your life, dear one. I understand the pain. You have been sent like a pioneer into non-charted territory and few have walked this way. They have not recognized this great drive that is within you to see what is beyond the next valley. Come walk with Me. Your way is greatly protected and sheltered. I have given you My Word, which you have hidden in your heart. I have covered you and shaded you. Resist carrying too much weight, dear one, for such encumbers your way. Instead, travel light and easy and become so sensitive to My leading that I can lead you with My eye. Look up, change your focus, for it is faith that causes you to rise above all that encumbers you. You belong to Me, My love. I belong to you. Fear not, for your prepared way has an impenetrable fence against the dogs or wolves who devour and bite. I am taking you cross-country and bringing you along the path of laurels, the overcoming ones. Also, you need not fear deception from the wolves, for I have paved the trail before you. Your path is well marked with signs of My Word liberally sprinkled to your right and to your left. I have also sent others before you who have given much in order to leave a trail of breadcrumbs and seeds for you, My precious hungry birds. And even as you have followed the signs and been faithful with what I have given you, you shall be promoted. I will send you into the marketplace to release My Words to those who are starving and, yes, they will listen. In the past, they did not heed My Word and grew hungry while they walked in circles. You are My chosen generation who walked ahead of them. You shall walk out of the wilderness pioneering, leaning upon your Beloved. A great company travels with you, and you shall never be alone again. (SoS.8:5-7 NKJV) Who is this coming up from the wilderness, Leaning upon her beloved? I awakened you under the apple tree. There your mother brought you forth; There she who bore you brought you forth. Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave; Its flames are flames of fire, a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, nor can the floods drown it. If a man would give for love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly despised.   The Mark, Persecution and Refuge I. P. - 03/22/2009 (David's notes in red) I had a dream that the world turned on the Christians. They did not necessarily turn on them because they were Christians, but because they did not receive the mark (of the beast). The war on terror never seemed to cease, and the focus seemed to be on those who did not take the mark. Anyone who refused the mark was considered a terrorist. The whole world had received the mark and even though I did not see it, I knew that everyone had it. Those of us who did not take it had a camp in the woods, hidden away from those in the world. I went into the city one day with my Bible to preach the Word to all those who would listen. After I entered the city, I stepped inside a mall and was taken aback by the strange sight. Everyone in the mall was severely mentally retarded. (The mall represents Babylon's buying and selling with those who have the mark. The mark retards spirituality.) Some of the store owners were outside their storefronts, beckoning people to come into their shop. (Those who seek to sell you their goods or worldly ideas.) Everyone was mentally handicapped, from the shoppers to the owners. (This is the reprobation the Bible promised to those who receive the mark.) Everyone in the mall had severe hatred for me, so I continued walking around until I came to a storefront where normal people were. It was the only shop where the people were not mentally handicapped. I walked to the front counter and they asked, “May I help you?” I said, “No, I am just here to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.” I was surprised because they were happy to see me. I said, “Wow, I thought I would be kicked out of here by now; everyone hates me.” She said, “No, we don't hate you.” They listened to what I had to say. Earlier in the dream, I had sown a blessing to another, and it made sense now that these women gave me more than I had sown before. The Lord met my needs. (These women represent those groups of Christians who do not buy and sell with the world because they are not marked. They also offer in Babylon their truths for those who will receive. Public buying and selling will not last long after the mark is forced. I suggest giving and receiving for which there is a reward.) So I walked back out of the city into the woods where our camp was. My fiancée (who's now my wife) welcomed me there. I walked to a lake that was inside our camp, and I saw David Eells and another man lying in lawn chairs, basking in the sun. (This represents the David/Man-child ministries resting from their own works abiding in the Son.) They were rubbing suntan lotion on and enjoying the day. (Resting in the anointing.) The man who was with David had a mustache that curled upwards; he was also a minister and seemed to be in the same position of authority as David. They were like elders of the community. The other elder was a bit sterner and more old-fashioned, but still in the same spirit as David. (The Man-child ministers will not be carbon-copies but will all walk in the Spirit of the Son.) They asked me about my day, and I proceeded to tell them all that had happened to me.    Christ Manifest in Us  David Let's examine some verses about how Jesus is coming in this matured body of sons. Christ will manifest His life and ministry in these. (2Th.1:10-12) when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be marvelled at in all them that believed (because our testimony unto you was believed) in that day. (We are still coming out of the dark ages but God will reveal the greater works in our day.) (11) To which end we also pray always for you, that our God may count you worthy of your calling, and fulfil every desire of goodness and [every] work of faith, with power; (12) that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and ye in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (2Co.3:18) But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit. (Col.3:4) When Christ, [who is] our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with him be manifested in glory. (Gal.4:19) My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you. (Col.1:27) to whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: (28) whom we proclaim, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ; (2Co.4:10) always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body. (11) For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. (Eph.3:14-19) For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, (15) from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, (16) that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inward man; (17) that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, (18) may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, (19) and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God. (Eph.4:11-15) And he gave some [to be] apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; (12) for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ: (13) till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: (14) that we may be no longer children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error; (15) but speaking truth in love, we may grow up in all things into him, who is the head, [even] Christ; Maturity is having Christ manifest in you. It says in 1Jn2:28 And now my little children, abide in him; that if he shall be manifested (the three most ancient manuscripts of the New Testament, the Nestles text, the A.S.V., the R.V., and the Numeric New Testament agree to this translation) if he shall be manifested we may have boldness, and not be ashamed before him at his coming. This means that “If he shall be manifested” in us, we won't be ashamed when we see him. 1Jn.3:2 “Beloved now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, (Again this means manifested in us 2 Cor 4:10,11) (the three most ancient manuscripts of the New Testament, the Nestles text, the Received Text, the A.S.V., the R.V., and the Numeric New Testament agree on this translation) we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is”. Notice that we must see the real Jesus to be like Him. The apostate's ‘Jesus' is nothing like Him and so they do not walk as He walked. 2Co.3:18 ASV But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit. This shows us that if we “see him as he is” in the mirror (by faith) then we will manifest His glory. According to quantum physics or mechanics, we must see what we want and believe we have received it to have it. Christ exchanged His life for ours at the cross. (Col.1:22) yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and without blemish and unreproveable before him: (23) if so be that ye continue in the faith, grounded and stedfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel which ye heard, which was preached in all creation under heaven;) That's why we must see him in the mirror by faith in order to manifest Him. (Gal.2:20) I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me: and that [life] which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, [the faith] which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me. This kind of faith is accounted as righteousness until righteousness is manifested in bearing fruit. He who sees his “natural face in the mirror” will be a hearer but not a doer because they will not have power to obey (James 1:23). (Col.3:4) When Christ, [who is] our life, shall be manifested (in us-same as above), then shall ye also with him be manifested in glory. Now notice the life of Christ is His glory and it is manifested in our “mortal flesh” (2Co.4:11) For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. Notice: mortal flesh on the earth, not glorified bodies. The false prophet has told us that we have to settle for being forgiven sinners in this life instead of overcoming sons of God. For many deceivers are gone forth into the world, [even] they that confess not that Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh. (This means in the true believer's flesh.(2Jn.7). Note: “is come” or “has come in the flesh” has no foundation in the ancient manuscripts, the Received Text, or the Nestles Text or Numerics. Paul prayed in Ephesians 3:18,19 that they “may be strong to apprehend (not comprehend- The ancient manuscripts, Received Text and Nestles Text and Numerics agree) ...the breadth and length and height and depth ...of Christ ...and be filled unto all the fullness of God”. I.e., Apprehend all of Christ. The power to do this is faith in Him. According to Paul in Eph.4:11-15, the five-fold ministry is “for the perfecting of the saints...unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” Through faith in the promises we “cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2Co.7:1). Be diligent in this faith beloved, till He comes, and you will bear the fruit of His works and have great reward. Most of you know this, but I want to briefly explain that ‘Manifest' in these texts means to appear in the physical realm. When we come to Christ, we accept all of His benefits by faith (faith is the substance of the thing hoped for while the evidence is unseen. Heb.11:1) until the sacrifice is manifest in our lives as fruit. According to the parable of the sower, the seed is sown in the heart, but only one out of the four is good ground and brings forth fruit 30, 60, 100 fold. The fruit here is Christ, not gaining other souls. The fruit of the Spirit. He is the “seed” of the word and each seed brings forth after its own kind; not another Jesus. (Rom.8:24,25) For in hope (Greek = a firm expectation) were we saved. But hope that is seen is not hope: for who hopeth for that which he seeth? (25) But if we hope for that which we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. In other words, we wait for the full manifestation of our salvation. When we come to Christ, we receive a new spirit, but our soul, our mind, will, and emotions need transforming. (Rom.12:2) And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. and ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. By faith we say with Paul (Gal.2:20) I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me. As we make this confession of our faith, it will be continually manifested in us, for we are justified by faith. The Holy Spirit gives power to those who believe. If we don't repent and believe the word, we cannot have what it says. As long as we are walking by faith in the word, we are acceptable to God for “faith is accounted as righteousness” until it is manifested. Jesus told his disciples in (Luk.6:40) The disciple is not above his teacher but every one when he is perfected shall be as his teacher. Christ wants to live and be seen or manifested in us. As we repent, when we see the word we permit this to happen. We give good ground to the seed and bear His fruit. (Luk.9:23,24) And he said unto all, If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. (24) For whosoever would save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. (2Pe.1:19) And we have the word of prophecy made more sure; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts. This is the manifested glory. (2Pe.1:9-11) For he that lacketh these things is blind, seeing only what is near, having forgotten the cleansing from his old sins. (10) Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things ye shall never stumble: (11) For thus shall be richly supplied unto you the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. (Jas.1:23) For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a mirror. If we don't see Jesus in the mirror, then that is not faith and we will not be a doer of the word. A doer of the word is manifesting Christ. I received this objection to my letter “Christ In You” from a brother. I am using the word perfection as the Greek word implies, to be mature, or full-grown. Here is an objection to what the Word clearly says: Dave, are you suggesting that the Word teaches that perfection can be attained in this life? Your quote: “perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor 7:1). would seem to indicate strongly that it is an ongoing process (known in Scripture as Sanctification) not accomplished in this life. (Notice here you have added to the Word, which brings the curse of the last four verses of Revelation. This also takes from the Word for you can never arrive at the manifestation with this unbelief.) Paul said, “...not as if I had already attained ...” - Paul continues that he is still pursuing that higher life which is found in Christ, who is “in us”. (Paul believed he could by grace manifest what he already said he believed.) 1 John says that if we say we sin not, we lie. We must be careful to differentiate between the goal we strive for (as close to the life of Jesus as possible) and claiming sinless perfection. Try as you may and believe as much as you wish does not erase the “old man” we must constantly fight against. That fight is by faith, of course, in Christ. Here is my answer: I hope you will read this carefully because, as you can see, it is the Word of God. We can't reject any scripture and still say we have the truth. We cannot pick the verses we like in order to justify our religion. “The sum of thy words is truth”. The whole verse says this: Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. (2Cor.7:1) All we have to do is believe what it says without invoking the curse for adding to the word. We are commanded here to use the word of God to separate from worldly thinking and actions. Look at what the following scriptures say: (1Th.4:3-8) For this is the will of God, [even] your sanctification, that ye abstain from fornication; (4) that each one of you know how to possess himself of his own vessel in sanctification and honor, (5) not in the passion of lust, even as the Gentiles who know not God; (6) that no man transgress, and wrong his brother in the matter: because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as also we forewarned you and testified. (7) For God called us not for uncleanness, but in sanctification. (8) Therefore he that rejecteth, rejecteth not man, but God, who giveth his Holy Spirit unto you. How can sanctification not be attainable in this life when scriptures say, (Heb.12:14,15) Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord: (15) looking carefully lest [there be] any man that falleth short of the grace of God. Holiness and sanctification are the same Greek word. A person who does not believe it is attainable cannot receive it because we receive it by faith. (2Co.4:11) For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. (Eph.3:18-20) ....may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, (in other words all of Christ ) (19) and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fullness of God. (20) Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, Notice, its not our power but His that accomplishes this by faith. Are you saying He can't do this? (Eph.4:12) for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ: (13) till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: (14) that we may be no longer children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error; (15) but speaking truth in love, we may grow up in all things into him, who is the head, [even] Christ; (Col.1:22,23) yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and without blemish and unreproveable before him: (23) if so be that ye continue in the faith, grounded and stedfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel which ye heard, (1Co.15:1,2) Now I make known unto you brethren, the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye received, wherein also ye stand, (2) by which also ye are saved, if ye hold fast the word which I preached unto you, except ye believed in vain. We are justified by faith in the sanctification given us at the cross and that faith continually brings us into manifest sanctification. Faith is accounted as righteousness until righteousness is manifested in us. In this way a person can continue under the grace of God as he bears fruit. Faith is the “victory that overcomes the world” (1Jn.5:4). Faith is “calling the things that are not as though they were” (Rom.4:17), until they come to pass. We must be “seeing that His divine power hath granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness... whereby He hath granted unto us His precious and exceeding great promises that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust” (2Pe.1:34). Christ made you “free from sin” (Romans 6:18,22) so why should you “live any longer therein?” (verse 22) for you were “delivered out of the power of darkness” (Colossians 1:13) so “reckon yourselves to be dead unto sin but alive unto God” and “let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that you should obey the lusts thereof “(Rom.6:11,12). “If you live after the flesh, you must die: but if by the Spirit (God's power) you put to death the deeds of the body, you shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God” (Rom.8:13,14). Believe God's promises and escape the lusts of the flesh. “Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God (2Cor. 7:1). (1Jo.2:1-6) My little children, these things write I unto you that ye may not sin. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: (2) and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. (3) And hereby we know that we know him. If we keep his commandments. (4) He that saith. I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar. and the truth is not in him: (5) but whoso keepeth his word, in him verily hath the love of God been perfected. Hereby we know that we are in him: (6) he that saith he abideth in him ought himself also to walk even as he walked. The religions of this day have turned the grace of God into lasciviousness, which is a license to do what you want to do. As we can see from the verses above, grace delivers from sin, not just covers it up. The blood covers our ignorance until we see the light. (Jas.4:17) To him therefore that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. (Heb.10:26) For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more a sacrifice for sins, (27) but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries. Some sins are done in ignorance and are therefore not willful. These are covered by the Blood through faith. For the other sins, we will obviously get chastening until we hopefully repent. (Rom.5:13) ... for until the law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law. You may have sinned a sin of ignorance (not knowing the law) but under Grace, God does not reckon it as sin. That is why we cannot say, “we have no sin” (1Jo.1:8). We are ignorant of many things that are against His perfect will. When we get light, then we are responsible. When does the Blood not just cover, but wash away the very nature of sin? (1Jo.1:5-7) And this is the message which we have heard from him and announce unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. (6) if we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in the darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: (7) but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin. This is why the Gospel is the Good News. Now we don't have to be content with forgiveness because Jesus is “the Lamb of God that taketh away, not just covers up the sins of the world”. Many of God's people are still living with Old Testament benefits because they don't believe the Gospel. I hope this answer will benefit you in your walk with Christ.   Chosen to Show God's Glory Mary Clark - 04/26/2007 unthinkable = unimaginable, impossible, fantastic, unbelievable, incredible, improbable, extraordinary Word: I want to talk to you about the unthinkable. What I am going to do is unthinkable. No man on the face of the earth could ever think up, ever even imagine, what I am about to bring forth. No man on the face of the earth could ever think up the wonders that I am about to present. It is utterly impossible, absolutely impossible! Keep this in mind when My mighty forces present the coming scenario. Keep this in mind when you see mind-boggling events. Keep this in mind when you see mankind standing agog, looking as if they have seen a ghost or something equivalent. Yes, keep it in mind that I told you that I was going to do the unthinkable. Keep it in mind that I told you that I was going to surprise you with the most extraordinary. Keep it in mind when you see the most incredible sights you have ever seen, much less experienced. Yes, I want you to remember My words when this fantastic display occurs in your vicinity and remember that I told you in advance. Yes, I always let My beloved children know in advance, and this is the season, beloved, for the unthinkable. It is approaching with great rapidity. It is coming by My hand. Stand back and watch as I present My last day scenario and know deep within your heart that all is coming forth for a reason. All is coming forth for a very good purpose. You will see that purpose arise solidly in lives all across the face of the earth, and you will vow that your God does all things well. Yes, you will vow that it is GOOD, mighty GOOD. In fact, you will say that it is unthinkable, and too good for words, too good to be true, but true, yes, true it will be. Yes, true it will be, and you will know that your Beloved has shown forth His mercy in this final hour to bring forth His glory-filled presence for all to see and to know that He is alive and He lives mightily in His chosen. Yes, I live mightily in those called by My name. My very own chosen are arising with purpose to show forth My glory, and what the world will see will be unthinkable, but it will be true, true to My word, a true to life display of the wonders of the living God, shining forth in vast array for all to see and to know that the eternal King has a purpose and has carried it through. Unthinkable? I think not, beloved. I think not. Did I not think? Did I not bring it into existence? Not so unthinkable. No, not so unthinkable at all. Not for Me, anyway!!!

Centering on Hebrews 12:1-2, Elder Gary Massengill delivers a Christ-centered message titled “What Are You Looking For?” This sermon challenges listeners to examine the focus of their lives and directs their attention to the One who is worthy of it all: Jesus Christ, the Author and Finisher of our faith. Drawing from the powerful exhortation to run the Christian race with patience while “looking unto Jesus,” Elder Massengill reminds us that salvation is not based on human effort, religious works, or personal merit. Our hope rests entirely in the finished work of Christ on the cross of Calvary. Before the foundation of the world, when no one in heaven, earth, or beneath the earth could be found worthy, God provided the perfect Lamb. Jesus willingly left the glory of heaven, took on human flesh, and became the sacrifice for the sins of mankind. The message reflects on the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, especially during the Easter season. Jesus endured the cross, suffered shame, and shed His precious blood so that every sinner could be saved by the grace of God. His cry of “It is finished” declared that the plan of redemption was complete forever. Nothing can be added to it, and nothing can be taken away. Elder Massengill beautifully illustrates salvation through the Old Testament tabernacle. The single door into the tabernacle points to Christ as the only way to the Father. The laver speaks of cleansing, the candlestick represents light, and the showbread reminds us that Jesus is the Bread of Life who sustains His people. When Christ died, the veil was torn from top to bottom, opening direct access to God through our great High Priest, Jesus Christ. Throughout the sermon, listeners are asked a simple but searching question: What are you looking for? Are you looking for fulfillment in the world, or are you looking unto Jesus? The world cannot satisfy the deepest needs of the soul. True peace, joy, forgiveness, and eternal life are found only in Him. The message also highlights the incredible love of Christ. While we were still sinners, He came to where we were, reaching into the depths of our brokenness to offer salvation. Through the convicting work of the Holy Spirit, He continues to call hearts to repentance and faith today. Elder Massengill reminds us that Jesus was looking for something as well. As He hung upon the cross, He was looking ahead to those who would believe, trust Him, and receive the gift of salvation. Even now, He is still drawing souls, making intercession for His people, and preparing a place for those who belong to Him. The sermon concludes with a glorious vision of heaven. A place where there are no more tears, no more death, no more sorrow, and no more pain. A place where believers will be reunited with loved ones, gather at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, and most importantly, see Jesus face to face. Whether you’re searching for hope, purpose, peace, or salvation, this message points to the answer found in Christ alone. The question remains: What are you looking for?

In this follow-up to their discussion of the Parable of the Ten Virgins, Jesse and Tony make a critical discovery about Matthew 25:13 that fundamentally changes how we should read Christ's eschatological parables. The command to "watch therefore" isn't primarily about staying awake—it's about preparedness for Christ's return. This episode explores the grammatical and theological connections between the Parable of the Ten Virgins and the Parable of the Talents, revealing how Matthew 25:13 functions as a hinge verse that binds these parables into a unified teaching on eschatological readiness. The hosts demonstrate how modern chapter divisions and translation choices can sometimes obscure the organic flow of Christ's teaching, and why understanding these connections matters for Christian living today. Key Takeaways Matthew 25:13 is a hinge verse, not an endpoint. The Greek grammatical structure (using post-positive connectors "therefore" and "for") links verses 1-13 forward to the Parable of the Talents, not just backward to the Ten Virgins. Sleep wasn't the problem in the parable. Both the wise and foolish virgins fell asleep. The issue was preparedness—having oil ready before the bridegroom's arrival, not staying physically awake. "Watch" means preparedness, not wakefulness. The better translation of the Greek word emphasizes alert readiness and preparation rather than literal sleeplessness. The Parable of the Talents explains what preparedness looks like. Christ intentionally connected these parables to show that watchfulness manifests in faithful stewardship and fruitful living. Christ himself made these connections. This isn't just Matthew's editorial arrangement—Jesus deliberately taught these parables together as a unified discourse on eschatological readiness. Sanctifying grace is non-transferable. The wise virgins couldn't share their oil because saving grace and the Spirit's indwelling cannot be borrowed or transferred between people. Eschatological ignorance is divinely ordained. Not knowing the day or hour prevents us from delaying obedience until the last moment, which was precisely the foolish virgins' error. Key Concepts The Grammatical Evidence for Connection The discovery that transformed this discussion centers on how Greek post-positive particles function. Both "therefore" (οὖν) in verse 13 and "for" (γάρ) in verse 14 cannot grammatically stand as the first word in a Greek sentence—they must connect to what precedes them. This means verse 13 isn't simply concluding the parable of the virgins; it's simultaneously introducing the parable of the talents. English translations that insert paragraph breaks between these verses may inadvertently suggest a harder separation than exists in the original text. When Christ says "watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour, for it will be like a man going on a journey," He's creating a seamless logical progression: the reason for watchfulness is eschatological uncertainty, and the nature of that watchfulness is illustrated by what follows in the talents parable. Preparedness vs. Wakefulness in Translation Some English translations render Matthew 25:13 as "stay awake" or "keep alert," emphasizing the sleep imagery from the preceding parable. However, this creates a logical problem: if falling asleep was the sin, then both groups of virgins sinned, since the text explicitly states "they all became drowsy and slept" (v. 5). The better understanding recognizes that the Greek word (γρηγορέω) encompasses a broader semantic range including vigilance, preparedness, and readiness—not just physical wakefulness. The wise virgins weren't praised for staying awake; they were praised for having secured oil before the bridegroom's arrival. This preparedness enabled them to respond appropriately when the moment came, regardless of whether they had been sleeping. Translating with an emphasis on sleep therefore misses Christ's point and artificially seals verse 13 off from the explanation that follows. The Perseverance of the Saints in Action This parable sequence reveals an often-overlooked dimension of the doctrine of perseverance: believers must actually do the persevering. While the Holy Spirit enables, empowers, and ordains our perseverance, He doesn't persevere instead of us—He causes us to persevere. The wise virgins' preparedness wasn't passive; they actively obtained oil before it was needed. They prepared for both the bridegroom's arrival and the potential delay. This illustrates that Christian preparedness isn't anxious vigilance or frantic last-minute effort, but the steady, Spirit-enabled work of sanctification, growing in grace, abiding in Christ, and maintaining readiness over the long haul. The Parable of the Talents then unpacks what this looks like practically: faithful stewardship, productive kingdom work, and diligent use of what God has entrusted to us during the time of waiting. Memorable Quotes The difference between foolishness and wisdom in the first parable is not whether or not the virgins fell asleep. It's whether or not they were prepared for the eventual coming of the bridegroom. - Tony Arsenal When God's people take to see and request his eminent and transcendent power in the lives of somebody else through intercessory prayer, a special bond is created that is very real. - Jesse Schwamb Christ himself has strung these different parables together... Christ was the one who decided that the parable of the talents was a proper explainer for the parable of the wise and foolish virgins. - Tony Arsenal Full Transcript [00:00:08] Jesse Schwamb: Welcome to episode 495 of the Reformed to Brotherhood. I'm Jesse.  [00:00:14] Tony Arsenal: And I'm Tony. And this is the podcast with ears to hear. Hey brother.  [00:00:18] Jesse Schwamb: Hey brother. So sometimes the episodes just seem to write themselves, and I say that of course, tongue in cheek from my full providential register. But in the last episode, we went over with great detail, the parable of the 10 virgins, or the 10 bridesmaids found in Matthew 25. And I think we did all the things that we were supposed to do, like contractually. We made really good oil puns. We talked about Petras song, midnight Oil. We talked about 10 bridesmaids, five Ys, five foolish. They're all waiting for the bridegroom who is late because he operates on divine timing. The foolish five run out of oil and begged the five whys to share theirs. The five whys decline, because sanctifying grace is non-transferrable. This is not a potluck. We went through all of that stuff and then what happened is we turned off the microphones and somehow you and I started a, a new conversation about this thing still. And we thought there's more to say and we didn't even expect it. And incidentally, it all hinges on a single word. Yeah. So we're gonna come back to that on this episode because we couldn't help ourselves. And I say that because we couldn't help ourselves. We literally kept talking about this long after the episode had ended. So we wanted to bring it back and it's something new. I think that you and I were really pondering that's gonna be really, really, really good. Yeah. But the other thing that's really good is either affirming with something or denying against something that's the part of the conversation where we either affirm with something that we think is underrated, really exceptional, that we wanna recommend or we deny against something that's just not that great. So Tony, what have you got for us today?  [00:02:04] Tony Arsenal: I'm gonna phrase this in a very particular way, of course, and then I'll explain why I'm phrasing it that way. I'm starting. Great. Um, I am affirming adult baptism upon a profession of faith, and I say it in that particular way. Sure, of course. Um, because I often hear, and I've heard, I mean, I've heard Presbyterian pastors say this, um, I've heard, heard it said that Presbyterians do cradle baptism too. And, uh, and sort of like, sometimes it's kind of in like a, I'm trying to like build a bridge with a, a cradle Baptist. Sure. Um, I actually object to that because the, the basis on which an adult is baptized in a Westminster covenant theology framework is different than the basis, uh, on which a believer is baptized under a traditional Baptist credo, Baptist position. Right. So I'm affirming adult. Profession of faith, baptism or adult baptism upon a profession of faith. Um, and the reason I'm saying that is because my wife and I had this opportunity this morning to go to another church to visit, uh, a friend of ours. It's actually a friend of our son's, which is crazy to say. He's four years old. A friend of our son's from school, his mother, um, who is a Christian, um, but had never been baptized, was being baptized at her church today. And so we got an opportunity to go to their church. It's a church we've been to before. It was not like a brand new church or any, like, super far away. It's a church we've been to before. Um, so we got to go to church and then we went over to the local sort of like swimming hole. Uh, like there's this little, uh, like recreational area called stores pond, I'm sure. Just I know you're familiar with it. Oh,  [00:03:38] Jesse Schwamb: yeah.  [00:03:39] Tony Arsenal: Um, and they did sort of like a testimony ceremony and, uh, all of the baptizes, I don't know if that's the right word, but all of those being baptized. Uh, I would normally call them catechumens, but I don't think that actually that applies here. But all of those being baptized, uh, got up and gave their testimony. There was eight people being baptized, which was fun to see. Um, of course all adults. This is a Baptist, um, a Baptist church that we were visiting. And then we walked over to the, over to the lake and they dunked him in there. And, uh, it was really great to see. And the reason that I'm affirming adult baptism upon a profession of faith, um, uh, is because it's really quite beautiful, right? I think we've, we just recently talked about this, um, and I'm sure we'll talk about it again at some point in the future, but we just recently talked about a baby baptism at my church that, uh, is beautiful in its own right for its own reasons, and it's got its own theological, uh, underpinnings and theological elegance to it. But there's also something just very beautiful about an adult who either has come to faith, um, and I don't, I don't know, um, this woman very well, like I, she's another mom at, um, at Agie school. And so our kids go to school together and so we interact with her periodically at like drop off and other times and they've been over to the house. I don't know her, well, I heard enough of her testimony today to know that she was kind of a nominal Christian. Uh, and they actually started going to church because in order to bring their son to the school that, um, they wanted to go to, which is, uh, the school that my son goes to, the school that your father teaches at, um. You have to have at least one parent needs to be a Christian, needs to be a regular attender, a regular member of a church. And so they, they joined a church, um, to be able to fulfill that requirement. And either, and, and again, I wasn't, I was watching the kids, um, including her son while she was doing this. So I was only kind of hearing with one ear. So either she was a nominal Christian and was kind of like renewing her faith or she was coming to faith for the first time. I'm not sure. But in either case, she had not been baptized previously that I know of. I didn't, I mean, I guess maybe she was baptized as a baby or something, I don't know. But, um, she was being baptized today upon a sort of a new profession of faith or renewal of faith, and it's just very sweet to see. The emotional investment that occurs when someone is recognizing that God's promise is being sealed on them. Right. And I don't know that, I don't know that a lot of traditional Baptist, and this is a pretty like plain Jane Evangelical church. I'm not sure that a lot of evangelicals would really recognize or use that language. But I also think there's an intuitiveness to it that like this is a sign that God gives us. It's gotta be a sign of something. Right. Um, it's not, this was a church that brought sort of broadly Calvinistic part, the baptism of house was actually adopted or adapted from, uh, a modification of question, one of the Heidelberg catechism. So I warned my Presbyterian heart, um. So they're in a context where like covenantal language is not foreign to them, even if it's not the primary structure that they're using. But it was just very sweet and kind and a, a really encouraging, uh, opportunity for the body of Christ to gather. Uh, it was a little bit chilly. It was raining actually, and people, anybody, like everybody was out there and, and in the rain, most people didn't have umbrellas. And you know, people's hair is wet and their clothes are getting wet and nobody cares. Nobody is bothered by it because there is some baptism going on. There's some, uh, some new birth in a roundabout sense and some yes, uh, some, some signification of that new birth in a very direct sense. So that's what I'm affirming today. Adult baptism upon a profession of faith, uh, with an asterisk in a covenantal mode. That's, that's my very specific, very technical affirmation today.  [00:07:19] Jesse Schwamb: There's also something about that's just special. Again, it's not prescriptive, but there's something special about those open water baptisms too. Oh  [00:07:27] Tony Arsenal: yeah.  [00:07:28] Jesse Schwamb: I mean,  [00:07:29] Tony Arsenal: yeah, it was like super picturesque. It was like, I felt like I was on the Jordan with Town of Baptist, like the, like, it was like a, that classic like Baptist minister standing in the water, like it was very right. Very, uh, it looked staged, but I don't think it was, I think it just was actually this, that genuine scenario. [00:07:44] Jesse Schwamb: Right. So, yeah. Yeah. And that's like a beautiful thing. Like we're saying, oh, we're not trying to get into the particulars. It's just to appreciate, I think all of those details. I myself was baptized by my father in a pond and it was glorious. That was, that was special. And there was something about the occasion and the environment as well that was special to me in that. But you're right, like in that Baptist mode, I, I think when it's like properly administered, when it's really appreciated and the theology is rich and richly exemplified in what's happening there to, it's hard not to be moved, I think in the Christian heart, not to be warned by seeing somebody go down into the water to come up into this representation of new life in Christ. I think regardless of your convictions on this, it's hard not to be moved by the power of the spirits.  [00:08:25] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:08:26] Jesse Schwamb: And the sign and seal being delivered to God's people. In a profound way. So whether you're a Pado or Cradle Baptist, I think it really is difficult not to be moved. And especially in an environment like that, you love to see it, right? I mean, this idea of of, um, being able to come to the Lord because he's called you and whatever season of life that is, and then to follow an obedience into baptism is a glorious thing that we should all celebrate. So I love this idea of people on a chilly day in New Hampshire standing in the rain saying, give us the baptism. Like let, let us see the Holy Spirits working through the lives of the people in our midst. Let, we wanna be a part of that. We wanna celebrate that we're here for that.  [00:09:07] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. It was just a, it was just a very, very sweet, like, I, like I said with, when we were talking about the, the baby baptism at my church, it's, there's just a, there's a sweetness to it. It's, yes. It's almost like, um, I've never been present for the birth of someone's child other than my own. Um, I've been at the hospital, uh, so meeting the family and the, the baby like very shortly after birth, but I've never been actually there. But there's something reminiscent to that, whether it's a baby being baptized or an adult being baptized where it's, it's just this sort of sweet moment of introduction to yes, this person with, um. To varying degrees depending on the theology, underlying baptism. But this person with a very real new identity that they have been given, yes, it's, it's, the old has gone, the new has come new creation in Christ. Um, whether, you know, I, I don't affirm baptism or regeneration, right? That's not a reformed position. But whether you have a, a position of some form of baptismal regeneration or baptismal efficacy, which is where kind of the, the reform tradition tends to fall, or even just, uh, I say just, I don't mean just in a peor sense, but like, even if, if what's going on is, is entirely a symbol that you know, is being applied to a person, there is a new sense of identity. There's a, there's a, a mark, a, a physical mark that it isn't persistent like circumcision, but it's a physical mark being applied, a visible mark being applied to, to the person claiming them as God's child. Um, and, and there's something very sweet and genuine. And, and to see, like, just to see, like I said, the, just the emotionality. And not a crass like emotionalism, but a genuine, heartfelt, emotional moment that someone is going through like a real, genuine emotion, um, is also not something we actually see that much in the world anymore, which is, it was nice to see. Anyway, I could, I could blather on about baptism and, and adult baptism and baby baptism and how great it is. Uh, God knew what he was doing and he, he gave us this beautiful symbol. So next time you have an opportunity to experience a adult baptism upon a profession of faith in a covenantal mode, uh, than you make sure you take advantage of that.  [00:11:14] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. You know what it's like for me and certainly I, baptism is way more profound, uh, than this example I'm about to give. But there's something within me that feels similarly or appreciates in a similar way when you're participating or just viewing a wedding. Yeah. Isn't there? There's that new identity. There's the vows and the covenants being made and promises being given and that that's just like a really meaningful, profound thing. And then like, you know, a thousand times, a million times, that is to participate or to witness again, baptism. And in my own church, which is Cradle Baptist, the one I attend, baptism, I'll say it this way in like this most trite way again, is like a super big deal. And one of the things I really appreciate is when that person, after they've given their testimony and they've gone down into the water and they come back up, our congregation goes like wild. Like just wild in celebration. Yeah. And at first I was like, wow, this. This seems like too much. Guys, can we take, can we take it down now? Just the Lord's day after all. And then I was with you in the sense of like, really, it's like we, you and I have talked so much about like the, the way in which you're trying to sometimes manufacture or theologians try to bring in some sense of emotionalism to kind of convey some kind of like, really, so I can demonstrate that I have a heartfelt and genuine commitment and love for God and Christ and you know, we can leave that as it is right now. Here is a place where I think that celebration is like just wholly and totally appropriate.  [00:12:36] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:12:36] Jesse Schwamb: And so I love that there's genuine enthusiasm and excitement over those things. And you're genuinely gonna get that more in the kind of traditional Baptist mode of this thing. I'm just saying celebrate where you celebrate, you know, get in where you fit in. Yeah. And so I think that your admonishment to us and affirmation there is really good. Um, totally about that. And all the better if you can do it in a, on a rainy day in a pond in New Hampshire. That sounds like a glorious spot.  [00:13:02] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah, it's, it was interesting. It was good. It was a good time. Jesse, what do you got for us tonight? [00:13:07] Jesse Schwamb: I'm also gonna go affirmation, and I think we can file this one for me, under seeing the power of God in his, that power demonstrated in his transcendence and in his eminence. All our timing is gonna be off on this, but there's a certain compulsion I have to report back to everybody. And that reporting is really on my wife who did undergo some surgery this week. And I'm about to say a bunch of things medically so you can, I mean, there's nothing in here like grotesque, but I say that because somebody might be like, wow, you're seeing a lot of personal things. I have her permission to share all this. But of course some of you may remember, she spoke on the podcast, I dunno, like a half dozen episodes ago. Go back and listen to that. She talks about her medical journey, but she just had this big surgery. And here's the reason why I want to report back. I sense that when God's people take to see and request his eminent and transcendent power in the lives of somebody else through intercessory prayer, that like a special bond is created that is very real. So I think when somebody comes to their brothers and sisters and says. Would you pray for us? Would you pray for me? That's not just an act. I think of vulnerability. It's one of of truly seeking after what God desires for his people to help and to intercede for one another. And there's something special about that. And then equally special, and I think binding is when people say, yes, I will pray. And they make themselves committed to doing that. When that relationship is established, what I think is like mutual accountability, mutual yielding to one another, mutual submission. The lovely thing about that is I think there ought to be a reporting back. I really feel highly convicted about that because so many people, including those in the from Brotherhood hanging out in the Telegram, TT Me Reform Brotherhood, they have prayed for us. My church has prayed, my parents have prayed. You have prayed. So many people have prayed. And so my wife did go undergo an 11 hour surgery just two days ago. And uh, I can say that that surgery, the doctors, the three surgeons who are working as part of this interdisciplinary team, this multifactorial, multidisciplinary team, were able to accomplish everything that they wanted to do, which was a wild accomplishment. And it was more intense than they thought it was going to be. But I can say to you very, very clearly, very cogently that, uh, God was in the midst of all of these things in a mighty and powerful way. Now, I know people are prone to say that kind of thing. I'm saying it because it was all exceptionally real. Not only as I sat there waiting for the next updates in the waiting room, did I really sense a peace of God that I haven't felt before, even in all of my wife's previous surgeries, when this was the most uncertain, this was the biggest, the highest risk that was all real. But at the very end, and I'll, I'll spare a lot of the details, uh, but at the very, very end when the surgeon reported back to me all the things that they did, which included having to take out a portion of her bowel and stitch it back together again, because she had some endometriosis that had embedded itself in there and that was unknown to them. You can't see that stuff in an MRI and yet God ordained that the right surgeon, the right preparation would be in the room and ready to go if something like that occurred and it did. That she had a full hysterectomy, which we were praying that it would be lack laparoscopic because they were concerned they would not be able to do it that way. And God answered that prayer that she needed to have her ureter, the thing that connects your kidney to your bladder, that also was filled with endometriosis. It had to be resectioned and repaired. And it was that the end of all of this, what the main doctor kept saying to me was, we wanted to put your wife in a position where her anatomy would determine the outcome and that you would have all of the skilled persons in the room to provide the best care, the best expertise possible. And what he said to me at the end is, it's strange things just kept breaking her way. And I said, well, I can tell you why that is. That's because God was answering the prayers of so many people who are praying for her. And so I'm so thankful for everybody who's prayed. She's in a critical time of healing right now. Our prayers now are turning to just that God would solidify the work that he has already accomplished, that there'd be no complications, that all the things that they did, and they did a lot of things. The surgeon in fact said to me at the end, it's gonna feel like she got hit by a truck. And that's actually not a bad description of what we did to her. And so the next days are the ones where we're really pleading for God to do this kind of miraculous healing that he started by providing all the things that he's, he's already done. I, as a husband, cannot be more thankful, more grateful, without words for everybody who has prayed. Uh, for my parents, for you guys, Tony, for all of our friends who reached out for so many people, I've realized I have a part-time job now just answering text messages, uh, on behalf of my wife for those who desperately are loving her through prayer. And again, I think I'd affirmed before. I'll say this very quickly, about the elders praying over her. About what a sweet time that was. Not only did that happen, but uh, unbeknownst to me until a little bit later on in that day did I learn that a bunch of women in the church had taken it upon themselves to schedule an 11 hour block where there was gonna be somebody praying every hour for my wife. And, um. Man, if, if, if this is not what the family of God does for one another, I don't know what they do.  [00:18:35] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:18:35] Jesse Schwamb: So I'm so grateful. Thank you for everybody who has prayed. I also don't want to testify. That's the power of God and his eminence. And his transcendence is just unreal loved ones. It's unreal, it's otherworldly and he comes in power when his people pray. He does good work and it's very James one. There's a lot that even as I'm worried now about the outcome of this surgery and how it will play out, that I can still somehow truly count it all joy, because it is God who does these things in our lives to test and to prove out our faith and our love towards him, because he's in fact good. And I'm just testifying to that goodness in the midst of this difficulty. So wherever you are at. For whatever it's worth. And I think it's worth a lot. God is faithful. He will do the work that he began, and he will meet us when we need him, where we are at in his loving kindness because of his great mercy. So be encouraged by that. And again, my sincere gratitude.  [00:19:36] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't have much that I can add to that. I mean, I, I, I think, um, prayer is an undervalued commodity in the church.  [00:19:48] Jesse Schwamb: Yes.  [00:19:49] Tony Arsenal: And. As good and right as it is for us, uh, to pray when there's some big, um, big need like this. Um, and, and there's no, there's no, uh, dishonor or shame in asking for prayer in the big situations. I think sometimes too, like we forget that prayer is just as vital and just as important and just as powerful and just as meaningful and just as everything in the small things. Amen. Um, and, and I also think, you know, sometimes we, maybe this is just me, but like sometimes we go into, we go into a, a scenario like what you and your wife are going in and we sort of like prepare ourselves for. The hard providence to come. Like, I don't know if, if that's where you've been at, but I know when I'm facing things like this, um, I'm, I'm kind of like asking people to pray, expecting God to bring the hard providence.  [00:20:43] Jesse Schwamb: Yes.  [00:20:44] Tony Arsenal: Um, and maybe that's just a coping mechanism to sort of like get out in front of it in case he does. Um, but like that God, God doesn't, uh, how do I wanna say this? I don't think that God takes any particular joy in bringing the par, the hard providences. Mm-hmm. And I actually think he does take a particular joy in answering the prayers of his people unto good effect. Um, I think there's a particular joy that God brings when he, God has in his own divine accommodated, anthropo, pathic way, um, when he can make sure that everything just breaks the right way for his children. Right. In a really difficult, complex, long surgery. Um, and all of the butterfly effect elements of, of how all of those different things are gonna, you know, spread out. Right. I don't know if this surgeon's gonna come to faith because you attributed his success in this surgery to, you know, to, to God. I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. Um, but, but either way, there are a thousand, a million imperceptible little ways that God's providence flows out of these kinds of situations that we will never know. Um, and he, he takes great joy in answering the prayers of his people and. Yes, it's true that when God, when we ask God for bread, he does not give us a stone even when he gives us the hard providences, right? The hard providences are not a stone, but he likes to give us really good bread.  [00:22:10] Jesse Schwamb: Amen.  [00:22:10] Tony Arsenal: And I think at times, um, we, we sort of almost doubt that he is able and willing and joyful to do so. So that's more, I think, more a reminder for me than it is for anyone else. 'cause I, I have a tendency to prep myself for the hard providences, um, before they come and, and pray to that effect that God would comfort me in the midst of whatever trials is coming. Um, maybe I need to show a little bit more faith in a good God who gives good gifts, um, to pray and thank him in advance for the good providence is the, the easier the soft providence is that he has in store for his people as well.  [00:22:46] Jesse Schwamb: Well, I think we all need that reminder from time to time and I, again, I like where you've taken that. It is a good reminder to pray for the people that you love around you all the time, or just ask. What's something that you would like some prayer for, especially maybe something that you can't pray for yourselves through this time? I can't tell you how many times somebody has asked to pray with me or for me, and they pray in ways that just astound me. I dunno if that makes sense. Yeah. Like just, I get off the phone and I think, well, that was spirit filled because I didn't know that I needed to hear those words. I didn't know exactly like what needed to be stitched together in terms of the requests that would really minister to my heart and provide me encouragement. But course the Lord knows, and even in prayer as you're saying, he's giving that good gift to each other.  [00:23:35] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:23:35] Jesse Schwamb: When we pray with one another, when we pray for one another, it's just a remarkable thing that I fail to understand and I definitely fail to appreciate. So in this season of being able to see it very clearly as if like the clouds. Parted and I could see some of this power of prayer and what God does in prayer, what God does to us in the prayer of others. I can't help but testify again. I feel it is my duty to do so, actually. So be encouraged, loved ones that this is a powerful weapon that God gives us. I think you and I have said before, Tony, maybe we can also partly this into like another reform. A brotherhood bumper sticker. I said another, like, we have bumper stickers. We don't, we definitely should. At some point  [00:24:17] Tony Arsenal: we do have at least one cross stitch pillow floating around out there  [00:24:20] Jesse Schwamb: somewhere. That's true. Yes. We need to get our hands on that. And maybe here's something else we could add to it, which is of course, when, when we work, we work, but when we pray, God works. And so I've just been reminded of that over and over and over again. The situation, like you said in the big times and the small times, what a blessing, what God is like this, who cares. Who again, is what I've been thinking about is how high and lifted and transcendent God is, so that like he's not moved in, uh, in a dis, like a passionate way by this nonsense of our world. He's steady and steadfast. You know, Isaiah 26, like our God is an everlasting rock, and yet he's eminent in sending his son to identify with the kind of pain even my wife is in right now. In her time of trial and struggle. He is there and yet separated and so powerful that he orchestrates all the details himself. I mean, what God is like this.  [00:25:11] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:25:11] Jesse Schwamb: So this is the one to whom we get to bend his ear, as it were, and we'll avail ourselves of that opportunity. Always. You're gonna have to stop it, Tony. Otherwise, I'm, this whole episode is just gonna be me talking about, which would not be bad, I suppose, but me talking about how good our God is, I suppose we can talk about that actually in the context of Matthew 25. [00:25:30] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. You better watch yourself before you wreck yourself. Is that how it goes? But I did that, that took a month off of podcasting. I forgot how to do transitions. Not that we were ever great at transitions. It's just slamming into gear  [00:25:43] Jesse Schwamb: now. That loved one's a segue that you, you don't even know about yet. You didn't even get it. So let me help you try to get it. 'cause I, I wanna do this quickly, but of course it's always the best part of our conversations where we can get to the scripture. Let me read just the first, uh, 13 verses Matthew 25, and I'm gonna read them from the version that I read on the last episode because part of the fun of this conversation that Tony I had had subsequently was, do you remember what you said to me, Tony, about, about the, this, I don't wanna say the word yet, but this word. [00:26:10] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. I, what I remember is, um, feeling confused because I, I said, I thought this was like a Mandela effect kind of thing. Yes. We might have to, I'll explain briefly what that is in that I could have swore this word was in the, in the Bible. Like I was, it was so ingrained in my head that this was there. And then I'm trying to find it in my, my version that I'm bringing in. It's not there. And the obvious answer is it actually was there in the version that Jesse was reading and is there in many translations. Um, so we'll, we'll read the translation, uh, Jesse read, and then we'll talk about why not only why this is, uh, important in the light of our last conversation, but actually how it's important in light of what will likely now be the beginning of our conversation on the next parable, and in the next week or maybe two of, of the discussion of the parable of the talents here, or one of the parable and talents. [00:26:57] Jesse Schwamb: So this is Matthew 25, beginning in verse one. Then the kingdom of heaven may be compared to 10 virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the body groom. Now five of them were foolish and five are prudent. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the prudent took oil in flasks along with their lamps. Now, while the bridegroom was delaying, they all got drowsy and began to sleep. But at midnight there was a shout. Behold the bridegroom come out to meet him. Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the prudent, give us some of your oil for our lamps are going out. But the prudent answered saying, no, there will not be enough for us. And you go to and instead to the dealers and buy some for yourselves. And while they were going away to make the purchase, the bridegroom came and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast and the door was shut. And later the other virgins also came saying, Lord, Lord, open for us. But he answered and said, truly, I say to you, I do not know you. Therefore, stay awake for you. Do not know the day nor the hour.  [00:28:02] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. So the part of this, uh, passage that I was having, like a brain cramp on and couldn't figure out is actually verse 13 and, um. The reason this is important and ties in, and this is part of why Jesse and I after we sort of had like a second, the beginning of a second episode, following the last episode, um, wanted to come back, is that this, this verse in verse 13 actually makes, um, in effect it makes the second parable that we're gonna talk about the parable of the talent here. It actually makes that parable like an extension of the first one or maybe an explanation of the first one, or further clarification. I'm not sure. It, it links the two together in a way that's really significant. So we need to make sure we really understand. Verse 13, and I'm gonna read verse 13 in my translation to demonstrate kind of where I think the, the question starts and says, watch therefore for, you know, neither the day nor the hour. And what Jesse and I kind of like marveled at is, um, the word for watch, uh, it's actually the same word we get the name Gregory, for, uh, from, um, the, the idea of being wakeful or alert or not falling asleep. That's that's there in the word. Um, and, and I don't think it's a bad translation. I don't. I always, um, wanna be really hesitant to sort of like make an argument that you wanna like build an entire theological point on a translation or a mistranslation. I think those are really shaky arguments, and even more than that, I don't ever wanna make an argument that makes it so people feel like they can't trust their English bibles. So the, the difference between the version that Jesse read with, you know, statements of being awake or stay awake or be alert versus watch, or more generalized alertness language, which is I think probably a better, not, not that the other one's bad, but this is probably a better translation. And it's a translation decision that's trying to connect that verb back to something that was said about the virgins. Right, right. The, the virgins, um, and this is, this is where our conversation went, is actually the, the sort of like real time epiphany that Jesse and I had, maybe I just had Jesse new, the, the sort of like real time epiphany that both, both groups of virgins fell asleep. Right. And so being asleep is not the necessary, it's not the thing that makes the virgins foolish.  [00:30:35] Jesse Schwamb: Exactly.  [00:30:36] Tony Arsenal: The, the translation, I think, I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, not like a mind reader and I haven't read anything from the translation committees that explain that this is why they did it. But I'm, I'm, I think it's reasonable to think they translated in light of that wakefulness element of being alert because of the fact that the virgins fell asleep and they were sort of caught off guard when the bridegroom came. But the reason I think that's an over translation is exactly the dynamic we pointed out last week, falling asleep was not the problem,  [00:31:04] Jesse Schwamb: right?  [00:31:05] Tony Arsenal: What was, what was the problem was not being prepared. And so this concept of watch, therefore is more, I think is more about preparedness because of the fact that the parable is about preparedness, not about wakefulness. So when we wanna think about translations, yes, verse 13 comes after verses one through 12, but there's this little word therefore that connects this one with the next one, right? And so it's watch therefore for, you know, neither the day nor the hour. If that was the end of, end of the book of Matthew, right, right there, then that therefore would be like, because of what I just said, watch for, you neither know the day nor the hour, you know, neither the day nor the hour. But then in verse 14, it starts with four. It will be like a man going on a journey who called his servant and entrusted them through his property. That word for, that's another connecting logic word. So it's watch therefore, so like, because of what I just said, be alert, watch, be wakeful, be mindful, be prepared for, you know, neither the day or the hour. Four, because it will be like a man going on a journey, right? The reason you have to watch is partially, or the reason you have to watch is that you will neither know the day nor the hour. And the reason you will neither know the day nor the hour is because it will be like a man who's going on a journey called his servants and entrusted them to his property, right? So these two parables are connected and we have to sort of like understand what that watch word means and how it relates to the previous parable to understand now what it is that the next parable is trying to say and how the two relate to each other.  [00:32:45] Jesse Schwamb: I think that's right. It's like you said before, we talked about last time, it's not that sleep was the problem. That's not where the condemn nation comes in. It's merely that sleep revealed the lack of preparedness. Right. Like I suppose if you wanted to change it up, you could be like, and then they all played Uno for a while and the lambs were going strong and then suddenly the bride coon came out and it was like, okay, well it was the fact that all the lamps were still burning. Yeah. But as they were still burning and that time was passing and the bridegroom delayed, providentially, then it was only those imbued with that grace who already I prepared for that moment in time. Not that they were all playing Uno itself. So, which, which I know this is like my own translation, which is horrible, but. It is important if somebody thinks like we're overworking this.  [00:33:26] Tony Arsenal: Right?  [00:33:26] Jesse Schwamb: It's important, I think, because it, it's gonna set up the next stuff, which we're gonna get to, uh, I presume in the next episode. But this verse is, is like a, is like kind of like the keystone. It's, it constitutes like the entire moral conclusion of both this parable, but the other two that are just like it, that come before it in different ways. And of course it's like structurally parallel to a bunch of like mark and stuff that we may or may not get to. And then it echoes like the broader, all that discourse as well. So I was just looking up quickly, mark 13, in other words like where do we hear this same type of language? Where does it almost rhyme in our minds? And so if you go over just to mark 1333, and this is the parable of the fig tree. So we won't get into that there, but you'll see kind of like the same conclusion, the same, I kind of high and lifted point at the end. And this is where Jesus says, see to it, keep on the alert. For you do not know when the appointed time will come. So instead, really what we're getting at is there's all this language about watchfulness, like the, the present imperative in Greek. Keep on watching, be continuously a work, uh, alert, but it's not like watchfulness in this like anxious, vigilant, kind of nervous energy uncertainty, but it's the prepared readiness of one who has oil in the vessel and knows that the bridegroom is coming regardless of whether you fall asleep. [00:34:46] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. And again, you know, the, the way that, um, the way that English translations are broken up into paragraphs and into, with headings and editorial content and chapter divisions and verse divisions, um, those things are all helpful and they're all really useful and I'm glad they're there. Uh, they're not inspired though, right? They're not the word of God. The, the, for the little, the little super script 14 before the word four and the little super script 13 before the word watch. Is not, it's not inspired and neither is the little, at least in the version I'm looking at on logs Bible start, neither is the little paragraph break that separates these two. So we, we can equally read and again, like I haven't done a full Greek exo treatment of this and maybe I should to, to know whether there is actually some real specific grammatical reasons why we would break these. There probably is, but we could equally read it saying, but he answered truly I say to you, I do not know you watch therefore for, you know, neither the hour or the day nor the hour. For it will be like a man going on a journey who called his sermon or we could read it, watch therefore for, you know, neither the day nor the hour for it will be like a man going on a journey. Right, right. We can, we can, the way that we read it, we can, we can clump verse 13 with what comes before it and sort of imply a full break or we can clump it with what comes after it and imply a full break before it. In reality, we shouldn't do either of those. Right. This is in, this is linked together in the, the Bible specifically to take these two parables. And pull them together. Right. Thematically, they're the same. They match, they, they have kind of this rhyming nature that like, there's, there's this theme of like, these people who have a specific task and they accomplish it to greater or lesser degree. And the ones who do it, right, the ones who do it well are rewarded in some sense because of their preparedness and their diligence. And again, I, I don't, um, I know that we can't overemphasize this because this is God's word, right? Right. The, the difference between foolishness and wisdom in the first parable is not whether or not the virgins fell asleep. It's, it's whether or not they were prepared for the eventual coming of the bridegroom, meaning that they had everything they need, not only to, um, and this is a, a real time realization I'm having here, not only to be ready when the bridegroom came, but to be prepared for the long haul until he came. Right. I think that's actually probably another big part of this pearl that we didn't even really talk about is that there's a, there's a, um. There's an implied statement here about the, the, um, perseverance of the saints in the fact that the saints have to persevere. Right? That's a corollary of the doctrine, of the perseverance of the saints, is that we actually have to do the persevering, right? Empowered by the spirit. Enabled by the spirit. Ordained by the spirit, of course, but that doesn't mean the spirit is the one who's persevering, right? Right. The spirit is not persevering for us. The spirit is causing us to persevere, but it's still us that he's causing to persevere. That's a major part of that. This next parable and, and we'll read, we'll read the parable here and then we'll get into some of the beginning part. I think this next parable here is really about like what does that perseverance look like? What does that diligence until the master comes, looks like. It's kind of like taking this, this period of time where the bride groom is delaying and the virgins all are becoming drowsy and sleeping. Well, what does that actually look like? What does it look like for the virgins who have gotten the oil ahead of time versus the virgins who waited and then had to go buy it? Well, the parable of the talents in this next passage shows us what it means to be prepared. And part of what it means to be prepared is to be diligently working to advance the kingdom of God diligently working to pursue and excel in righteousness, insofar as it depends on us, and insofar as we're empowered by the Holy Spirit. So these two, these two parables are linked together and um. Maybe we're falling into this trap a little bit, although I think because of the way we're kind of doing these, these passages in sort of organic fashion, rather than really insisting on sort of hermetically sealing off each parable, we have a tendency, I think to say like, this parable is this right? This parable is that. And we don't really ever talk about them unless you're in like a parables of Christ Seminary class or like you're reading a book on the parables of Christ. Um, if you're just sort of looking at popular teaching on parables or you're. Like a sermon series through the parables. I don't think you're gonna run into a lot that's gonna show these connections and relationships between the parables in the way that I think we're, I'm stumbling upon is maybe not right. But that's what it feels like. We're sort of like discovering in real time together that these parables are so organically linked to each other that we really can't seal them off from each other or we do some violence to the text.  [00:39:36] Jesse Schwamb: Right on. Yeah. And speaking of that whole life, whole preparedness, whole watchfulness, John Owen writes, in the mortification of sin, the whole of Christian living may be described as a preparation for eternity, mortifying sin, growing in grace, abiding in Christ, waiting for his appearing, which really strikes me as maybe a summary of like an umbrella of all of these parables of ones that we've just seen most recently and the ones that we're about to go into because. The ground for the watchfulness here is that like legitimate eschatological ignorance. This is like a deliberate, divinely ordained uncertainty. So of course, like knowing the precise moment would just tempt the flesh to delay until the last possible moment, which is precisely the error of the foolish virgins who assume that there was enough time to obtain the oil after that midnight cry. So all of this is happening right now. Like I, I do think this verse is just so critical now. It's like really a weird linchpin. It is like the capstone in a strange way of like the three parable sequence in the olive discourse, which we already talked about, the 10 virgins, the talents, and the sheep and the goats. Because it strikes me as you were speaking, Tony, what was coming to my mind is like each is almost escalating from, as it were, like a watchfulness to like a fruitfulness, to like a final judgment. And each of those are kind of building on each other. In other words, like there is a logical consistency and chronology to those things that Christ is leading us through. And the verse therefore doesn't stand alone. It's like this hinge between the eschatological warning of the virgin narrative and the productive stewardship demanded in the parable of the talents. And I think unless you see that here, it's like saying, listen, the watchful person does this. You know, why should you be watchful because of this example I've just given to you. So within that Oliver discourse, there's the exhortation to watchfulness, which occurs with that striking force. Stay awake, be ready, watch. And of course, I think we're just joining in all the reform exe and the pros who had this instinct of reading those with a unity. Yeah. The whole discourse is like the L, the Lord's own like pastoral Herman Hermeneutic, I guess on like Daniel nine or whatever. So like it is important, and I think it is maybe a bridge that, at least in my mind, I often didn't build or didn't seem necessarily because you're like, well this, this ends one. And the warning is to be watchful. And now here's something else. That's something interesting you should consider. Yeah. But really this is all one and the same, all, all. Maybe one like well like parable to rule all parables, like it's a single parable told in many sequential pieces.  [00:42:06] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Which is something we saw before, right? Yes. And maybe, maybe not to belabor the point and, and again taking, take this in the context of me saying I never want to try to make an argument that you must be able to read Greek in order to profit from the scriptures. [00:42:20] Jesse Schwamb: Sure.  [00:42:20] Tony Arsenal: All of that said, it's very helpful to understand a little bit about how Greek works, even if you don't actually learn Greek. So for example, and here's, I promise you that this is not just me being nerdy about Greek. I'm looking at the ESV and verse 13 says, watch therefore for, you know, neither the day nor the hour. Right? So the, the command comes, uh, before the logical connector that sort of like, is explaining why, right? Because of, because of something. Right? When it's the thing that comes before, maybe it's the thing that comes after, usually it's probably before, but because of this thing, watch therefore for, you know, neither they or the hour, right? And then in verse 14 it says four. It will be like a man going on a journey. This is where I think understanding how Greek works a little bit is important. Both the word therefore and the word for. In Greek, which it's, it's therefore it's un OUN or omega upsilon new un and gar for four. Both of those are what's called post positive, and what that means is that it cannot be the first word in a sentence. So, um, verse 13 is translated very word order, literal watch. Therefore that ma matches the Greek very closely. Verse 14 is not right, right. Verse 14, if you translated it very literally would be like, uh, let's see. Would be. Just as for a man, and I get like, you can hear there, right there, why we don't translate it that way is 'cause it's really awkward, but it's just as for a man, uh, a man went on a journey or a man, um, going on a journey who called his servants. Right. The, the point of what I'm trying to say here though is that that subtle variation in the verb, the command coming first versus this post positive, logical connector coming first, that that sort of like gears your brain towards a certain conclusion. Right? Right. Watch, therefore we, we have a tendency to think like watch connects to the previous one. Right? This verb must connect us to the previous one, where the next one we see four being the beginning of a word, beginning of a sentence. We feel like that's the beginning of a new thought, right? This logical connector at the be very beginning of a sentence is like starting a new thought. The problem with that is, one, it doesn't actually match the Greek word order in both cases. Neither of these is the first word of the sentence, but let's just think of it in as a post positive and say that it should have been the first word of the sentence, but the Greek grammar won't allow it to be.  [00:45:00] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:45:01] Tony Arsenal: That connector in both cases is linking us to the previous sentence, and that means both of these sentences are linking us to the previous sentence, meaning both segments of thought are linked to other together. Verse 14 is linked to verse 13, and verse 13 is linked to verse 12. There's no good grammatical reason that I can see with the 30 seconds of looking at it and the five semesters of Greek, right? Keep that in mind. I'm not an expert, but there's no good reason I see immediately from the Greek text, right? There are certain phrases and indicators in Greek that tell you like, this is a new segment of thought. I don't see those here. What I see is a very strong, strong, logical sequence of connection between 13 and 14, right? Therefore, watch for, you know, neither the day nor the hour. Well. Going back to our discussion about translating that in terms of sort of general watchfulness or preparedness or translating it in light of sleep. These are the things that are important for us to think about when we're reading English translations. 'cause this keys us off to what the, what the translators thought in terms of what belongs with what translators. Even though there's a paragraph break here in the ESV, the translation that says be awake or be, you know, uh, do not sleep like this language that's specifically connected to this, like not falling asleep aspect of watchfulness, they're signaling to you that this sentence belongs with the parable above it. Right. Almost exclusively. Right. Because there's nothing in the next parable that has anything to do with being awake or sleeping.  [00:46:35] Jesse Schwamb: Right?  [00:46:36] Tony Arsenal: Right. So, so by translating it as sleep language or do not sleep language, they're sealing it off from the parable that follows and they're kind of like making it this firm break in the text. That's not there in the Greek. That language is not there in the Greek. And it's, um, again, I think the sleep language, that's certainly a part of this word and it's, it's fine for us to interpret this word in light of the parable that came before it, as long as we're not letting that interpretation of it in light of the word that came before it seal it off from the next parable. And I, I worry that if we, if we think about it in terms of the sleepiness aspect of it, which again, there's already some contextual reasons why that doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would, why would Christ command to the people that are listening to him be about not falling asleep when falling asleep was not the problem in the, in the bearable He's told. Right, right. But the problem was, was be prepared. And it actually may be, this is also maybe an overt translation. A better translation might be, be prepared, therefore, right. Be alert, be wakeful, be be mindful, be uh, be on top of things. Right. Be ready for anything. Might be a good way to look at this. Be ready for anything for you. Neither know the day nor the hour. Four. It will be like a man going on a journey and called his servants and entrusted them to his property. So he tells the parable of the virgins, which is, is all about being prepared for the sudden, unexpected coming of the Lord after a delay, after he tarries. And then he says, for it will be like a man going on a journey. Well, what will be like a man going on a journey? The coming of the Lord, the coming of the bridegroom, the coming of the one, the promised one from the previous parable, the bride groom. For that will be like a man going on a journey for the day on the hour, which you do not know. That will be like a man going on a journey, I think. Um, and this will be the last thing I say before I, I let you jump in and, and we're getting close to ending anyways here. I think that, um, these parables are so often, uh, this parable about the talents and the parallels. I mean, there's several different par uh, parables that have to do with this theory. This sort of like scenario of like a master is giving some, some funds to his servants, or a man going on a journey. He's giving some funds to his servants and he expects them to make a return. Right? That's a, there's multiple parables that tell that same basic principle. This one here. Is an eschatological one, but I think it gets clumped in with the others in sort of this idea. And it doesn't hurt that the word talents has a meaning in English, right? It gets clumped in with these sort of like way of teaching this that's like Christ has given you some special abilities and some gifts, you better use it for his glory. Or you're all done. That's not really at all what this is talking about, at least this version of it. You might be able to make an argument for some of the others that that is about kingdom fruitfulness and, and to much is given, much is expected, right? That's the output of those parables. This one is really, it's explicitly about being prepared for this sudden arrival of the bridegroom, uh, after he delays, after he tarries. So that's all I'll say for now on that. I just, this is. This is why we had to do another episode, right? Like, because we couldn't do all of this Last week we started and we were like, we gotta push pause, save something for next week. This is one of those like realtime discoveries, realtime uh, epiphanies that I'm just like, I cannot believe I didn't see this in the text before, but I'm so glad that we're doing this deep dive. This sort of like long running slow burns through these parables because these are the kinds of things we're able to see when we really slow down and take our time.  [00:50:17] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, it's that good old like crockpot theology. I'm with you. There is like in the next par we'll see a kind of manifest fruitfulness that comes from a preparedness and if, if we divorce that we're gonna get to the end of the next parable. And I think what we'd find is that, wow, the master seems super harsh here. Why is he so ticked off that the people with whom he entrusted all of these resources didn't do anything with them? It just seems like he's overzealous in saying, well, you just wasted a lot of things until you see like that full emphasis that comes all the way through these other parables in terms of the reason why. Then I think it starts to make more sense. So I did have to look it up like you're right, that the NIV has therefore keep watch. The King James version also is using watch, therefore. So if that's the emphasis, in other words, if the thrust is you ought to be watchful and prepared in all of your life for all the things preparing for Christ, doing the things in the work of Christ. Now it makes sense that to go away again and to have this time of not knowing when the perusia happens and being unprepared and unfruitful because you were not watchful, because you did not do the things you ought to have done and be making yourself again aware and vigilant in that awareness, then there's a problem. And that's like gonna be, I think, the full thrust of what's gonna happen that we're gonna see next when we look into this parable. I think it's important to remember that this parable is not as it sometimes is presented like an allegorize timeless moral maxim that's divorced from its eschatological referring. Yeah, the 10 virgins are figures of those awaiting Christ perusia. The oil is not some kind like vague symbol of like good works in a ian sense, but I think it's best understood as the reality of saving grace and the spirits in dwelling, which cannot be borrowed or transferred. If all of that is true. Then how does that manifest in daily living? What does that look like? And then what does that lead to on the day of judgment? All of that is to come for us, but it actually starts in this verse here in verse 13, just with the simple, very direct, but e expressly articulated phrase, be watchful or be prepared. Maybe like a better incidentally, like contemporary treatment would be like, don't sleep on this. Like, I like the word sleep in that context. Yeah. Which of course, when somebody says that to you, they're not actually meaning like, don't fall asleep now. But make sure that you're paying attention to this thing. Get after this thing, go and grab this thing, get a hold of this very thing. Make it your priority. And I think really that is what is Christ is after here as he moves us from one example into another. That's almost, again, to me like the manifestation or the outworking 'cause because one might ask, and maybe this is like a good question, he was anticipating, you hear that story and we're just used to like things moving, or like you said, like discreet chunks of text, which we appropriate for ourselves. We take out, it's almost as they have little boxes on the shelf and we remove that box. We look at it, we study it, we turn over, we put it back, and it's a little compartment place. And instead you can imagine, uh, as I could, I think if you were hearing this in the context of conversation, of teaching in this way, that you might say like, so what? Like be prepared for what, how do we get prepared? What does preparedness look like? And so that's what's coming for us next.  [00:53:34] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. And you know, the other thing I think that's, um, important for this parable, um, there are some places in the scripture in the, uh, in the gospels where Christ's teaching and nothing specific comes to mind. So this is. Hypothetical, but I know there are actual places. I just can't think of anything right off the top of my head. There are some places where sort of like discrete chunks of Christ's teaching are juxtaposed next to other discreet chunks. Sure. That's an editorial decision by the gospel author. Right. Matthew makes a decision to put this story next to this story, and we might see in Luke actually, it's slightly different. A good, a good example would be like in the temptation narratives, um, the order of the Temptations is different I think between Matthew and Luke. Right. And there's, there's an editorial decision that's made there and there's a theological reason. I don't know off the top of my head what it is. I'm sure I studied it in, you know, like gospels class in seminary. Um, that's not what's happening here, right? These are not two discreet chunks of text. That Matthew has decided to put together, right? Right. Christ is the one that says, watch therefore for you. Neither know the day nor the hour for it will be like a man going on a journey. Christ is the one who has decided, and this is one chunk of teaching. There's, um, like the Sermo

Matthew 8:16-17 tells us that Jesus healed all that were sick, to fulfil that which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet saying, ‘Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.' So even at the time of the actual ministry of Jesus, the Bible says that Christ's atonement for our sin is also His atonement for sickness and disease, that the cross He carried was our healing. Why not carry that cross of healing (1 Peter 2:24; Isaiah 53)? Sin and sickness are not from God, both come from the devil. The purpose of the first coming of Jesus was to make a way of escape from the evil which Satan and ultimately man, by his disobedience, brought into the world: ‘For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, to destroy the works of the devil!' (1 John 3:8). However, this is only in part today, none of us is perfect in ourselves, we live in a world of sin and sickness and are surrounded by them. When Christ returns we shall be taken out of this world into the Kingdom of Heaven, then there will be no more sin, sickness or death. Until then, walking by faith, we must overcome sin – and temptation – and sickness. Q. Is my sickness God's punishment for my sin? Perhaps He is teaching me something? A. If you think like that, you will not be healed. No, just as God forgives sin, instantly, He wants to heal you, NOW!

https://square.link/u/UHRU92rp - Donate HereToday's reading brings us back to 1 Peter 3, where Peter calls suffering believers to honor Christ the Lord as holy in their hearts. In a world filled with pressure, fear, persecution, and opposition, the answer is not to hide our faith, but to enthrone Jesus above every fear and every enemy.Peter reminds us to always be ready to give a reason for the hope within us—with gentleness and respect. When Christ is Lord of our lives, the enemy may try to discourage or distract us, but he cannot defeat us. So today, read 1 Peter 3 and prepare your heart, your testimony, and your life to clearly say: Jesus is real, Jesus is alive, and Jesus is the reason for my hope.

When Christ was about to be crucified, He prayed for the Church. He prayed that we might know Him. He prayed that we would have life in Him. He prayed that knowing Him as Father, Son and Holy Spirit would mean eternal life. The Church has protected that truth ever since.

What happens when the church falls out of sync with Jesus?In Acts 6, growth, cultural differences, and overlooked needs begin creating tension inside the early church. But instead of allowing division to win, the apostles respond with wisdom, humility, and servant leadership.This message explores calling, unity, and what it truly means to stay in step with Jesus. When Christ becomes the rhythm of our lives, unity follows and the Gospel moves forward.

Full Title Name: Seminary Super Chats: monetizing questions? Should Catholics celebrate Old Testament Passover with Seder: "You can be Jewish and Catholic if you want to"! Was Emperor Constantine the true founder of the Catholic Church? Was Judas Iscariot predestined to be a demon? if New Mass might be valid, then shouldn't I go to receive Communion? When Christ raised the dead to life, where were their souls? This episode was recorded on 5/19/2026. Our Links: http://linkwcb.com/ Please consider making a monetary donation to What Catholics Believe. Father Jenkins remembers all of our benefactors in general during his daily Mass, and he also offers one Mass on the first Sunday of every month specially for all supporters of What Catholics Believe. May God bless you for your generosity! https://www.wcbohio.com/donate Subscribe to our other YouTube channels: ‪@WCBHighlights‬ ‪@WCBHolyMassLivestream‬ May God bless you all!

This recording is a condensed version of the sermon preached at Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church in Mankato, Minnesota on May 14, 2026, Ascension Day. You can watch the full recording on our YouTube Channel.   Sermon Text: Colossians 3:1-4 (NKJV) If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. 2 Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. 3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Theme: Your Life Is Hidden with Christ

Matthew Week 136 Mark 13:1 ESV   And as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!"       Luke 21:5a ESV   5 And while some were speaking of the temple, how it was adorned with noble stones and offerings…       Colossians 3:1-4 NASB95   Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. 3 For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.       Romans 12:1-2 NASB95   Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.     Matthew 24:3 ESV   3 As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?"             Matthew 24:4-14 ESV   4 And Jesus answered them, "See that no one leads you astray. 5 For many will come in my name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray. 6 And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. 9 "Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. 10 And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. 11 And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. 12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. 13 But the one who endures to the end will be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.       Matthew 24:15-22 ESV   15 "So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, 18 and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. 19 And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days!20 Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath. 21 For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. 22 And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.       Luke 21:20-22 ESV   20 "But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. 21 Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it, 22 for these are days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written.                    

Click here for the DRB Daily Sign Up form! TODAY'S SCRIPTURE:1 Chronicles 25–27, 1 Thessalonians 4 Click HERE to give! One Year Bible Podcast: Join Hunter and Heather Barnes on the Daily Radio Bible, a daily Bible‑in‑a‑year podcast with 20‑minute Scripture readings, Christ‑centered devotion, and guided prayer.This daily Bible reading and devotional invites you to live as a citizen of Jesus' kingdom, reconciled, renewed, and deeply loved. TODAY'S EPISODE: Welcome to the Daily Radio Bible! On this 15th day of May, join Hunter as we journey through day 135 of our Bible reading plan. Today's episode features passages from 1 Chronicles 25–27, highlighting the roles of musicians, gatekeepers, and leaders in David's kingdom, as well as the appointed responsibilities within Israel's tribes. We'll also reflect on Paul's words from 1 Thessalonians 4 about living lives that please God and the hope of resurrection. Stay tuned as Hunter offers encouraging insights into the meaning of being "caught up" with Christ, and leads us in prayer as we start this new day with faith, hope, and love. TODAY'S DEVOTION: There is a word tucked into today's reading from Thessalonians, a word that pulses with hope for all who are longing for God's return — apantēsis. Paul uses it to describe that moment when those who remain will be "caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air." It's a word that paints a picture richer than a mere meeting; it's the eager procession we see in Scripture and in life — going out to welcome one we have been waiting for, to accompany them in to celebration, to a place of honor. Paul longs to comfort a grieving church, unsure about their beloved who have died. He tells them resurrection is at the center of our hope. Those who have passed on aren't left behind — they join together with those still living in the great procession, the apantēsis, as Christ takes his place as king not just in heaven, but on earth too. This hope is not just for the Thessalonians but for us as well. Because Christ was raised, so too are we raised — to fullness of life, to the joy of his return. I remember a time in India when this word came to life for me — people streamed out to meet us, singing, dancing, showering our necks with flowers as they accompanied us into their home. It was breathtaking, and it's only a shadow of the joy awaiting us all. When Christ returns, there will be no reversal, no anticlimax. He will be processed in, and we will join him, caught up together, not in fear or confusion, but in celebration and belonging. Resurrection means we never grieve without hope. The King is coming, and he's bringing all his own with him, drawing us into his joy. Let these words root deep in your soul today: you are destined for resurrection. Your future is hope — not as wishful thinking, but as sure as Christ's own victory over death. Encourage each other with this. Live every day in the joy and assurance that you will be with the Lord forever. That's my prayer for myself, for my family, for all of us today — may we rejoice in the hope of resurrection, and go forward in the strength of knowing that the best is still to come. May it be so. TODAY'S PRAYERS: Lord God Almighty and everlasting father you have brought us in safety to this new day preserve us with your Mighty power that we might not fall into sin or be overcome by adversity. And in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose  through Jesus Christ Our Lord amen.   Oh God you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth and sent your blessed son to preach peace to those who are far and those who are near. Grant that people everywhere may seek after you, and find you. Bring the nations into your fold, pour out your Spirit on all flesh, and hasten the coming of your kingdom through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.   And now Lord,  make me an instrument of your peace.  Where there is hatred let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon.  Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope.  Where there is darkness, light.  And where there is sadness,  Joy.  Oh Lord grant that I might not seek to be consoled as to console. To be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.  For it is in the giving that we receive, in the pardoning that we are pardoned, it is in the dying that we are born unto eternal life.  Amen And now as our Lord has taught us we are bold to pray... Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our tresspasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not unto temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Loving God, we give you thanks for restoring us in your image. And nourishing us with spiritual food, now send us forth as forgiven people, healed and renewed, that we may proclaim your love to the world, and continue in the risen life of Christ.  Amen.  OUR WEBSITE: www.dailyradiobible.com We are reading through the New Living Translation.   Leave us a voicemail HERE: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible Subscribe to us at YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Dailyradiobible/featured OTHER PODCASTS: Listen with Apple Podcast DAILY BIBLE FOR KIDS DAILY PSALMS DAILY PROVERBS DAILY LECTIONARY DAILY CHRONOLOGICAL  

This devotional challenges Christians to move beyond treating faith as just one part of life and instead recognize Christ as life itself. Rooted in Colossians 3 and Psalm 73, it encourages readers to anchor their identity, direction, and contentment in Jesus alone. When disappointment, loneliness, or confusion arise, believers are reminded that God is the one constant who never fails and whose presence brings lasting joy and strength. Highlights Peter’s response to Jesus reveals complete dependence on Christ alone. Disappointment often exposes misplaced priorities and false sources of security. Faith is meant to shape every part of life, not remain compartmentalized. Colossians 3 calls believers to focus on eternal priorities and values. Jesus is not simply part of life—He is our life. God is the only one who will never ultimately disappoint us. Lasting peace, purpose, and joy are found in Christ’s presence. Do you want to listen ad-free? When you join Crosswalk Plus, you gain access to exclusive, in-depth Bible study guides, devotionals, sound biblical advice, and daily encouragement from trusted pastors and authors—resources designed to strengthen your faith and equip you to live it out boldly. PLUS ad free podcasts! Sign Up Today! Full Transcript Below: When You Have Nowhere Else to Go By Cindi McMenamin Bible Reading:“So Jesus said to the twelve, ‘You do not want to leave also, do you?’ Simon Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life’” (John 6:67-68 NASB). After Jesus had said some difficult words for His followers to understand, many of them got up and left. Some probably realized He wasn’t the conquering Messiah-king they had hoped for. Others perhaps got frustrated with not being able to understand Jesus’ words. After many of them left, Jesus asked His remaining twelve disciples if they, too, wanted to leave. That’s when Peter spoke up and boldly proclaimed, “To whom shall we go?” In other words, “We have nowhere else to go.” Have you ever felt like that? I remember the day I felt I had nowhere else to go but to Him. My parents had just split up, and there was no security in my home, in my plans, or in my heart. Today, I look back on that day as the moment in which I took ownership of my faith. The moment in which my bond with Him was sealed, and I realized I had nowhere else to go but to Him. When we grow up learning about Jesus from the time we’re young, or if we’ve walked with Him a while, we can get complacent and put our lives in cruise control and fail to acknowledge His presence, direction, wisdom, guidance, and love every moment of our day. Faith becomes a compartment that is added to the many elements of our life, instead of becoming our whole life. That’s when disappointment can rock us. The apostle Paul opened his letter to the Colossians with instructions for followers if they are truly His: Therefore, if you have been raised with Christ, keep seeking the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory (verses 1-4). If you have been raised with Christ. It appears to be an if/then situation. If we are His and have been transformed by His death and resurrection, we are to keep seeking the things that are above, where Christ is. That means we are to keep our minds on our eternal home, have eternal priorities and values, live as if we are here temporarily, and we will soon be in our real home with the Lover of our souls. The verse goes on to say we have died and our lives are hidden with Christ in God. (Our rights, our sense of entitlement, our preferences have died with Christ, and we are hidden, and He (and His character) is evident and on display for the world. Then the next line simply assumes that Christ is not just a part of our life, but is our whole life. Intersecting Faith & Life: When we consider Christ—not a partner or spouse, child, or even a job—as our whole life, we safeguard ourselves from misplaced priorities and frequent disappointment. God is the Only One who will never disappoint us. And I realize that you may believe that in your heart of hearts, but life still hurts. Being vulnerable enough to tell a loved one what you need from them and then coming up empty because they have no idea how to respond can leave us feeling sore to the core. So where do you and I go with that? Our answer must be the same as Peter’s: “Lord, there is no one else that we can go to!” (CEV). I have learned to echo Peter’s words by making Psalm 73:25-26 my life’s motto, as well as the cry of my heart. In the Contemporary English Version, that passage reads: “In heaven I have only you, and on this earth you are all I want. My body and mind may fail, but you are my strength and my choice forever.” In other words, Christ, who is my life. Where do you go when others disappoint? Be already depending on Him, and the disappointments will come less often. What do you do when you begin to lack contentment? Remember who is your life and that in His presence is fullness of joy (Psalm 16:11). Where do you turn when you feel directionless or lacking in purpose? To the One who is your life, your compass, your purpose. Lord, may You be the object of my heart, my focus, my direction, my life. You gave up Your life on this earth so I could belong to You forever. I give You my life and desires and realize I have nowhere else to go—but to You. Further Reading:Psalm 84 For help prioritizing your day with Jesus, see Cindi McMenamin’s book, The New Loneliness Devotional: 50 Days to a Closer Connection with God. Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

The Earth's magnetic field makes compasses work so that Boy Scouts don't get lost in the woods and ships arrive at the correct port. It actually moves over time. This means that navigators periodically need updated information on the position of the pole for their charts.Many people have the idea that the Earth's magnetic field moves very slowly. The Earth's magnetic field actually offers some of the clearest evidences that the Earth is young. Geophysicists recently reported that the north magnetic pole has moved 800 kilometers northwest of where it was in 1904. That's a much faster rate of movement than many people imagined. Its speed and direction of movement are about what was expected by geophysicists, however. They also report that the magnetic pole has moved as much as 80 kilometers in one day.Measurements taken over the last 150 years show that the Earth's magnetic field is decaying. When Christ walked the hills of Palestine, the magnetic field was twice as powerful as it is today.The Earth is much more dynamic and changeable than most people, including many scientists, think. These rapid changes in the position of the magnetic pole and the rapid decay of the magnetic field offer evidence that the Earth is much younger than many people think. One of the world's best known experts has shown that the decaying magnetic field means that the Earth could not be much older than the Bible's genealogies indicate.Job 26:7" He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.”Prayer: Lord, the blessings of modern travel rely on Your gift of to us of the Earth's magnetic field. I also thank You for the beauty of the northern and southern lights that is created by the magnetic field. Amen.REF.: "News of Magnetic Poles." Science News, Vol. 128. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1232/29?v=20251111

Christ is my identity, ______ is my ambassador role.1 Peter 2:13-25, Romans 6:17-18, 1 Peter 2:12, 2 Corinthians 5:20(e.g., Pastor, Teacher, VP of Sales, Doctor, Coach, Student, Husband, Wife, Single, Mom, Dad…) When Christ is our identity, our ambassador roles become a platform for His righteousness and glory.1 Peter 2:16,24, John 8:28-29, 2 Corinthians 5:9 --------DAILY DEVOTIONAL WITH RON MOOREGet Ron's Daily Devotional to your inbox each morning; visit biblechapel.org/devo.CAREGIVINGDo you have a need we can pray for? Do you need someone to walk alongside you? Do you know of another person who needs care? Let us know at caregiving@biblechapel.org.GROWTH TRACKWe all have a next step - what's yours? To learn more about our Growth Track and to take your next step, biblechapel.org/connect.

In 1905 a scruffy young man holed up in his apartment in Bern, Switzerland, engaging in complex thought experiments regarding the nature of the universe. With frenzied focus, the physicist worked and reworked his calculations. Four mind-crunching months later, this man had rewritten much of what was known about how the world works. The man was Albert Einstein. He was twenty-six. The year 1905 is now famously called “the miracle year,” the moment Einstein peered into God’s design of the universe. Yet despite possessing a great scientific mind, Einstein said, “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.” The Bible frequently points to the majesty of God reflected in His creation: “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1), and Job predated Einstein’s words: “Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens” (Job 11:7–8). But God’s creation glory is even greater than the expanse of universes: “In the beginning was the Word. . . .The Word became flesh” (John 1:1, 14). There are no mathematical calculations that can explain God’s extraordinary act of entering humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. God is not just “out there” in a universe we cannot begin to know, but He’s here alongside us, the Word among us, the light of life (1:4) whom we can know personally and intimately. When Christ was born in Bethlehem, that was the true “miracle year.”

Friends of the Rosary,As we read today, on the feast day of 5th-century Saint and Father of the Church St. Cyril of Alexandria, while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum, Jesus said to unbelieving Jews (John 6:52-59) that “He is the bread that came down from heaven” and “Whoever eats this bread will live forever.”“Amen, amen, I say to you,unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood,you do not have life within you.Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Bloodhas eternal life,and I will raise him on the last day.For my Flesh is true food,and my Blood is true drink.Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Bloodremains in me and I in him."When Christ spoke of giving his flesh to eat, He revealed a profound mystery that we must understand: the life-giving flesh of Christ nourishes the whole human race through divine power. Alleluia! Christ is Risen!Ave Maria!Come, Holy Spirit, come!To Jesus through Mary!Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will.Please give us the grace to respond with joy!+ Mikel Amigot w/ María Blanca | RosaryNetwork.com, New YorkEnhance your faith with the new Holy Rosary University app:Apple iOS | New! Android Google Play• ⁠April 24, 2026, Today's Rosary on YouTube | Daily broadcast at 7:30 pm ET

When Christ died and rose again, Satan was defeated. Jesus struck the decisive blow at Calvary.

When Christ's disciples tried to protect Him from being falsely arrested, why did He stop them? Why did He knowingly and willingly submit? Listen to Truth For Life as Alistair Begg examines Jesus' response—and considers what it means for believers today. ----------------------------------------- • Click here and look for "FROM THE SERMON" to stream or read the full message. • This program is part of a special sermon‘Shall I Not Drink the Cup?' • Learn more about our current resource, request your copy with a donation of any amount. • FREE 5-DAY READING PLAN: BREAKING FREE FROM JEALOUSY If you've ever been caught in the grip of jealousy, you know how destructive it can be. So how can you overcome it? Gain biblical wisdom on how to break free from this sinful affliction.Subscribe FREE now. Helpful Resources - Learn about God's salvation plan - Read our most recent articles - Subscribe to our daily devotional Follow Us YouTube | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter This listener-funded program features the clear, relevant Bible teaching of Alistair Begg. Today's program and nearly 3,000 messages can be streamed and shared for free at tfl.org thanks to the generous giving from monthly donors called Truthpartners. Learn more about this Gospel-sharing team or become one today. Thanks for listening to Truth For Life!