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The
Sunday after Ascension Day.
The
Collect.
O
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GOD, the King of
glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph unto thy
kingdom in heaven; We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless; but send to us
thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our
Saviour Christ is gone before, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same
Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.
Our Collect for Sunday after
Ascension follows logically the observance of the Ascension of the Lord Jesus
Christ. It is perfectly timely and natural that we, having observed our Lord
ascend, should now desire the promised comforter - I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.
(John
14:18) This word ‘leave means,
in the Greek, to divorce or to sever all legal connection. Christ will not
disown His people even if He has departed to a High Station. Many of our
friends may forget who we are if they advance to high political or social
office, but not our Lord Jesus Christ. His very Ascension was for our benefit.
We have been left with a close and intimate intercessor who will ALWAYS testify
of Christ to us and point always to His benefits.
The Collect refers to God the Father as the King of Glory and is based, for the
most part, on the 24th Psalm. Lift up your heads, O ye
gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall
come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty
in battle. (Psalm 24:7-8) It is
interesting to note that the preceding Psalm (23rd) describes Christ as the Lord our Shepherd,
and here the Father is called the King of Glory.
The plea is rhetorical for Christ has promised with a surety that He will NOT
leave us Comfortless. The Holy Ghost (or Comforter) will exalt us to a standing
place in Christ. The Holy Ghost has not come to exalt Himself, but to exalt and
point only to Christ. We see that many churches corrupt the purpose of the Holy
Ghost in granting wealth, power, and benefits outside those promised in Christ.
W
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HEN the
Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit
of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: and ye also
shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning. These
things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. They shall put
you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you
will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you,
because they have not known the Father, nor me. But these things have I told
you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them. (John 16:1-4)
Christ walked among us and taught us all things concerning Himself. He went
about all of Judea and Galilee preaching, teaching, and healing. But Christ was
confined to a body with limitations of time and space. He came to a few whom He
called to Himself as Apostles so that a living testimony would remain after His
Testament (death Will). This was a necessary component of God’s plan to expand
the witness of the Gospel unto all nations by means of witnesses. Today, we are
those witnesses who teach and preach the Gospel of Christ once delivered to the
saints. This teaching has taken place from heart to heart.
But it was necessary Christ die on the Cross, else we would remain unredeemed
and unsaved. This was His most critical intent. Secondly, it was necessary that
Christ ascend to the father, not only to make intercession for us, but that the
Comforter might come. The Comforter, or Holy Ghost, is a Spirit not subject to
limitations of time or space. The Holy Ghost is capable of witnessing in a
diversity of places and times because He is a Spirit. He can warm my heart in
Alabama and point me to the truth of the Gospel while He is able, at the same
time, to do the same for a Christian in Indonesia. He not only reveals truth to
us as written in Holy Scripture, but He also administers comfort, succor, and
encouragement to us when the world offends. He does not leave us alone for He
ABIDES in our hearts if we belong to Christ. But when the Comforter is come, whom I
will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth
from the Father, he shall testify of me. Do not be deceived
by the modern apostates that the Holy Spirit will whisper secrets in your ear
not revealed in God’s Word, or cause you to speak in a babble that no one else
can understand (including yourself). The Holy Ghost is reasonable, Biblically
true, and loving.
27 And ye also
shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning. Jesus is speaking to His apostles here, but
He also speaks to us. “From the beginning, for us, is the moment that we first
believed. That is OUR beginning, for before we were born anew in Christ, we
were dead in trespasses and sin. And you hath he quickened, who were
dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein
in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the
prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of
disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the
lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and
were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in
mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in
sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And
hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in
Christ Jesus: (Eph 2:1-6)
We all find our ‘beginning’ in Christ Alone. Because we have known Him from the
beginning, we must also bear witness of Him. If we have ever been WITH Him at
all in faith and trust, we must still be so, for He loses none that the Father
has placed in His able hands.
1 These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not
be offended. There is an old saying, “To be forewarned is
to be fore-armed.” When we have been warned of coming trouble, we are
able to make provision for it and to prepare our hearts and minds. The Greek word
for ‘offend’ is Skandalizo.
It means to entice to sin, or to cause a person to begin to distrust and
desert one whom he ought to trust and obey (to cause to fall away). If you have
been told by the Field Commander to expect to encounter enemy elements ahead,
you will be alert and at the ready for the encounter. If, on the other hand,
you walk complacently and oblivious to the enemy, you will not be prepared for
the engagement and may perish by the wayside or in ambush.
2 They shall put you out of the
synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he
doeth God service. Do you realize that more martyrs have died in
the last century than any previous one? Do you know that men and women are
being hung by their necks, and beheaded, today in the name of a presumptive god
called Allah? Those who bear the sword believe that they serve God by brutally
killing all who do not accept their false god. Christ has told you already that
they shall put you out of the synagogues (churches). If you have not yet been
cast out, do not be surprised if you are so cast out when you insist on
biblical truth and righteousness. You may be labeled a ‘contentious one” for
opposing a luke-warm Gospel or outright heresy. You may be beheaded as an ‘infidel’
for adhering to the faith of Christ. “This is America – such things cannot
happen here!” you may say. Really? Have you observed the great changes that
have transpired in just your own lifetime in America? Have you noticed how
those things that are godd have been relabeled bad, and the bad relabeled good?
Have you
noticed the departure from solid truth in modern churches and the embrace of
abject error?
3 And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known
the Father, nor me. How can those who profess Christ, or
even allah, cast you out as a heretic? Because they are false professors of
Christ. They have not known the Father because they do not recognize His Son.
The churches are full of such people every Sunday who call, unbelievingly, upon
the name of Christ. They call upon that unblemished name to gain wealth and
political objectives. They stoke their own fires in Hell by so doing.
4 But
these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember
that I told you of them. The predestinate will of God does not include
sin. God never ordains sin, but He warns us that it shall come. God may use the
sin of others to advance His will for us and to chastise us, or to try us, but
He is never the Author of sin. Many are being told today that God will never
allow them to undergo the great Tribulation. Suppose these know-alls are wrong.
What happens when the tribulation fires are stirred for believers in China,
India, Vietnam, North Korea, or Alabama? Will we cease to believe because we
have not been warned and feel deserted by the originator of our nativity? Erroneous doctrine can do much harm. It
is for this reason Christ warns us, and why a right understanding of His Word
is so critical for our time.
What is it to you or me if Christ comes for us today, or in one hundred years?
Regardless of when He comes for us, He is always ‘on the way’ and we must be
ready for the sounding of the trumpet. He may come for you in the next ten
minutes by means of an heart attack, or He may come for me on the highway this
morning as I drive to church. His coming for us is at His own discretion and
good time. Give no thought for when the Master of the House shall return –
simply be prepared for Him always and there will be no worry or grave doubts.
Are you ready?
The day will come, my friend, when God’s Word ceases to go out through the
medium of preaching and teaching. There is a famine coming upon the land –
evidence of which may already be observed in the brazen sky and denuded land - Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD,
that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for
water, but of hearing the words of the LORD: And they shall wander from
sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to
seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it. (Amos 8:11-12) Those who pick up man’s Bible instead of
God’s is already evident in its prominence. The NIV, the ESV, and others posing
as God’s Word are simply copyrighted words of men who have corrupted the Bible
and adopted false manuscript evidence to satisfy their insatiable appetite to
embrace sin while appearing as Christians.
God’s Church is a Holy Army. It sends out missionaries and evangelists ahead of
its main body just as an earthly army sends out skirmishers, pickets, and
vedettes ahead of its own main line of deployment. When the enemy draws near
for the decisive battle, these skirmishers, pickets, and vedettes are recalled
to the main battle line. So shall it be in the days of the consummation of that
Last Battle.
It is interesting to note the term ‘sorcerer’ can mean a marketer of
mind-altering drugs in some parts of Scripture: Neither repented they of their murders, nor
of their sorceries, nor of
their fornication, nor of their thefts. (Rev 9:21) The word, sorceries above in the Greek is
the same from which we get the word ‘pharmacist’ – Pharmakeia. Look also in the following verse taken from
the last book of the Bible - Blessed
are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of
life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are
dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and
whosoever loveth and maketh a lie. (Rev 22:14-15) If you have in your hands a modern wonder of error such as the NIV,
you may miss some of the point of this counsel in Verse 14: "Blessed
are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of
life and may go through the gates into the city. “ (Rev 22:14 - NIV) This change is not consistent with every
other truth of the Bible – it is the white and sinless Robe of Christ that
covers our sins – not the effort we make in washing them ourselves. We are told
in Philippians 3:2 to beware of those of the ‘concision.’ These are those who
‘mutilate’ the Word of God.
In Verse 15 above, those dogs and sorcerers are a very clear definition of the
society in which we live today. To the best of my recollection, no recognized
government has ever before sanctioned homosexual marriage as legitimate. Though
it was one underlying cause of the fall of Rome (Gibbon), it was not enacted
into the law of the Republic. The Bible refers to sodomites as dogs - Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or
the price of a dog, into the house of the LORD thy God for any vow: for even
both these are abomination unto the LORD thy God. (Deut 23:18) The word used for dog is Keleb – whose
gender is masculine and which means a male prostitute. The preceding verse is
clear as well: There shall be no
whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel.
(Deut 23:17) We see this has already happened even at the
Episcopal level of ECUSA and other apostate churches.
The Day of Battle draws ever nearer in our day. The Church of God will remain
only as a remnant, but all of the forces of Satan shall be destroyed who assail
it. All of the armies of Satan shall be gathered and will encircled that little
enclave of God’s people. Then shall the power and might of God be demonstrated
in destroying them. And they went up
on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and
the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.
10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of
fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be
tormented day and night for ever and ever. (Rev 20:9-10)
There may be those in our ranks who
resent my speaking so openly and forcefully of sin. The world would prefer a
more gentle and polished dissertation of sinners, but God never minces words,
and neither should we in addressing the sins of the day. Are you in the right
Army, or that which shall be destroyed by the Arm of God. R emember: And all this assembly shall know that the
LORD saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the LORD'S. (1 Sam 17:47)
