THE FAMINE Over two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ was baptized in the river Jordan by John the Baptist. When he came out of the water,the Holy Spirit descended unto him from heaven and God spoke from His throne, He said, “This is my son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” From there, he went to the desert, where he was tempted by the devil for forty days. He triumphed over the devil and his temptation. From the desert,when he heard that John the Baptist had been put in prison he returned to Galilee leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum to fulfill the prophecy in Isaiah 9: 1-2. Since that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent for the kingdom of God is near.” The King James Version puts it as such: “From that time, Jesus began to preach, and to say, “Repent; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” In short, we can say that over two thousand years ago Jesus declared that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Over two thousand years ago, Jesus warned us to repent. Remember it was not by coincidence that John the Baptist came before Jesus. We can say that John the Baptist was the summary of the Old Testament. He preached; ‘repent and prepare the way for the Messiah’and the Messiah did come. I decided to give this preview so that we may be at par with the fact that the coming of Jesus is nigh, these are the last days, and we are on the final lap of the race. Whatever the prophets of old prophesied is taking place. We can see wars, rumors of wars, economic crisis, work of the antichrist is clearly visible,people calling themselves servants of God are trading with the gospel, the flock is now running after and listening to what is pleasing to their itching ears, people have gone out calling themselves prophets of God yet they have not stood in His counsel, predictions of good hope are rampant with their givers calling them prophecies little do they know that they are false prophets. To make it worse, people seem to like it that way. God has been calling, stretching his hand but no one is taking heed. Jesus wept over Jerusalem not being able to recognize the coming of her Savior. God laments that His people are perishing for lack of knowledge. Instead of being the brood of Abraham, we have become the brood of the viper, which John the Baptist talked about. We think that we will say to ourselves that we have Abraham as our father yet God is already raising children for Abraham out of the stones and this brings us to my dream. In the dream, I got a letter from a certain man (not a Christian), I was in an office which according to the documents that were being brought in, I concluded it was an immigration office. A colleague brought some documents (including the letter) and said that someone had sent him to bring them to me so that I check something (which I did not understand) for him. I stated reading the letter and discovered that the writer was very was very bitter. I will not include the name of the writer’s religion for fear of being seen as glorifying it. The tone of the letter indicated that the man was annoyed towards the Christians because they(Christians) had ignored prophesy of the coming hunger/famine. In one of the sentences, he wrote, ‘…or are they looking at the current state of things and thinking that the famine will not take place?’ Now, this sounds weird, a non Christian criticizing Christians for ignoring prophesy about famine!Let us find out what kind of famine is this. It is illustrated in Amos 8:11-13. “The days are coming,”declares the Sovereign LORD, “when I will send a famine through the land-not famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. Men will stagger from sea to sea and wonder from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD but will not find it.” Right at the moment we can already see this famine; every left and right, churches are coming up, every person who can read the bible is declaring good hope and changing to become a prophet, an apostle, etc. Preachers have started behaving as if titles take them to heaven and the flock is applauding them. The flock thinks that the truth which Jesus said will set us free is to know how to get rich (materialism), knowing who is bewitching who, etc. Men want God to help them but the problem is that they do not want to repent of sin. That is why they are running from left to right, jumping from sea to sea (from false religion to false religion) in search of God but they are only finding falsehoods where they end up paying for the word. People are now looking for the truth of God from books written by men. Nowadays it isnt strange to hear a so called man/woman of God after/before preaching, he starts advertising his/her books: If you want to advance in ministry buy this book; if you want to know how to lead a church successfully, buy this book; if you want to know how to be filled with the Holy Spirit, buy this book; etc. The preachers give a notice about the next Sunday/church sessions topic in advanced so that the congregation may have time to buy the related book. Very soon, we will have church services being conducted like literature classes with the flock carrying story books instead of Bibles! When that time comes, people will perish for lack of nourishment from the Holy Spirit. The end will be eternity in Hell. Now,why is God going to do this? Let’s turn to the book of Proverbs 1:20-33 (especially verse 20-28) “20Wisdom calls aloud in the streets, she raises her voice in the public squares; 21at the head of the noisy streets, she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech; ‘22How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge? 23If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you and made my heart known to you.24But since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, 25since you ignored all my advice and would not accept my rebuke, 26I in turn will laugh at your disaster; I will mock when calamity overtakes you--27when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you. 28‘then they will call to me but I will not answer;they will look for me but will not find me.” Men ignored the voice of the Holy Spirit and even though the Bible says that God rebukes those whom He loves, men still ignore it. God stretches out His mighty hand to save but men look sideways and turn to the hands of men for Salvation. Because of this, God is going to withdraw His Holy Spirit from the world and that will be the beginning of disaster.There will be no communication between man and God. Man will perish. You cannot fight or contest against God and expect to win. The only hope we have to escape all these disasters is verse thirty three; “but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm” To crown it all, let me leave you with the following scripture: Jeremiah4:1-4 Prepare the way brethren; a Holy Highway for the Lord. He is coming in His Majesty as the king. SHALOM.
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 09:27:57 +0000
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