‘They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.’

(Re 12:11) 11 And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. ESV

     Irene Park became a committed Christian. Her story is remarkable. She was once a high witch in the state of Florida, seducing boys and girls into occult activities. She stated that the children she could never reach were those whose parents protected them by praying over them in the name of Jesus, standing on the merits of Christ’s atoning blood. Today the occult has made its way into some of our public school systems under the guise of ‘pluralism’ and ‘free speech’. If you’re a parent, you should be concerned! It’s wise to give your child a mobile phone or pager so they can stay in touch with you. But the most powerful defence you can give them is praying over them in the name of Jesus and standing on the merits of His shed blood. Jesus defeated Satan at the cross. And today He’s saying to you, ‘My victory is your victory, and My authority is your authority – use it!’ You must acknowledge the existence of the devil, but you must not be afraid of him because ‘greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world’ (1 John 4:4 KJV). To deny the existence of Satan or underestimate his power gives him the advantage over you. But God has given you the key to overcoming Satan’s power in your life: ‘And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.’ Start declaring what the blood of Jesus has done on your behalf. When you do, you’ll begin to walk in victory.

Zech 13-14
Rev 21

UCB The Word For Today

     After nearly ten years of being its own nation, the Republic of Texas became the 28th State of the Union this day, December 29, 1845. It later joined the Confederacy, but was readmitted after the Civil War. The Preamble stated: “We, the people of the Republic of Texas, acknowledging, with gratitude the grace and beneficence of God, in permitting us to make a choice of our form of government, do… establish this Constitution.” It later added: “Nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.”

American Minute

     Chapter 22  December 29

     You know my history. You know why my withers are quite unwrung by the fear that I was bribed-that I was lured into Christianity by the hope of everlasting life. I believed in God before I believed in Heaven. And even now, even if-let's make an impossible supposition-His voice, unmistakably His, said to me, "They have misled you. I can do nothing of that sort for you. My long struggle with the blind forces is nearly over. I die, children. The story is ending," would that be a moment for changing sides? Would not you and I take the Viking way: "The Giants and Trolls win. Let us die on the right side, with Father Odin."

     But if it is not so, if that other world is once admitted, how can it, except by sensual or bustling pre-occupations, be kept in the background of our minds? How can the "rest of Christianity"-what is this "rest"?-.-be disentangled from it? How can we untwine this idea, if once admitted, from our present experience, in which, even before we believed, so many things at least looked like "bright shoots of everlastingness"?

     And yet … after all. I know. It is a venture. We don't know it will be. There is our freedom, our chance for a little generosity, a little sportsmanship.

     Isn't it possible that many "liberals" have a highly illiberal motive for banishing the idea of Heaven? They want_ the gilt-edged security of a religion so contrived that no possible fact could ever refute it. In such a religion they have the comfortable feeling that, whatever the real universe may be like, they will not have "been had" or "backed the wrong horse." It is close to the spirit of the man who hid his talent in a napkin-"I know you are a hard man and I'm taking no risks." But surely the sort of religion they want would consist of nothing but tautologies?

     About the resurrection of the body. I agree with you that the old picture of the soul reassuming the corpse-perhaps blown to bits or long since usefully dissipated through nature-is absurd. Nor is it what St. Paul's words imply. And I admit that if you ask me what I substitute for this, I have only speculations to offer.

     The principle behind these speculations is this. We are not, in this doctrine, concerned with matter as such at all; with waves and atoms and all that. What the soul cries out for is the resurrection of the senses. Even in this life matter would be nothing to us if it were not the source of sensations.

     Now we already have some feeble and intermittent power of raising dead sensations from their graves. I mean, of course, memory.

     You see the way my thought is moving. But don't run away with the idea that when I speak of the resurrection of the body I mean merely that the blessed dead will have excellent memories of their sensuous experience on earth. I mean it the other way round: that memory as we now know it is a dim foretaste, a mirage even, of a power which the soul, or rather Christ in the soul (He went to "prepare a place" for us), will exercise hereafter. It need no longer be intermittent. Above all, it need no longer be private to the soul in which it occurs. I can now communicate to you the fields of my boyhood-they are building-estates to-day­ only imperfectly, by words. Perhaps the day is coming when I can take you for a walk through them.

Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

We are not here to prove God answers prayer;
we are here to be living monuments of God’s grace.
--- Oswald Chambers
Answered Prayer: A True Story of a Woman's Personal Struggle for a Deeper Walk with God and How He Answered Her Deepest Prayer

The world is growing old in sin.
--- C.H. Spurgeon
Sermons of Rev. C.H. Spurgeon of London Volume v.15

I am not such an egotist as to believe that God has spared me because I am I. I believe there is work for me to do and that I am spared to do it, just as you are.
--- Eddie Rickenbacker
Seven Came Through - Rickenbackers Full Story

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
--- Winston Churchill
One Life to Give: A Path to Finding Yourself by Helping Others

                Deserter or disciple?

     From that time many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him.
--- John 6:66.

     When God gives a vision by His Spirit through His word of what He wants, and your mind and soul thrill to it, if you do not walk in the light of that vision, you will sink into servitude to a point of view which Our Lord never had. Disobedience in mind to the heavenly vision will make you a slave to points of view that are alien to Jesus Christ. Do not look at someone else and say—‘Well, if he can have those views and prosper, why cannot I?’ You have to walk in the light of the vision that has been given to you and not compare yourself with others or judge them, that is between them and God. When you find that a point of view in which you have been delighting clashes with the heavenly vision and you debate, certain things will begin to develop in you—a sense of property and a sense of personal right, things of which Jesus Christ made nothing. He was always against these things as being the root of everything alien to Himself. “A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth.” If we do not recognize this, it is because we are ignoring the undercurrent of Our Lord’s teaching.

     We are apt to lie back and bask in the memory of the wonderful experience we have had. If there is one standard in the New Testament revealed by the light of God and you do not come up to it, and do not feel inclined to come up to it, that is the beginning of backsliding, because it means your conscience does not answer to the truth. You can never be the same after the unveiling of a truth. That moment marks you for going on as a more true disciple of Jesus Christ, or for going back as a deserter.

My Utmost for His Highest

                Code

He grew up into an emptiness
he was on terms with.
     The duplicity
of language, that could name
what was not there, was accepted
by him. He was content, remembering
the unseen writing of Christ
on the ground, to interpret
it in his own way. Adultery

of the flesh has the divine
pardon. It is the mind,
catching itself in the act
of unfaithfulness,
     that must cast no stone.

The Poems of R.S. Thomas

     Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.
--- John 2:10.

     Wherever God in Christ is working, the best wine is kept until the end.  Wings of the Morning, The (The Morrison Classic Sermon Series)

     Think first for a moment of Creation.

     First there was chaos and the formless deep, then light and the ingathering of the waters, then the first dawn of life in lowliest form, mounting into the power of bird and beast. And always, under the working of that wisdom to which a thousand years are as a day, the path was upward from dull and shapeless horror to what was better, richer, and more beautiful. And then at last, not at the first, came Adam, capable of communion with his Maker, greater, by that spark of God within him, than sun and moon and all the host of heaven. And it is in human beings, so noble though so fallen, so touched with heaven although so soiled with hell, that we discover it is the way of God to keep the best wine until the end.

     Isn’t this true also of our Christian calling? The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day. Not all at once does Christ reveal himself, when we go forward determined to be his. The old life still struggles for the mastery, and we are in heaviness through manifold temptations. But the difference between Christ and the Devil is just this, that the Devil’s tomorrow is worse than his today; but the morrow of Christ, for everyone who trusts him, is always brighter and better than his yesterday. Every act of obedience that we do gives us a new vision of his love. Sorrow and trial reveal his might of sympathy, as the darkness of the night reveals the stars. And when at last the wrestling is over, and like tired children we lie down to sleep, and when we waken and see his face in the land where there is no more weariness, I think we will look back on it all and find new meanings in every hour of it, but I think also we will cry adoringly, “You have kept the best wine until now.”
--- George H. Morrison

Take Heart: Daily Devotions with the Church's Great Preachers

     Philip Paul Bliss was born to singing parents in a log cabin in the northern Pennsylvania woods. He left home to work at age 11 and made a public confession of Christ at age 12. He spent his teen years in lumber camps and sawmills. But he loved to sing, and he did his best to get an education in music. His voice was remarkably full, resonant and elastic, with a range from low D-flat to high A.

     With an old horse named Fanny and a twenty-dollar melodeon, Philip started traveling around as a professional music teacher. In 1858 he married Lucy Young, a musician and poet who encouraged him to develop his gifts. As a result he wrote and sold his first composition in 1864. It was well received, and he moved to Chicago the next year as an associate of music publishers Root and Cady. Presently he found himself in demand, conducting musical institutes, giving concerts, and composing Sunday school melodies. Moody championed his work, and Bliss wrote many of the Gospel songs we love today: Let the Lower Lights Be Burning; Man of Sorrows—What a Name!; Jesus Loves Even Me; The Light of the World Is Jesus!; Almost Persuaded; Wonderful Words of Life. He also wrote the music to such hymns as It Is Well with My Soul.

     During the Christmas holidays of 1876 the Bliss family visited his mother in Pennsylvania. On December 29, 1876 they boarded the Pacific Express in Buffalo to return to Chicago. About eight o’clock that Evening in a blinding snowstorm as the train crossed a ravine, the wooden trestle collapsed. The cars, packed with holiday passengers, plunged 75 feet into the icy river and caught fire. Over a hundred people perished in the wreck, among them—Philip Bliss and his family. He was 38.

     By coincidence, Philip’s trunk had been placed on another train and it arrived safely in Chicago. Inside, his friends found a last hymn:

   I will sing of my Redeemer
   And his wondrous love to me.
   On the cruel cross he suffered
   From the curse to set me free.

     Tell everyone on this earth to sing happy songs in praise of the LORD. Make music for him on harps. Play beautiful melodies! Sound the trumpets and horns and celebrate with joyful songs for our LORD and King!
--- Psalm 98:4-6.

On This Day 365 Amazing And Inspiring Stories About Saints, Martyrs And Heroes

     The narrative content of this chapter is sparse, but interesting. In the same spirit as that of the previous chapter, the people respond to the need to repopulate the fortified city of Jerusalem. Since this was primarily for defensive purposes, the list of their leaders was drawn up with an eye on the forms of the musters of the conscript army of pre-exilic times. To this list, other material was added later, especially an idealized description of the province, based on the territorial pattern of the pre-exilic kingdom.

     Attention may be briefly drawn to two points emerging from this. First, as in the case of Nehemiah (cf. chap. 7), so the people too recognized that buildings in themselves are lifeless. Once divorced from their purpose of providing a framework within which a community (be it town, Church, or family) may develop, they become nothing more than a liability. There can be little doubt that had the people not acted as they did they would soon have discovered, as the Church has subsequently, all too frequently to its cost, that the refortified city would have become a drain on their energy and resources, putting additional strains on the community’s cohesion. It was with a sure instinct that “the people blessed all those who volunteered to settle in Jerusalem” (v 2), and recorded their names with gratitude.

     Second, it would be a mistake to dismiss the list of settlements in vv 25–36 just because it is a later addition and historically inaccurate. Its backward glance to former glories, and its conscious imposition upon them of the pattern of life in the wilderness is adequate testimony to the writer’s faith that the restrictions which he currently faced could not be God’s last word. The writer to the Hebrews, 11:13–16, speaks of earlier heroes of the faith who similarly looked for promises whose physical realization lay still in the future. To all who are thus conscious of a discrepancy between a vision of God’s future vouchsafed by revelation and a present frustration at the shortfall in realization, there comes the writer’s assurance that “God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

Word Biblical Commentary Vol. 16, Ezra, Nehemiah

          Morning - December 29

     “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us." 1 Samuel 7:12.

     The word “hitherto” seems like a hand pointing in the direction of the past. Twenty years or seventy, and yet, “hitherto the Lord hath helped!” Through poverty, through wealth, through sickness, through health, at home, abroad, on the land, on the sea, in honour, in dishonour, in perplexity, in joy, in trial, in triumph, in prayer, in temptation, “hitherto hath the Lord helped us!” We delight to look down a long avenue of trees. It is delightful to gaze from end to end of the long vista, a sort of verdant temple, with its branching pillars and its arches of leaves; even so look down the long aisles of your years, at the green boughs of mercy overhead, and the strong pillars of lovingkindness and faithfulness which bear up your joys. Are there no birds in yonder branches singing? Surely there must be many, and they all sing of mercy received “hitherto.”

     But the word also points forward. For when a man gets up to a certain mark and writes “hitherto,” he is not yet at the end, there is still a distance to be traversed. More trials, more joys; more temptations, more triumphs; more prayers, more answers; more toils, more strength; more fights, more victories; and then come sickness, old age, disease, death. Is it over now? No! there is more yet-awakening in Jesus’ likeness, thrones, harps, songs, Psalms, white raiment, the face of Jesus, the society of saints, the glory of God, the fulness of eternity, the infinity of bliss. O be of good courage, believer, and with grateful confidence raise thy “Ebenezer,” for—

     He who hath helped thee hitherto
     Will help thee all thy journey through.

     When read in heaven’s light how glorious and marvellous a prospect will thy “hitherto” unfold to thy grateful eye!


          Evening - December 29

     “What think ye of Christ?” --- Matthew 22:42.

     The great test of your soul’s health is, What think you of Christ? Is he to you “fairer than the children of men”—“the chief among ten thousand”—the “altogether lovely”? Wherever Christ is thus esteemed, all the faculties of the spiritual man exercise themselves with energy. I will judge of your piety by this barometer: does Christ stand high or low with you? If you have thought little of Christ, if you have been content to live without his presence, if you have cared little for his honour, if you have been neglectful of his laws, then I know that your soul is sick—God grant that it may not be sick unto death! But if the first thought of your spirit has been, how can I honour Jesus? If the daily desire of your soul has been, “O that I knew where I might find him!” I tell you that you may have a thousand infirmities, and even scarcely know whether you are a child of God at all, and yet I am persuaded, beyond a doubt, that you are safe, since Jesus is great in your esteem. I care not for thy rags, what thinkest thou of his royal apparel? I care not for thy wounds, though they bleed in torrents, what thinkest thou of his wounds? are they like glittering rubies in thine esteem? I think none the less of thee, though thou liest like Lazarus on the dunghill, and the dogs do lick thee—I judge thee not by thy poverty: what thinkest thou of the King in his beauty? Has he a glorious high throne in thy heart? Wouldest thou set him higher if thou couldest? Wouldest thou be willing to die if thou couldest but add another trumpet to the strain which proclaims his praise? Ah! then it is well with thee. Whatever thou mayest think of thyself, if Christ be great to thee, thou shalt be with him ere long.

     “Though all the world my choice deride,
     Yet Jesus shall my portion be;
     For I am pleased with none beside,
     The fairest of the fair is he”

Morning and Evening

          THERE’LL BE NO DARK VALLEY

     William O. Cushing, 1823–1902

     He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. (Revelation 21:4)

     There is a land of pure delight, where saints immortal reign;
Eternal day excludes the night, and pleasures banish pain.
--- Isaac Watts

     In every life there will be some “dark valleys.” Difficult days cannot be avoided. In fact, the lives of some believers seem to be filled with affliction and suffering. But for the child of God, there is glorious relief just ahead … the return of Christ and the promise of a land of endless delight. The prospect of Gods’ tomorrow also means a time of joyous reunion with loved ones who have preceded us. Truly “there’ll be songs of greeting when Jesus comes …”

     William Orcutt Cushing knew the meaning of “dark valleys” in his life. After more than 20 years of successfully pastoring Disciples of Christ churches in the state of New York, he suddenly lost the ability to speak. Then his wife died at the age of 47. During this “valley period” Cushing became interested in hymn writing and wrote more than 300 hymn texts, including such other favorites as: “Under His Wings,” “When He Cometh,” and “Hiding in Thee.”

     Ira David Sankey, the hymn’s composer, worked as a soloist and songleader with evangelist D. L. Moody for nearly 30 years in campaigns throughout the United States and the British Isles. “There’ll Be No Dark Valley” was widely used by Sankey in many of these meetings. The hymn’s simple repetitive message and singable melody still provide encouragement and comfort to God’s people.

     There’ll be no dark valley when Jesus comes; there’ll be no dark valley when Jesus comes; there’ll be no dark valley when Jesus comes to gather His loved ones home.
     There’ll be no more sorrow when Jesus comes; there’ll be no more sorrow when Jesus comes; but a glorious morrow when Jesus comes to gather His loved ones home.
     There’ll be songs of greeting when Jesus comes; there’ll be songs of greeting when Jesus comes; and a joyful meeting when Jesus comes to gather His loved ones home.
     Refrain: To gather His loved ones home, to gather His loved ones home; there’ll be no dark valley when Jesus comes to gather His loved ones home.

     For Today: 1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17; 2 Peter 3:13, 14; Revelation 22:5, 12

     Hear these words of encouragement “I will come back and take you to be with me …” (John 14:1–3). Carry this musical truth with you ---

Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions

     3. He doth exercise patience for the propagation of mankind. If God punished every sin presently, there would not only be a period put to churches, but to the world; without patience, Adam had sunk into eternal anguish the first moment of his provocation, and the whole world of mankind, in his loins, had perished with him, and never seen the light. If this perfection had not interposed after the first sin, God had lost his end in the creation of the world, which he “created not in vain, but formed it to be inhabited” (Isa. 45:18). It had been inconsistent with the wisdom of God to make a world to be inhabited, and destroy it upon sin, when it had but two principal inhabitants in it; the reason of his making this earth had been insignificant; he had not had any upon earth to glorify him, without erecting another world, which might have proved as sinful and as quickly wicked as this; God should have always been pulling down down and rearing up, creating and annihilating; one world would have come after another, as wave after wave in the sea. His patience stepped in to support the honor of God, and the continuance of men, without which one had been in part impaired, and the other totally lost.

     4. He doth exercise patience for the continuance of the church. If he be not patient toward sinners, what stock would there be for believers to spring up from? He bears with the provoking carriage of men, evil men, because out of their loins he intends to extract others, which he will form for the glory of his grace. He hath some unborn that belong to the election of grace, which are to be the seed of the worst of men; Jeroboam, the chief incendiary of the Israelites to idolatry, had an Abijah, in whom was found “some good thing towards the Lord God of Israel” (1 Kings 14:13). Had Ahaz been snapped in the first act of his wickedness, the Israelites had wanted so good a prince and so good a man as Hezekiah, a branch of that wicked predecessor. What gardener cuts off the thorns from the rose-brush till he hath gathered the roses? and men do not use to burn all the crab-tree, but preserve a stock to engraft some sweet fruit upon. There could not have been a saint in the earth, nor, consequently, in heaven, had it not been for this perfection: he did not destroy the Israelites in the wilderness, that he might keep up a church among them, and not extinguish the whole seed that were heirs of the promises and covenant made with Abraham. Had God punished men for their sins as soon as they had been committed, none would have lived to have been better, none could have continued in the world to honor him by their virtues. Manasseh had never been a convert, and many brutish men had never been changed from beasts to angels, to praise and acknowledge their Creator. Had Peter received his due recompense upon the denial of his Master, he had never been a martyr for him; nor had Paul been a preacher of the gospel; nor any else: and so the gospel had not shined in any part of the world. No seed would have been brought into Christ; Christ is beholding immediately to this attribute for all the seed he hath in the world: it is for his name’s sake that he doth defer his anger; and for his praise that he doth refrain from “cutting us off” (Isa. 48:9): and in the next chapter follows a prophecy of Christ. To overthrow mankind for sin, were to prevent the spreading a church in the world: a woman that is guilty of a capital crime, and lies under a condemning sentence, is reprieved from execution for her being with child; it is for the child’s sake the woman is respited, not for her own: it is for the elect’s sake, in the loins of transgressors, that they are a long time spared, and not for their own (Isa. 55:8): “As the new wine is found in a cluster, and one saith, Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it, so will I do for my servants’ sakes, that I may not destroy them all;” as a husbandman spares a vine for some good clusters in it. He had spoke of vengeance before, yet he would reserve some from whom he would bring forth those that should be “inheritors of his mountains,” that he might make up his church of Judea; Jerusalem being a mountainous place, and the type of the church in all ages. What is the reason he doth not level his thunder at the heads of those for whose destruction he receives so many petitions from the “souls under the altar?” (Rev. 6:9, 10). Because God had others to write a testimony for him in their own blood, and perhaps out of the loins of those for whom vengeance was so earnestly supplicated; and God, as the master of a vessel, lies patiently at anchor, till the last passenger he expects be taken in.

     5. For the sake of his church he is patient to wicked men. The tares are patiently endured till the harvest, for fear in the plucking up the one, there might be some prejudice done to the other. Upon this account he spares some, who are worse than others whom he crusheth by signal judgments: the Jews had committed sins worse than Sodom, for the confirmation of which we have God’s oath (Ezek. 16:48); and more by half than Samaria, or the ten tribes had done (ver. 51): yet God spared the Jews, though he destroyed the Sodomites. What was the reason, but a larger remnant of righteous persons, more clusters of good grapes, were found among them than grew in Sodom? (Isa. 1:9). A few more righteous in Sodom had damped the fire and brimstone designed for that place, and a “remnant of such in Judea” was a bar to that fierceness of anger, which otherwise would have quickly consumed them. Had there been but “ten righteous in Sodom,” Divine patience had still bound the arms of Justice, that it should not have prepared its brimstone, notwithstanding the clamor of the sins of the multitude. Judea was ripe for the sickle, but God would put a lock upon the torrent of his judgments, that they should not flow down upon that wicked place, to make them a desolation and a curse, as long as tender-hearted Josiah lived, “who had humbled himself” at the threatening, and wept before the Lord (1 Kings 22:19, 20). Sometimes he bears with wicked men, that they might exercise the patience of the saints (Rev. 14:12): the whole time of the “forbearance of antichrist” in all his intrusions into the temple of God, invasions of the rights of God, usurpations of the office of Christ, and besmearing himself with the blood of the saints, was to give them an opportunity of patience. God is patient towards the wicked, that by their means he might try the righteous. He burns not the wisp till he hath scoured his vessels; nor lays by the hammer, till he hath formed some of his matter into an excellent fashion. He useth the worst men as rods to correct his people, before he sweeps the twigs out of his house. God sometimes uses the thorns of the world, as a hedge to secure his church, sometimes as instruments to try and exercise it. Howsoever he useth them, whether for security or trial, he is patient to them for his church’s advantage.

     6. When men are not brought to repentance by his patience, he doth longer exercise it, to manifest the equity of his future justice upon them. As wisdom is justified by her obedient children, so is justice justified by the rebels against patience; the contempt of the latter is the justification of the former. The “apostles were unto God a sweet savor of Christ in them that perish,” as well as in them that were saved by the acceptation of their message (2 Cor. 2:15). Both are fragrant to God; his mercy is glorified by the one’s acceptance of it, and his justice freed from any charge against it by the other’s refusal. The cause of men’s ruin cannot be laid upon God, who provided means for their salvation, and solicited her compliance with him. What reason can they have to charge the Judge with any wrong to them, who reject the tenders he makes, and who hath forborne them with so much patience, when he might have censured them by his righteous justice, upon the first crime they committed, or the first refusal of his gracious offers? “Quanto Dei magis judicium tardum est tanto magis justum.” After the despising of patience, there can be no suspicion of an irregularity in the acts of justice. Man hath no reason to fall foul in his charge upon God, if he were punished for his own sin, considering the dignity of the injured person, and the meanness of himself, the offender; but his wrath is more justified when it is poured out upon those whom he hath endured with much long-suffering. There is no plea against the shooting of his arrows into those, for whom this voice hath been loud, and his arms open for their return. As patience, while it is exercised, is the silence of his justice, so when it is abused, it silenceth men’s complaints against his justice. The “riches of his forbearance” made way for the manifesting the “treasures of his wrath.” If God did but a little bear with the insolencies of men, and cut them off after two or three sins, he would not have opportunity to show either the power of his patience, or that of his wrath; but when he hath a right to punish for one sin, and yet bears with them for many, and they will not be reclaimed, the sinner is more inexcusable, Divine justice less chargeable, and his wrath more powerful. (Rom. 9:22), “What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction?” The proper and immediate end of his long-suffering is to lead men to repentance; but after they have by their obstinacy fitted themselves for destruction, he bears longer with them, to “magnify his wrath” more upon them; and if it is not the finis operantis, it is at least the finis operis, where patience is abused. Men are apt to complain of God, that he deals hardly with them; the Israelites seem to charge God with too much severity, to cast them off, when so many promises were made to the fathers for their perpetuity and preservation, which is intimated, Hos. 2:2. “Plead with your mother, plead:” by the double repetition of the word “plead;” do not accuse me of being false or too rigorous, but accuse your mother, your church, your magistracy, your ministry, for their spiritual fornications which have provoked me; for their נאפופיה, intimating the greatness of their sins by the reduplication of the word, “lest I strip her naked.” I have borne with her under many provocations, and I have not yet taken away all her ornaments, or said to her, according to the rule of divorce, Res tuas tibi habeto. God answers their impudent charge: “She is not my wife, nor am I her husband;” he doth not say first, I am not her husband, but she is not my wife; she first withdrew from her duty by breaking the marriage covenant, and then I ceased to be her husband. No man shall be condemned, but he shall be convinced of the due desert of his sin, and the justice of God’s proceeding. God will lay open men’s guilt, and repeat the measures of his patience to justify the severity of his wrath (Hos. 7:10), “Sins will testify to their face.” What is in its own nature a preparation for glory, men by their obstinacy make a preparation for a more indisputable punishment. We see many evidences of God’s forbearance here, in sparing men under those blasphemies which are audible, and those profane carriages which are visible, which would sufficiently justify an act of severity; yet when men’s secret sins, both in heart and action, and the vast multitude of them, far surmounting what can arrive to our knowledge here, shall be discovered, how great a lustre will it add to God’s bearing with them, and make his justice triumph without any reasonable demur from the sinner himself! He is long-suffering here, that his justice may be more public hereafter.

     Use IV. For instruction. How is this patience of God abused! The Gentiles abused those testimonies of it, which were written in showers and fruitful seasons. No nation was ever stripped of it, under the most provoking idolatries, till after multiplied spurns at it not a person among us but hath been guilty of the abuse of it. How have we contemned that which demands a reverence from us! How have we requited God’s waitings with rebellions, while he hath continued urging and expecting our return! Saul relented at David’s forbearing to revenge himself, when he had his prosecuting and industrious enemy in his power. (1 Sam. 24:17), “Thou art more righteous than I; thou hast rewarded me good, whereas I have rewarded thee evil:” and shall we not relent at God’s wonderful long-suffering, and silencing his anger so much? He could puff away, our lives, but he will not, and yet we endeavor to strip him of his being, though we cannot.

     1. Let us consider the ways, how slowness to anger is abused.

     (1.) It is abused by misinterpretations of it, when men slander his patience to be only a carelessness and neglect of his providence; as Averroes argued from his slowness to anger, a total neglect of the government of the lower world: or when men from his long-suffering charge him with impurity, as if his patience were a consent to their crimes; and because he suffered them, without calling them to account, he were one of their partisans, and as wicked as themselves (Psalm 50:21): “Because I kept silence, thou thoughtest I was altogether such a one as thyself.” His silence makes them conclude him to be an abettor of, and a consort in their sins; and think him more pleased with their iniquity than their obedience. Or when they will infer from his forbearance a want of his omniscience; because he suffers their sins, they imagine he forgets them (Psalm 10:11): “He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten:” thinking his patience proceeds not from the sweetness of his nature, but a weakness of his mind. How base is it, instead of admitting him, to disparage him for it; and because he stands in so advantageous a posture towards us, not to own the choicest prerogatives of his Deity! This is to make a perfection, so useful to us, to shadow and extinguish those others, which are the prime flowers of his crown.

     (2.) His patience is abused by continuing in a course of sin under the influences of it. How much is it the practical language of men, Come, let us commit this or that iniquity; since Divine patience hath suffered worse than this at our hands! Nothing is remitted to their sensual pleasures, and eagerness in them. How often did the Israelites repeat their murmurings against him, as if they would put his patience to the utmost proof, and see how far the line of it could extend! They were no sooner satisfied in one thing, but they quarrelled with him about another, as if he had no other attribute to put in motion against them. They tempted him as often as he relieved them, as though the declaration of his name to Moses (Exod. 34.), “to be a God gracious, and long-suffering,” had been intended for no other purpose but a protection of them in their rebellions. Such a sort of men the prophet speaks of, that were “settled in their lees,” or dregs (Zeph. 1:12): they were congealed, and frozen in their successful wickedness. Such an abuse of Divine patience is the very dregs of sin; God chargeth it highly upon the Jews (Isa. 57:11): “I have held my peace, even of old, and thou fearest me not;” my silence made thee confident, yea, impudent in thy sin.

     (3.) His patience is abused by repeating sin, after God hath, by an act of his patience, taken off some affliction from men. As metals melted in the fire remain fluid under the operations of the flames, yet when removed from the fire, they quickly return to their former hardness, and sometimes grow harder than they were before; so men who, in their afflictions, seem to be melted, like Ahab confess their sins, he prostrate before God, and seek him early; yet, if they be brought from under the power of their afflictions, they return to their old nature, and are as stiff against God, and resist the blows of the Spirit as much as they did before. They think they have a new stock of patience to sin upon. Pharaoh was somewhat thawed under judgments, and frozen again under forbearance (Exod. 9:27, 34). Many will howl when God strikes them, and laugh at him when he forbears them. Thus that patience which should melt us, doth often harden us, which is not an effect natural to his patience, but natural to our abusing corruption.

     (4.) His patience is abused, by taking encouragement from it to mount to greater degrees of sin. Because God is slow to anger, men are more fierce in sin, and not only continue in their old rebellions, but heap new upon them. If he spare them for three transgressions, they will commit four, as is intimated in the first and second of Amos; “Men’s hearts are fully set in them to do evil, because sentence against an evil work is not speedily executed” (Eccles. 8:11). Their hearts are more desperately bent; before they had some waverings, and pull-backs, but after a fair sunshine of Divine patience, they entertain more unbridled resolutions, and pass forward with more liberty and licentiousness. They make his long-suffering subservient to turn out all those little relentings and regrets they had before, and banish all thoughts of barring out a temptation. No encouragement is given to men by God’s patience, but they force it by their presumption. They invert God’s order, and bind themselves stronger to iniquity by that which should bind them faster to their duty. A happy escape at sea makes men go more confidently into the deeps afterward. Thus we deal with God as debtors do with good-natured creditors: because they do not dun them for what they owe, they take encouragement to run more upon the score, till the sum amounts above their ability of payment.

     But let it be considered, 1st. That this abuse of patience is a high sin. As every act of forbearance obligeth us to duty, so every act of it abused, increaseth our guilt. The more frequent its solicitations of us have been, the deeper aggravations our sin receives by it. Every sin, after an act of Divine patience, contracts a blacker guilt. The sparing us after the last sin we committed, was a superadded act of long-suffering, and a laying out more of his riches upon us: and, therefore, every new act committed is a despite against greater riches expended, and greater cost upon us, and against his preserving us from the hand of justice for the last transgression. It is disingenuous not to have a due resentment of so much goodness, and base to injure him the more, because he doth not right himself. Shall he receive the more wrongs from us, by how much the sweeter he is to us? No man’s conscience but will tell him it is vile to prefer the satisfaction of a sordid lust, before the counsel of a God of so gracious a disposition. The sweeter the nature, the fouler is the injury that is done unto it. 2d. It is dangerous to abuse his patience. Contempt of kindness is most irksome to an ingenuous spirit; and he is worthy to have the arrows of God’s indignation lodged in his heart, who despiseth the riches of his long-suffering. For,

     [1.] The time of patience will have an end. Though his Spirit strives with man, yet it shall “not always strive” (Gen. 6:3). Though there be a time wherein Jerusalem might “know the things that concerned her peace,” yet there is another period wherein they should be “hid from her eyes” (Luke 19:43): “O that thou hadst known in this thy day!” Nations have their day, and persons have their day; and the day of most persons is shorter than the day of nations. Jerusalem had her day of forty years; but how many particular persons were taken off before the last or middle hours of that day were arrived! “Forty years was God grieved” with the generation of the Israelites (Heb. 3:11). One carcass dropped after another in that limited time, and at the end not a man but fell under the judicial stroke, except Caleb and Joshua. One hundred and twenty years was the term set to the mass of the old world, but not to every man in the old world; some fell while the ark was preparing, as well as the whole stock when the ark was completed. Though he be patient with most, yet he is not in the same degree with all; every sinner hath his time of sinning, beyond which he shall proceed no further, be his lusts never so impetuous, and his affections never so imperious. The time of his patience is, in Scripture, set forth sometimes by years; three years he came to find fruit on the fig-tree: sometimes by days; some men’s sins are sooner ripe, and fall. There is a measure of sin (Jer. 2:13), which is set forth by the ephah (Zech. 5:8), which, when it is filled, is sealed up, and a weight of lead cast upon the mouth of it. When judgments are preparing, once and twice the Lord is prevailed with by the intercession of the prophet: the prepared grass-hoppers are not sent to devour, and the kindled fire is not blown up to consume (Amos 7:1–8). But at last God takes the plumb-line, to suit and measure punishment to their sin, and would not pass by them any more; and when their sin was ripe, represented by a “basket of summer-fruit,” God would withhold his hand no longer, but brought such a day upon them, wherein “the songs of the Temple should be howlings, and dead bodies be in every place” (Amos 8:2, 3). He lays by any further thoughts of patience to speed their ruin. God had borne long with the Israelites, and long it was before he gave them up. He would first brake the “bow in Jezreel” (Hos. 1:5); take away the strength of the nation by the death of Zechariah, the last of Jehu’s race, which introduced civil dissentions and ambitious murders, for the throne, whereby in weakening one part they weakened the whole; or, as some think, alluding to Tiglah Pilezar, who carried captive two tribes and a half. If this would not reclaim them, then follows “Lo-ruhamah, I will not have mercy,” I will sweep them out of the land (ver. 6). If they did not repent, they should be “Lo-ammi” (ver. 9), “You are not my people,” and “I will not be your God.” They should be discovenanted, and stripped of all federal relation. Here patience forever withdrew from them, and wrathful anger took its place. And, for particular persons, the time of life, whether shorter or longer, is the only time of long-suffering. It hath no other stage than the present state of things to act upon; there is none else to be expected after but giving account of what hath been done in the body, not of anything done after the soul is fled from the body: the time of patience ends with the first moment of the soul’s departure from the body. This time only is the “day of salvation;” i. e. the day wherein God offers it, and the day wherein God waits for our acceptance of it: it is at his pleasure to shorten or lengthen our day, not at ours; it is not our long-suffering, but his; he hath the command of it.

The Existence and Attributes of God

Pt 1

Pt 2

Revelation 13:16-18
The Beast Who Was Marked
Jon Courson

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04-13-1997

Revelation 13
Jon Courson

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04-16-1997

Revelation 14:1-5
Purity Pays

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04-20-1997

Revelation 14:1-11

Jon Courson

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04-23-1997

Revelation 14:13
Rest In Peace
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04-27-1997

Revelation 14:12-20
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04-30-1997

Revelation 15:5-8
Necessary Surgery
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05-04-1997

Revelation 15
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05-07-1997

Revelation 16:21
An "Altared View" In Tough Times
Jon Courson

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05-18-1997

Revelation 16:1-11
Jon Courson

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05-21-1997

Revelation 16:12-21
Armageddon
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05-25-1997

Revelation 16:1-11
Strong Medicine
Jon Courson

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04-27-2004

Revelation 16:12-16
Vial Frogs
Jon Courson

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05-18-2004

Revelation 16:12-18
Bloodbath Or Bathed In The Blood?
Jon Courson

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05-23-2004

Revelation 16:18-21
Revealing Our Hearts
Jon Courson

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05-25-2004

Revelation 13:16-18
Antichrist
Jon Courson

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01-10-99

Revelation 13:16-18
Prophecy Update
Jon Courson

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01-15-95

Revelation 13
Jon Courson

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05-04-11

Revelation 14:1-5
Jon Courson

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05-11-11

Revelation 14:6-20
Jon Courson

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05-18-11

Revelation 15
Jon Courson

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05-25-11

Revelation 16
Jon Courson

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06-01-11

Jon Courson

Revelation 13:1-10
The Most Interesting Man in the World
Skip Heitzig


04-04-2016

Revelation 13:11-18
The Coming Deception
Skip Heitzig


04-11-2016

Revelation 13:1-10
The Antichrist Revealed
Skip Heitzig


June 26, 2023

Revelation 13:11-18
Six Six Six
Skip Heitzig


July 2, 2023

Revelation 16:12-16
The Battle of Armageddon
Skip Heitzig


July 9, 2023

Skip Heitzig | Calvary Chapel NM

Revelation 12-13:1-10
Gary Hamrick

Revelation 13:11-18
Gary Hamrick

Revelation 14
Gary Hamrick

Revelation 15-16:6
Gary Hamrick

Revelation 16:12-21
Gary Hamrick

Gary Hamrick | Cornerstone Chapel

Revelation 13
The First and Second Beast
Paul LeBoutillier


06-16-2017

Revelation 14
The Harvest of the Earth
Paul LeBoutillier


10-03-2013

Revelation 15-16
7 Plagues and Bowls of Wrath
Paul LeBoutillier


06-16-2017

Paul LeBoutillier | Calvary Chapel Ontario, Oregon

Revelation 13:1-15
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7-24-2013

Revelation 13:16-18
The Mark Of The Beast
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7-28-2013

Revelation 14
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7-31-2013

Revelation 15:2-3
The Song Of Moses
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8-04-2013

Revelation 15
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8-07-2013

Revelation 15
Tribulation Brats
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8-11-2013

Revelation 16
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8-14-2013