Eternal life resides in Jesus and in Him alone. No one else! This is true now and will also be the case after Jesus removes His true church from the earth.
In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
What do people need the most? The answer remains the same as it’s always been: A clear understanding of the Gospel. By this I mean that people need Jesus, not the one that so many today create in their mind but but the One revealed on the pages of Scripture.
What we hear instead of watchfulness for Jesus’ appearing is that the church must be about fulfilling the Great Commission as though that excludes teaching about the rapture, the coming tribulation, the Second Coming, or the millennial kingdom.
I believe Jesus regarded His command to preach the Gospel as inseparably intertwined with watchfulness for His return. Let me explain why.
Hope. If there is anything people need today it is hope.
We see this today in the record number of suicides among both the young and old. Despair rather than hope fills the minds of so many today. The outcome of confining all our dreams to this world is often bitterness, anger, fear, and depression. I have tasted of this despair, too, in my past.
The Bible is necessary because:
3. Scripture alone gives us hope
For as long as I can remember, I have always thought that if God exists and is powerful enough to create all that we see, then He’s certainly capable of communicating His Word to us in an accurate and trustworthy way. It’s not that I based my belief on reason, but my thinking opened the door to accept the claims of Scripture to be God’s Word to us.
The Bible is necessary because:
2. Scripture is God’s revelation to humanity
I grew up loving Scripture. It started in Awana as I memorized God’s Word and continued in Sunday school as I marveled at the accounts of creation, Moses, and the Israelites.
Perhaps this is why I feel such grief at the current attacks on the Bible. GQ Magazine referred to the Bible as “one of the most overrated books of all time” and placed it on its list of 21 books “you don’t have to read.” This is so incredibly sad.
The Bible is necessary because:
1. Scripture Defines Right Versus Wrong
Have you ever thought of God as a vending machine? Oh, this may not have been your conscious thought at the time, it wasn’t with me, but you believed if you behaved in a certain way the Lord would bless you with a trouble-free life or reward your service in some way. The money goes into the machine and out comes the blessing you desire or perhaps think you deserve.
That was me as a young pastor. Although I truly loved the Lord at the time, I possessed a faulty view of what it meant to walk with Him.
Do you ever have times when a line from Scripture jumps out at you and cannot get past it in your thoughts? One morning this past week was such a time. As I was reading in Proverbs 10, the first line of verse 26 struck me in such a way. It says, “The hope of the righteous brings joy.”
Our hope brings us joy; the anticipation of Jesus' appearing and all that He has promised us for all eternity.
It seemed so simple. We would send our letter and earnest check for our new home in Illinois via certified mail. Our purchase contract for our new house allowed several days for the check to arrive.
After double-checking the address my realtor had provided, I took the letter to the post office in North Liberty, Iowa on March 30. The kind young man at the counter gave me the tracking information and said our check would be at its destination in Rockford, Illinois on Monday, April 2. I felt confident the check would arrive on time.
On April 2, I entered the tracking information only to discover that our certified mail was in the small town of Wellman, Iowa
What do these things signify? The imminent conflict has the potential to light the fuse that leads to the fulfilling of the Gog and Magog prophecy of Ezekiel 38-39. We know that Russia, Iran, and Turkey are already closely aligned just as Ezekiel prophesied 2,500 years ago; all three countries have significant forces in Syria. It would not take much for them to combine forces and invade Israel precisely as the prophet said they will do.
Jesus’ tomb is empty; it’s an established historical fact. All the attacks on Jesus’ resurrection come in the form of trying to explain the vacant grave. They do this because they cannot deny the reality that His body was missing from His tomb.
However, no one has ever been able to come up with a credible explanation for Christ's empty grave. Jesus is indeed alive!
The resurrection matters so much to our faith because if Jesus did not walk bodily out of His grave, if His body was buried somewhere else in ancient Israel, then humanity has absolutely no hope.
Perhaps one of the more perplexing matters in the New Testament is the sense of imminent expectation regarding the Lord’s return. We see this all through its pages.
Jesus said, “Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (Matt. 24:44). Jesus instructed His disciples to expect His appearing at any moment.
All through the epistles, we read of the New Testament saints eagerly watching for the Savior’s appearance (see Rom. 8:23; Phil. 3:20; 1 Thess. 1:9-10; and Titus 2:11-13). It’s clear that those who read the apostles’ letters anticipated Jesus’ return at any moment, too.
Yet, 2,000 years have passed since then. How do we understand Jesus' command the expectancy of the New Testament saints?
It’s contest time and the prize is the beautiful new thin line NIV Bible in the picture above.
You may have expected that a vacation in the Caribbean, or perhaps a trip to Hawaii, or even a week-long stay in beautiful North Liberty, Iowa would go to the winner. However, this prize is more in keeping with an author’s income.
How do I enter the contest? You enter by simply writing a review of my first book, Shipwrecked! Learning From The Bible Bad Guys, on Amazon.com. If you have already placed such a review on Amazon don't worry, you are already entered to win the grand prize.
How do I win? After 25 reviews of my book appear on Amazon, I will determine the winner by drawing one number between one and twenty-five. The lucky reviewer whose review matches the number will win.
Here’s why I love the Bad Guys of the Bible:
1. Bad guys serve as warning signs.
Life is complex and difficult to navigate, that’s for sure. It demands warning signs simply because there are pitfalls everywhere. No one plans to shipwreck their faith, fracture their family, or wound their own soul, but sometimes these things overtake us without the advantage of an honest-to-goodness negative example. I say bring on the bad guys.
2. Bad guys expose and unmask the bad guy I deal with every day, my flesh.
That bully is an imposter and a master of deception. He relentlessly tries to get me to think that he’s my true identity instead of who I am in Christ. He knows how to make himself look good and sound good (he’s religious).
3. Bad guys help me understand that a shipwrecked life is never the result of a single bad decision but a process.
Shipwrecked! Learning from the Bible Bad Guys: A Book Review written by Terry James
Have you ever thought, If I could just do that over again? Or thought, Wish I had made a different decision way back then…
I have done so many times over my many decades of life. It’s a common human trait to lament some of the mistakes we’ve made. But, of course, wishing makes no difference. It changes nothing. If is for children, as the lyrics to Roger Whittaker’s song goes.
To avoid having to constantly look back at our lives and say, “If only…” the avoidance must be accomplished through preventative action. We must prepare in some fashion so that we make wise decisions as they come in order to avoid looking back and having to say “If only…”.
Jonathan Brentner has given us a book that offers such wisdom—how to avoid the pitfalls of life that cause us to look back and have to say “If only…”.
The idea for my book, Shipwrecked! Learning From The Bible Bad Guys, started with my study of the life of King Saul. I could see several of my faults in his life, particularly as I read about his unwillingness to wait for Samuel at a critical time during his reign.
From this wayward king, I discovered a strategy for waiting amidst the faulty reasons he gave to Samuel for his disobedience. If we can avoid the places where his thinking went awry, it helps us wait for whatever we hope will happen soon, but doesn't. We have all been there.
I believe if there is one shared experience among followers of Christ, it is that of waiting. He often makes us wait for:
What comes to your mind when you think of Esau? You likely picture a rugged red-haired hunter selling his birthright to his brother Jacob for some stew.
The story began rather innocently. Esau, tired from a long day of hunting, came home experiencing what he later described as life-threatening hunger (Gen. 25:32). Once he smelled Jacob’s lentil stew, Esau demanded that his brother give him some.
Jacob, sensing his brother’s desperation, took advantage of him by requesting that Esau sell his birthright to him in return for the stew. Esau, focused solely on the need of the moment, willingly gave up his most prized possession for a cup of the soup.
For a moment, I actually thought the rapture was occurring. I heard a trumpet blaring and for a brief moment I felt as though something was pulling me upward.
This happened when I was in college, over 40 year ago, during a time when I had been reading extensively about the rapture. Late one warm afternoon, I fell asleep at my desk in my dorm room. Suddenly, the sound of a loud trumpet fanfare awoke me from a deep sleep and I thought “this is it; the Lord is returning!” After a few seconds, I realized it was the sound of a trumpet warming up for a nearby band rehearsal.
Several years ago, I discovered I could learn a lot from some of the shadier characters of the Bible. It was not that their examples were so stellar, most failed miserably. However, I have gleaned much from their bad examples over the years.
You may be wondering what in the world we can learn from such misfits and failures. How can they possibly help us in our walk with the Lord?
I'm glad you asked. To help you answer this question, I have picked a few of the characters as examples of what we might possibly learn.
It’s almost too much to bear. I want to do more; I want to do so much more but I do not even know where to start.
I hear about the evils of the horrific sex trafficking and wonder now how people can be so wicked. And yet, this practice (undoubtedly inspired by demons) rakes in untold billions of dollars every year as pedophilia becomes more and more accepted in our society, much in the same way homosexuality became increasingly accepted decades earlier.
A year or two ago I watched videos of Planned Parenthood executives boasting about the dismembering and selling of baby parts and thought, “Surely Congress will take action against this atrocity.” Instead, I watched as leaders of the Republican Party supported the continued funding of this vile organization with our tax money. A couple weeks ago, I saw Democratic Senators celebrate the defeat of a bill that would have at least stopped the wicked practice of abortion after twenty weeks. How can these things be?
Shipwrecked! is about learning from the mistakes of several bad guys of the Bible.
Life rarely goes as we expect. That's why it's so important that we learn to walk with the Lord and trust our loving heavenly Father before things go awry. Life caught several of our Bible bad guys "off guard" and instead of looking to God in faith, they turned away from Him and made terrible decisions. As we examine their lives, we learn how we can avoid their errant choices.
The last character in the book is John Mark. From him we learn that failure does not have to be the last chapter in our lives. John Mark overcame an early failure in ministry to be greatly used of God.
(Below is an article written by Jan Markell about artificial intelligence [AI]. As Jan explains, AI is not something that is coming in the future; it is here now and developing far more quickly than even its founders imagined. Many of them are sounding the alarm about it. Is this setting the stage for the tribulation? How far will God let this go?
The Billy Crone videos mentioned later in the article are long, but quite fascinating, informative, and well worth the time.)
I started watching videos online of robots who look human and who “think.” They answer questions and seem to process real thoughts. Developers of these robots say someday they will solve society’s problems. Such men also believe that it is possible for artificial intelligence to be a billion times smarter than humans. Try to process that!
