You Only Go Around Once
We are living in a generation of the defiance of God with unparalleled boldness and confidence. The United States Supreme Court Justices, supreme only in their own estimate, have recently shaken their fists in God’s face, as they espoused and legalized perverted same-sex marriage across the United States. Inconceivable in the one nation under God! It all makes Sodom and Gomorrah look benign in comparison. They are hell-bent on advancing Satan’s kingdom as the bold blasphemers they are. Once again – IN YOUR FACE GOD!
America now has a president, or should we say a total impostor, who champions the cause of abortionists and LGBT perversionists. He is a son of disobedience who is leading the nation astray in open and defiant rebellion against God.
The fact is that America is being governed by OUTLAWS who legislate outside of the laws of God, and even outside of the laws of the land they govern. They are a law unto themselves.
Oh how this world has put the TEMPORAL above the ETERNAL, the MATERIAL above the SPIRITUAL, and the JUDICIAL BENCHES OF MEN above the JUDGMENT SEAT OF GOD. But in the last day, it will all be set right before THE HIGHEST COURT OF HEAVEN.
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Add to this the enormous corruption of the apostate church to whom has been committed the law of God, the Word of God, and all the means of instruction to morality and virtue, and you have what Isaiah says in Isaiah 1:21,
“How the faithful city has become a harlot.”
I am reminded of Proverbs 12:26,
“The righteous is a guide to his neighbor, but the way of
the wicked leads them astray.”
And again, II Timothy 3:13,
“But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to
worse, and out of them the Lord has delivered me.”
Saints, we’re seeing 1 Timothy 4:1 playing out right before our very eyes. It’s called the Great Apostasy, and it’s well-underway. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul wrote:
“Now the Spirit clearly says that in the last times
some will depart from the faith and pay
attention to seducing spirits and
doctrines of devils.”
Example:
The Dutch Reformed Church is a South African denomination that traces its beginnings to the Reformed tradition of the first white settlers who came to South Africa from the Netherlands in the mid-17th century according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. The church claims nearly 1.3 million members in more than 1,200 congregations.
The latest denomination to fall at Jezebel’s hand is the Dutch Reformed Church. In a landmark vote, the church has decided to recognize same-sex relationships. Jesus warned the church not to tolerate the spirit of Jezebel, which teaches and seduces God’s servants to commit sexual immorality and engage in idolatry (Rev. 2:20).
The Dutch Reformed Church didn’t even put up much of a fight against the depths of Satan (see Rev. 2:24). Sixty-four percent of the church voted in favor of this strong delusion, which also opens the door for ordaining gay ministers without the call to celibacy.
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I. THE PROPHETS’ LAMENTING AND LAUDING
And the prophet Jeremiah likewise bemoans his generation in Jeremiah 9:2-3,
“O that I had in the desert a wayfarer’s lodging place;
that I might leave my people, and go from them!
For all of them are adulterers, an assembly of
treacherous men.’
“And they bend their tongue like a bow; lies and
not truth prevail in the land; and they proceed
from evil to evil.”
I know the prophet’s longing for a far away deserted lodging place. Did you ever feel that way? I have, and I know exactly what he is going through. A place to get away from all the filth and pollution and rot and heresy. A place to be separated from adulterers, from liars, and from just plain evil and becoming ever more evil men. I get it! The prophets righteous heart is sorely vexed! I truly get it!
We are now being ruled by those who are approving being as wicked as they possibly can be, and passing laws to justify themselves. Not only that, but they are hell-bent on making the entire nation their proselytes. There has never been a time like this in America. Never! The first Democratic Debate of 2015 paraded all of this in living color. It was filth and perversion and lies on parade.
It has indeed gone from BAD TO WORSE, as Paul said it would, and as Jeremiah said, from EVIL to EVIL. And it will become far worse than this just before Christ comes, when INIQUITY SHALL ABOUND, AND THE LOVE OF MANY SHALL GROW COLD. Sin’s temperature is rising and the moral temperature of the nation is dropping!
The Democratic Party in these last days has become THE DEVIL’S FACE. Do you want to know what the Devil looks like. Just look at the face of Barack Obama and Hilliary Clinton and their fellow demoncrats. It is a more than striking resemblance to the face of the chief thief, murderer, and liar.
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But about those who lead others to righteousness, the prophet Daniel lauds them as he writes in Daniel 12:3,
“…they that turn many to righteousness shall shine
as the stars forever and ever.”
What a gloriously bright promise that is! I have no doubt that those who lead others in paths of righteousness, and stand strong for moral right in this deepening darkness shall shine the brightest in Heaven for ever and ever.
This is not TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STAR, HOW I WONDER WHERE YOU ARE. If people have to wonder who and where we are, it is because we are not letting our light of righteousness shine here for all to see.
They who turn many to righteousness, while the government turns others to unrighteousness, will be starlight magnified by perfection lighting up the New Jerusalem. No one has ever seen stars like these – ETERNAL STAR SAINTS.
Hear it:
“NO ONE SHINES LIKE A STAR IN HEAVEN WHO DOES
NOT LET HIS LIGHT SHINE FOR GOD ON EARTH.”
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II. FROM WHENCE COMES THIS DEFIANT BOLDNESS AGAINST GOD?
What really is it that makes so many in these last days so wickedly defiant against God, and so bold in doing so, such as gay pride and perversion on parade? Not only being as wicked as they possibly can be, but proudly vile in their agendas to make others their companions in their vileness!
First of all, remember what the Bible says about all men by nature in Romans 8:7,
“because the mind set on the flesh is HOSTILE toward God;
for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is
not even able to do so.”
Hostile means they hate God and His laws with a open and public hatred. They sin and promote sin with clenched fists.
Second, there is a text in the Bible that is well known by many, perhaps too well known to many. It is found in Ephesians 2:12 where we read these words,
“…HAVING NO HOPE AND WITHOUT GOD IN
THIS WORLD.”
Lest we get infected with big-headed spiritual pride, Paul there reminds Christians that we all were once just like the world – godless and hopeless. If it wasn’t for the awesome grace of God, we too would be without God and without hope.
WITHOUT GOD AND WITHOUT HOPE IN THIS WORLD – this pretty well explains modern man’s brazen rampage against Almighty God. In short:
“THEY BELIEVE IN NOTHING DIVINE ABOVE THEM,
AND IN NOTHING ETERNAL AHEAD OF THEM.”
No, they don’t walk around saying, “We feel so hopeless.” That is not what WITHOUT HOPE MEANS. Rather, the anti-God culture believes that there is nothing more beyond death. Eat, drink, and party for tomorrow you croak, and that is that.
And so because they are totally bound by the diabolic lying spirit of deception:
“THEY DO THE DEVIL’S WORK BELIEVING THAT THEY
WILL NOT PAY THE DEVIL’S PRICE FOR IT IN
THE HEREAFTER.”
In short, because they only think in terms of NE PLUS ULTRA – NOTHING MORE BEYOND:
“THEY ARE NO WISER THAN DUMB BEASTS, SO THEY
GIVE THEMSELVES OVER TO BEASTLY LUSTS AND
VIOLENCE, WITH AS LITTLE SHAME AND
REMORSE AS THE BRUTE BEASTS
THEMSELVES.”
If you will, they believe that:
“YOU ONLY GO AROUND ONCE, SO GRAB FOR ALL THE
GUSTO AND LUSTO YOU CAN IN THE NOW, FOR
THE NOW IS ALL THERE IS.”
You see:
“THEY LIVE IN SUCH BOLD DEFIANCE AGAINST GOD
HERE, BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE THERE IS NO
ETERNAL ACCOUNTABILITY TO GOD IN
THE HEREAFTER.”
In fact:
“THE MORALLY AND SPIRITUALLY DEFIANT AGAINST
GOD BELIEVE THAT DEATH IS THE END OF THIS
LIFE, AND AN ASYLUM AGAINST ANY
LIFE TO COME.”
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III. WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND FOREVER
The Word of God has totally different message. We read in II Corinthians 5:10 KJV,
“For we must all appear before the judgment seat
of Christ; that everyone may receive the things
done in his body, according to that he hath
done, whether it be good or bad.”
Hear it:
“THOSE WHO HAVE DONE GOOD FOR CHRIST SHALL
RECEIVE FROM CHRIST HIS ETERNAL BEST,
AND THOSE WHO HAVE DONE BAD FOR
SATAN SHALL RECEIVE FROM
CHRIST HIS ETERNAL
WORST.”
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ILLUSTRATIONS OF GOOD AND BAD LIVING
In one of his sermons, Fred Craddock told a story about something that happened many years ago while he was driving by himself cross-country. He had stopped at a small diner somewhere in the South to refresh himself with an early breakfast and some coffee. He had been driving through the night and now it was getting close to dawn. So before he got too sleepy, he stopped for a while.
As he waited for his breakfast order to come, Craddock spied a black man who had just come in and had sat down on a stool up by the lunch counter. The diner’s manager then began to treat the black man with a contempt that was clearly borne of deep-seated racism. The manager was rude, insulting, demeaning toward his black guest. As he sat in his booth a little ways away from the counter, Craddock wrestled with saying something to chide this manager for his shameful, racist conduct.
Eventually the black man quickly slurped down some coffee and then fled the diner. Craddock meanwhile remained silent. “I didn’t say anything,” he confessed. “I quietly paid my bill, left the diner, and headed back to my car. But as I walked through the parking lot, somewhere in the distance, I heard a rooster crow.”
With that poignant, final image, Craddock evoked an entire cloud of denial, betrayal, shame, and regret. The rooster’s crow following the disciple Peter’s triple denial of Jesus has become one of the more famous images from the gospels. Of course, even so, not everyone knows it.
I once heard Craddock say that one Sunday he was a guest preacher at a church and he preached that same sermon. After the service, a man came up to him in the narthex, shook Craddock’s hand vigorously, and said, “Thank you, pastor, for that powerful sermon. That really hit home! Oh, but by the way, what was that business with the rooster?”
What indeed! For all mankind, preachers and laity alike, it most likely will not be the rooster crowing. It will be however something like it though far more piercing – God’s trumpet blowing! We had better learn to understand what really is the good life and what really is the bad life. Whether it is the rooster’s crow or the trumpets blast, what goes around will indeed in the end come around.
Oh, by the way, what is that business with the trumpet sounding? What indeed!
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ILLUSTRATION
If you’ve ever toured one of the Nazi concentration camp memorials, you know of the almost choking sense of death and finality you sense in those places.
Buchenwald, like the other camps at Dachau, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Plötzensee, hangs so heavy with a sense of mass extermination that all else is eclipsed. By the time you’ve viewed the memorial plaques, glanced at the grim photos of corpses stacked like cord wood, and passed by the crematorium onto which is now engraved the words, “Remember How We Died Here,” there is little left in your mind than the overwhelming sense of death’s tragedy and of its apparent absolute finality. There is no beauty there and often very little sense of hope.
This in its own way is a picture of Hell for the wicked. What they did in Buchenwald etc. shall never leave their tormented minds forever. It shall go round and round and round in their eternal and tortured minds of lifeless death. They shall be dead to all joy, to all comfort, to all hope, and alive to all pain, to all shame, to all guilt, and to all the HORRORS OF CONSCIENCE forever. The smoke shall never stop ascending!
It all comes right back to II Corinthians 5:10,
“For we must all appear before the judgment seat
of Christ; that everyone may receive the things
done in his body, according to that he hath
done, whether it be good or bad.”
Good never looked SO GOOD as when Christ’s followers will stand before His RADIANT HOLINESS, and He says to them, “Well Done – Good Job – Great Work!” The good they have done for Jesus Christ will be praised by the Lord Himself, and will be remembered by God and by them for all eternity. Good was never this good as when face to face their righteous deeds are exalted by the Holy God Himself. There is no award or diploma on earth that can even come close to that moment of graduation into Heaven with highest honors.
Hear me:
“FOR THEM IT WILL BE AN ETERNAL MERRY-
GO-ROUND, FOR WHAT GOES AROUND
TRULY DOES COME AROUND
FOREVER.”
Bad never looked so bad as when Satan’s followers stand before Christ’s PERFECT RIGHTEOUSNESS, and He says to them, “Depart from me you workers of iniquity.” The bad they have done against Jesus Christ will be condemned by the Lord Himself, and will be remembered by them for all eternity. Bad was never this bad as when face to face their evil deeds are Divinely detailed and are judged by the Holy God Himself.There is no sentence or condemnation on earth that can ever come close to that moment of damnation into Hell with lowest dishonors. No sense of temporal flunk or failure even comes close!
Hear me:
“FOR THEM IT WILL BE AN ETERNAL MISERY-
GO-ROUND, FOR WHAT GOES AROUND
TRULY DOES COME AROUND
FOREVER.”
Let us get this straight in our heads:
“NOTHING AND NO ONE JUST GOES AROUND ONCE,
EXCEPT THE SINS OF THE REPENTANT BELIEVERS,
WHOSE SINS ARE WASHED IN THE BLOOD OF
CHRIST AND FORGOTTEN BY GOD FOREVER.”
My, my, have the wicked got an awful eternal shock coming. They will first have their evil lives transcribed by God in their eternal memories. And second, they will see their wicked lives transcribed in the lives of others that they influenced and brought to Hell with them. Hell compounded!
In short for the wicked in their eternal Hell it will be:
-Perpetual darkness without rest.
-Continual night without sleep.
-Madness without distraction.
-Dying without death.
-Misery without pity.
-Wishing without hope.
-Memory without lapse.
-Pain without relief.
-Fire without consumption.
CONCLUSION
The world’s attitudes about life and death are powerfully captured by writer Daniel Wojcik in his book The End of the World As We Know It. He writes, “You can detect the fatalism people carry around in their hearts just by listening to certain popular catch phrases. People will refer to this or that event in their lives (be it something good or something bad) and they’ll say things like, “It was fated that we meet this way. This was your destiny. It was meant to be. It was in the cards.” Or, when someone dies, people may characterize this by saying, “I guess his number was up. It was just his time. It was his fate.”
Gazillions of people believe that when your number is up, you run out of numbers. Mathematics at death runs out of numbers, as all numbers are absorbed into an eternal zero. The alphabet at death runs out of letters, as all letters are absorbed into an eternal omega. End of story! End of you and me.
Oh so wrong. We know that for the Christian THE BEST IS YET TO BE, and for the non-Christian THE WORST IS YET TO BE.
We know according to the sure Word of God the following forever truth:
“DEATH IS BUT THE COMMENCEMENT OF EITHER AN
ETERNAL DEATHLESS LIFE WITH GOD, OR OF AN
ETERNAL LIFELESS DEATH WITH SATAN.”
AMEN!
