Michael Hunt

Michael Hunt

Its Sunday Night

And I was thinking about “The Cost”

The cost of hurricane Katrina was over $200 Billion. The projected cost of hurricane Harvey- $190 Billion; a lot of money, and a lot suffering and agony.

The 2017 United States National Budget, 3.21 Trillion dollars, a

whole Lot of money.

There is another cost I want to look at – and that is the cost, the price, for our Salvation.

The Bible says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

First let me say Jesus cares about the needs of your life; He cares about all your needs; He is concerned about your life, the suffering, the sorrow, the despair. He came to make the ordinary better; to transform the person.

And what He gives, has to offer, is not just enough, it is more than enough; with plenty left over. He gives His life, on the cross, for our sin, and that offering, that sacrifice, is more than enough.

John three sixteen was written to show the heart of God; the heart of the gospel. That while we were yet in our sins, Christ died for us, to meet the spiritual need of the people; the need of our Salvation, and that came at a great cost – the only Begotten Son of God.

He offered His life on the cross, was raised up in three days, his sacrifice on the cross and victory over death and the grave gives us the means of our deliverance from sin, and eternal separation from a holy God.

The heart of the gospel is that all men have sinned; that we have fallen short of the glory of God; that in spite of what we have done, God loves us; that while we were yet in our sins, Christ died for us.

That Jesus draws us to Him by the love of God; from the cross He met our needs, to give us new life.

Nobody made Jesus come from Heaven to earth. Nobody ordered Jesus to give His life on the cross; He did it freely; because it was the only way to pay the cost, the price, for the sins of the world.

Not anything we have done. But because of God’s love. There is nothing we have done to deserve this; it is the grace of God. It is a gift of God, to us.

As we accept that gift of Salvation, our sins are forgiven, past, present and future. We are a new creature, a new life in fellowship with God.

“Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things have passed away; all things are become new.” {II Corinthians 2: 17}

He is the object of our Salvation. He is the consummation of our hope.

John three sixteen is the Bible, the gospel, in miniature.

It says Jesus came from heaven to earth for the express purpose of going to the cross, that man should not perish, but Shall be saved.

That he who believes, does not come under the judgment of God.

That God is Life; and that His mercy and grace, follows after us.

That Salvation is the gift of God; and nothing which we earned, to save the world, man, from their sin.

The cost of hurricane Katrina was over $200 Billion. The projected cost of hurricane Harvey- $190 Billion; a lot of money, and a lot suffering and agony.

The 2017 United States National Budget, 3.21 Trillion dollars, a Whole Lot of money.

But the cost, the price, for our Salvation, was the Only Begotten Son of God, which is un-measurable; unfathomable.

It is more precious than silver or gold.

Bible Prophecy

When the solar eclipse crossed over the continental United States two weeks ago, it was immediately followed by a hurricane of epic proportions in a manner that conformed precisely to prophetic sources. Two weeks ago, a rare solar eclipse transversed the US, the first time in 99 years such an event had occurred. Four days later, Hurricane Harvey hit Texas. The connection between the eclipse and the hurricane was implicit in how events unfolded.

When the eclipse’s path of totality passed out to sea over the Atlantic Ocean, it crossed over three storm systems. At the time,

meteorologists stated that “the odds for development of those systems is very low”, but one of the systems revealed itself to be far more than the scientists anticipated. One of the systems touched by the dark path of the eclipse was the now infamous Hurricane Harvey, currently the second-most costly natural disaster in US history.

The connection was explicitly prophetic. One week before the solar eclipse, Breaking Israel News presented an article describing a prophecy in the Yalkut Moshe, written by Rabbi Moshe ben Yisrael Benyamin in Safed in 1894. Rabbi Benyamin predicted that when a solar eclipse occurs at the beginning of the Hebrew month of Elul, as this one did, “It is a bad sign for the other nations, bringing great damage to the kings of the East, and bringing great storms.”

But the Yalkut Moshe promised “storms”, and now the second storm system over which the eclipse passed is poised to inflict more damage. Irma is now a category three hurricane lingering off the coast, gaining strength and threatening to wreak havoc in an already devastated region.

“Prophecy is meant to reinforce that God is behind all these events. If God says that he is going to do something, and then it happens right in front of your eyes, you should believe the entire message,” Rabbi Yosef Berger, rabbi of King David’s Tomb on Mount Zion, told Breaking Israel News of the storms.

“If a person sees totally unanticipated events, wonders of nature arriving in unexpected fashion, if that person still refuses to believe the prophecy that predicted them, then there is nothing you can say to such a person.”

At the time of the eclipse, Rabbi Berger explained that the prophecy concerning “kings of the east” referred to Kim Jong Un , the despotic leader of North Korea . In the wake of the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Harvey, less attention has been focused on the conflict with North Korea, but that political situation has also progressed in its prophesied manner.

One week after the eclipse, North Korea fired a missile over Japanese airspace. The American response, live-fire runs by heavy bombers, contained an unmistakable threat any sane leader would heed. But in the most illogical manner that seemed intended to lead the rogue Asian nation to destruction, North Korea exploded a hydrogen bomb in their most powerful nuclear test to date. The underground test generated a 6.3 magnitude tremor under the earth and perhaps even greater tremors in international relations.

Rabbi Daniel Asore , a member of the nascent Sanhedrin, also understood current events as part of a prophetic process.

Oswald Chambers

Watching With Jesus
September 5, 2017
Stay here and watch with Me. —Matthew 26:38
   
“Watch with Me.” Jesus was saying, in effect, “Watch with no private point of view at all, but watch solely and entirely with Me.” In the early stages of our Christian life, we do not watch with Jesus, we watch for Him. We do not watch with Him through the revealed truth of the Bible even in the circumstances of our own lives. Our Lord is trying to introduce us to identification with Himself through a particular “Gethsemane” experience of our own. But we refuse to go, saying, “No, Lord, I can’t see the meaning of this, and besides, it’s very painful.” And how can we possibly watch with Someone who is so incomprehensible? How are we going to understand Jesus sufficiently to watch with Him in His Gethsemane, when we don’t even know why He is suffering? We don’t know how to watch with Him— we are only used to the idea of Jesus watching with us.
The disciples loved Jesus Christ to the limit of their natural capacity, but they did not fully understand His purpose. In the Garden of Gethsemane they slept as a result of their own sorrow, and at the end of three years of the closest and most intimate relationship of their lives they “all…forsook Him and fled” (Matthew 26:56).
“They were all filled with the Holy Spirit…” (Acts 2:4). “They” refers to the same people, but something wonderful has happened between these two events— our Lord’s death, resurrection, and ascension— and the disciples have now been invaded and “filled with the Holy Spirit.” Our Lord had said, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you…” (Acts 1:8). This meant that they learned to watch with Him the rest of their lives.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
It is not what a man does that is of final importance, but what he is in what he does. The atmosphere produced by a man, much more than his activities, has the lasting influence.  Baffled to Fight Better, 51 L

Waiting on God – Streams in the Desert – September 5

<< Streams in the Desert, with Mrs. Charles Cowman
Waiting on God – Streams in the Desert – September 5
2017Sep 05
Blessed are all they that wait for him (Isa 30:18).
We hear a great deal about waiting on God. There is, however, another side. When we wait on God, He is waiting till we are ready; when we wait for God, we are waiting till He is ready.
There are some people who say, and many more who believe, that as soon as we meet all the conditions, God will answer our prayers. They say that God lives in an eternal now; with Him there is no past nor future; and that if we could fulfill all that He requires in the way of obedience to His will, immediately our needs would be supplied, our desires fulfilled, our prayers answered.
There is much truth in this belief, and yet it expresses only one side of the truth. While God lives in an eternal now, yet He works out His purposes in time. A petition presented before God is like a seed dropped in the ground. Forces above and beyond our control must work upon it, till the true fruition of the answer is given.

–The Still Small Voice
I longed to walk along an easy road,

And leave behind the dull routine of home,

Thinking in other fields to serve my God;

But Jesus said, “My time has not yet come.”

I longed to sow the seed in other soil,

To be unfettered in the work, and free,

To join with other laborers in their toil;

But Jesus said, “‘Tis not My choice for thee.”

I longed to leave the desert, and be led

To work where souls were sunk in sin and shame,

That I might win them; but the Master said,

“I have not called thee, publish here My name.”

I longed to fight the battles of my King,

Lift high His standards in the thickest strife;

But my great Captain bade me wait and sing

Songs of His conquests in my quiet life. 

I longed to leave the uncongenial sphere,

Where all alone I seemed to stand and wait,

To feel I had some human helper near,

But Jesus bade me guard one lonely gate.

I longed to leave the round of daily toil,

Where no one seemed to understand or care;

But Jesus said, “I choose for thee this soil,

That thou might’st raise for Me some blossoms rare.” 

And now I have no longing but to do

At home, or else afar, His blessed will,

To work amid the many or the few;

Thus, “choosing not to choose,” my heart is still.

–Selected
And Patience was willing to wait.

–Pilgrim’s Progress

​Sharon Moles

Sharon Moles

A VERY INSIGHTFUL ARTICLE:

“IT SHOULD BE EXPECTED” by Daymond Duck, as posted at Rapture Ready.

Prophecy buffs expect the Word of God to be fulfilled. For example, as the Tribulation period nears, they expect Jerusalem to be a problem for the world, the religious Jews to talk about rebuilding the Temple, people to talk about establishing a one world government and things like that.

Prophecy buffs don’t rejoice over the fact that some of these events will happen (for example, they don’t rejoice over the fact that the battle of Gog and Magog will happen) because they know that a war like that will cause much death, destruction and misery. But they know that God said it will happen so they expect it to happen.

Below are four recent things that students of prophecy should have expected:

First, on August 13, 2017, the Chief of Israel’s Mossad (Israel’s intelligence agency) said, “Israel is identifying a presence (in Syria and Lebanon) not only of Iran and Hezbollah, but also of Shiite forces, that are not Iranian, from all over the world . . ..”

This eliminates the need for a debate about the identity of Gomer and all his bands, or the house of Togarmah and all his bands, whether they are present in Syria or not, etc. If Shiite forces are gathering in Syria from all over the world, Gomer and all his bands and the house of Togarmah and all his bands are in place regardless of who they are. A gathering of Shiite forces from many nations should have been expected.

Second, on August 23, 2017, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu spent three hours with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mr. Netanyahu reminded the Russian leader that he has not accepted Israel’s demand for Iranian and Hezbollah forces to leave Syria. Mr. Netanyahu presented Mr. Putin with evidence that Iran is building a seaport, airport and military bases in Syria. He warned Mr. Putin that “Israel will not remain passive” and that there will be “a regional war” if Iran continues to stay in Syria and build these threatening facilities.

Prophecy buffs are not surprised that Mr. Putin has not accepted Israel’s demand for Iranian and Hezbollah forces to leave Syria. But if the world is as close to the battle of Gog and Magog as some think, Mr. Putin’s lack of acceptance and Iran’s continued presence and preparation should be expected.

Third, on Aug. 15, 2017, Kentucky Governor, Matt Bevin, told a radio audience, “The proper teaching of biblical virtues in schools would reduce instances of white supremacist violence.”

Less than one week later, the governor received a letter from the Freedom from Religion Foundation saying the that Christian Bible “encourages violence and racism.” The group called the Bible “A hate-filled book.” They said, “Religious education, and religion in general, would lead to ‘increased levels of all manner of societal ills, including: violent crime and homicide, poverty, obesity, teen pregnancy, and infant mortality.'”

This atheist is calling good evil, and evil good. It is to be expected, if society is moving close to persecution under the reign of Satan’s Antichrist.

Fourth, President Trump’s campaign slogan was “Make America Great Again.” This slogan smacks of nationalism (patriotism, pride in one’s nation, loyalty to America, etc.). It is Popularism (what the American majority wants). It requires a war with globalism (those who want world government, those who want America to submit to the UN, make America weak, etc.).

Prophecy buffs know that world leaders will cast aside nationalism (patriotism) at the end-of-the-age and opt for globalism (the one-world government of Satan’s Antichrist).

But America’s acceptance of a Satanic one-world government requires the rejection of Christian values. It requires corrupt politicians that don’t care what America’s majority wants (Popularism). It means President Trump will lose the war in the White House and the swamp won’t get drained.

When President Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, resigned and said, “The Trump Presidency that we fought for and won, is over,” it should have been expected. Why? Because the predictions of Daniel the prophet and John the Revelator in the Bible will be fulfilled as recorded.

From Steve Bannon’s statement it appears that the shadow government may have managed to stop the draining of the swamp and redirected some of that icky stinking goop into the Trump White House.

The fulfillment of Bible prophecy should not surprise anyone. But the control and foreknowledge of God should amaze everyone. He, and all His deeds, are truly awesome