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Bent On Violence

 

Habakkuk 1:5-11

“Look at the nations and watch — and be                         
utterly amazed.
For I am going to do something in your
days that you would not believe, even if
you were told.

 

 

 

 

I am raising up the Babylonians,          
that ruthless and impetuous people,
who sweep across the whole earth to seize
dwelling places not their own.
They are a feared and dreaded people;
they are a law to themselves and promote their own honor.

 

Their horses are swifter than leopards, fiercer than wolves at dusk.      
Their cavalry gallops headlong;  their horsemen come from afar.
They fly like a vulture swooping to devour;
they all come bent on violence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Their hordes advance like a desert wind and
gather prisoners like sand. They deride kings and scoff at rulers.
They laugh at all fortified cities;
they build earthen ramps and
capture them.
Then they sweep past like the wind and go on —
guilty men, whose own strength is
their god.”

 

 

 

 

Isaiah 5:25-30a
He lifts up a banner for the distant nations,
he whistles for those at the ends of
the earth.
Here they come,
swiftly and speedily!
Not one of them grows tired or
stumbles,
not one slumbers or sleeps;
not a belt is loosened at the waist,
not a sandal thong is broken.
Their arrows are sharp,
all their bows are strung;
their horses’ hooves seem like flint,
their chariot wheels like a
whirlwind.
Their roar is like that of the lion,
they roar like young lions;
they growl as they seize their prey
and carry it off with no one to
rescue.

 

 

 

 

 

In that day they will roar over it
like the roaring of the sea.

 

 


Wisdom Is Supreme

Proverbs 4:7

Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding.

 

 


The Noblest Faculties

 


…why men, who have the noblest faculties of any beings on earth, should yet generally pursue their destruction with as much eagerness as the beasts avoid it…     Arthur Pink (1886-1952)

 

 


Time of Testing

The time of testing that marks and mightily enriches a soul’s spiritual career is no ordinary one,
but a period when all hell seems to let loose, a period when we realize our souls are brought into a net,
when we know that God is permitting us to be in the devil’s hand.                       Alpha White

From Streams in the Desert Volume 1 by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman


Can You Hear Me Now?

 

…an impersonal beginning explains neither the form of the universe nor the personality of man…But the Judeo-Christian tradition begins with the opposite answer. And it is upon this that our whole Western culture has been built.

 

The universe had a personal beginning – a personal beginning on the high order of the Trinity. That is, before ” in the beginning ” the personal was already there. Love and thought and communication existed prior to the creation of the heavens and the earth.

 

Modern man is deeply plagued by the question “Where do love and communication come from?” Many artists who pour themselves out in their paintings, who paint bleak messages on canvas, many singers, many poets and dramatists are expressing the blackness of the fact that while everything hangs upon love and communication, they don’t know where these come from and they don’t know what they mean.
The biblical answer is quite otherwise: Something was there before creation. God was there; love and communication were there; and therefore, prior even to Genesis 1:1, love and communication are intrinsic to what always has been.

Francis A. Schaeffer (1912-1984)

 


Stones

Stones are not broken except by an earnest
use of the hammer, and the stone-breaker usually
goes down on his knees…
…You can force your way through anything
with the leverage of prayer. Thoughts and
reasoning may be like the steel wedges that
may open a way into truth, but prayer is the
lever, the crowbar that forces open the iron
chest of sacred mysteries so that we may get
the treasures hidden in it for those who can
force their way to reach it. “Until now the
kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the
violent take it by force. ” (Matt 11:12).
Take care that you work with the mighty
implement of prayer, and nothing can stand
against you.
Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892)


A very diverse religion

Christianity is a very diverse religion, containing
elements meant to satisfy every part of our make-up.
We have minds, and Christianity has food for our minds.
It is a thinking man’s religion.

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Christianity takes us to the very beginning of creation and
introduces us to God who is
all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-wise.

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It provides us with the most profound of all analysis
of man’s nature and condition – made in the image of God,
yet tragically marred by rebellion against God and resulting
accumulation of wickedness.

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Christianity reveals God’s amazing provision for salvation through
the work of Jesus Christ, and it stretches our minds beyond the past
and present to the future, where we view the ransomed saints of God in
God’s presence in great glory.
These doctrines challenge our minds and reward diligent study.

James Montgomery Boice (1938-2000)

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A Mark, The Mark, That Mark

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I believe that for a nation and for an
individual it is possible to continue in
sin until you cross over a mark. I do not
know where the mark is – I don’t pretend    nations-world_map_with_countries-6
to be able to say when this takes place – but there is such a place. When you pass over that mark, it is not that the grace of God cannot reach you but that you cannot reach God for the simple reason that you have come to the place where you are hardened and in a state of unbelief which cannot be changed. This can be true of a nation, and it can be true of an individual.
J.Vernon McGee (1904-1988)

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Logos

 

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greek-philosophers-atheenseschoolThe Greek for ‘word’ is Logos, a term that was used by stoic philosophers for the rational principle behind the universe and subsequently invested with additional meaning by Christians, who used it to describe the second person of the Trinity. The term ‘word’ itself conveys to us notions of command, meaning, code, communication – thus information; as well as the creative power needed to realize what was specified by that information. The Word, therefore, is more fundamental than mass-energy. Mass-energy belongs to the category of the created. The Word does not.

John C. Lennox

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Einstein of Birds

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After forty days Noah opened the window
he had made in the ark and he sent out
a raven, and it kept flying back and forth
until the water had dried up from the earth.
Genesis 8: 6,7

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Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah: “Leave
here, turn eastward and hide in the ravine of  Kerith,
east of the Jordan.You will drink from the
brook, and I have ordered the ravens to feed
you there. So he did what the LORD had told
him. He went  to the ravine of Kerith, east
of the Jordan, and stayed there.The ravens
brought him bread and meat in the morning
and bread and meat in the evening, and he
drank from the brook.   1 Kings 17:2

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Life is more than food, and the body more
than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do
not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or
barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more
valuable you are than the birds!
Luke 12:23,24

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