Can you conceive of the possibility that God may need someone to defend Him? That He could use a human being for that purpose?

Goliath was an arrogant, blaspheming Philistine giant who not only defied the armies of Israel but also for weeks publicly defied and blasphemed “the God of the whole earth.” Israel and its army were not the primary issue; Goliath was challenging God’s existence and His authority to choose and to bless a nation through whom must come the Messiah, the Saviour of the world. Will God suffer this insult in silence, slinking away as it were, leaving Goliath to win the day?

God cannot strike Goliath with a lightning thunderbolt because He does not want to force a subservient worship based on fear. Goliath may himself be a big bully, but God cannot win the day by being a Bigger Bully. He can roar from heaven with a loud voice and frighten Goliath and the Philistines, but again that is not His way of doing things. Actually, as in the days of Job, God needs a human being to defend Him, because the battle is not “with sword and spear” (1 Sam. 17:45). Someone must speak up to maintain God’s honor.

Enter into the arena the stripling, David, clad only in his shepherd’s garb and armed only with a slingshot and a few pebbles. David was not principally a partisan contestant for national greatness; he had an understanding of God’s character of love and of the sacrifice of Christ for the world. He spoke publicly in defense of the plan of salvation itself. To demonstrate for all time to come how God works in cooperation with man, He blessed David’s skillful aim of a pebble from his sling shot, which caught the giant between his eyes, blinded and stunned him. Picture this lad jumping on the giant’s prostrate belly, wresting from its scabbard his huge sword to use it on him before the giant recovers. A teenager has learned to appreciate the character of God, to trust Him, willing to face eternal death for His honor.

Can you conceive of 144,000 giant “Goliaths” blaspheming God in these last days? And 144,000 “Davids” challenging and conquering them? Get in training today.

I’m sure that everybody who “dials daily bread” is very busy. Many of us are desperately struggling to keep our nose above water economically, trying to make a decent living, support a family, educate our children in Christian schools, pay the bills (including the medical and dental ones), keep the old car going, all the while still trying to discharge our church fellowship duties. Doesn’t Paul warn us that if we don’t take care of our own family, we are worse than infidels (1 Tim. 5:8)? In order to avoid Paul’s condemnation of us as “infidels,” in many homes both husband and wife work in the market place.

Does the Lord know all this and understand how busy we are? How does He expect us to balance all these insistent demands on our time? Part of the answer is in Proverbs 9:1-6, where Wisdom is personified as a woman. But good evidence tells us that this is a personification of Christ as the Holy Spirit. Listen! Verses 1-3: she has built a beautiful mansion and prepared a marvelous banquet of all the finest gourmet foods imaginable. Verse 3, last part: then she goes out to the main streets of the city and stands in the most prominent places and cries out to all the hungry, busy, hard-working, and pleasure-seeking crowds passing by, “Come to My banquet, enjoy My gourmet food. It’s all ready for you! Just come!” (vs. 5).

You can’t drive down the freeway without seeing all the huge billboards everywhere advertising this or that. Experts tell us that a business must advertise in order to survive. Is God advertising? Proverbs 9 says YES! You can’t go through a day without hearing that cry at the busiest crossroads of the city—“Come, enjoy My banquet!”

Seriously, does God love you THAT much? Or is His place of “business” unadvertised, some tiny little hole in the wall on some dark, unknown side street? Does He just leave you to yourself, busy, swamped in all the busy-ness of your life that you must take care of, telling you, “Take-it-or-leave-it! And if you don’t take it, too bad for you!” No, Proverbs 9 tells us that the Holy Spirit is shouting in your ears day by day; come, enjoy His banquet. “Come unto Me, “ says Jesus, and “rest.” (Matt. 11:28).

The more intelligent a person is, the more painful are his/her bouts with depression. And “good” people have the problem as well as so-called “bad people.” In fact, the more “good” a person may be, the greater and more painful is the depression suffered. Job was an extremely intelligent person, and also genuinely righteous; but read about his episodes! And the One human Person of all time who alone was righteous through and through—behold His depression! Well, during His periods of depression. There were His episodes in His childhood when He was hounded by unbelieving, abusive members of His family circle (for they didn’t believe in Him, John 7:5). No child has ever suffered such excruciating emotional pain as Jesus had to go through (read Psalm 119:19, 22, 23, 28, 42, 50, 51, 69,78, 85, 87, 92, 99, etc.; these are the prayers of the Teen Jesus).

Reason for depression? Yes! Verse 92 says He would have “perished” if He had not known how to pray and how to receive strength directly from the Bible by believing what it said. He suffered deep pain of depression during His 40 days in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1-11). We get the impression in reading Mark that during His sunlit days of ministry He was always on Cloud Nine, but the truth is that tears were ever ready to burst forth (John 11:35; Matt. 23:37; Heb. 5:7). Then there were those bitter hours of darkness on the cross when the Prince of Depressed People wrestled with a blackness of despair not one of us has ever gone through completely. Not even a candle shining at the end of His tunnel.

He is right now teaching a College Course 101 in Depression; go in and join it, even children can understand it. Identify with Him; immerse yourself in His depressions. I guarantee—you’ll overcome your own. “Truth will make you free” more effectively than—do I dare say it?—than pills (John 8:32). This particular College Professor is known as our great High Priest (Heb. 4:15, 16).

What do you do if you realize that helping other people, telling others about Christ, etc., is just no fun for you? It’s boring. You’re not even sure you want to go to heaven if that’s what it’s going to be like. Some people will say, “The problem is you’re not converted!” That could discourage you even more. Jesus has never told you that you must convert yourself. That’s His work (one is “born of the Spirit,” John 3:6), and you stop resisting His on-going work on your heart.

The way Jesus tells it in John 3, someone somehow has to tell you the Good News of the gospel; God employs human agents in His work. Someone somewhere has said something to you that is like a ray of sunshine bringing hope into your dark soul. Now welcome that ray of light, and stop resisting it; somehow the dear Lord has already begun to work on your heart: LET HIM GO ON WORKING.

Secondly, Jesus made it clear that the Good News you must see (you’ve got to begin seeing it before you can begin believing it!) is Christ uplifted on His cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. That’s in verses 14-16: He must be “lifted up” before you as Moses “lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.”

No psychology or pep talks can take the place of understanding the content of the Gospel, which is (a) that Christ died the second death for your sins (1 Cor. 15:3); (b) He has redeemed you; (c) He has “exhausted” the penalty of the broken law for you; (d) He has “adopted” you into His family by virtue of His sacrifice for you as the second Adam, (e) He has set His table with a place mat for you; and (f) sinful and selfish as you may know yourself to be, He treats you as though you had never sinned. (By the way, that is called “grace.”) All this was done before you were born.

In John 3, Jesus does not get the cart before the horse; He tells of conversion in true order: When your heart appreciates what He has already done for you, the cold hardness of your heart begins to melt. Maybe even a tear will trickle down your cheek as you think of the horror of that second death from which He has already delivered you. All the decency in your inmost soul begins to assert itself and you are “reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:18-20; Rom. 5:11).

With the cart behind the horse in proper order, the moment you are “reconciled to God,” you find yourself reconciled to His holy law, which is His will for you; and what you once found boring and distasteful begins to become for you what it was for Jesus—He said “What’s fun for Me is to do My Father’s will and to finish His work!” (see John 4:34).

Life today is solemnly Exciting—more than at any time in 6000 years: this is the cosmic, grand “Day of Atonement.” It’s the antitype of ancient Israel’s one Day of days when the nation was in such heart-stopping excitement that they ate nothing all day. They (and God, too!) were on trial in an awe inspiring Day of Judgment. But now the real thing is going on.

In Israel, it was the one Day of the year when everything got straightened out and all questions were answered. At Day’s end, the nation was in heart-oneness with God. In miniature, “the great controversy” (between Christ and Satan) was finished. Sin and sinners were no more. The entire nation was clean. One pulse of harmony and gladness beat throughout. Sin and sinners were as no more. Life and light and gladness flowed from the Lord. It seemed to Israel, all things in their unshadowed beauty and perfect joy declared that God is love—on that one grand day of the year, the Day of Atonement.

Now the message from our great High Priest, Jesus Christ, is this: “be ye reconciled to God”(2 Cor. 5:20). “Atonement” is not obscure Latin, Greek or Hebrew—it’s pure simple Anglo-Saxon, “be at-one with God.” It’s time for your doubts to be resolved, those deep feelings that He has not been fair with you. It’s time to join that distraught father in Mark 9 who cried with tears (when everything seemed against him), “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief” (vs. 24). It’s time for “Jacob” the Supplanter to wrestle with God and get a new name, “Israel.”

But can we shake ourselves by our shoulders and just DO it—reconcile ourselves to Him? It means a change of mind (Greek, metanoia) which actually is repentance. Now wait a moment: do we have a self-start button to press for “repenting ourselves”? Acts 5:31 says it’s a “gift” from our “Prince and Saviour.” A “gift” is not what you work for.

Which reminds us: the Israelites never “cleansed” their own sanctuary: the high priest alone always did it. It wasn’t a works-trip for them. Yes, bitter as this pill may be for do-it-yourself legalists: we have to LET Him do it for us and in us on this cosmic Day of Atonement. He takes the initiative and we cooperate “through faith.” So stop resisting the blessed Holy Spirit. Your High Priest loves you more than you ever dreamed He does. To understand, “behold” and “comprehend” what happened on His cross.

Talk about vivid, intensely interesting language! The Bible tops all books.

Ezekiel tells how God showed him Israel as a valley filled with dry bones, “bleached by the sun,”—a vast panorama of spiritual death. Then He asked the prophet a simple question: “‘Can these bones live?’ I said, ‘Master God, only you know that.’” It was a representation of the spiritual state of God’s true church then. The primary focus of the vision is not the physical “first resurrection” and the “new earth,” although that can be one application. But no one who is spiritually dead now will have a chance of coming up in the “first resurrection.” It’s NOW that we must experience a living conversion.

According to what Christ says in Revelation 3:14-21 of His true church in these last days, “the valley of dry bones,” is disturbing. It’s not ancient history.

Ezekiel could have prayed for those “dry bones” 24 hours a day for a century (endless prayer meetings!), and nothing would have happened. (Some churches fast and pray and still nothing happens to change their spiritual death.) Now note: some ten times in Ezekiel 37:4-12 (Peterson), the Lord told the prophet what to do: “prophesy upon these bones”—and he did. God wasn’t about to resurrect them unilaterally; He demanded the prophet’s help. Even the final “breath” that entered them was the fruit of Ezekiel’s “prophesying” (vs. 10). They must have “the everlasting gospel.” The “dry bones” must be fed with the Word.

Is your church “dead”? The children being starved? The youth? Yes—pray; but don’t overlook Ezekiel’s lesson—nothing will work except the proclamation of “the everlasting gospel,” “the third angel’s message in verity,” the Word of the cross (Rev. 14:6-15). That will make the bones “live.” Yes!

How to have personal assurance of salvation is serious, because you can waste a lot of psychic energy worrying about your eternal future. All kinds of personality disorders can develop because of this deep anxiety, making not only yourself miserable, but others closest to you. The apostle John says, “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life” (1 John 5:13). Is that like knowing you have a certain amount of money in the bank? You feel better if you know it’s there in your name. Obviously, God does not want us to fret and worry.

On the other hand, He also wants us to exercise common sense. The Bible does not teach the heresy of Universalism. Clearly, some people, “the number ... as the sand of the sea” (Rev. 20:8) will not enter into eternal life. Christ will be forced to tell “many,” Sorry, “I never knew you” (Matt. 7:23).

So, how do we walk this fine line? Several Bible principles may help us:

(1) The only Person in the Bible who has ever been guaranteed eternal life is Christ Himself. God says of Him, “Behold My servant, ... Mine elect, in whom My soul delighteth” (Isa. 42:1). “I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on Him shall not be confounded” (1 Peter 2:6).

(2) All the rest of us are “chosen ... in Him” (Eph. 1:4), because His new role is that of “last Adam,” or second Adam. He is the new Head of the human race; and just as the human race is naturally “in Adam” by birth, so now by faith we can individually ratify His election of us “in Him.”

(3) He wills that “all men” should be saved (1 Tim. 2:3, 4); you waste your time if you worry about whether He wants you to be saved.

(4) His love is so strong, His persistence is so great as “Good Shepherd,” that He will continue to assure you of His search for you as His lost sheep.

(5) He claims you as His purchased possession, purchased with His blood.

(6) He says that He has you in His hand. “My sheep hear My voice ... and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any one pluck them out of My hand” (John 10:27, 28). “Assurance”? You bet!

(7) But let the common sense kick in right here: if you cling stubbornly to unbelief, if you deliberately choose to rebel, you yourself can jump out of His hand. So He says, “Abide in Me,” stay where I have put you by means of My great sacrifice for you (15:4).

If the Lord Jesus were to ask you to do something, would you be willing to do it?

Especially if it were to bring you joy forever after?

Here’s what He asks you to do:

We read from Psalm 27:

“When Thou didst say, ‘Seek My face,’ my heart said to Thee, ‘Thy face, O Lord, I shall seek’” (vs. 8).

That’s a simple, direct command:  Seek the face of the Lord Jesus Christ.

(a) That “face” is pure joy to see!

(b) But ever since the fall of our father Adam, we have had by nature a mind that is “enmity” against the Lord Jesus Christ, for we read: “The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8:7).

(c) In order for us to “seek the face” of the Lord Jesus Christ, we must turn away from the “face” of the fallen rebel angel, Lucifer, who has become the “prince of this world” (John 12:31).

(d) Give to the Lord Jesus your full attention; “wait” before Him as Psalm 27 says;  “wait,” patiently.

(e) There is no word in the ancient Hebrew for “patiently, “ it just repeats the word, “wait, wait, wait.”

(f) Do it, dear friend, today; receive the blessing that the Lord has for you!

What impact on your personal life today is in the truth of the New Covenant?

(1) All seven promises God made to Abraham (Gen. 12:2, 3) are made to you, for Abraham is your “father” by faith. God promises (a) to make of you “a great nation,” that is, make your life important; (b) “bless you,” that is, make your life happy; (c) make your “name great,” that is, people will respect you highly; (d) you “shall be a blessing,” that is, to others—out of your inmost soul will flow “rivers of living water” as Jesus said in John 7:37-39; (e) God will bless those who bless you, that is, He will honor you among your acquaintances; (f) He will “curse” anyone who “curses” you, that is, people will learn to respect you; (g) and in you, through your life, He will bring happiness to “all families” who know you, for they will be enriched with your “blessings.”

(2) SOUND IMPOSSIBLE? Well, it sounded so to Abraham, and to Sarah especially who just couldn’t get pregnant in order to have the boy baby “heir” that was included in those seven promises. So, it meant waiting a quarter century for the birth of Isaac, “the child of promise,” when everyone said it was hopeless. Sarah just couldn’t bring herself to believe, so she and her husband invented the Old Covenant in the Hagar/Ishmael episode. If you have been wrestling with unbelief in the darkness of discouragement, which is par for the course as a “child of Abraham.” (His descendants served for centuries in Egypt, thinking they were born to be slaves! They lacked Abraham’s faith.) But you can learn to believe!

(3) “You mean that I can learn to be happy as Sarah was at the birth of Isaac, even when my life has been ruined by divorce, illness, accident, loss of job, forsaken by friends, poverty, disgrace, prison?” Yes; choose to believe the promises of the New Covenant, for that’s what Sarah finally did when “through faith also [she] received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age because she judged Him faithful who had promised” (Heb. 11:11). “Delight thyself in the Lord; and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart” (Psalm 37:4). “Judge Him faithful”! That’s the first step.

The Lord Jesus appreciates His servants.

His favorite words to them are these: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: ... enter thou into the joy of thy lord” (Matt. 25:21), even if they don’t really deserve those good words.

That’s because of His “much more abounding grace” (cf. Rom. 5:20). It “abounds” more than our fallen human wisdom can appreciate.

When the Lord was confronted with the problem of an entire planet gone into rebellion and sin, He proceeded to solve the problem by an unthinkable way that shocked the entire unfallen universe: He frankly forgave all of planet earth’s sinners.

What He did shocks good people even today: they ask, “If He frankly forgave the world through Christ’s sacrifice on His cross, won’t that encourage sinners to go on sinning more and more?”

The answer is very serious; it appears to be “yes”: “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil” (Eccl. 8:11).

Wouldn’t God be wise to “execute” that “sentence” “speedily” so that sinners will fear more and more to go on sinning?

The Lord knows what He is doing: He doesn’t want to fill His glorious earth made new with people whose motivation for being there is fear. The only righteousness that can enter that eternal realm is the “righteousness which is of faith” (Rom. 9:30) that appreciates “the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love [agape] of Christ which passeth knowledge” (Eph. 3:18, 19).

Does the Lord Jesus Christ really NEED us?

Is He not the Omnipotent One?

As such, is He not automatically Victor in His “great controversy with Satan”?

Does it really matter to Him if we are loyal or disloyal? In the long run will He not win out, irrespective?

Let’s back up to the Great Event on Calvary’s cross: When Jesus was arrested by evil men, in Gethsemane, we read of His disciples that “they ALL forsook Him, and fled” (Matt. 26:56).

Let’s not forget that Jesus, although He was the divine Son of God, He had laid aside the prerogatives of His divinity, and He was now the “Son of man.” He was living our life, as One of us, feeling as we feel.

The pain of those spikes driven into His ankles and wrist bones was horrible, but it was nothing compared to the pain of His soul He felt when His chosen ones, the Eleven (Judas had already forsaken Him) turned away from Him. In the horror of the moment, could He have been tempted to fear that His mission might ultimately fail? After all, weren’t these Eleven a prophecy of the ultimate end of His “great controversy with Satan”?

Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if at least one of the Eleven had firmly declared to the Romans, “If you crucify this Man, you crucify me, too!”?

But there is no such story in any of the Four Gospels; there is no such Hero for any of us to exult in.

Whoever you or I could be today, the truth is that the Lord Jesus does need us to be loyal to Him; it’s too late in the day for Him to have to feel sad that we too have done what the Eleven did long ago.

It’s time for “144,000” of the weakest and most unworthy of earth’s inhabitants (in 6000 years) to “follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth” (Rev. 14:4). That’s our glorious opportunity!

Does Jesus answer questions when we ask Him?

He says, “Yes!”

“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you; for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened” (Matt. 7:7, 8).

It’s His character to want to respond to every hungry, seeking human soul; but there are questions:

“Why is it that often when we pray for something, we don’t get it?”

(a) If a child sees a flashy sharp knife and wants it and asks for it, the wise father will not give it.

(b) The Lord is our heavenly Father; we are to Him little children; He manifests His love to us in saying “No!” to our misplaced prayers.

(c) But He goes a step further in His love for us. If, for our good, He must say “No!” to this or that prayer, He emphasizes His love for us by giving us something else that this time is good for us—something we have been too blind to see or too naive to desire.

(d) A child has no idea what wonderful life career his wise father has prepared for him; the only earthly career or activity that we will be happy for in eternity is the soul-winning activity that we have been involved in.

(e) And there is nothing the Lord is more happy to give us now than the ability to win some soul for eternity.

(f) It may be that what is needed is not some lengthy, involved, theological “Bible study,” but a few words of understanding love and appreciation; Jesus says to “ask” Him to give them to us; He will.

(g) Now, it’s your job to pass them on; some word that will build up, elevate, encourage someone who is wishing he/she knew how to follow Jesus in salvation—

(h) Practical, down to earth, heart preparation for the return of the Lord—as He has promised when He said, “I will come again” (John 14:1-3).

(i) He is like a bridegroom who feels he can’t wait for the wedding to take place: so far, Jesus has had to be a disappointed Bridegroom.

(j) The story is in the Song of Solomon 5:2-4—note the last part where the bride-to-be finally forgets her own comfy warmth in bed on this rainy night and she begins to think about her lover, the one man in the world who loves her truly, is outside in the rain “knocking” on her door.

(k) Finally, the inspired story says, her heart was “moved for Him.”

(l) Has that moment come for the Lord’s world-wide church?

Someday you and I will be in God’s eternal kingdom of glory, thanks to our Savior. We’ll look back on our earthly pilgrimage, wondering why it took us so long to overcome our worldliness, our selfishness, our sinful addictions, yes, our Laodicean lukewarmness. We will see that pure “river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Rev. 22:1).

“The Lamb”? Yes, the crucified Christ. We will at last understand why Paul said long ago that he would “glory” in nothing else “save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal. 6:14), why he “determined not to know anything among [us], save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). We will then begin to understand, “clear as crystal,” how Christ as the Lamb of God “tasted” our second death, endured the horror of hell in our behalf, endured being made the “curse of God,” “made to be sin for us, who knew no sin,” experienced in Himself all the agony of the total of all our human terror multiplied by the unspeakable agony also of divine terror, endured to the fullest the reality of every man’s worst nightmares,—and then at last we will sing with new understanding the anthem, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain” (Heb. 2:9, Gal. 3:13, 2 Cor. 5:21, Rev. 5:12).

But what a pity if we can’t begin to understand all that today! Or can we? If we could, we would find the victory over our worldliness, our sinful addictions, yes, our deep-seated selfishness, not sometime far off in eternity but NOW, today. True, a little child can’t appreciate what happened on the cross; he/she can only laugh and coo and enjoy his superficial level of life (thank God he/she can!). But who of us is content to remain a little child forever? Is it not time to begin to “grow up into Him,” to “come” into “the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown person, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13)?

Ask the Father to lead you to His Son’s cross so you can begin to see what happened there. You’ll never be the same person again.

There is nothing the Lord loves more to do than to lift the burden of fear and guilt that oppresses a human heart.

He says to us all, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).

The “coming” implies for us all, that we confess to Him our sin; we must get it off, away from, our heart.

But what is our sin?

Paul says that our “carnal mind” is “enmity against God” (Rom. 8:7). And “enmity” is something that always ends in the murder of the innocent one, according to John: “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15). Already is!

Therefore, if we have a “carnal mind,” that carnal mind is “enmity,” and the result is inevitable; enmity against a “brother” is already the sin of murder.

Therefore, it follows: if we all as fallen humans have a “carnal mind” which is “enmity against God,” we all share the guilt of the murder of the innocent Son of God.

But that is a corporate sin; and, the only repentance which is appropriate for a corporate sin is corporate repentance. And therefore that is what the Lord Jesus calls us to experience when He says to Laodicea, “Be zealous, therefore, and repent” (Rev. 3:19).

We cannot repent on our own—repentance is a gift (see Acts 5:31, “God exalted [Him, Jesus] ... for to give repentance to Israel”).

Let us receive the gift that Heaven waits to give us!

Someone writes from far away saying that he is “spiritually starving, for Bible study and prayer are sometimes tasteless.”

Is there anyone one who can testify that he/she has never felt this way?

The fault lies with “Babylon,” that great system of false and counterfeit faith that has removed Christ far away from us because:

(a) Babylon teaches that in His incarnation Christ did not take upon Himself our true human nature which is fallen and sinful, but Babylon teaches that Jesus took upon Himself the sinless nature of Adam before the Fall, so that therefore Christ is separated from us, removed far away.

(b) If Babylon is right, then Christ could not be the One that Hebrews describes as “touched with the feeling of our infirmities,” and “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (4:15).

(c) But Babylon is wrong; for Christ has come all the way to where we are in our lost and sinful condition, yet without sin. He has “condemned sin” in our fallen, sinful flesh and proved for all the world and the universe to see that if one has a fallen sinful nature he need not continue in sin.

(d) Now the Lord says, “Come out of her [Babylon], My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues” (Rev. 18:4).

(e) Around the world there are”144,000” people who believe the truth and have chosen to “come out” of Babylon, and to “follow the Lamb [the crucified and risen Christ] whithersoever He goeth” (Rev. 14:4).

(f) Come, join them! “And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” (Rev. 22:17).

When the Lord’s people on earth rebelled against Him in sin, this planet became the only one in the universe in rebellion against God. This presented the Lord with a new and serious problem: what to do.

To the utter surprise of the vast unfallen universe, the Lord solved the problem in the most unthinkable way: He frankly forgave us all.

The apostle Paul thought it through, and he has written out the story for us in Romans 5:

“It was through one man [Adam] that sin entered the world, and through sin death, and thus death pervaded the whole human race, inasmuch as all have sinned. [That last phrase in the Greek suggests that we can’t blame Adam entirely for our plight, because we have all done what he did—sinned].

“... But God’s act of grace is out of all proportion to Adam’s wrongdoing. For if the wrongdoing of that one man brought death upon so many [everybody!], its effect is vastly exceeded by the grace of God and the gift that came to so many [everyone] by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ. And again, the gift of God is not to be compared in its effect with that one man’s sin; for the judicial action, following on the one offence, resulted in a verdict of condemnation, but the act of grace, following on so many misdeeds, resulted in a [judicial] verdict of acquittal. ... Much more shall those who in far greater measure receive grace and the gift of righteousness live and reign through the one man, Jesus Christ.”

So, what is Paul’s point?

“It follows, then, that as the result of one misdeed was condemnation for all people, so the result of one righteous act is acquittal and life for all” (vss. 15-18, Revised English Bible).

(a) Since the world began there has been only one act of “righteousness” ever performed—the sacrifice of Christ.

(b) On God’s part, it is a gift given.

(c) Our salvation personally therefore consists simply in a gift received.