-----This world’s last hour has come ----- 1 John 2:18
The world and all that’s in it – what a sweeping concept.
30 - 33% of the world's population claim to be Christian.
These are people who have responded to a survey or on some way have professed their faith to be Christian. How many though, are truly saved into His Kingdom? How many know and follow Jesus Christ as Lord of their lives?
I still wonder about my early years, for though I believed in Jesus Christ and His crucifixion, I had not become a living sacrifice. I still went about living my life “my way.” Only when the wheels fell off did I realise that “my way” was a disaster.
Someone I thought of as a “Holy Joe” – you know, the sort of person who oozes Christianity, and scares the nominal Christians stiff with their fervour – asked me if I was born again. What was I to think? Here was someone who had “got religion,” a happy clapper of note, so my reply caused raised eye-brows and a look of shock. “I am a Christian,” I said, but I’m not born again!”
After all, I had been christened as a baby, confirmed as a teenager, and I went to church quite often, warming a pew and responding to the liturgy.
May she be blessed! She didn’t try to bowl me over with heavy preaching, and she remained my friend, accepting me with all my warts and hang-ups. Fortunately though, the Lord did not leave me long in ignorance as after the seed was sown for very soon afterwards John 3:3 hit me between the eyes!
I had been fed a watered down gospel by well-meaning, sincere teachers, but from then on I dug into the Scriptures myself.
We need to be sure that we hear the Word, understand the Word, and respond to the Word, for it is the Word of Truth.
Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world – wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important – has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from Him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on its way out – but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity. (1 John 2:15,16. The Message)
Dear children, this world’s last hour has come. You have heard about the Antichrist who is coming – the one who is against Christ – and already many such persons have appeared. This makes us all the more certain that the end of the world is near. These “against Christ” people used to be members of our churches, but they never really belonged with us or else they would have stayed. When they left us it proved that they were not of us at all.
(1 John 2:18-20 TLB)
These are the ones of Matthew 13:20. They received the message with great joy, but the soil of their hearts was shallow, so the seed did not take deep root, and when trouble came, or persecution because of their belief, enthusiasm faded, and they fell away.
But you are not like that, for the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you know the truth. So I am not writing to you as to those who need to know the truth, but I warn you as those who can discern the difference between true and false.
And who is the greatest liar? The one who says that Jesus is not Christ. Such a person is antichrist, for he does not believe in God the Father and in His Son. For a person who doesn’t believe in Christ, God’s Son, can’t have God the Father either. But he who has Christ, God’s Son, has God the Father also.
So keep on believing what you have been taught from the beginning. If you do, you will always be in close fellowship with both God the Father and His Son. And He Himself has promised us this: eternal life.
These remarks of mine about the Antichrist are pointed at those who would dearly love to blindfold you and lead you astray. But you have received the Holy Spirit, and He lives within you in your hearts, so that you don’t need anyone to teach you what is right, For He teaches you all things, and He is the Truth, and no liar; and so, just as He has said, you must live in Christ, never to depart from Him.
And now, my little children, stay in happy fellowship with the Lord so that when He comes you will be sure that all is well and will not have to be ashamed and shrink back from meeting Him. Since we know that God is always good and does only right, we may rightly assume that all those who do right are His children. (1 John 2:20-29 TLB)
Be sure you are of the ones who know Jesus Christ! And be ready for His 2nd Coming.
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