“And the Lord said, Whereunto then shall I liken the men of this generation? And to what are they like?

They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you (played the flute for you) , and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept.

For john the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil.

The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans (tax collectors)  and sinners!

But Wisdom is justified in her children.” Luke 7:31-35 

Most ministers, teachers, and believers can certainly identify with his statement and now more so that ever and rightfully so. Many of us have been calling it for years, I myself often at times feeling like “Chicken Little’ when trying to warn the world that things were coming and and all that glitters is not gold and when it comes to the written word of God and all that has been foretold, has, is, and will come to pass, just as he said that it would.  And through it al people have scoffed, pondered, and tried to logically reason, just how they could not see how any of these things could take place.

Well they have,and they are, and they will continue to do so, so I am not even going down the list of all the woes because all we need to do is watch the news to know all about it and you already do.

And when it comes to sharing the Gospel and trying to win souls and in my case, trying to  enlighten people to all the dangers seen and unseen and those that dangers that they just do not want to acknowledge, you know the “little foxes” that the Bible warns us of.

We do tend to like what works for us and we are super efficient at justifying behaviors, actions, and thoughts whether or not we can line those up with the word. Which is what has led us to where we are now, when the Gospel is often watered down and very user friendly and that’s the deal, right there.

Our human nature is quite the beast and since the rebellion in the garden it has been on.

Check out this passage from 1 Samuel 15:22,23, we’ll pick it at Samuel’s reply to Saul after Saul had disobeyed God and quickly justified himself while blaming his people for that disobedience, and trying to convince Samuel that that act of disobedience was actually intended  for good,and it was going to cost, and it was going to cost him his crown.

“And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken (listen) than fat of rams.  

For  rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.  Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected the as king.” That one verse covers it so well, rebellion, just good old fashioned,  attitude, nothing more than an attitude of “I don’t have too and you can’t make me”.

This has been our issue since the garden, afterall, that was exactly what Eve did, the serpent convinced, she’d be fine, she’d be smart and there wasn’t anything bad really gonna happen if she just took a bite.

And we also know she took the bait, and she took the bite, and that ONE SINGLE ACT, even though all three of them were in trouble with God and Adam very much alos sinned and was just as guilty, still it was ONE moment, ONE act of disobedience and look at the price that has been paid to repair the damage that ONE action had caused. But what I want to focus on is this, God told them to destroy these things because these things would be dangerous to them.

God,as we all know told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit because He knew what the outcome would be, it destroyed everything they had known and people upon people to us, even today are still in our state because of that failure to take him at his word and trust that his way is best and that whatever he is telling us to do or not to do it I ALWAYS for our good.

He is God, we do not add anything to him, he has NO pleasure in anything bad befalling us, quite the opposite, He tells us these things because  He love us and wants good for us. He has absolutely NO pleasure in us being hurt, lost, sad, or destroyed by sin, alcohol, or pagan beliefs.

He is pure love and pure mercy and He  loves us and his command to obey him is that we listen to his word, listen to that little voice inside that warns us of bad decisions and dangers ahead, not because he power trips, and Oh my, who could have better reason to?

Who would ever have more right to display their absolute power over life, death, heaven, hell and all of eternity, than the one who CREATED all these?

He is God, He CREATED everything, everything that was, is, or ever will be! Why would he need to “torment’ humans to feel powerful? He IS all the power!

BUT God is NOT like that and those who believe their rebellion against him is justified only do not realize that they are helplessly deceived and that Satan is feeding them with that same food he had Eve swallow.

So as Jesus said so beautifully, as is ever word that flows from his lips, utter perfection, the maturity level not quite there, wanting to be catered to, self desires and self willed, and all about them, so they are offered music, joyous music to lift them but no, they will not dance, no matter how the Gospel is “packaged” and I don’t think it should be, BUT I do understand the thought behind it, and as Paul said he “became” all things to win some, so I dig the need to connect to wins souls, but I think we can all admit, it has went way too far, and in that produces the candy coats, because we took the Gospel completely out of it in order to get people in “churches’ and there is absolutely no salvation without repentance and you can not have repentance while in constant state of sin.

So we played those “flutes”, we tried we showed the beautiful, the exciting aspects of serving God and still they “danced” not, they did not accept the joy, the freedom that surrender to Christ would have given them.

So we cried, we cried and we have wailed, howled, begged, and pleaded, Please, please wake up,please take notice of all we say, and please acknowledge your mortal soul,because the days are numbered and even if we had all the time in the world (which we don’t) still none have the promise of the next breath.

We cried out for years to be careful in your steps, we cried to stop killing the innocent and slaughtering the babies, we have cried that judgment would come if repetenace did not come soon, we have cried that Babylon the Great will be destroyed from the face of earth and we have wailed that all the destruction  detailed in the Book of Revelation will surely come upon this earth and yet, not one tear, because they scoff, laugh, and absolutely refuse to believe, but God does not need us to believe in him.

That has always amazed me when people are so adamant that they do NOT believe in God, and yet that does NOT prevent his existence.

And one day they will understand that whether they choose to believe or not, he  will make believers of them all, and that is not to say they will serve him or surrender to him, but that is saying that they day is coming that they will NO longer have the option of  saying that “don’t believe” when the are faced with his rule over this earth.

So all, in all, no matter what we say, or how we present there will be those who will not be happy with any of it.

So we have piped, we have cried, and now it is time for us to offer a very simple proposal to the world, it is useless to resist, think of it as the old saying, “We can do this the easy way or we can do it the hard way” and to put that in perspective, we lay down some facts.

We all belong to Jesus anyway, even if we rebel, even if we never come to him, never convert, never acknowledge him, we will be condemned in that state but we STILL belong to him and we are all responsible for our choices, as we will be only responsible for our decisions to accept him NOT whether or not anyone else does, or whether or not anyone else in our lives will be happy with that decision.

“The word of the Lord came unto me again, saying, What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children teeth are set on edge?

As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel, BEHOLD, ALL SOULS ARE MINE; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sinneth, it shall die.”Ezekiel 18: 1-4   

That is where that rebellion comes into play,people rebel against God because they want to think their in control and that their logic is far superior to ancient wisdom, and that all that is is what they perceive life to be but we can never know the joy of the Lord or the peace or the fulfillment of the very desire of our soul UNTIL we know the Lord, but that rebellion inside prevents us from coming to that place because we can’t feel it or logically analyze it because we have never known it and the biggest thing we need to stress here is again, we are born carnal then we BECOME spiritual, so it can’t be based on what we think we know because once we are in the family of Christ we realize really fast that that no matter  what we thought we knew, we had actually known nothing!

But we ALL were created and HE is our Creator and there is nothing, nothing, no belief system, no scholar, no philosophy, NOTHING that can EVER change that fact.

So here we are, one of my favorite accounts in the Bible, very familiar,Paul, (whose name was still at the time Saul, God later changed it) in the height of his persecution of the church, he is prepared, fully legally authorized to bring the men and women of God, bound, beaten, whatever he chose back to Jerusalem, but this was not going to be quite the trip he bargained for, God was going to make a believer of the very one one who sought to destroy the believers.

“And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus; and SUDDENLY there shined round about him a light from heaven. And he fell to the earth (fell down on the ground), and HEARD a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou Lord?  and THE LORD said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest; it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”  Acts 9:3-5

Love that! Jesus was basically telling Paul that it was “useless to resist”, He had him, there was nothing, absolutely nothing or anyone else could do to deliver him from the hand of Jesus, so it would be in his best interest to surrender.

And remember, now, that Paul had truly believed that the followers of Christ were deranged heretics, he thought he was doing something good by ridding the world of them! That’s the point, we can believe lots of things, we can be very intelligent, and have what we feel are honourable intentions and still be so far off point and be so very wrong and such as in Paul’s case, we can be in very dangerous territory. Jesus could have destroyed him at any time, he could have destroyed him at birth, never even let him make it that far.

He could have destroyed him at  any time as he persecuted God’s people but Jesus wanted Paul to KNOW his real purpose in life and as we know that purpose was a mighty mighty ministry complete with his writing much of the Bible we have today!

Paul at that point became  a believer and went on to know the beauty, mercy, love of Jesus that he could not understand by seeing it in others, he had to be made to know it for himself, but once he knew it, he NEVER wanted anything more.

Because once you have encountered Jesus, and believe me, encountered is a very accurate word, you will NEVER be the same and you will NEVER want to be the same. Paul went the “hard way”, many of us have, myself included, had to have my life destroyed to the point, as all I can ever say is that, Jesus saved me when there wasn’t much left to save and so many of us do go the hard way and that is our biggest regret, Oh if we had only knew, not what we were missing but WHO we were missing!

But that’s what happens when we run, and run from God, we miss out on so many blessings and a love and peace that can’t even be described, you are complete because you are reconciled to the one who holds your very soul in his hand.

And it is in this you realize that he really does love you and only wants the absolute best for you and died and rose again so that you could have it!

So to sum it up, we got a lot going on around us but the focus should be this, Jesus Christ IS returning to this earth, He WILL set up his Kingdom, New Jerusalem, which will be brought DOWN FROM HEAVEN, and He WILL reign over the nations and ALL the people that are left of this world.

The most exciting words written:  Revelation 11:15: “And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, THE KINGDOMS OF THIS WORLD ARE BECOME THE KINGDOMS OF OUR LORD, AND OF HIS CHRIST; AND HE SHALL REIGN FOR EVER AND EVER.”

It is highly recommended to do it the easy way, you will be so glad you did! but either way, everyone will know that HE IS and THAT HE IS GOD and it is absolutely useless to resist him.

Φλογιζω 2020 NBJ Rev. Nina Brown Johnson

I love this song and I can only imagine the beautiful, beautiful praise that will one day flow from New Jerusalem throughout this earth!