Author: elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

This essay first appeared on The End Time in October 2009

Have you ever locked yourself out of your car? Or worse, your house? LOL. It’s always aggravating when that happens, and it happens to the best of us. Sometimes your child will lock you out on purpose, and you stand there begging and pleading, “Please open up. Open it. I said NOW!” Anyway, it’s always a relief when you get the key and let yourself in.

I was reading Isaiah 22 and I came across the verse containing the phrase, “The Key to the House of David.” It isn’t a long chapter but that phrase stopped me and I kept returning to it. Here it is:

“Then I will set the key of the house of David on his shoulder, When he opens no one will shut, When he shuts no one will open.” Hmmm. Isaiah is a prophetic book. We see in the prophetic book of Revelation 3:7 the same phrase is repeated.

“And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says this:”

Plenty of more scholarly folk than I have delved into the spiritual implications of these bookend phrases describing the Key of David. However, the Spirit is drawing me to the simple. The door and the key. The bible is replete with symbology depicting the Open Door and Christ is that door. Here are two examples.

Luke 13:24-
He said to them, “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.” Matthew 7:7- “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

However this promise is not open-ended. He will not stand as the open door forever.

He is also the key! The authority of the Church is God and He has given the key to Jesus, descendant of David, to govern. Though Jesus has sole authority, His mercy proclaims that we, His bride and soon to be His wife, will govern with Him. (Rev 1:5-6; Ephes. 2:6; Romans 8:17). We have received the keys to the kingdom. The guarantee of the open door will not remain forever, however.

“When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ (Luke 13:25).

Can you imagine that one day the door will be shut and the key will not ever enter the lock to open the door again? If you thought it was aggravating to be locked out of your car for a few minutes, imagine how it will be to be locked out of the Lord’s presence for all time.

Why is it that so many people stampede to get in the closed doors at Wal-Mart at Thanksgiving’s Black Friday, and do not stampede to get into heaven, with its infinitely more beautiful riches and goods? You, precious reader, can partake of the glories of worship of the Lord in heaven. Your trials and tribulations can be laid behind and your tears to be wiped from your eyes by your Maker. You must make sure you are in the right side of that (currently) open door. Be eager to ask forgiveness of your sins and make Jesus your Savior and Lord. Because, He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, … who shuts and no one opens… and that day when the door shall be shut is coming.

By Elizabeth Prata

Do you ever wonder how much, if anything, you will remember in heaven after the rapture or after resurrection through death? I do. I have unsaved family members and unsaved friends. If I am happy worshiping Him in glory, will I also not cry in despair because of the knowledge of eternal torment of my loved ones?

Yet Isaiah 65:17 tells us, For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. I would hate to forget His glorious creation and His many miracles and works!

Gotquestions.org deals with the issue by saying that “some interpret Isaiah 65:17 as saying that we will have no memory of our earthly lives when we are in heaven. However, one verse earlier in Isaiah 65:16, the Bible says, “For the past troubles will be forgotten and hidden from my eyes.” It is likely only our ‘past troubles’ that will be forgotten – not all of our memories. Our memories will be cleansed, redeemed, healed, and restored – not erased.”

Does that mean God will erase the memory and knowledge of sin from our minds? Will the memories that will be cleansed will be the ones that involve only sin, pain, and sadness? Revelation 21:4 declares, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

Further, the book of Revelation says that in heaven we will sing the song of the Lamb and of Moses (Revelation 15:3), which is a song about past history. So if we are going to sing about the great works of God in history we will be having memories of them. It appears we will not forget everything.

The verse in Luke 14:26 says,

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

Of course the verse is not to be taken literally. If it was, then Jesus would be violating the fifth commandment which says to honor thy mother and thy father. (Exodus 20:12). The verse is meant to demonstrate that comparatively, one must love Jesus so much that by comparison, one’s love for one’s parents is like hate.

So when in heaven, our love for Jesus will be fully made manifest because we will be glorified and nothing, such as our sin nature, will stand in the way of loving Him. Our joy will be so pure, so full, that comparatively, our remembrance of past sins will fade away. Beholding His perfection, in our glorified state, we can fully understand and know His decisions and His will is perfect. There will be no need to mourn.

Ultimately, of course, I do not know for sure. But one thing I DO know: God is perfect and He is righteous, always doing the right thing. I believe it highly likely we will forget and remember things in accord with what will maximize our enjoyment of God. If remembering something enhances our worship of Him, He will allow us to remember it. If it would hinder our worship of Him, He will allow us to forget it.

What do you think?

By Elizabeth Prata

Though we see the decline of culture, decline of peace, decline of the church, we remember that Jesus’s bride is BEAUTIFUL! His bride is spotless, glowing, holy and pure. He is purifying His bride daily, so that when presented to God we will be united in a holiness so astounding it is the very demonstration of the incomparable riches of His grace.

“And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:6-7).

In Revelation 19:7 “Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.”

I’ve seen several of my friends online appeal to the Lord for relief from this world by His calling all of us home. “Come soon, Lord Jesus” is the cry. I feel it too and say it in my prayers each day. After desiring for the Lord to call us home in the rapture, my next most fervent desire is for His Spirit to give me strength to do His will in a glorifying manner until He calls us home. “Thy will be done.”

One day, the preparations will be concluded, and we will enjoy perfect union and uninterrupted glory with Him. God the Redeemer sets Himself over the apostate world, with His bride at His side. What a glorious God we have.

By Elizabeth Prata
This essay first appeared on The End Time in January 2014.

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared,”
(1 Timothy 4:1-2).

What does a seared conscience look like? Like this:

Now as the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying, “Help, my lord, O king!” And he said, “If the Lord will not help you, how shall I help you? From the threshing floor, or from the winepress?” And the king asked her, “What is your trouble?” She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’ So we boiled my son and ate him. And on the next day I said to her, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him.’ But she has hidden her son.” (2 Kings 6:26-29).

You see the issue. The woman was appealing to the King for justice. For a breach of contract. But what a breach of contract! She was SO SEARED in mind that she never stopped to think of what she was saying. “I want justice because the other woman broke our deal to cannibalize our children?!” The horror is that she related this so matter of factly. The worse horror is that she was so unconscious about her sin that she simply and unemotionally stated the facts of the case without stopping to think of what she was actually saying.

That is a seared conscience.

That is also a judgment. Judgment for their apostasy was prophesied by Moses in Deuteronomy 28:56-57:

The most tender and refined woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because she is so delicate and tender, will begrudge to the husband she embraces, to her son and to her daughter, her afterbirth that comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears, because lacking everything she will eat them secretly, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in your towns.

Cling fast to the faith. In my opinion, this is why Paul said to take very thought captive, every thought. (2 Corinthians 10:5). Do not listen to liars with seared consciences, who have already been pre-judged for their lies by having the seared conscience to begin with. The road which they travel and lure followers only gets darker and more evil with every step. As with everything biblical, there exists a progression. Ascent into holiness and then glorification is a process and descent into evil and the final apostasy is also a process. It all begins with one step.

This is where sin brings the unwary to: cannibalism…and worse. How can it get worse you ask? Apostasy is a terrible thing. It brings people so deep into sin they can’t even feel their sin anymore. People who have seared consciences are not only sinners, but are “inventors of evil”! (Romans 1:30) Worse, they not only sin deeply, don’t care, and invent ways to perform more evil, but they give hearty approval to those who practice the evil. (Romans 1:31).

Times of great apostasy are always dangerous for the vulnerable- the physically vulnerable and the spiritually vulnerable. In the Tribulation, the vulnerable will be at most risk once again. (Matthew 24:21-22; Luke 12:51-53). It will be a free-for-all of sins like we saw in the 2 Kings passage. A seared conscience is a terrible thing.

If you still feel conviction over your sin, great! Keep that feeling alive by remaining in a humble and penitent relationship with your Holy God. If you do not feel the same about sin as you used to, you must check yourself to see if you are in the faith. (2 Corinthians 13:5). If you don’t, you know the outcome. You will get eaten up- either by your neighbor because love has gone cold (Matthew 24:12) …or by satan, for the wages of sin is death.