By Elizabeth Prata
I saw this meme on Twitter. The ‘best life now’ mantra offends me.
I’m personally glad that this is my worst life now. It’s hard and upsetting. I can’t wait until there is only joy and peace.
As for the unsaved, sadly, John MacArthur said at the Strange Fire conference some years ago,
All peoples need to hear this mantra, which is no mantra but only absolute truth:
From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 4:17)
By Elizabeth Prata
In Paul Twiss’ sermon in the series at Grace Community Church “Sundays in July”, at about the 25:00 minute mark, Twiss said,
There is a decided lack of virtue in society today. It’s an old-fashioned word, virtue. Virtue is “behavior showing high moral standards.” Synonyms might be: goodness, virtuousness, righteousness, morality, ethicalness, uprightness, integrity and so on.
Society is not exercising self-control, and that’s not a good thing. In large measure it’s because of our preoccupation with the idea of freedom, misconstrued. The way people think of freedom today is just licentiousness. We just substitute it for freedom and it’s wrongly used.
Another indication of a society not exercising self-control these days is because we have no end goal in sight. Society has no idea where it’s headed. We don’t know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it or where we’re meant to be going.
When you have an end goal in sight, all of a sudden the notion of self-control becomes a lot easier. Think of putting your 4-year-old in time-out because he threw the cereal bowl on the floor after you told him not to. If you just put him there, and he’s in there without an idea of how long, he will not go quietly into that good night, lol. If you tell him it’s 3 minutes, and remind him at intervals of the countdown, he will be more amenable.
Adults are like that too. Anything we do that has no end date is a lot harder to endure than one where we have an end goal, even if the end is far away. This American society is juvenile, and we are behaving like we’re three-year-olds in time-out with no end goal in sight.
Christians have an end goal. We know at death or the rapture, all our tears, trials, difficulties, and sadness will be washed away. We know that the self-control we’re developing as a fruit of the spirit has a purpose and we can hang on even as societal pressure mounts.
Unsaved people don’t have knowledge of release. They just live a life of spiritual anguish and confusion and sometimes great anger on earth feeling like it’s forever. They do not know it can end. That there can be peace with God on earth and joy forever in heaven. So their self-control goes out the window and they just “let it all hang out”. This was an idiom that entered American vernacular in the 1960s and it meant ‘be totally candid in expressing feelings and opinions; hold nothing back’. It’s been turned from a catchphrase to a lifestyle. And worse, a lifestyle where not only do the unsaved let it all hang out, but insist that others do, also. (Romans 1:32). Society is increasingly trying to control Christians by insisting on participation in their lack of self-control.
Restraining ones’ self in word and deed for civility’s sake, for politeness’s sake, for the sake of others around us, has become passe.
Of course a society on its way to total abandonment, populated by sinners galore, would soon turn that phrase ‘let it all hang out’ into a life trajectory of lack of self control. Lives lived with no virtue, honor, or dignity. Naked feminists in libraries flaunting to children, pedophiles clamoring for acceptance, Sodomy parades vying for attention, ‘proud’ of their depravity, and so on. A society that lacks self-control en masse is a society that impacts neighbors in highly negative ways.
The Bible commends self-control and discipline. We are told that self-control is fruit of the Spirit, an imprint of God’s presence in our lives. We are told to discipline and train ourselves to godliness (1 Timothy 4:7), to labor for habits and patterns that will drive us toward holy thoughts, holy desires, and holy lives. Challies, The Lost Virtue of Self-Control
As this American society collapses, the more we develop and display self-control, the more we will be shining the light in the darkness, even if the darkness comprehends it not. (John 1:5). But Jesus will be honored, and that is what we live for, with the end goal in sight, when faith becomes sight.
Westminster Shorter Catechism
Q: What is the chief end of man?
A: Man’s chief end is to glorify God,1 and to enjoy him forever.
1 Corinthians 10:31. Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. Romans 11:36. For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.
Psalm 73:24-26. Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God isthe strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.
John 17:22, 24. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one… Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.
By Elizabeth Prata
After the sorrow of Saturday afternoon’s mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, where after praying and thinking and mourning and pondering, I went to bed. I awoke to news that overnight in Dayton Ohio, another mass shooting had taken place. A man shot up a bar. Ten people were killed and 26 were injured.
All the people killed who went to grab a beer or go buy some crayons for their kid, instantly arrived up in either one of two places. No one expects this day to be their last day. But it always is, at some point.
I read these sad facts on Twitter from a news organization:
Dayton mayor: Gunman wearing body armor used large, high-powered gun with multiple magazines. Death and injury toll from mass shootings attacks in public spaces in past week across the US in Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Gilroy, El Paso and Dayton: At least 34 killed and 71 injured.
7 of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern U.S. history have happened in the last 7 years. With 20 confirmed dead in El Paso, it ranks as the 8th deadliest.
These shootings are happening because God has abandoned America. This isn’t unique to us here in America, it’s happened to every nation in history.
Acts 14:16, the apostle Paul said, “In the generations gone by, He” – God – “permitted all the nations to go their own way.” This is the story of history. All the nations of history go their own way. So like the nations of old, like the nations past, we follow the same cycle of having the truth, rejecting the truth and being abandoned by God. John MacArthur
In 2006 MacArthur delivered the sermon I’d quoted above, titled “When God Abandons a Nation.” I found it helpful then and I found it helpful this week. It explains the process from Romans 1 when “God has abandoned America to the effects of its sinful choices.”
This abandoning act on God’s part is the removal of restraining grace. He gives over a society to the their sinful wants, which only further depraves the mind and makes it futile. He explained here,
What is a depraved mind? Well, the word literally means tested and found useless, disqualified for its intended purpose, a non-functioning mind. Reasoning is so corrupted that it is crippled. The faculty, the intellectual faculty can no longer function. The moral law of God written in the heart has been literally stomped and replaced with cultural immorality. The conscience cannot function.
And so, says verse 28, they do the “things which are not proper,” not moral. So immorality goes in every direction and now you can’t find your way back because the mind is so corrupt. People don’t think right. People’s brains don’t follow the paths that they should.
They arm themselves and go into a public space and shoot people, children, and babies. No one in their right mind would ever do that. But these people are not in their right mind, they have been given over. Our nation as a whole has been given over, en masse.
Sadly, that means you never know if, when you’re happily shopping for school supplies at Target with your kids or attending a SEC football game with your husband or enjoying Shakespeare in the Park with your date and suddenly a mass shooting will happen.
Public spaces are some of the most dangerous places you can go these days. They will happen more frequently, as the statistic above shows. 7 of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern U.S. history have happened in the last 7 years. As God has given us over, the minds that are darkened in sin will deepen in their inability to find conscience, and we whose minds are full of His light will be subject to their depraved choices. That depravity shows itself in gunmen and murder and riots and moral chaos.
I’m sorry the news from here isn’t happier. But in a way it is happier. The more depraved the nation becomes the more it’s obvious we are progressing along exactly as God said we would in Romans 1 down the path of “no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.” (Romans 1:31b). Sin that has long been contained in a depraved thinker’s mind is now showing itself. Their inner pollution is worn as an external robe of corrupt unrighteousness, showing itself in all its inky sump.
Be ready, sisters, with scripture, with confidence, with patience for those among you and me who do not know Jesus. Their sinful mind will only sink lower and lower. We can and should share the light, in hopes that some, as we go through life in a nation abandoned by God, will repent and believe.
By Elizabeth Prata
This first appeared on The End Time on February 2012
How do you handle sufferings? What do you do?
Everyone is going through something. I go through things, usually invisibly. I don’t have a crippling disease or an abusive husband or children in trouble or a vehicle accident or a hospitalization or anything really noticeable. My trials are my autistic brain trying to navigate the neuro-typical society in which God has placed me. Squre peg meets round hole.
1. I tell myself that this present trial is not permanent. Even if I were to receive a fatal diagnosis or were to suffer in an accident where I was totally disabled, the trial is not permanent. It is temporary. This life is short, being but a vapor (James 4:14). A 20 or even a 40 year trial is nothing, compared to eternity. And thus far, thanks to God’s grace, I have NOT received a trial that has lasted all my life. At most, one has lasted 5 years, and most of the rest only a few weeks or months. So whatever I am going through will end. I tell myself that often, because it is true.
2. My trial is not as bad as someone else’s. There is always a Christian out there who is suffering more, and usually with more grace than I am, too. Am I in jail for my faith? No. Have I lost employment for my faith? No. Have I lost a child because of Jesus’s name? No. And in reading Paul’s resume of sufferings, being the epitome of how His grace is sufficient, I have nothing to complain about, even when I am at my darkest or my lowest.
3. I tell myself that He is Good. He IS Good therefore everything He does is good. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28).
Therefore everything He does is Good. Even Job, who lost all, suffered much, went through one of the Bible’s most difficult trials, it was Good. How so, you say? Job’s trial, his righteousness in looking to God in all things, his realization of his sin as a result, and his restoration was set into the Bible, to be read by countless millions of Christians going through trials and needing encouragement. Job’s trial was bad, but it helped millions, over thousands of years. Now that’s good! So as dark as my trial is, I know something good will emerge out of it.
4. I stay positive. I do not dwell on the bad part I am going through, but pray, read the Bible, and tell myself repeatedly that it is for the good. I apply 2 Corinthians 10:5 here, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” I refuse to dwell on how low I may be feeling, because feelings are ephemeral. I concentrate on God’s sovereignty, because I know I can rest under His control, even in the seemingly “bad” things. I take the negative thoughts captive while I allow the positive thoughts in. I focus on the promises, not the trials.
Romans 5:3-5 helps here, “And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” James 1:12 too.
5. Every time I have gone through a trial, I have gotten closer to God. Jesus is my Savior and Lord, and though I can never know all His ways nor ever plumb the depths of His grace, each time I emerge from something bad, I feel closer to Him. This is a good thing! I have that to look forward to on the other side. I have been the recipient of His grace, His comfort, His faithfulness. So even in the bottom of the valley I tell myself that the reward will be a closer relationship with Him. It keeps me going.
6. I read the Bible a lot. When I am going through a dark time, I wash myself in the Word even more than usual. I cling to it. I read it and chew on it and it fills me up instead of the darkness and negativity that would be there instead. His gift of spiritual armor is in place for a reason. It can withstand the fiery darts of the evil one. The Bible is truth, and it sustains us. I turn to it and appeal to the Spirit for encouragement. The Spirit assures us,
“Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” (Galatians 4:6).
The Spirit empowers us, “And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:49).
He helps our weakness! “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words;” (Romans 8:26).
If I do not read the Bible I would not be reading these truths about His work in our lives and His power to help us overcome.
These are a few of the things that I do when I come upon a trial, and I do have them. I am relentlessly joyful despite them, because the Most High is in my heart, helping me. I surely cannot do it on my own. But He is there, in so many ways. Never forget that, even as dark as it may get in your own life, dear brethren.
What do you do when you go through a trial?
Kay Cude is a Texas Poet. Used with permission.
By Elizabeth Prata
Shootings are horrible. Children who die in shootings is horrible. I work in a school. School shootings make me quake like no other. The reality as close to living a High School shooting as it’s possible to live, yet not be there was depicted on the Canadian TV show 19-2, season 2.1.
The episode was actually based on the Montral Dawson College shooting in 2006. Canada was not quite ready for the revisiting, even in dramtic TV form 9 years later, but they got it anyway.
Not that I’d want to live through it, but the way the series presents the situation realistically, but not gratuitously, & w/that famous long unbroken 13-minute single camera scene, haunts me. If you want to know what living through a shooting is like as a cop, a high school student, or a parent, watch 19-2’s episode of “School“.
You can see the episode on Amazon Prime/Acorn TV for $2.99. It is worth it. It is also as of this writing, on Vimeo. The episode was the most intense television or movie watching I EVER saw, to this day. I think it is the most intense television ever possible to watch. This episode is commercial free.
The Canadian magazine The Star wrote, “an episode that includes 60 of the most breathtaking minutes on television.”
I see tweets and comments making jokes about the El Paso mall shooting that occurred today in which 20 were killed and 24 were wounded. Some were children. Jerks immediately began politicizing it or over-layering race and ethnicity into it. After you watch “School“, then go ahead and politicize, joke, or crack wise about shootings. If you do, you will know you are mentally dead, emotionally putrid, and politically void.
By Elizabeth Prata
I have read that an active shooting situation is occurring at an El Paso, TX mall and Wal-Mart. A shooter has shot and killed multiple victims, (early reports say up to 21 killed, including 4 children) with more shoppers injured and transported to local hospitals. So far a suspect is in custody.
More information will be forthcoming as police conduct their investigations. On the news brief, the Policeman said that the crime scene area is quite large, and they were still going through to sort victims from potential suspects, and retrieving people who sheltered in place.
The news reported an eyewitness saying the man went from aisle to aisle shooting, with rage.
Last week there was a shooter at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California. A video of the event showed people running in a herd toward the camera man. “Why are people running?”, we hear on the video. Bystanders didn’t understand what was happening at first, and a women who was told, said “Who shoots up a Garlic Festival?”
Sin doesn’t make sense. We just have to live with it, and with the people with blackened hearts and depraved and futile minds who perform these deeds.
The constant barrage of sin coming against us tests our faith. I read tweets from folks saying they are devastated, when will it stop, they are sick to their stomach. I feel the same. Of course I prayed.
I also remember having those feelings I’d had before I was saved when this kind of thing would happen (admittedly less frequently back 40 years ago). In addition to all the questions noted above, I felt confusion, fear, and alarm.
Having the Spirit in me to open my eyes to why these things happen doesn’t reduce my sadness for the people experiencing the fear and panic of this kind of tragic event, but it does help in other ways. I understand why it happens. It does bring home the shortness of life especially compared to the longness of eternity. It does instill an ever growing gratitude to the Savior that I have peace and assurance, and that without Him, who knows what sins I might have been doing that hurt people.
Why does this happen? We are told why, humanity in its sin rebels against a holy God. I can’t imagine the spiritual anguish the alleged 21-year old shooter felt to shoot the man in the doorway at point blank range, then go up and down shooting others, including children. The brutality and unholiness noted in the list in the verse below will grow and grow and spread to more and more people as sin overtakes more and more people.
Difficult Times Will Come
3 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these. 6 For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, 7 always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. 8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith. 9 But they will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all, just as Jannes’s and Jambres’s folly was also.
That is quite a list of sins we have to live with. Did you know we are in the end times now? The “last days” are between Jesus’ first and His second comings.
In the article linked above, it ends with noting that as the evacuees from the Mall lined up on the sidewalk, a man with a Bible went up and down the line asking people to pray with him. As the darkness grows, our Light which is Christ in us should glow more brightly. We have the answers.
Sin forgiven, souls redeemed, familial adoption, a heavenly inheritance, an eternity of joy. All for the price of repenting. Call out to Jesus who saves, give up your sin, and be remade as a new creation, born again. (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Christians still feel anguish, but it takes on a new flavor. It’s not spiritual anguish, that’s calmed when the Spirit comes in and we are at peace with God. (Romans 5:1). No longer His enemy, we now look outward upon the anguish of the world that is without God.
No one on this side of the veil knows the date of their death. It could come in 80 years or it could come today. For the poor folks inside the store when the shooting began, some will never be the same, others who were killed met eternity. I pray that at least some of those were true believers, now rejoicing with Jesus for their life in Him. Others who are not in Christ, learned of their mistake, but will pay for it through all of the rest of time, forever. Ultimately, that is the anguish Christians feel when we read of news like this.
Repent and be reconciled, for we do not know what tomorrow brings.
And through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, (Colossians 1:20-22).
By Elizabeth Prata
In the beginning…what was the first thing recorded that God ‘saw’?
Light.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.(Genesis 1:1-3).
What was the first thing recorded that God said?
Light.
In my Spurgeon morning devotional, Spurgeon wrote that “Light is the cause of beauty.” Isn’t it funny when a seemingly simple phrase sends you off on a direction of deep pondering.
Light and beauty are companions. Beauty might exist, but it cannot be seen and appreciated until there is light.
God didn’t have to make the world beautiful, but He did. But if it was dark, we would never know.
In photography, there is the Golden Hour. It’s when the sun has slid down the sky to an angle where its rays that touch all things turn them gold. It happens the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset. The light is special then, bathing the world in a gentle blanket of golden light.
During the Renaissance the artists discovered ways to play with light, shadow, and dark. It’s called chiaroscuro (clear-dark).
Chiaroscuro in art, is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. The underlying principle is that solidity of form is best achieved by the light falling against it. Artists known for developing the technique include Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio and Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Goya. It is a mainstay of black and white and low-key photography. (Wikipedia)
The Renaissance painter Caravaggio is known for his mastery of the play of dark against light. Here is his Annunciation (1608):
We all know we can’t really have beauty if there is no light, but I had not thought about how light is the cause of beauty, as Spurgeon wrote.
The root of all this is of course Jesus. He IS the Light. (John 8:12). We cannot have anything, including beauty, unless it was made by Him, and for Him, and through Him. (1 Corinthians 8:6; Colossians 1:16).
If we say “Light is the cause of beauty” then we might as well say “Jesus is the cause of beauty”, then we might as well say “Jesus IS beauty”. Since He is the root of all things, the cause of all things, and the sustainer of all things, He is light and beauty itself.
His Light will soon, on that blessed day, be the only Light.
And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign forever and ever. (Revelation 22:5).
Imagine a world where it’s is always the Golden Hour, everything is always beautiful, and we can always gaze upon the root and cause of it all: Jesus.
Light is the cause of beauty.
By Elizabeth Prata
A man who wanders from the way of understanding Will rest in the assembly of the dead. (Proverbs 21:16).
The phrase ‘assembly of the dead’ is especially vivid. Assemble is active, but dead is passive. Inert, even. We don’t usually think of the dead assembling, or being assembled. But they will all be there, together, away from God. This is a horrifying thought.
I was struck by this illustration when I was looking for stock photos. The clamorous crowd of women reminds me of so many women today, prominent women, whose actions and teachings are a raised fist against God.
Contentious women, rebellious women, haughty women, are a dishonor to the Lord. Proverbs 25:24 says
It is better to live in a corner of the roof Than in a house shared with a contentious woman.
A woman like that is not easily lived with, not in the home nor in the church or in the denomination or in the global church.
No man or women decides to wade into the bog where death lurks. He thinks he is going “my way”, or the “right way”. Or even, the ‘It’s OK, Way”. This is the very bottom of the barrel of sin, which is pride.
Does man, or woman, know better than God? Will there be absolution for those who claim “ignorance of the Law?”
There is only one way, and it is the only right way, as the Bible shows repeatedly in Proverbs 16:2, 25; 21:2. To stay in what the Proverb calls “the way of understanding,” or the Gospel, we love God’s precepts, obey His commands, and mortify our own opinions and philosophies. (2 Corinthians 10:5).
The flesh will want to rear up, (Genesis 4:7, Romans 6:12), so staying in the Word and in constant prayer (1 Thessalonians 5:17) will subdue those inclinations.
Ladies, we are gentle, soft-spoken, kind, teaching and teachable. We are dignified and loving, patient and diligent. We’re moms and widows, virgins and singles. We are strugglers and overcomers, sinners and repenters, but most of all we are loved by Jesus as His own. We are and always will be part of the assembly of the living. Praise Jesus for that!
By Elizabeth Prata
The Time of Jacob’s Trouble as it is known (the Tribulation last 7 years) is about Israel. Israel is the hand on God’s prophetic clock. These things must come to pass as it is prophesied that Israel on that last day will stand alone with all her enemies around her.
A prophecy:
<i>The word of the LORD concerning Israel. The LORD, who stretches out the heavens, who lays the foundation of the earth, and who forms the human spirit within a person, declares: “I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling. Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves</i>.” (Zechariah 12:1-3).
Why? So that they turn to their Messiah, the One whom they rejected but now call upon!
Although there have been seiges and wars around Jerusalem before this time, we also know that this particular event is still future. The verse says “on that Day”, which is always a reference tot he Day of Judgment.
<i>For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery, lest you be wise in your own estimation, that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and thus all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, ‘The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob.’ </i>Romans 11:25-26).
That verse tells us that Jews in Israel will be accepting Jesus as Messiah during the Tribulation. He will remove the partial hardening so that they will see the truth and be able to call out to Him. At long last, they will ask for Jesus!
<i>And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son</i>. (Zechariah 12:10).
Though rejected by His own people for 2000 years, on that Day He will pour out grace. Not mete it out, not dribble it out, but POUR it out upon those who refused to know Him but now clamor for His grace.
the-end-time.org 