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Tag: Revelation

The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John

lord. What does it mean?

Jesus is Lord.

What does that mean?

Is this a Kingly title… like, “Sir Jesus, most exalted ruler” of someone or some land or maybe even some angels? Is that what you mean by, Jesus is lord?

I say this tongue-in-cheek, but the question of the title ‘lord’ probably yields a not much better answer in most of our freedom-loving minds.

Lord: a broad definition from the Oxford dictionary

Origin Old English hlāford, from hlāfweard ‘bread-keeper’, from a Germanic base (see loaf1, ward)

Last on the Oxford list: Our Lord
10 Used as a title for God or Jesus Christ:

IF a man holds all your bread, he literally lords it over you – you are servant of the lord over the bread of your existence.

Think about wars and war lords (in the middle ages, the Islamic wars & Crusades); even now war-torn parts of Africa, Asia, Arab lands, the Middle East; poor European and Russian wilderness regions; poor areas of Mexico, Central and South America; many islands worldwide – lords of violence enslave and murder their unwilling victims.

Think about the dependence of the poor on the rule of an over-lord, cruel men commanded by evil and cruel men who control the bread, the rice, the trade, the labor, the sex traffic, the drug traffic, the oil…

Are there not lords of evil throughout the earth?

It is no wonder that Jesus Christ stated categorically:

“No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and money.” – Luke 16:13

It is a matter of life and death to be dependent on a lord. Indeed we are a slave to whatever or whoever feeds us when we have nowhere else to go or no one else upon whom we can rely.

The large master-slave story of the Old Testament is found in Exodus. Joseph was sold by his brothers (lords of the eleven tribes of Israel) into slavery in Egypt. Pharaoh later became lord and ruler over all the tribes of Israel.

The LORD, Jehovah,The Existing One, sent Moses to Pharaoh to demand: Let my people go.

The LORD will rule His people and He will only give them into the hand of another for His refining purpose.

Consider that in reference to God saving Israel from their Master, Pharaoh; and that the lord over the bread of our very existence is ruler over our lives; Jesus boldly proclaimed:

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” – John 6:51

Lord is used in other contexts of authority throughout the Bible. Sarah calls Abraham her husband, ‘my lord,’ for example. And Jesus points to His authority when He taught, “For David himself says in the Book of Psalms, “‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”’

Jesus had asked the traditional religious ‘authorities: “How can they say that the Christ is David’s son?” – Luke 20:41-47

The word “Lord” is used 7836 times in the King James Bible.

Authority must have some importance in the lives of the followers of God.

Simply stated: He IS God and we are not.

In these freedom-loving, self-serving last days, let christians recall the chilling (or should I say rather: the fiery, damning) words of Jesus:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” – Matthew 7:21

¹⁹Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

Let your ears hear, unfruitful christian, the damning caution of the one you call, ‘lord.’

Yes, we are free from the Law, from earthly rulers, even Bishops and over-lords. We have the grace of Jesus Christ and forgiveness of the Cross.

We need no intercessor (with exclusive access to the Holy Spirit) to intervene for us as Priest, father or mother of Perfect Son of Man. We need pray through no dead saint, alive in the Spirit. We are free from all of that.

Yet by the authority of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit: the saints (that is, you and me, beloved faithful brother, obedient sister in the Lord) have a relationship of love, a fellowship of grace and mercy with the LORD of all mercy, Lord of all the Heavens and the earth; Judge of all men, ruler of all creation!

Are we not, fellow men and women of dust, sinful in our every leaning away from our loving Heavenly Father, the command and example of the Living Son of God the Father, and the merciful leading of the Holy Spirit to the overflowing streams of Living Water – are we not perishing ashes of fools destined for the fires of destruction?

Who IS your LORD?

Is there not a price to pay for taking up the Cross of Christ Jesus?

Christians were persecuted in Rome, in Syria, in Greece, in Asia in the first century for proclaiming Jesus Christ as LORD. Are the days not coming, even this day for some believers, to suffer once more for boldly bowing down ONLY to Jesus Christ as our Lord and our Savior?

Romans 10:

… if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.”

The Revelation of Jesus Christ to the Apostle John:

19:16 On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.

He Was and IS and Is to come, the LORD!

Jesus IS LORD!

What does it mean to you?

What must you do now (while it is yet today)?

February 25, 2015
Ashes of Ash Wednesday + a Preparation of Repentance

Ash Wednesday

We pause momentarily today [AD 2022] from consideration of God’s love to prepare for the season of Christ’s Blood of Sacrifice.

Consider your own unrighteousness to receive any grace.

Bow down in the dust of your crumbling bones; cover with ashes your sin-consumed flesh.

Will the LORD not have mercy on me, a sinner?

Who will pay any ransom for your many sins? Who has redeemed the faithful who fall short of righteousness? Who only can cleanse the soul of sin and the heart of continual iniquity?

Jeremiah 6:26

O daughter of my people, put on sackcloth,
and roll in ashes;
make mourning as for an only son,
most bitter lamentation,
for suddenly the destroyer
will come upon us.

Mark 1

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John 3:3

Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you.

2 Peter 2:

But false prophets also arose among the people… And many will follow their sensuality… And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell… if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly… then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment…

Repentance Of Sinners: v.12

But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed… They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, while they feast with you…

Peter is warning the church here of those CLAIM to be christians, but actually are wed to Satan the master of their sin.

Is this not a timely loud caution for our contemporary church?

14 They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray…

20 For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.

21 For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.

Remember in ashes and dust, the turning of Judas from Jesus Christ, our only Lord and Savior.

The ashes of Ash Wednesday traditionally come from the burnt palms of the prior Palm Sunday, a day with the crowds shout, HOSANNA! The KING, our LORD Jesus approaches the gate.

Yet how quickly we turn on HIM, when we see the CROSS we must also bear to follow Jesus.

In this season of preparation for Easter, less than 40 days until the dark celebration of our own sin for which our Lord suffered and died on Good Friday, let us repent in dust and ashes before the Lord our God. Let us bow down to Christ Jesus, who suffered all for our sins that we might be redeemed by His grace to the Light of Eternal Life.

Hebrews 3

7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,

“Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion…

12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. 15 As it is said,

“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

Are you prepared to meet the LORD your GOD Face to face?

Are you prepared to face Jesus should today bring your last breath of life before eternal Life or prior to Christ’s triumphant return and Judgment?

Like Job, do you repent in dust and ashes before God?

Like Peter, do you come before Jesus Christ confessing, I am a sinful man?

Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Lord in these troubling times?

Mark 8: 34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? 37 For what can a man give in return for his soul?

38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

Yes, false Prophets will come, but the time is not yet.

No man knows the day or the hour. Some claim tolerance with darkness and Jesus.

He is NOT Christ to them. They twist truth into lies with self-serving sinful false prophesy!

Some proclaim loudly choruses of peace, while they proclaim God’s lands for the destruction of evil.

Our United leaders of this world excel as the Chamberlains of peace, rather than admit evil’s destruction of the truth and the truth of evil’s destruction.

Some sing loudly a Hallelujah Chorus to Jesus, while they lead astray softly in the sin of their hidden ways.

Are you a secretive christian, tolerant of those who hate Christ and the Cross?

REPENT in dust and ashes! For in these last days the signs are many and the Day and hour you do not know.

Prepare and wash your soul in the Blood of Christ Jesus, in preparation for the Good Friday of the Cross and our only hope and joy, the Resurrection and Victory of the love of God celebrated in 40 days (God willing) on Easter.

Revelation 7

A Great Multitude from Every Nation

⁹After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, ¹⁰and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

¹³Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” ¹⁴I said to him, “Sir, you know.”

And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

¹⁶They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore;
    the sun shall not strike them,
    nor any scorching heat.
¹⁷For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,
    and he will guide them to springs of living water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Revelation 11

The Seventh Trumpet

¹⁵Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying,

“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”

HALLELUJAH! CHRIST OUR LORD IS! JESUS CHRIST IS RISEN. HE WILL RETURN ON THE CLOUDS IN VICTORY OVER ALL SIN. HE WILL PUNISH ALL UNRIGHTEOUSNESS.

Repent, therefore, and worship Christ Jesus our Lord. Bow down only to Christ in the dust of your flesh and the ashes of your sinfulness. Christ Jesus IS and will judge you and me and all.

Remember you are dust and into dust you will return.

February 18, 2015
Prayer List
May our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus, who we worship with the Father and Holy Spirit, kneed our impenitent hearts of stone into soft sands of His overflowing love. Amen.

To begin, let’s not forget that God is a Person who cares about us. In Christ Jesus we have a personal relationship with the Living God!

And by our intimate relationship with the God of Heaven, a spirit to Spirit relationship the Bible describes as most like that of a wife to her husband, we have the intimacy of the love of God and the ear of His loving heart.

Who, then, do we pray for? (and to whom do we pray?)

Can we begin any relationship without attention given to the intimacy of love between the one who asks and the person we would have answer?

IF you ignore the loving question of your loved one, how is it that you ask God and expect to receive an answer? His is an even more intimate relationship, not unlike that of husband and his wife.

Did I say, ‘His wife?’

Yes. Unless we are submitted to Jesus Christ as our Lord, He cannot be the Bridegroom of our hope. What a shame that He would say to you, betrothed christian, “I never knew you.”

Prayer is most personal with the Person of God!

If we pray privately, which I pray you do and will do so even more, the intimacy will give you more understanding of His will, alongside your dedicated devotion to the scripture of God’s written and living word. (I am too often guilty of a lack of intimacy in my prayer with God, a lack of time and commitment.)

Privately, (& trying to praise and thank the lover of my soul) I ask God my Lord for what I need, showing me what I need rather than what I want which is not in His will. I guess that I would say that I NEED God to sustain me in my prayer for my own heart-felt needs.

Corporately, that is in praying as part of our church or a prayer group, I find that prayers like my deepest prayers to God are sorely neglected by most of those asking ONLY for prayers for others, not confessing our own deepest hurts, needs, and desires for God’s love and the love of our Christian community.

We border on hypocrisy in our false, hopeful faces before our brothers and sisters in Christ.

If we only ask prayer for our family, friends, loved ones and others, while hiding the depths of our brokenness from those who would, along with God, sustain us in prayer; is our prayer request not disingenuous, an easier substitute for our own heart-felt needs for love and prayer?

Our God is a God of relationships – loving relationships. We dare not neglect His expected intimacy in our prayer relationships in which we would intercede for others by our own prayers.

I pray first for my wife, then for our three (grown) children. I try to do this more than daily. This has always been my first priority of prayer.

I try also to pray for my Christian family, as if they are nearer to me than my own biological family; for through Christ in eternity, they are also adopted alongside me into His body, through the Blood of His Holy Sacrifice of love for all of our sins.

Pray first for the person. Pray then for their need.

I try to bow my head and thank God in prayer before I eat or enter into some activity of the day. (I seek to do this both privately and publicly as witness.) This is not so much about the person, as it is for our immediate need. For example, my wife once insisted on praying for our safety most times we left home in the car. Our security and safety are needs, of course. Yet the soul of a loved one is certainly more important to God and to me than any thing I might ask for a trip across town.

Is it right that one who claims Jesus as “Lord,” should pray for help in winning in the world so that they might live comfortable in Christ?

Do you pray that you or someone in your family will ‘hit the Lottery’ and help answer your unanswered prayers? Do you pray for a blessing from God, nearer than the blessing God already sent for you to have and to hold?

We know the true answer in Christ.

Yet is not forgiveness and grace so necessary in dealing with the struggles and sins of our most beloved ones as they trustingly share the concerns of their own heart?

The false face of our prayer requests (sometimes)

Some of the sins of our lives and struggles of our flesh remain even more as anathema to ‘church’ prayers. Who will hear our cries to God, a crying out for help, love, forgiveness and grace; cries from some of our beloved Christian sisters and brothers?

Dare you even mention one of these at ‘church?’

Dare your brother or sister even mention: an abortion, adultery, a homosexual experience, pornography or any other such ‘christian’ taboo?

Dare any of our Christian youth even mention the passions and indiscretions which most commonly lead to the pregnancies the church must hide? For that matter, dare one divorced, widowed or unmarried for a time ask the help of a brother (sister) in prayer for the same?

Dare any ‘grace-faced christian’ even reveal these struggles and prayers to a pastor, let alone a dear friend of the church? Again, let us be careful not to judge too harshly.

You know why you put on the mask of hypocrisy.

Do you not suspect that those you love in Christ are not threatened by the judgment of your rejection?

How difficult it is for us to not judge (for even Jesus would not judge). I am guilty. May the Lord have mercy on me, for I endure the punishment of His curse. Yet I include loved ones guilty of each or these sins just mentioned and more in my prayers to God.

If God can forgive them (should they turn to His love), how can I not also pray for their repentance and return to God through the same Blood of Christ Jesus shed for me?

David committed adultery with a woman and murdered her husband! Yet when the man after God’s own heart finally repented, David prayed:

Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment. – Psalm 51

How difficult it is for us to reprove in love – give a Christian sinner the help for which they have asked God in their own deepest prayer. How difficult to love AND forgive those most dear to us.

Yet by the Blood of Christ, God has covered even our sins of today (in addition to those long past).

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered. – Psalm 32:1

The revelation of God’s love for us is in Christ Jesus, who died on the Cross and IS risen! He hears our pray. Jesus hears our plea. He is revealed to us. We are freed by his blood.

Amazingly, by his blood, we are made His Priests and His intercessors!

Revelation 1:5 … and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood.

To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood 6 and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Help us, God. Help us, beloved believer. We all need prayer. Allow us, as His Priests to intercede for those near and dear to our hearts and our souls.

Who is important in your life?

Are you praying for your VIP in humble humility to God and asking your loving brothers and sisters in Christ to stand by you in prayer for their needs?

Who is most import in God’s will?
- A husband to his wife &
- A wife to her husband.
- BOTH parents to every child.
- a loving father to all of his children, at home and by example in Christ,
- a nurturing mother to all of her children, at home and by example in Christ.
We all FAIL in some of these most important relationships God expects from us in His love, don’t we?

So why not ask God, with whom we have a personal relationship in prayer, to help us to do what is right in His will and not our own?

And why not ask our most intimate of friends, Christian brothers (sisters), who care for us in Christ deeply, to support us in prayer for these same relational needs for the VIP’s of our daily life? Sometimes the difficulty of these struggles of life are more appropriate for a small group of believers or even one life-minded brother (or sister) in the Lord, than for the prayer list of the entire church (often as fodder for speculation and gossip).

It seems the ‘perfect christians’ must go to some other church.

OR perhaps some we know just hide behind their masks of Christ’s perfection.

Let us, dearly beloved of Christ Jesus, love them as He has loved us.

Let us bow down before the Lord our God in great humility, with hearts overflowing in love and pouring forth forgiveness, through our prayers for for the family of Christ Jesus. Amen.

How may I pray for you, adding you to my personal prayer list?

Please comment. If you would like any of our readers to also pray for you, please share your personal prayer needs with us.

(IF you would rather have your request remain private, please begin your comment with the word, ‘Private,’ and I will not post it publicly.)

Pray also for me, that I might return to a purer committed faith in God to both hear and answer my ceaseless prayers for my most beloved.

Roger Harned, author and site administrator
February 1, 2015