SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/2/2015
10:37 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Judgment Avoided PT-1
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Revelation
18:4-5
Message of the
verses: “4 I heard another voice from heaven, saying,
"Come out of her, my people, so that you will not participate in her sins
and receive of her plagues; 5 for her
sins have piled up as high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.”
In my Spiritual Diary from October 15, 2005 which is
entitled “Coming Out from Among Them: I wrote the following: “John now heard another voice and this is the
voice of separation that comes from heaven.
God has always wanted his people separated from those who are of the world
and in this case those who are of this “Babylonian Religion.” There are examples of this in Scripture of
God separating His people from those of the world, examples like when He called
Abram out of the land where he was living because the people there were
worshipers of idols and God did not want his people being influenced by idol
worshipers. God also separated Lot from
the influence of Sodom and Gomorrah because of the prayers of Abraham. The believer is warned in 1 John to not love
the world or the things in the world, and loving the world is like loving
commercial Babylon.”
We want to look at the word “another” which John
MacArthur says is the word “allos”
(another of the same kind.) He writes
that this “suggests that the speaker is an angle like the one in verse 1. The message he proclaims, ‘come out of her,
my people,’ is a call for God’s people to disentangle themselves from the world
system. It may also be an evangelistic
call to God’s elect to come to faith in Christ and come out of Satan’s kingdom
(cf. Col. 1:13). In both cases, the
message is to abandon the system.”
As we look back at some of the things we have already
learned from our study in Revelation we have seen that this will no doubt be
the largest harvest of souls for the glory of Christ that has ever happened, as
we first saw the 144,000 Jewish evangelists and then the two wittiness and then
we saw an angel flying in mid-heaven proclaiming the glorious Gospel. This does not take into account how many
souls were saved from the outcome of all those who had been saved through the ministries
mentioned above. Many people will die
for their faith in Christ during this seven years of tribulation, and I believe
that there will be many family members telling other family members to take the
mark so that they can survive the fact that they cannot buy or sell or be a
part of the economy if they refuse to take it.
I have to, at this time tell a story of a young mother who lived next to
me a while ago and God saved her in a wonderful way, and thus her life was
changed. She was going to a certain
church where the gospel was not preached in the true way and wanted to reach
others for Christ. Since I had been a
believer for many years I knew what she was going through and was happy that
she wanted to reach others for Christ; however I believed that this would be disappointing
to her and thought that she needed to get out of that church, but still
witnesses to people in the church. She
struggled with this and I left her alone to see what the Lord would do. One day she told me that she had read the
following verses from 2 Corinthians: “14
Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have
righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15
Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with
an unbeliever? 16 Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we
are the temple of the living God; just as God said, "I WILL DWELL IN THEM
AND WALK AMONG THEM; AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE. 17 “Therefore,
COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE," says the Lord. "AND DO
NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN; And I will welcome you. 18 “And I will be a father
to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me," Says the Lord Almighty
(2 Cor. 6:14-18).” The decision had been
made and it is a decision that we all need to make, not just deciding to break
away from a church that is not preaching and teaching the Word of God, but
being separated from the world system of which we can see what it is as we
study this 18th chapter of Revelation. Our roots cannot go down deeply or we will be
misguided and fall prey to Satan’s tricks.
I have a sign on my refrigerator that says “We are not human beings
going through a temporary spiritual experience, We are spiritual beings going
through a temporary human experience.”
We will continue on this theme in our next SD.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: “Therefore, come
out from their midst and be separate, says the Lord.”
My Steps of Faith for Today: Same as above.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Seven” (Genesis 41:53).
Today’s Bible
question: “On what should one set his affections’?”
(Good question)
Answer in our next SD.
9/2/2015 11:04 AM
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