SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/17/2025 11:13 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-4 “Difficult Experiences”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 2 Timothy
3:11-13
Message of the verses: “11 persecutions, and
sufferings, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium and at Lystra;
what persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord rescued me! 12 Indeed,
all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. 13 But evil men
and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being
deceived.”
I will get to the end of this section in a moment,
but as I look at the title that John MacArthur has chosen to use for this
section I cannot help but think of the difficult experiences that my wife is
going through at this time in her life.
I have mentioned that on the 25th of February due to some
tests that we knew that she had cancer and this has set off for us some
difficult circumstances. We both know
that the Lord is in control of these circumstances, and we both trust the Lord to use these
circumstances to bring glory to Him, but none the less they are difficult to go
through. My wife, like all true
believers is in the hands of the Lord and He knows best and will give us both
comfort as we face these difficult circumstances. She has since had surgery which turned out
well, but it is believed that there is still some cancer in her body, and for
that we covet your prayers as we move forward in finding the best treatment for
her. My feelings about cancer is that it
is an evil disease and whenever I read one of the Psalms that are called
imprecatory Psalms I can’t help but think of cancer.
Now
back to where we were in commenting on these verses and I will begin with a
perhaps stinging quote from John MacArthur’s commentary. “Self-centered Christians who serve the Lord halfheartedly
seldom have to pay a price for their faith.
They are of little threat to Satan’s work because they are of little
benefit to Christ’s.
“It
is those who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus [who] will be persecuted. The faithful believer should expect
persecution and suffering for Christ’s sake.
Not every godly believer will be maligned, imprisoned, tortured, or martyred
for his faith. Even Paul did not face unrelieved mistreatment. But all faithful believers should expect
opposition from the world and realize that, when opposition becomes severe
enough, they will suffer for their faith, just as did Paul and Timothy.
“Persecution
of the godly will continue until the Lord returns, because evil men and
impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. These are the very evil men and impostors
Paul had vividly described in the first nine verses of this chapter.
“Poneros (evil) refers to malignant
character or activity. In the parable of
the sower, Jesus used the word to describe Satan, ‘the evil one [who] comes and
snatches away’ the good seed of the Word that is sown in the heart of a hearer
(Matt. 13:19). Impostors translates goes, which literally refers to one who
wails or howls. Because sorcerers,
wizards, and magicians commonly use wails in their incantations, the term was
sometimes used to describe such people, and hence was used of any deceiver or imposters. If the Jannes and Jambres of verse 8 were
among the magicians of Pharaoh’s court, imposters obviously could here carry
the meaning of sorcerer. But Paul’s
warning to Timothy applies to impostors of any sort who pervert God’s Word.
“Such
enemies of Christ will proceed from bad to worse. Paul does not specifically state whether the
regression is internal or external, and it seems likely he was referring to
both. As men themselves proceed from bad
to worse, so does their influence on others.
“Paul
has already given assurance that there are limits to how effective these
enemies of the faith can be. They ‘will
not make further progress (v. 9a), because their stupidity eventually becomes
apparent to those who know the truth. ‘Their
folly,’ like that of Jannes and Jambres (v.8), ‘will be obvious to all’ (v.
9b). While they are deceiving others,
and being deceived by their own wicked foolishness, the people of God will
eventually expose them for what they are.”
I have mentioned many times that the Lord called me
to salvation on the 26th of January, 1974, and what he used to get
my attention of the end times, for I was afraid of what will happen at the end
of the world, and did not have the correct information to understand. The Lord used the preaching of Hal Lindsey
and his messages from the great book that he wrote back in the early 197’s, “The
Late Great Planet Earth” to open my heart to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as
my Savior and Lord. Well it has been 51+
years later and when one looks at the world now they can see that things are
getting worse by the day. Nuclear war
has just been prevented between India and Pakistan a few days go through the
efforts of our President, Donald Trump and wars from the proxies of Iran are
being defeated by Israel and the United States.
There still could be a war between Iran and Israel, with the help of the
United States, and all of these countries in the Middle East are mentioned in
what will happen in the end times seem to be aligning up in the place where the
Bible says they will be. My point is
that things are getting more evil each and every day as we move toward the end
of the Church Age, which will end with the Rapture of the church, and then
shortly after that the worse time in human history will begin in what the Bible
calls the Tribulation Period, which will last seven years and will end with
Christ returning to planet earth along with all the raptured saints to end the
war, and then the Lord will set up the millennial kingdom. After that there will be a short war and then
it will be over very fast, and then there will be what the Bible calls “The
Great White Throne Judgment” where only unbelievers will be in attendance, all
will be then sent into hell forever, the world as we know it will be destroyed
as seen in 2 Peter 3:10 “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in
which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense
heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.” Now notice the highlighted word elements and
this word means “basic building blocks” and we know that the atom is the basic
building block of all creation. The atom
is held together by the Lord Jesus Christ and once He releases His control over
the atom the entire universe will be blown up in one gigantic nuclear bomb. The will be a new heaven and a new earth that
God will create and this is where eternity will begin. Now here is what one must do in order to gain
heaven and miss hell and thus miss all the torment of hell. First realize that you are a sinner, you were
born a sinner and you sin because you were born a sinner. Next realize that God hates sin and sent His
Son to planet earth to deal with sin by dying on the cross almost 2000 years
ago. Next admit that you are a sinner,
and that Christ died for your sin, and then ask Him into your heart to forgive
you of all your sin and He will do that.
You will then at that moment become a born-again believer in Jesus
Christ and will one day be with Christ in eternity.
5/17/2025 12:04 PM
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