FRIDAY MORNING MANNA
January 2, 2015
Nathaniel Fajardo
Biblical Numerology: NUMBER TWO – Part XVII
HOW MANY CLASSES OF ANIMALS ARE THERE? – Part III
We take a necessary parenthetical break, as it were, from our ongoing series on classes of animals in order to greet and wish all a miraculously peaceful New Year!
Why miraculous? and peace instead of Happy? Because end-time prophecy, which cannot be altered “in one jot or tittle” by any false prophet or any church, graphically unfolding before our very eyes by the steady deterioration on every level and dimension of human society, endeavor, and environment, ominously bode darker and greater troublous times ahead. The time of the final test of the churches and the world is drawing nearer every day, every year. “Now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than we first believed.” Rom. 11-14.
Only a genuine miracle, i.e., exclusively by Biblical definition and standard (because countless counterfeits are being passed off by impostors of Christ and purveyors of the counterfeit gospel), has to happen this year in the hearts of those who truly “hunger and thirst after righteousness” and “godliness,” not merely its form. Christ’s promise to these is, “for they shall be filled.” Matt. 5: 6; cf. 2 Tim. 3: 5. Let all remember at that start of this year that:
(1) Salvation is individual. Eze. 14: 14, 16, 20; 18: 20-32. Not once-saved-always saved. Eze. 33: 7-20; 2 Pet. 2: 20-22; Heb. 6: 4-6.
(2) “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ., that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.” 2 Cor. 5: 10; cf. Eccl. 12: 13, 14. “The work of preparation is an individual work. We are not saved in groups. The purity and devotion of one will not offset the want of these qualities in another. Though all nations are to pass in judgment before God, yet He will examine the case of each individual with as close and searching scrutiny as if there were not another being upon the earth. Everyone must be tested and found without spot or wrinkle or any such thing {Eph. 5:27).”- E. G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 490.
This maddeningly elusive peace is still the same one that mankind in general has been desperately trying to corral since the fall in all the familiar and unfamiliar places and spaces, including outer space. And sadly, so late now into earth’s history and they’re still adrift—even farther from the real place where all true peace begins and emanates from—in the innermost space of the heart by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
E. G. White wrote: “Unbelievers have inquired, ‘Why are not miracles wrought among those who claim to be God’s people. Brethren, the greatest miracle that can be wrought is the conversion of the human heart. We need to be reconverted, losing sight of self and human ideas, and beholding Christ, that we may be transformed into His likeness. When this, the greatest of all miracles, is wrought into our hearts, we shall see the working of other miracles.
God cannot work through us miraculously while we are unconverted. It would spoil us, for we would take it as an evidence that we were perfect in Him. Our first work is to become perfect in His sight [not on our faulty eyesight and myopic spiritual vision], by living faith claiming His promise of forgiveness. ‘Ask what ye will,’ Christ declared to His disciples, ‘and it shall be done unto you.”- Manuscript 169A, July 14, 1902. David’s prayer, which should be especially ours, now, is: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Ps. 51: 10.
This peace is not the absence of strife, conflicts, wars or lulls from it such as the so-called Pax Romana (Latin for “Roman Peace”) about 206 years, 27 B.C to 180 A.D., or Pax Americana (Latin for “American Peace”) generally referring to the fragile man-made peace among the great powers of the world after the end of World War II in 1945, particularly in relation to America, or even to the one-day Christmas truce, whose 100th anniversary was celebrated this December, that took place in the fields of Flanders between the German and British forces during World War I.
A couple of things we can be sure of regarding Christ’s peace:
(1) It “passeth” or exceeds all human understanding yet it guards hearts and minds (Phil. 4: 7). Scientists cannot explain it, neither can the most gifted poet or writer, creative or technical. The humble and believing—which knows no distinction between culture, class, age, color of skin, academic achievement, or station in life—can, and must have it but only if it be accepted, possessed, enjoyed, and retained in accordance to, and in harmony with the divine Giver’s terms, conditions, and provisions,—all by simple, childlike faith in the word and the word only, as spoken by the Word in the beginning that was “made flesh and dwelt among us.“ John 1: 14: 1 Tim. 3: 16.
(2) It is the peace of the Creator and Redeemer, whom even His own people rejected (John 1: 11). Thus, they had no peace for they saw God in Christ, rejected Him and had Him crucified. Ah! “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.” Matt. 5. 9. “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right (power) to become children of God.” John 1: 12. Shortly before His crucifixion Christ bequeathed to His true disciples of till the close of time (after introducing the gift of His peace through the impartation of His supreme gift of the Holy Spirit, (verse 26): “Peace I leave with you, My Peace I give I to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” John 14: 27. “This peace is not the peace that comes through conformity to the world. Christ never purchased peace by compromise with evil. The peace that Christ left His disciples is internal rather than external, and was ever to remain with His witnesses through strife and contention.” – Acts of the Apostles, 84.
(3) “There is no peace,’ says the Lord, ‘for the wicked.” Isa. 48: 22.
(4) “Great peace have those who love Your law, and nothing causes them to stumble.” Ps. 119: 165. Jesus said, ‘If you love Me, keep My commandments.” John 14: 15.
(5). “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he trusteth in Thee. Trust ye in the Lord forever: for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.” Isa. 26: 3, 4, K.J.V.
(6) It certainly isn’t peace obtained by the art of compromise—politics—or through the popular doctrinal errors and ideas of the day. “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword [see Eph. 6: 17; Heb 4: 12, 13]. For I am come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.’ And a man’s foes will be those of his own household [including the household of faith, the church]. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.” Matt. 10: 34-39.
“The Savior bade His disciples not to hope that the world’s enmity to the gospel would be overcome, and that after a time its opposition would cease. He said, ‘I came not to send peace, but a sword.’ This creating of strife if not the effect of the gospel, but the result of opposition to it. Of all persecution the hardest to bear is variance in the home, the estrangement of dearest earthly friends.” The Desire of Ages, p. 357.
(4) All the boasted advances of the accumulated and combined wisdom, power, sciences, and wealth of the ages of worldly origin, will never be able to impart, even if offered gratis and with the best of intentions, the internal peace and tranquility sought by troubled hearts, families, communities, nations, religions, and the whole world itself. Only one peace will do—that peace promised in the grand anthem the angel choir sang above the lighted up plains of lowly Bethlehem at Christ’s birth. Listen to it: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.” Luke 2: 14.
From the inspired pen of E.G. White, we read in The Desire of Ages, p. 48:
“Oh that today the human family could recognize that song! The declaration then made, the note then struck, will swell to the close of time, and resound to the ends of the earth. When the Sun of Righteousness will arise with healing in His wings [Mal. 4: 2], that song will be re-echoed by the voice of a great multitude, as the voice of many waters, saying, ‘Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.’ Rev. 19: 6. . . .
The story of Bethlehem is an exhaustless theme. In it is hidden ‘the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and power of God.’ Rom. 11: 33. We marvel at the Savior’s sacrifice in exchanging the throne of heaven for the manger, and the companionship of adoring angels for the beasts of the stall. Human pride and self-sufficiency stand rebuked in His presence. Yet this was but the beginning of His wonderful condescension. It would have been an almost infinite humiliation for the Son of God to take man’s nature, even when Adam stood in his innocence in Eden. But Jesus accepted humanity when the race had been weakened by four thousand years of sin. Like every child of Adam He accepted the results of the working of the great law of heredity. What these results were, is shown in the history of His earthly ancestors [see genealogy, Matt. 1: 1-17; Luke 3: 22-28]. He came with such a heredity to share our sorrows and temptations, and to give us the example of a sinless life [see 1 Pet. 2: 2: 21-25].”
(Continued next week)