SPECIAL MESSAGE FOR WGM TEAM PARTNERS:
February 12, 2024
Straight Testimony to the Laodiceans – Part 13
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE LAODICEAN MESSAGE THRU THE YEARS (Third Part)
1899 – “The Laodicean message applies to all who PROFESS to keep the law, and yet are NOT DOERS of it. We are not to be SELFISH in anything. Every PHASE of the Christian life is to be a REPRESENTATION of the life of Christ. If it is not, we shall hear the terrrible words “I KNOW YOU NOT.’ Ibid, Oct. 17, 1899.
Note the following:
1) A mere “profession” of any thing is not the same as its actual “possession.” It may only be a performative “form of godliness but denies in substance “its power thereof.” Jesus made the difference plain between “saying” and “doing” in His parable of the two sons.
2) The Ten Commandments is an unbreakable unit, thus, “to break one is to break all.” The Jewish nation in Christ’s time zealously preserved, observed, and enforced by their religious authorities and own laws the inviolable sanctity of the seventh-day Sabbath—to the point that they even condemned Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath himself, of breaking the Sabbath by healing the sick. In fact, it was on the very Sabbath day that they plotted to kill Him! They honored and worshipped the seventh DAY Sabbath over the LORD of the Sabbath of creation.
3) Christ’s purpose and earthly mission as the promised “seed” and Messiah through His “great mystery of godliness” incarnation and “once and for all” sacrifice by crucifixion was in fact “to magnify THE LAW and make it honorable” by His own LIVING EXAMPLE. Only thus could He enable, empower, and expect the INDIVIDUAL, who considers and obeys Jesus as his PERSONAL Savior, to “overcome even as He overcame. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” The old covenant was made with Israel as a nation. But the new covenant is made with the individual. Thus, “work out your OWN salvation with fear and trembling for it is God that worketh IN YOU, both to WILL [i., e., to exercise one’s power of choice as a free moral agent] and to DO [willingly and lovingly obey] His good pleasure.” The “hope of glory” is “Christ IN you.” Col. 1: 26, 27.
4) This is one of the passages that helped me better understand Matt. 7: 1-29, particularly verses 21-23, and know, intelligently and spiritually as to what Jesus meant, to who it applies,and why. Indeed, “to the law and testimony” is the way the truth is to be established, not by “selfish,” that is, self-justifying, self-serving, self-pleasing interpretations perpetrated by cultural tradition and corporate institutional mentality, instead of the precious “individuality of man where true religion is concerned.
To be continued. Bless all, NMF.