IT IS WRITTEN: YOU CAN OVERCOME IN CHRIST’S STRENGTH
“Therefore in all things He has to be made like His brethren that He might be a merciful High Priest. . . In that He Himself has suffered being tempted, He is able to aid(succor) those who are tempted.” Heb. 2:17,18.
“Because fallen man could not overcome Satan with his human strength, Christ came from the royal courts of heaven to help man with His human and divine strength COMBINED. Christ knew that Adam IN EDEN with his superior advantages might have withstood the temptations of Satan and conquered him.
Jesus said, “I am the true Vine. . . . Every branch that does not bear fruit is cast away, and every branch that bears fruit He PRUNES, that it may bear MORE fruit. . . .By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.” Matt. 15:1,2,8, NKJV.
What kind of fruits? See Gal.5:22-26. When your faith wavers and are tempted to give up, remember God permits divinely-calibrated, divinely-measured-and-controlled obstacles and trials in order to test, develop and perfect faith, not discourage us! Thus: “When we are hedged about on every side, this is the time above all others to trust in God and in the power of the Holy Spirit.
“The Scriptures says that ‘men ought to pray; and not to faint.’(Luke 18:1); and if ever there is a time when they feel their need of prayer, it is when strength fails and life itself seems slipping from their grasp. Often those who are in health forget the wonderful mercies continued to them day by day, year after year, and they render not tribute if praise to God for His benefits. But when sickness comes, God is remembered.
“Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips.” Ps. 141: 3.
“In the use of language there is perhaps no error that we pass over lightly than hasty, impatient speech. But God’s Word does not treat it lightly. The largest share of life’s annoyances, its heartaches, it’s irritations, is due to uncontrolled temper.
In one moment, by hasty, passionate, careless words, may be wrought evil that’s whole lifetime’s repentance cannot undo. Oh, the hearts that are broken, the friends estranged, the lives wrecked, by the harsh, hasty words of those who might have brought help and healing.
"Jesus Praying" Photo Credit by Samson Daniel/Flickr
FRIDAY MORNING MANNA
Biblical Numerology: NUMBER FOUR & FORTY– Part X
Christ’s Forty Days in the Wilderness of Temptation
See Matt. 4: 1-11. Satan knew that everything concerning his prosperity depended on his success or failure in overcoming Christ in the wilderness of temptation. Disguised as an angel of light, apparently in answer to Christ’s prayer, he appears when Christ is at His weakest, most vulnerable condition in His forty-day fast. Satan submitted Christ to his “very best,”—the subtlest of artifices and force of his powerful temptations to allure Christ from His allegiance to the Father and adherence to the moral law He himself established as the foundation of His eternal throne. He came “to magnify the law and make honorable” (Isa. 42: 21), not abrogate it.
More and more conscientious people everywhere are alarmed at the moral decadence and self-indulgence threatening the very of core of human society of this generation of boasted advancement in education, technology, and enlightenment. How soon we forget the revolting results of the French Revolution where Reason was worshipped over Deity, Jesus was called a “wretch,” and the Bible burned publicly.
Both human history and Bible prophecy testify how earth’s greatest kingdoms and empires crumbled away—when, at the height of earthly power and prosperity of their time, they succumbed to gross idolatry, unbridled self-indulgence, and apostasy. Thus they fell, starting with the first atheistic empire, Egypt, Neo-Babylonia, Medo-Persia, Greece (Macedonian), and the Roman pagan empire. Revelation 13’s predictive prophecy of divine foreknowledge clearly reveals that America, “the greatest and most favored nation upon the earth,” will not return to its original nature as refuge for the persecuted and oppressed that it once was. However, the coming final war “will not be between rival churches contending for the supremacy,” “but between the religion of the Bible and the religion of fable and tradition.” It will be “the last great conflict of the controversy between truth and error.” We are now entering into it.
However, until national apostasy results in national ruin, and rapidly becomes global for “the the final events will be rapid ones,” for now, just as it was in the time of Israel’s national apostasy: “Elijah had thought that he alone in Israel was a worshipper of the true God. But He who reads the
