Preface: Would you ever gamble with your life? How about your eternal soul? Well if you do not at least consider this then you are indeed a gambler! There will be an event or events of some sort....that will change everyone's life on planet earth. It could be a nuclear world war....or an earth-killer asteroid....I don't know....but I know this....all the sports will be gone....no NFL or golfing or vacations....no more Luke Bryan or Taylor Swift concerts....not even any high school extra-curricular activities for a soccer mom....all gone....that is how cataclysmic and traumatizing this will be....whatever it is. It will then be as when the people ran up to Noah's boat when the torrents came. They didn't get in folks. It was too late! So....what should you take from this? You should take this....the plan will not work! You wanted to put this off for when you were ready....it's not going to work. Consider the very words of Jesus Christ....as He describes the narrow way.....this in Luke 13....this is God's Word folks...."When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door....("Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him...)....and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, open to us,' then he will answer you, 'I do not know where you come from'....(you didn't come through the wicket gate....you were never born again!)....Then you will begin to say, 'We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.' (church membership just doesn't seem to impress God)....But he will say, 'I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from Me, all you workers of evil'." You are planning on knocking later....but friends.....the door is not going to open for you....precisely because you planned on knocking later!
The following was first posted on November 12, 2015:
The Basket Never Empties
You have been in a Barnes & Noble and walked past the Bibles section I'm sure. And you have probably been in a hotel or motel room and opened the table drawer under the clock radio and lamp and saw a Bible placed there by the Gideons. More than likely you have a Bible somewhere in your home. It's incomprehensible to me, and breathtakingly stupefying, for if there were a table of gold bullion with a sign reading...free....only one to a customer....a madhouse would ensue. And yet here in a typical bookstore is the single most valuable physical item of any possible type in this entire world, for sale at a price one could buy a roast beef dinner at Applebee's, and it goes unnoticed. I visit bookstores with the regularity that most people attend to a gasoline pump. I know that there is very seldom anyone even browsing the Bibles...Christian bookstores excluded here of course.
Well I haven't yet impressed you too much with this post have I? Blah, blah, blah....the Bible. Book lovers can lose themselves in a good mystery. Believe me, I'm married to one. I can pick up a non-fiction book and sit down with it until I've finished it, highlighting and notes included. Mark Levin's Liberty And Tyranny was like that. This (God's Word) is something different. It's oxygen in the form of words...the blood of life pumped throughout one's being by God Himself.How many neurons function throughout the brain? I could look it up but its billions. God designed this organ and yet it's merely a tool to discern the glories of its creator, the inglorious condition man has brought upon himself, and the redemption of those who believe and trust in what is the very Word of God which we so nonchalantly call...a bible. In this neglected gift of gifts is all of creation explained in sixty-six books. It would be more accurate to say that it's all that we as humans can handle of creation explained in sixty-six books. Still, for the sake of argument you say that sixty-six small books is not a lot of information. Obama's new Pacific Rim Trade Pact has sixty times as many words! Let me try to explain. One sentence from God's Word can change not only a life but an eternal destiny. One phrase can debilitate the strongest person. One word can explain the mystery of your own life.
What's more it is like the five loaves and two fish that Jesus fed the five-thousand with. The basket never empties! One can read through the Bible and go from death to life, from peasant to a king, and from rags to the riches of an inheritance in heaven as a child of God! Paradoxically and wonderfully it becomes more complex and yet more clear as time passes and veils are lifted. I vividly remember the testimony, some thirty years ago, of a ninety-five year old Christian man who spoke of the ever increasing wonder of the Bible over his life.
It's an odd treasure also in that people want to give it away. Some live only to give it away, and one may give it away a thousand times and still possess it. The very most that my testimony can do is to pique your interest. If you think me a fool....wonderful....should it lead you to research it yourself to find the method to the perceived madness.
