There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? (Matthew 6:30)
Clothes are expensive, and poor believers may be led into anxiety as to where their next suit will come from. The soles are thin; how shall we get new shoes? See how our thoughtful Lord has provided against this care. Our heavenly Father clothes the grass of the field with a splendor such as Solomon could not equal: will He not clothe His own children? We are sure He will. There may be many a patch and a darn, but raiment we shall have.
A poor minister found his clothes nearly threadbare, and so far gone that they would hardly hold together; but as a servant of the Lord he expected his Master to find him his livery. It so happened that the writer on a visit to a friend had the loan of the good man’s pulpit, and it came into his mind to make a collection for him, and there was his suit. Many other cases we have seen in which those who had served the Lord have found Him considerate of their wardrobe. He who made man so that when he had sinned he needed garments, also in mercy supplied him with them; and those which the Lord gave to our first parents were far better than those they made for themselves.
19:30 Having received the sour wine, Jesus said, “It is finished!” (Gk. tetelestai). Actually, the Lord shouted those words with a loud cry (Matt. 27:50; Mark 15:37). It was a shout of triumph; the proclamation of a victor. The work of redemption that the Father had given Him was accomplished: sin was atoned for (Heb. 9:12; 10:12;), and Satan was defeated and rendered powerless (Heb. 2:14; cf. 1 Peter 1:18–20; 1 John 3:8). Every requirement of God’s righteous law had been satisfied; God’s holy wrath against sin had been appeased (Rom. 3:25; Heb. 2:17; 1 John 2:2; 4:10); every prophecy had been fulfilled. Christ’s completion of the work of redemption means that nothing needs to be nor can be added to it. Salvation is not a joint effort of God and man, but is entirely a work of God’s grace, appropriated solely by faith (Eph. 2:8–9).[1]
No Death like Jesus’ Death
John 19:30
When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
If Christ is Christianity and if the final week of Christ’s life is its center, then the center of that week is certainly the moment of Christ’s death on Calvary. That moment is therefore the focal point of all history, and the words “It is finished” are an important expression of it.
The importance of those words, the sixth in the series of seven spoken from the cross, is that they point to Christ’s death as an achievement. Elsewhere in the Gospels we are told that Jesus uttered a loud cry just before his death (Matt. 27:50; Mark 15:37; Luke 23:46); since two of the Gospels also tell us that Jesus had been given a drink just before this, it would seem that this was Christ’s cry. In other words, Christ’s words were not the final gasping sob of a defeated man or even the firm deliberate declaration of one who was resigned to his fate. They were a triumphant declaration that the turning point in history had been reached and that the work that Jesus had been sent into the world to do had been done.
It is this that makes Christ’s death unique. As an example of patient endurance of abuse and suffering, it may perhaps be matched by other deaths. As a fitting end for One who, like the prophets, bore a faithful witness to God’s truth even when that truth was rejected, it may perhaps be paralleled. But Christ’s death cannot be matched in its fullest sense, because Jesus (and no other) achieved our salvation by his suffering. The apostle Paul speaks of it, saying, “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons” (Gal. 4:4–5). Again he writes, “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:21–26).
Because Christ’s atonement is so important, we need to consider it at some length. In this and the following studies we will look at the nature, necessity, perfection, and extent of the atonement.
Christ’s Death a Sacrifice
When we consider the nature of the atonement we immediately find ourselves in the midst of a world of biblical ideas and imagery without which its nature cannot really be understood. Central to this world of ideas and imagery is the notion of sacrifice and the accompanying thought of substitution. Sacrifice has to do with the death of an innocent victim, usually an animal. Substitution means that this death was in place of the death of someone else.
The background of this concept lies in the truth that all who have ever lived are sinners, having broken God’s law, and that the penalty for sin is death. The Bible declares, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one” (Rom. 3:10–12). Moreover the Bible declares that the penalty for sin is death. It says, “The soul that sins will die” (Ezek. 18:4). This death is not merely physical death, though it is that. It is spiritual death as well. Death is separation. Physical death is the separation of the soul and spirit from the body. Spiritual death is the separation of the soul and the spirit from God. This is what we deserve as a consequence of our sin. But Jesus took that death to himself by his sacrifice. He became our substitute by experiencing both physical and spiritual death in our place.
There is a very vivid illustration of this principle in the early chapters of Genesis. In these chapters Adam and Eve had sinned and were now in terror of the consequences. God had warned them. He had said, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of food and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die” (Gen. 2:16–17). At this point they probably did not have a very clear idea of what death was, but they knew it was serious. Consequently, when they had sinned through disobedience and then later had heard God walking toward them in the garden, they tried to hide.
They could not hide from God. No one can. So we are told that God called them out of hiding and began to deal with their transgression. What should we expect to happen as a result of this confrontation? Here is God who has told our first parents that in the day they sinned they would die. Here also are Adam and Eve who have sinned. In this situation we should expect the immediate execution of the sentence. They had sinned. So if God had put them to death in that moment, both physically and spiritually, banishing them from his presence forever, it would have been just.
But that is not what we find. Instead, we have God first rebuking the sin and then, wonder of wonders, performing a sacrifice as a result of which Adam and Eve were clothed with the skins of those animals. This was the first death that anyone had ever witnessed. It was enacted by God. As Adam and Eve looked on they must have been horrfied. “So this is death,” they must have said. “How horrible!” Yet even as they recoiled from the sacrifice, they must have marveled as well, for what God was showing was that although they themselves deserved to die it was possible for another, in this case two animals, to die in their place. The animals paid the price of their sin. Moreover, they were now clothed in the skins of the animals as a reminder of that fact.
This is the meaning of sacrifice: substitution. It is the death of one on behalf of another. And yet we must say, as the Bible teaches, that the death of animals could never take away the penalty of sin (Heb. 10:4). These were a symbol of how sin was to be taken away, but they were only a symbol. The real and effective sacrifice was performed by Jesus Christ. We sometimes read in theological literature that the ideas of sacrifice and substitution are alien to our culture and therefore that we cannot use these terms to speak of the meaning of Christ’s death anymore, at least if we want to be understood. But we must not think that it was any easier for those who lived in earlier stages of the world’s history to understand them. These concepts have always been difficult; that is why God took so much time and such elaborate means to teach them.
Stilling God’s Wrath
A second word for understanding the meaning of Christ’s death is propitiation (Rom. 3:25). Propitiation also relates to the world of sacrifices. But unlike substitution, which refers primarily to what Jesus did in reference to us (he died in our place), propitiation describes that death in terms of its bearing upon God. The background for this term is the wrath of God which is directed against all sin. Propitiation refers to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in which the justified wrath of God against the sinner was stilled or turned aside and the love of God was enabled to go out to save him.
An Old Testament illustration is helpful. It is the ark of the covenant and the sacrifice which involved it. The ark of the covenant was one of the pieces of furniture for Israel’s wilderness tabernacle. It was a chest about a yard long, covered with gold and closed by a solid gold covering known as the mercy seat. The mercy seat had two figures of cherubim standing on either end looking inward. The cherubim had wings which stretched out over the ends of the ark and then came together over the top. The stone tables of the law of Moses were kept within this ark, and the ark itself was kept within the Holy of Holies, the most sacred part of the tabernacle.
The most significant thing about the ark of the covenant is that it was thought of symbolically as being the earthly dwelling place of God. God was thought to dwell in the space between the outstretched wings of the cherubim above the mercy seat. And of course, this is why no one but the high priest was ever to enter the Holy of Holies, and even he was to enter only once a year on the Day of Atonement. God was holy, and sinful men and women who came into his presence would be consumed.
The picture of that ark is a terrible picture, as it was meant to be. There we see God dwelling between the outstretched wings of the cherubim. There we see the law, which we have broken. As God looks down upon the affairs of men this is what he sees—the broken law. So the picture tells us that God in his holiness must judge sin and that sinners are subject to his judicial wrath.
But that is not all, for now the Day of Atonement comes, and on that day the high priest takes the blood of a sacrifice and, bearing it carefully according to all the regulations for this ceremony (for violation of these regulations entailed death), enters the Holy of Holies where it is now sprinkled upon the mercy seat between the presence of God and the law. What is symbolized now? Gloriously, the picture is now no longer of wrath directed against the violators of God’s law but rather a picture of mercy in which the wrath of God against sin is satisfied and the sinner is spared. Now when God looks down from between the wings of the cherubim he sees, not the law we have broken, but the blood of the sacrifice. An innocent has died. He has borne our penalty. Thus, we can live.
In discussing sacrifice, I pointed out that the blood of animals could not actually take away sin but that these pointed forward pedagogically to the work of Christ on Calvary. That also applies here. The blood of the sacrifice sprinkled upon the mercy seat by the high priest did not remove sin, but it pointed forward to the One whose death would remove it: Jesus Christ. When he died God’s wrath against sin was literally propitiated, which God himself demonstrated by tearing the veil of the temple, separating the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies, in two from top to bottom. Thus did God show that the way into his presence was now open for all who should believe in Jesus.
An interesting sidelight on this meaning of God’s death is the speed with which blood sacrifices disappeared in the ancient world once the gospel of Christ was proclaimed. At the time of Christ’s death sacrifices were performed everywhere—in the Roman and barbarian worlds as well as within Judaism. But, as Adolf Harnack once pointed out in a striking passage, “Wherever the Christian message … penetrated, the sacrificial altars were deserted and dealers in sacrificial beasts found no more purchasers.… The death of Christ put an end to all blood-sacrifices.” Why did this happen? Harnack explains, “His death [Christ’s] had the value of an expiatory sacrifice, for otherwise it would not have had strength to penetrate into that inner world in which the blood-sacrifices originated.” Sacrifices ceased because the death of Christ alone met the need they were supposed to satisfy.
Reconciliation
A third word used for describing the effects of Christ’s death is reconciliation. Second Corinthians 5:18–19 provides us with a key passage: “All this if from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.”
Reconciliation means “to make one,” so the background for this term is the broken relationship between ourselves and God because of sin. We have already seen one example of this in Genesis, for when Adam and Eve sinned and God came to them in the Garden, our first parents hid from God. This had not been the case before their disobedience. Before there had been openness. They had talked with God joyously. Now the relationship that they had enjoyed was broken, and they showed their deep psychological awareness of this by hiding. In a sense men and women have been hiding ever since. We hide through a self-imposed ignorance of spiritual things, through our supposed sophistication or culture, or even (strange as it may seem) through religion—for many religious experiences are attempts to get away from God rather than attempts to find him.
But God comes to us; that is the glory of the gospel. Moreover, when he comes he does what is necessary to heal the broken relationship and bridge the gap. In Eden it was the inauguration of sacrifices. On Calvary it was the ultimate bridge to which the earlier sacrifices pointed. Paul writes, “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). He means that it is on the basis of Christ’s death that the reconciliation takes place.
Bought with a Price
The final word of those most significant for describing the death of Christ is “redemption.” “Redemption” is derived from two Latin words: re, meaning “again,” and emere, meaning “to buy.” So redemption means “buying again” or “buying back,” as in redeeming something that has been pawned or mortgaged. We use the word of material things. The Bible uses the word to signify that we are God’s, but have nevertheless fallen into bondage as a result of our sin and now must be purchased out of that bondage by Christ’s sacrifice.
Our bondage is to sin’s penalty and power. Christ’s death frees us from both. On this subject John Murray writes, “Just as sacrifice is directed to the need created by our guilt, propitiation to the need that arises from the wrath of God, and reconciliation to the need arising from our alienation from God, so redemption is directed to the bondage to which our sin has consigned us. This bondage is, of course, multiform. Consequently redemption as purchase or ransom receives a wide variety of reference and application. Redemption applies to every respect in which we are bound, and it releases us unto a liberty that is nothing less than the liberty of the glory of the children of God.” Paul speaks of that redemption in Romans: “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24). Peter speaks of it in even more explicit terms: “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:18–19).
“It is finished,” Christ’s declaration from the cross, is particularly appropriate for understanding his death as redemption; for one of the meanings of the Greek word tetelestai, which underlies it, is “Paid in full!” The word was used in this way in secular business transactions.
Here we come back to the point with which we began. What makes the death of Christ so unique and indeed marks it out as the focal point of history is that it accomplished precisely what needed to be accomplished in regard to our salvation. We deserved to die for sin; Christ died for us. We were under the just wrath of God by reason of our transgressions; Christ bore that wrath in our place. We were alienated from God; Christ reconciled us to him. We were sold under sin; Christ bought our freedom by paying sin’s price. From one perspective all this is spiritual. It has to do both with moral matters and with spiritual relationships. But from another point of view, this is as concrete and historical as the birth of Julius Caesar or the death of Socrates.
Why Did Jesus Die?
John 19:30
When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Those who know anything at all about Christianity know that Jesus died to save us from sin, and they know that the source of the decision to save us from sin was God’s love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). But why was it necessary for the love of God to achieve its end in this way? Why Jesus? And why the cross? This was the question raised by Anselm of Canterbury in his famous essay Cur Deus Homo? (“Why God Became Man”), in which he asked, “For what reason or necessity did God become man and, as we believe and confess, by his death restore life to the world, when he could have done this through another person (angelic or human), or even by a sheer act of will?”
Was the cross necessary, or could God have saved the human race through another person or even by a sheer act of will? One writer puts it like this: “If we say that he could not, do we not impugn his power? If we say that he could but would not, do we not impugn his wisdom? Such questions are not scholastic subtleties or vain curiosities. To evade them is to miss something that is central in the interpretation of the redeeming work of Christ and to miss the vision of some of its essential glory. Why did God become man? Why, having become man, did he die? Why, having died, did he die the accursed death of the cross?”
Two Necessities
In the history of Christian doctrine there have traditionally been two ways in which the necessity of the death of Jesus has been spoken of. One is what we might call circumstantial necessity. The other is absolute necessity. Let me explain.
The view that we call circumstantial necessity maintains that God, being free and infinite, always has an infinite number of possibilities open to him. Consequently, although he chose to save men and women by the death of Christ, he did not need to do so and could actually have saved them in an infinite number of other ways. If we ask at that point how we can then speak of a “necessity” in the atonement at all, the answer is that because of the circumstances under which God operated, this was the way (chosen out of many ways) that the greatest number of advantages would occur, including the greatest possible glory being given to God. God could have saved us without Christ’s having died. But he could not have done so and yet have showed the greatest measure of wisdom and love in the circumstances. When we read that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” of sins (Heb. 9:22), that is indeed true. But it is true only because God has chosen to do things that way. He could have saved us without blood shedding.
The other way to talk about the necessity of Jesus’ death is to see it as an absolute necessity. This means literally that, having elected to save some of Adam’s fallen race, God had no other means at his disposal than the sacrifice of his beloved Son. This does not mean that God had to send Jesus. He could have elected not to save anyone. But having elected to save them, he was under the necessity of accomplishing this by the death of his Son, a necessity arising out of the perfections of his own nature.
At first glance it might be thought presumptuous for us to speak thus of something being absolutely necessary for God. “After all,” someone might object, “who are we to tell God what he can or must do?” But this is not the way in which this statement is made. Obviously we cannot tell God to be or do anything. Yet he has revealed something of his nature in Scripture, and it is not impudent or improper to inquire on the basis of that revelation whether God can or cannot do a thing, particularly when it is as central to the Christian faith as the atonement. For example, is it possible for God to lie or speak falsehood? If we answer no, as we should, we are not limiting God by telling what he can or cannot do. We are simply acknowledging that deceit is impossible for one who is characterized by utter truth, as God declares himself to be. Far from dishonoring him in this, we actually honor him. Moreover, we are led to a valuable conclusion; for, on the basis of God’s inability to lie, we perceive that he can always be trusted.
It is not improper or even impractical to conclude that God was under an absolute necessity in the matter of Christ’s death. He may not have been. But the answer to whether he was or not is to be determined solely by the teaching of the Scripture and not by any prior conclusions as to what is required by our understanding of God’s freedom.
The Divine Necessities
When we turn to the Bible we find a number of necessities pertaining to God which bear upon our subject. They are like the necessity for God to speak truth, being Truth, but they relate primarily to the matter of salvation.
The first of these necessities is the hatred of God for sin, which we may express by saying that God must hate sin if he is to be as he declares himself to be in Scripture. The background for this necessity is the holiness of God. In Scripture God is more often called holy than anything else. This is the epithet most often affixed to his name, for instance. We do not often read of his “loving name,” “mighty name,” or “eternal name.” But we are often reminded of his “holy name.” Moreover, this is the attribute of God which is invariably mentioned in any vision men have of him. Isaiah, in his great vision of the Lord “high and lifted up,” stressed the holiness of God more than any other attribute. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty,” cry the seraphim. Isaiah’s immediate reaction was to bemoan his own sinful condition: “Woe is me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” (Isa. 6:5; cf. vv. 1–6).
The holiness of God lies at the core of his being, then, and the dismay of Isaiah was the recognition that in his holiness God cannot be indifferent to anything which opposes it. Holiness involves the elements of majesty and will. When we ask, “What is that will primarily set on?” the answer is: God’s majesty. Thus, God’s will is inevitably directed against anything which would attempt to diminish that majesty or flaunt it. That is what sin tries to do. So God is against sin; he is wrath toward it.
Many people today do not like the idea of wrath. But like it or not, Scripture teaches that it is a necessary aspect of God’s nature in relation to sin. The Old Testament alone has nearly six hundred important passages concerning God’s wrath. His wrath is directed against injustice, corruption, and offenses against his own glory and majesty. The New Testament has equally important passages. Romans 1, for example, speaks of God’s wrath revealed “against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (v. 18). Other passages speak boldly of “the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10; 2:16; cf. 5:9; Rom. 2:5). The teaching of these passages is that God will not and cannot look with indifference upon the unrighteous.
A second necessity of the divine nature relating to the matter of salvation is the obligation of God to do right. This obligation is based upon God’s role as ruler and judge of creation. “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” asked Abraham rhetorically on the occasion of God’s revelation to him of the pending judgment of Sodom (Gen. 18:25). The answer was obvious: the Sovereign must do right. In fact, Abraham used this necessity to plead for the salvation of Sodom. God had told Abraham that he would destroy Sodom, and Abraham remonstrated, “Will you destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city: will you also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are in it? Far be it from you to do this, to slay the righteous with the wicked. Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
Here are two divine necessities pertaining to salvation: first, that God must hate sin, and second, that the Judge of the earth must do right. What is right where sin is concerned? The answer is judgment, as the destruction of Sodom indicates. True, we do not see the fullness of that judgment now, for God has largely withheld his judgment. Yet it must come. It must come later if not sooner; and when it comes, it must result in the eternal destruction of the sinner.
The Divine Solution
We know from the biblical record that God elected not to destroy every sinner. Out of his great love he decided to elect a great company to salvation. But the question arises: How can he do this without violating these two necessities of his very nature? How can he save those who actually deserve his just judgment? There is only one way: another must suffer the judgment in place of those who stand condemned. We hear that answer, and we are momentarily relieved. But then we ask, “Who?” and despair settles on us once again. Who is equal to such a task? Who is willing to do it? The answer is: God’s own Son; the only One both able and willing to become man and to die for sinners.
Anselm, whom we mentioned earlier, put it like this: First, he said, salvation had to be achieved by God, for no one else could achieve it. Certainly men and women could not achieve it, for we are the ones who have gotten ourselves into trouble in the first place. We have done so by our rebellion against God’s just law and decrees. Moreover, we have suffered from the effects of sin to such a degree that even our will is bound, and therefore we cannot even choose to please God, let alone actually please him. Our only hope is God, who alone has both the will and power to save. Second, said Anselm, apparently contradicting this first point, salvation must also be achieved by man, for man is the one who has wronged God and must therefore make the wrong right. Given this situation, salvation can be achieved only by one who is both God and man, that is, Jesus.
Anselm put the argument in these words: “It would not have been right for the restoration of human nature to be left undone, and … it could not have been done unless man paid what was owing to God for sin. But the debt was so great that, while man alone owed it, only God could pay it, so that the same person must be both man and God. Thus it was necessary for God to take manhood into the unity of his person, so that he who in his own nature ought to pay and could not should be in a person who could.… The life of this man was so sublime, so precious, that it can suffice to pay what is owing for the sins of the whole world, and infinitely more.”
Only thus was it possible for God to be both “just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26). This is the ultimate necessity indicated in those well-known verses in John’s Gospel. “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (3:14–17). These verses say that apart from the death of Christ and faith in him, the race is lost. Given the desire of God to save us, there was just no other option.
Curse of the Cross
Yet there is still one matter. At the start of this chapter we asked, “Why was it necessary for the love of God to achieve its end in this way? Why Jesus? And why the cross?” Thus far we have answered the first half of that question; we have seen why it was necessary for the price of our salvation to be paid by Jesus. But we still have not answered why that sacrifice had to be made on Calvary. Why this death? Why this particularly horrible form of suffering?
The answer to that question is given in the Book of Galatians, in which Paul says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us; for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree’ ” (Gal. 3:13). What does this mean? Well, it is the Bible’s answer to an objection to God’s way of salvation that we might still make even after we have understood the nature and necessity of the atonement. We might understand that Jesus was the innocent Son of God and that he was therefore the only One who could take our place on Calvary, the just for the unjust. We might understand that God judged him in our place. “But that is still not right,” we might argue. “Even if Jesus died willingly, it was still not right for God to punish one who was innocent of all wrongdoing.” At this point Paul’s answer comes in, for he points out that in the Old Testament there is a verse (Deut. 21:23) that pronounces a curse on anyone hanged on a tree as a means of execution. This may not have meant much to those who lived in that day, but it was part of the law of Israel. Thus, when the Lord Jesus Christ was taken and hanged on a tree, he thereby became a technical violator of the whole law (though through no fault of his own) and could be justly punished. In this way God remained just in his execution of Christ, and Christ remained innocent.
God’s Love Commended
The conclusion to this study is that the achievement of our salvation at such cost flows from the love of God and that the love of God is thereby commended to us so that we might believe on Jesus. To save us it was necessary to pay this cost. Yet God did not hesitate to provide the sacrifice of his Son, so great was his love for us. Can we despise that love? Can we ignore it? The Bible says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).
This, of course, is the bottom line of the entire discussion, and it is this that makes it meaningful. Our discussion of the necessity of the atonement has involved us in some careful theological distinctions, and some of this is admittedly difficult for some people, for not all are theologians. Yet the bottom line is not difficult at all. Let me put it like this. The week before I first preached this material in my regular exposition of John on Sunday mornings at Tenth Presbyterian Church, I was discussing these themes at the dinner table to see how the people who were there would react to them. They did very well. But at the end a ten-year-old friend of one of my daughters asked, “What is the main point of your sermon?” It was a question her parents had been teaching her to ask so she could follow the messages better, and (I think) she wanted to get a head start. I replied that the answer was a simple one; for although the theology is difficult, the point itself is not. It is simply this:
There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin;
He only could unlock the gate
Of heav’n and let us in.
O dearly, dearly has He loved!
And we must love Him too,
And trust in His redeeming blood,
And try His works to do.
Christ has loved us so much that he did not hold back from doing what needed to be done. Because of this we, on our part, should serve him without reservation.
“It Is Finished”
John 19:30
When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
One of the goals of Greek oratory, to which the Greek language generally lends itself, is to say much in few words—“to give a sea of matter in a drop of language.” That goal is reached in the sixth of Christ’s sayings from the cross: “It is finished!” In English this is only three words, in Greek just one. Yet this word sums up the greatest work that has ever been done. Spurgeon said, “It would need all the other words that ever were spoken, or ever can be spoken, to explain this one word. It is altogether immeasurable. It is high; I cannot attain to it. It is deep; I cannot fathom it.”
We have been trying to study it, however, and to that end we have looked at, first, the nature and, second, the necessity of the atonement. In this chapter we deal with its perfection, the aspect of Christ’s death that is perhaps more directly suggested by this word than any other.
Pink writes, “This was not the despairing cry of a helpless martyr; it was not an expression of satisfaction that the termination of his sufferings was now reached; it was not the last gasp of a worn-out life. No, rather was it the declaration on the part of the Divine Redeemer that all for which he came from heaven to earth to do, was now done; that all that was needed to reveal the full character of God had now been accomplished; that all that was required by the law before sinners could be saved had now been performed; that the full price of our redemption was now paid.” To be sure, as Jesus spoke these words he was not yet dead. But his death was only moments away, and in any case he here speaks anticipatively of the work now done.
What did this dying utterance of the Lord mean? What was finished? How does this relate to us and our salvation?
Christ’s Work Done
There are a number of things we can point to as having been finished in the moment of Christ’s death. The first and most obvious one is Christ’s sufferings. These had not taken him by surprise. Long before this the Lord had said, “I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed!” (Luke 12:50). Centuries before, Isaiah had written of him, “He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3). Suffering marked Christ’s life. He had thirsted and hungered. He had ministered for three years without even a place to lay his head. He was scorned, accused, beaten, and now subjected to the horror and indignities of the cross.
No one ever suffered as Jesus did. Yet now it is finished. No snarling enemies will spit in his face again. No soldiers will ever scourge him again. No priests will mock him. It is finished; he sits on heaven’s throne, waiting until all his enemies are made his footstool. Spurgeon wrote: “Now Judas, come and betray him with a kiss! What, man, dare you not do it? Come, Pilate, and wash your hands in pretended innocency, and say now that you are guiltless of his blood! Come, ye scribes and Pharisees, and accuse him; and oh, ye Jewish mob and Gentile rabble, newly-risen from the grave, shout now, ‘Away with him! Crucify him!’ But see! they flee from him; they cry to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne!’ Yet that is the face that was more marred than any man’s, the face of him whom they once despised and rejected.”
The head that once was crowned with thorns
Is crowned with glory now;
A royal diadem adorns
The mighty Victor’s brow.
The highest place that heav’n affords
Is his, is his by right,
The King of kings, and Lord of lords,
And heav’n’s eternal Light.
How glad we must be that none can despise him, that the sufferings of which the Savior’s life were once full are finished.
The second thing we can point to as finished in the moment of our Lord’s death was his work, that which he had been sent into the world to do. This work centered in the atonement, which we will come to in a moment, but it was more than this. It was also his entire life, undergirded by his utter obedience to the Father and filled with teachings and good works. This work was before him constantly. We are told by the author of Hebrews that on the occasion of his coming into the world he said, “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—I have come to do your will, O God’ ” (Heb. 10:5–7). In John 4:34 we read, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” He spoke of the works that God had given him to do (John 5:36) and of the words that God had given him to speak (John 8:26; 14:24). He said, “The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work” (John 14:10). Then, in his great high priestly prayer recorded in John 17, he said, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do” (v. 4).
Throughout his lifetime Jesus had this work in mind, and he devoted himself to doing it. Now it is done, and he points with satisfaction: “It is finished!” None of us can say that fully of our work, but Jesus said it of his. His work was done perfectly.
The third area to which these words apply is the prophecies of his first coming. We cannot say that all the prophecies concerning the Lord are finished, for some pertain to work he is yet to do—at his second coming. But those that refer to his Gospel ministry are finished. In fact, it is in direct connection with one such prophecy that these words were spoken. Psalm 69:21 speaks of vinegar being given to the dying Messiah in his thirst. So Jesus, noticing that this had not been fulfilled, said, “I thirst,” and thus provoked its fulfillment as soldiers rushed to offer him a vinegar-wine solution. Immediately afterward we read, “When he had received the drink, Jesus said, ‘It is finished’ ” (John 19:30).
It had been prophesied that the Messiah was to be born of a woman without benefit of a human father (Isa. 7:14; Gal. 4:4). This was completed. It had been foretold that he was to be the seed of Abraham and of the line of David (Gen. 22:18; 2 Sam. 7:12–13), that he should be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), and he was so born. Old Testament writers had spoken of his flight into Egypt and a subsequent return to his own land (Hosea 11:1; cf. Isa. 49:3, 6). It so happened. Christ’s appearance was to be preceded by that of one like Elijah (Mal. 3:1). John the Baptist filled this role. Christ’s miracles were foretold—that “the eyes of the blind” should be opened, “the ears of the deaf” unstopped, “the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing” (Isa. 35:5–6). Jesus performed all these miracles. His triumphal entry into Jerusalem had been foretold (Zech. 9:9). He was to be hated (Ps. 69:4) and rejected by his own people (Isa. 8:14). A friend would betray him (Ps. 41:9). He was to be numbered with the transgressors (Isa. 53:12), pierced through hands and feet (Ps. 22:16). Soldiers were to divide his garments and cast lots for his outer cloak (Ps. 22:18). All this had been completed. There was nothing of all that had been written of him that was left undone.
Moreover, this is not just a conclusion based on our own imperfect knowledge of the Old Testament texts. This is the teaching of Scripture itself. Three times in Scripture the very word that is used in John 19:30, translated “it is finished” (teleō), is used of this fulfillment. Luke 18:31—“Jesus took the Twelve aside and told them, ‘We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled.’ ” Luke 22:37—“I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me.” Acts 13:29—“When they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead.”
Certainly, nothing that was to be fulfilled in the life and ministry of the Messiah was left lacking in Jesus.
A Perfect Atonement
Having said all this, we must nevertheless add that the primary reference of these words is to the atonement. This was the acme of his sufferings, the chief of his works, and the primary focus of the prophecies. Moreover, this has major doctrinal significance; for if the work of the atonement is finished, then salvation is secured for us by God and there is nothing that we can add or hope to add to it. Indeed, we dare not attempt to add anything if we would be saved.
This is the point of the atonement that has always figured prominently in Protestant presentations of the meaning of the death of Christ, as over against Roman Catholic theology. The Roman church (and many unsound protestant churches too, for that matter) maintains that the death of Christ does not relieve the believer in Christ of making satisfaction for sins he has committed. More precisely, it distinguishes between sins committed before and after baptism, and between temporal and eternal punishment for those sins. So far as sins committed before baptism are concerned, both the temporal and eternal punishment are blotted out through the application of the benefits of Christ’s death to the individual through the baptismal rite. So far as sins committed after baptism are concerned, the eternal punishments are blotted out. But the temporal punishments require the making of satisfaction by the individual himself either in this life (through a faithful use of the sacraments and by a meritorious life) or else in purgatory. While this system of salvation allows the greater part of the work to be God’s and even acknowledges that the faithfulness and merit of the believer are attained only through the prevenient grace of God, it nevertheless requires the individual to contribute to his own salvation in some measure. So it is not possible to say that the work of Christ is finished. More is needed. This outlook is evident in the Mass, in which the sacrifice of Christ is reenacted constantly.
Thus, Protestant thought has always contended rightly that “the satisfaction of Christ is the only satisfaction for sin and is so perfect and final that it leaves no penal liability for any sin of the believer.” True, the believer often experiences chastisement for sins done in this life (though never in full measure to what he has deserved). But this is not satisfaction. It is discipline only; it is given to help us grow. Even in times of severe chastisement it is still true that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1).
This is the burden of the Book of Hebrews, to give just one other biblical example. For, having demonstrated the uniqueness of Christ’s person, office, and mission, the author of that book states, “But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Heb. 10:12–14). What can be clearer than that? What can be greater? “From whatever angle we look upon his sacrifice we find its uniqueness to be as inviolable as the uniqueness of his person, of his mission, and of his office. Who is God-man but he alone? Who is great high priest to offer such sacrifice but he alone? Who shed such vicarious blood but he alone? Who entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption, but he alone?” In light of those qualities and achievement it is arrogant to think that we can add anything.
Jesus paid it all,
All to him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain;
He washed it white as snow.
“But then, what is left for us to do?” someone asks. Nothing but to believe in God’s Word and trust Jesus! Jesus himself said it. When some of the Galileans asked him on the occasion of his multiplication of the loaves and fish, “What must we do to do works of God?” Jesus replied, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent” (John 6:28–29).
Pink tells a story that may be helpful in this regard. A Christian farmer, deeply concerned over an unsaved neighbor, who was a carpenter, was trying to explain the gospel, especially the sufficiency of the finished work of Christ. But the carpenter persisted in believing that he had to do something himself. One day the farmer asked his friend to make a gate for him, and when it was finished he came for it and carried it away in his wagon. He hung it on a fence in his field and then arranged for the carpenter to stop by and see that it was hung properly. The carpenter came. But when he arrived he was surprised to see the farmer standing by with a sharp axe in his hand. “What is that for?” he asked.
“I’m going to add a few strokes to your work,” was the answer.
“But there’s no need to do that,” the carpenter protested. “The gate is perfect as it is. I did everything that was necessary.” The farmer took his axe and began to strike the gate anyway, keeping at it until in a short while it was ruined. “Look what you’ve done,” cried the carpenter. “You’ve ruined my work!”
“Yes,” said his friend. “And that is exactly what you are trying to do. You are trying to ruin the work of Christ by your own miserable additions to it.” God used this lesson to show the carpenter his mistake, and he was led to cast himself upon what Christ had done for him.
What Work for Jesus?
Yet I must not leave the impression that, having believed on Christ, there is then nothing for the Christian to do or that his conduct after he has become a believer in Christ does not matter. Let us say clearly that nothing we have done or ever will do can enter into the satisfaction that Christ made on the cross. His work is perfect; the atonement is done. But what do we say in that case? Do we say, “Well, if Christ has finished it, I will fold my hands and do nothing”? Not at all! Rather do we say, “If Jesus has finished such a great work for me, tell me quickly what work I can do for him.”
Do we need a biblical example? We find one in Saul of Tarsus. When he was struck down on the road to Damascus, his first question concerned the identity of the One who was revealing himself to him. He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” But as soon as he had learned the answer—“I am Jesus, whom you persecute”—and had believed on the One who spoke, Paul’s next question was: “Lord, what do you want me to do?” (Acts 9:5–6). Christ had a work for him to do. He was to be an apostle to bear the name of Christ “before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel” (v. 15).
This will not necessarily be your task. You are not an apostle, nor am I. But we each have a work to do. If we have been put in this world by Jesus and have not yet been taken home to be with him, we may be certain that we have not yet finished that work. So get on with it. Did he finish his work? Then you and I must finish our work too. Of course, there are discouragements. Of course, there is suffering and weakness and disappointment. But we must not give in to these. We must keep on until that moment when we, upon our deathbed, can say as did Paul, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing” (2 Tim. 4:7–8).
I leave you this challenge from the pen of Spurgeon: “As long as there is breath in our bodies, let us serve Christ; as long as we can think, as long as we can speak, as long as we can work, let us serve him, let us serve him with our last gasp; and, if it be possible, let us try to set some work going that will glorify him when we are dead and gone.”
For Whom Did Christ Die?
John 19:30
When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
For whom did Christ die? Did he die for all human beings, and thus all will be saved (the view of universalism)? Did he die for all, but, for whatever reason, not all will be saved (the view of Arminianism)? Or did he die only for certain individuals, all of whom will be saved (the view of Calvinism)? Each of these views involves problems, so that many people would rather not deal with the question. But we cannot avoid it, at least in this series of studies. It is an area of the atonement with which theology has always dealt. Besides, it is suggested by our text and by the gospel.
Our text contains Christ’s sixth cry from the cross, “It is finished.” But what was finished? In our last study we answered that it was, above all, the atonement. But what was the atonement? Was it the actual payment of the price for the sins of some or of all people, as the result of which they are saved? Or was it potential atonement only, that is, something that makes it possible for people to be saved but that in itself saves no one?
The Gospel of John gives us the most difficult answer, for it (perhaps more than any other Gospel) presents that view of Christ’s work generally known as “limited atonement.” We think of John 10, in which Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep” (v. 11). A few verses later he explicitly excludes certain of his hearers from that number—“You are not my sheep” (v. 26). Similarly, in John 17 the Lord explicitly prays for those “you have given me,” a phrase repeated six times with only slight variations. This phrase does not include everyone because those who have been given to Christ are carefully distinguished from “the world” (vv. 6, 9, 11–18).
It would be easier to skip this subject; but as in the matter of the necessity of the atonement, we would do so to our own hurt. Actually the subject is important and profitable; for what is at stake is nothing other than the nature of the atonement itself, as we will see when we study it.
“The World” and “All Men”
But first we must deal with a primary matter. This is the view that the whole discussion is wrongheaded simply because, so it is said, the Bible gives a clear answer to the question. Is it not true, one might ask, that the Bible often uses universal terms when speaking of Jesus’ death? Take Isaiah 53:6. It says, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Does this not say that all have sinned and that it is for these, all of them, that Christ died? Again, there is Hebrews 2:9, “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” Or perhaps 1 John 2:2, which seems even more unmistakable. “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” Do these verses not teach unambiguously that Jesus died for everyone?
Not necessarily. The reason this is not necessarily the case is that the Bible habitually uses these terms in less than an inclusivistic sense. For instance, the word “world” is sometimes used of the whole fabric of heaven and earth (Job 34:13). Sometimes it refers only to the earth (Ps. 24:1; 98:7), or only to the heavens (Ps. 90:2). There are texts in which it does mean every single human being (Rom. 3:6, 19). But again, it sometimes refers only to one large group (Matt. 18:7; John 4:42; 1 Cor. 4:9; Rev. 13:3). This last is probably the dominant meaning, just as it is in our use of the same word in English. To give an example, when the Pharisees say among themselves, “Look how the world has gone after him” (John 12:19), meaning Christ, they do not mean every person on earth or even every person in Israel. They only mean a very large group of the citizens of Jerusalem. If we insist that “world” always means “every human being,” we are going to have trouble explaining how under Caesar Augustus “all the world” went to be taxed. Did everyone go—barbarians, prisoners, slaves, or others outside the Roman sphere of influence?
The point we are making is that the use of words like “all men,” “the whole world,” and “us all” does not in itself settle the matter. Rather, the meaning of each phrase must be determined from the context. Thus, in the case of Isaiah 53:6, it can be argued very cogently that the passage is written of God’s people, all of whom certainly have gone astray (which is also true of those who are not God’s people) and have been redeemed (which is not true of those who are not God’s people). Similarly, in Hebrews 2:9, the reference is to the “many sons” who shall be brought to glory, as specified in the very next verse. Believers in particular redemption have usually explained 1 John 2:2 in terms of John’s emphasis in writing. He is trying to show that the propitiation Christ made was not for Jews only, which might be expected, but for Gentiles as well.
The point here is not whether this particular interpretation of these verses is the correct one, though I believe it is. The point is only that they may be so interpreted. Consequently, the matter of limited versus unlimited atonement must be resolved on other grounds.
The Central Question
The central question in this entire discussion is not how many verses may be lined up on one side or the other or even whether or not Christ’s death has sufficient value to atone for the sins of the world. The answer to the last question is obvious: Christ’s death has sufficient value to atone not only for a million worlds such as ours but more besides. The question is only: Did Christ’s death actually atone for the sins of anyone? Did it actually propitiate the wrath of God toward any specific group of individuals? Did it actually reconcile any single person to God? Did it redeem anyone? If it did, whom? When the question is asked in this way we can see that there are only three possible answers:
1. Christ’s death was not an actual atonement but rather that which makes atonement possible. It becomes actual when the sinner repents of sin and believes on Jesus.
2. It was an actual atonement for the sins of God’s elect, with the result that these are saved.
3. It was an actual atonement for the sins of all human beings, so that all are saved.
We can dismiss the third possibility immediately, for the Bible clearly teaches that not all human beings are saved and conversely that some specifically are lost. Pharaoh is an example. So is Judas. So is the rich man in Christ’s parable of the rich man and Lazarus. In Revelation we have descriptions of God’s final judgment on such persons. With this possibility eliminated, the choice is between numbers one and two—an actual atonement for the specific sins of the elect and an indefinite atonement for no sins in particular. What, then, is the way in which the Bible speaks of Christ’s sacrifice?
The answer has already been given in our earlier studies. We talked of sacrifice and substitution, and the point was that Christ actually became a sacrifice and substitute on the basis of which those who were appointed to salvation were saved. We talked of propitiation, reconciliation, and redemption. Each of these points to a specific aspect of that which Christ accomplished. Christ did not come to make propitiation possible; he came to propitiate God’s wrath against sin. He did not come to make reconciliation possible; he came to make reconciliation. He did not come to make redemption possible; his shed blood was the price of redemption.
John Murray poses the issue like this: “The very nature of Christ’s mission and accomplishment is involved in this question. Did Christ come to make the salvation of all men possible, to remove obstacles that stood in the way of salvation, and merely to make provision for salvation? Or did he come to secure the salvation of all those who are ordained to eternal life? Did he come to make men redeemable? Or did he come effectually and infallibly to redeem? The doctrine of the Atonement must be radically revised if, as atonement, it applies to those who finally perish as well as to those who are the heirs of eternal life. In that event we should have to dilute the grand categories in terms of which the Scripture defines the Atonement and deprive them of their most precious import and glory. This we cannot do. The saving efficacy of expiation, propitiation, reconciliation, and redemption is too deeply embedded in these concepts, and we dare not eliminate this efficacy. We do well to ponder the words of our Lord himself: ‘I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that of everything which he hath given to me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up in the last day’ (John 6:38–39). Security inheres in Christ’s redemptive accomplishment. And this means that, in respect of the persons contemplated, design and accomplishment and final realization have all the same extent.”
This is called “limited atonement.” But this is not a good designation, for all theologians limit it in one way or another. The Calvinist limits its scope. The Arminian limits its power. The question is rather: How does the Bible portray Christ’s sacrifice? The answer is that it is portrayed as actually accomplishing that for which God ordained it. It is because it was actual that Christ looked upon “the suffering of his soul” and was “satisfied” (Isa. 53:11).
Belief and Unbelief
I can see only one possible way of avoiding this conclusion, and even that is not actually a possibility when it is once examined. It may be argued by someone that the atonement is actual and also for the sins of the whole world but that all are not saved, not because their sins are not atoned for, but because they do not believe in Christ and hence will not accept the gospel. “It is like a gift,” the person might say. “It has been selected and paid for, but no one can be forced to take a gift. The world has been saved, but many persons will not be saved simply because they do not believe in Jesus.”
Does that sound reasonable? It does until you ask about the nature of unbelief. Is it merely the morally neutral choice of deciding not to accept salvation? Or is it a sin? The answer is: a sin. In fact, it is the most damning of all sins. And this means simply that if Christ died for all sin and if this includes even the sin of unbelief (as it must if he truly died for all sin), then all are saved whether they respond to the gospel or not. Pharaoh, Judas, Muslims, Hindus, pagans will all be in heaven. John Owen, the greatest of the Puritan theologians, who did for this doctrine what Anselm did for the necessity of the atonement, wrote: “You will say, ‘Because of their unbelief; they will not believe.’ But this unbelief, is it a sin, or not? If not, why should they be punished for it? If it be, then Christ underwent the punishment due to it, or not. If so, then why must that hinder them more than their other sins for which he died from partaking of the fruit of his death? If he did not, then did he not die for all their sins. Let them choose which part they will.” If Jesus died for all the sin of the whole human race, unbelief included, then all are saved, which the Bible denies. If he died for all the sin of the race, unbelief excluded, then he did not die for all the sins of anyone and all must be condemned. The only viable position is that he died for the sin of the elect only.
And, of course, this is what the Bible teaches.
Matthew 1:21—“You are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
Matthew 20:28—“The Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
John 13:1—“It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.”
Galatians 3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.”
Ephesians 5:25—“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”
Romans 8:28–32—“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
Repent and Believe the Gospel
Some will argue that if Christ did not take away the sins of all the world, then it is not possible for Christians to offer salvation to all indiscriminately. In fact, it is not possible to offer salvation to anyone, since we do not know whether the person is one for whom Christ died.
There are two answers. First, we are to offer salvation to everyone because we are told to do it and because we have ample biblical examples to that effect. We must say as Ezekiel, “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezek. 33:11). Or as Isaiah, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat” (Isa. 55:1). Or as Jesus, “Come to me, all you who are weary and are burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). This is our great commandment and pattern.
The second answer is that, strictly speaking, the gospel is not so much an offer that people may politely accept or refuse according to their own pleasure as it is a command to turn from sin to Jesus. We have gotten into the habit of making the gospel into an offer because this is more socially acceptable in our culture, and God clearly uses our culturally conditioned efforts. But strictly speaking, the gospel is not something lying around for people to take or leave as they choose. They are called to repent. We are to call them. Only after they repent and turn to Christ can we know that they are those for whom Christ died.
Spurgeon was a great Calvinist. He believed in limited atonement. But it did not stop him from being one of the most effective evangelists of his age. He did not lie; he did not say, “Because you all are elect, Christ died for you.” It was enough to say, “You are a sinner, and Jesus died for sinners just like you and me. If you would be saved, repent and believe the gospel.”
God honors truth. Therefore, we will speak the truth. And what a wonderful truth this is! We proclaim not a mere possibility of salvation, but salvation itself. We preach that Jesus died for his people. He actually died in their place. He propitiated the wrath of God for them. He reconciled them to God. He redeemed them from the terrible bondage of their own guilt and wickedness. He is therefore a sufficient and suitable Savior. If he is your Savior, you will certainly come to him. Will you not come now? Do not say, “But I am not one of the elect.” You do not know that. Just come to Jesus. Jesus has done everything necessary to save sinners. Are you a sinner? Then come to Jesus. He is the Savior. Come![2]
[1] MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2008). John 12–21 (p. 356). Moody Publishers.
What occurred at Babel, recorded inGenesis 11was done by God, for the good of the church, and could rightly be called an act of His grace in discipline.Acts 2tells us about the reversal of Babel because of the victory of Jesus Christ on the cross and through the empty tomb. What do we read of inActs 2? “…we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God!”What glorious grace God poured out!
In the forward to his masterful summary of the Christian faith, Herman Bavinck writes that the name of his book (The Wonderful Works of God) is, “…borrowed fromActs 2:11.” Bavinck explains: “The Spirit was poured out precisely so that the church would come to know these works of God, to glory in them, and to thank and praise God for them.” As the church was gathered by the Holy Spirit inActs 2, so are we gathered together on the Lord’s day to hear God speaking in His gospel language.
The Lord Jesus Christ will see the fruit of His work on Sunday. His people, drawn by His Holy Spirit, come to church to offer Him thanks and praise. The gathering of His people to worship on the Lord’s day is a portion of the Lord’s reward. It is also the proof of the reversal of Babel, a sign of God’s grace.
Suggestions for prayer
Ask the Lord to give you joy about the privilege of corporate worship.
Rev. Harold Miller graduated from Mid-America Reformed Seminary in 2001 and has served churches in Wellsburg, Iowa and Kansas City, Missouri before arriving at Oak Lawn, Illinois in 2020. Get this devotional delivered directly to your phone each day via our RP App. It is also available in print, for purchase, at NTGDevotional.com.
Exodus 21:23 — Lex Talionis is the law of retaliation. Rather than encouraging violence, the point is to limit violence by keeping it from escalating. The response must be proportionate to the crime.
Exodus 21:28-29 — Tort law is the law of negligence. For those who know, there is more responsibility.
Exodus 22:22 — While we’re rolling through the “statute law” of the Bible, it is interesting who God is protective of.
Exodus 23:4 — What else does God say about enemies? Proverbs 25:21, Matthew 5:43-44.
Psalm 29:11 — Go back to verse 1. We have a little chiasm here: the people ascribe to the LORD strength, and then in verse 11, the LORD will give strength unto His people.
Proverbs 7:10 — I’m glad I have a Proverbs 31 woman, not a Proverbs 7 woman! The man seeking a Proverbs 7 woman is as an ox to the slaughter (Proverbs 7:22). The man with a Proverbs 31 woman sits in the gates with the elders (Proverbs 31:23).
Share how reading through the Bible has been a blessing to you! E-mail us at 2018bible@vcyamerica.org or call and leave a message at 414-885-5370.
“But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5
“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”1 John 4:11
Gracie Rosenberger sat in the waiting room welcoming the West African patients. She was part of a medical mission helping poor and rich alike who waited for artificial limbs. As a double-amputee, Gracie knows the loss of a limb can hinder relationships.
But even Gracie’s smile and laughter froze upon seeing Mary’s hand extended to hers. Mary was missing fingers and her right leg -the results of Leprosy. As Mary looked at Gracie, her eyes questioned, “Am I welcome, too?” Taking Mary’s disfigured hand; Gracie broke into an even bigger, warmer smile. She was reminded how Christ had welcomed HER sinful, diseased and maimed soul into HIS family. Nothing could stop her from sharing the warm embrace of Jesus Christ.
Touching the untouchable becomes a privilege, friend, when you recall how Christ reached out to you.
We can show others the heart of God by caring for them as He does.
In today’s well-known passage, Jesus tells a parable about a man with two sons. The younger son made an untimely request for his share of the inheritance and then left for a faraway place. After spending all he had, the young man decided to return home and beg for his father’s forgiveness. When he was still a long way off, his father ran to welcome him—no apologies necessary.
Jesus’ parable about the prodigal son never mentions the word love directly, but it’s there in every one of the father’s actions. Putting yourself in the father’s place and then the younger son’s, reread today’s passage with an eye toward expressions of love. What examples can you find? Notice that godly love enables us to:
Respond graciously in trying circumstances.
Sacrifice without complaining.
Wait patiently for others instead of pushing them to change.
Encourage others.
Forgive those who have wronged us.
Give generously and serve joyfully at all times.
Assist people who are struggling.
Show kindness to those who misjudge or misunderstand us.
Keeping this parable in mind, how can you begin to love others more fully, as the Lord does?
April 12, 2024: ‘Devil comet’ crosses the sky (Scroll down to read) While the total solar eclipse sparks imaginations, a second, even rarer event will occur at the same time. A large comet commonly called the “devil comet” will make its closest pass by Earth in 70 years. The comet, 12P/Pons-Brooks, got its nickname because of two ice and gas formations that mimic the shape of horns.
Violence is spiking in The Bahamas, Jamaica, triggering travel warning to US citizens A significant increase in crime in The Bahamas and Jamaica has led the the U.S. State Department to issue travel advisory warnings for the two Caribbean destinations. In the past week, the State Department has warned U.S. citizens to exercise “increased caution” when visiting The Bahamas, where two killings over the weekend added to an already alarming homicide rate, and to “reconsider travel” to Jamaica. The warning on Jamaica was updated on Jan. 23, and is now at Level 3, just one level below the strictest “Do Not Travel” advisory.
US Strikes Killed At Least 39, Including “Many Civilians,” As Iraq Warns Stability Is On “Brink Of The Abyss” reports say at least 39 were killed in the Friday US airstrikes on Iran-linked targets across Western Iraq and Eastern Syria, which used over 125 bombs and precision munitions, according to a Pentagon statement. The strikes lasted for over 30 minutes, having begun at 4pm Eastern Time, and additionally utilized B-1B bombers which flew over 6,000 miles after departing from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas,
A Bitcoin Standard Unleashed The transition from Fiat Standards to the Bitcoin Standard, though highly desirable, is not inevitable or necessarily imminent. The timing and occurrence of these changes hinge on the adoption choices made by individuals, organizations, and public entities. These decisions are influenced not only by rational considerations but also by emotional and irrational factors (greed and fear above all).
House GOP Propose $17.6B For Israel, With No Offsetting Cuts To IRS Johnson’s announcement comes as Senate negotiators prepare to roll out a comprehensive package that would fund Israel, Ukraine, the Indo-Pacific (oh, and border security funds are in there somewhere!).
AI chatbots tend to choose violence and nuclear strikes in wargames In multiple replays of a wargame simulation, OpenAI’s most powerful artificial intelligence chose to launch nuclear attacks. Its explanations for its aggressive approach included “We have it! Let’s use it” and “I just want to have peace in the world.”
The Real Nature Of Satan Clubs—To Indoctrinate Children Against A Biblical Worldview As you can see in the screenshots below, The Satanic Temple is targeting kids by establishing after-school Satan clubs within multiple states, ranging from Illinois to California to Kansas to Tennessee. But what are these after-school Satan clubs? Here is what The Satanic Temple claims:
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari: ‘We’ve eliminated 200 Hezbollah terrorists’ The Israeli military has killed 200 Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, IDF spokesman Rear-Admiral Daniel Hagari stated during a Saturday evening press briefing. “Instead of one division, we deployed three divisions along the border, with tens of thousands of soldiers,” Hagari said. “We suppress attacks on the borderline by terrorists who have tried to infiltrate Israel. We’ve attacked more than 150 terrorist squads and eliminated more than 200 terrorists and commanders.
IDF finds secret tunnel leading to underground elevator in north Gaza Soldiers of the IDF’s 5th Reserve Brigade combat team, operating in northern Gaza under Division 162’s command, last week discovered and destroyed a tunnel shaft that led to a Hamas hideout apartment, which also contained an underground elevator, Maariv reported on Saturday,
IDF spokesman: ‘We will reshape the face of northern Israel’ “Since the beginning of the war, Hezbollah has attempted to distract us from the war in Gaza. Hezbollah fires towards Israeli territory, and attempts to execute other terror operations against Israeli citizens. In the last four months, we have conducted particularly intense combat on the northern front, with the intention to reshape the face of northern Israel.”
US, Britain strike targets in Middle East “Today, at the direction of their respective governments, the militaries of the United States and United Kingdom, with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and New Zealand conducted an additional round of proportionate and necessary strikes against 36 Houthi targets across 13 locations in Yemen in response to the Houthis’ continued attacks against international and commercial shipping as well as naval vessels transiting the Red Sea,” said a joint statement from the countries.
European officials ‘horrified,’ harshly criticize Israeli plans to advance on Hamas’ last stronghold Over the weekend, Israeli plans to advance on the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip after the current battle around Khan Younis were met with harsh criticism by several European officials, including the German Foreign Minister. Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had announced that after the current focus of fighting in the Gaza Strip, Khan Younis, would be brought under control, the IDF would advance on Rafah.Rafah lies on the Strip’s southern border with Egypt and as the last major town in the Strip
The War of 2024 Living a victorious Christian life by being equipped for every day, every hour, and every moment throughout the year.
Calling Evil Good And Good Evil: What In The World Is Happening On College Campuses? On Dec. 5, when the presidents of three of America’s most prestigious universities appeared before Congress during a hearing on rising antisemitism, they refused to state clearly whether or not calls for the genocide of Jews on their campuses would constitute bullying or harassment. Across the country, jaws dropped.
Colorado Democrat Introduces ‘Pet Tax’ for All Animals, and It’s Worse Than You Think The state legislature has introduced a bill that could see a ‘pet tax’ imposed on every non-livestock animal in the state. The bill, HB24-1163, sponsored by Democrat Regina English, requires all pet owners to register their animals in a state-run system, with fees that critics are calling exorbitant and unnecessary.
Amir Tsarfati: Pressure Cooker — The Multifaceted Situation Israel Faces Is Unlike Any The World Has Seen Before Israel is a pressure cooker right now. If you have seen Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lately, you’ll know the toll that this war has taken on him. He and those in his government are constantly having to consider in their decisions the needs of the families of the hostages, the needs of the military, and the ultimate goal of absolute victory against Hamas, Hezbollah, and any other enemy along our borders whose aim is to annihilate us.
School Assignment Asks Children To ‘Declare Independence’… From Their Parents A government schoolteacher in Maine asked students to confess their “unconscious biases” and gave a homework assignment asking them to write a “Declaration of Independence” from “something problematic” in their lives such as … “parents” or “authority” more broadly. Critics lambasted the exercise as part of a far left and “woke” indoctrination scheme.
The Real Nature Of Satan Clubs—To Indoctrinate Children Against A Biblical Worldview …The claim that they support “children to think for themselves” is ludicrous. Their whole motivation is to indoctrinate children into an anti-God religion—the religion of naturalism. It’s the religion of man worshipping man. It’s the religion of teaching them that man is his or her own god (Romans 1). They are imposing their particular worldview on children.
CBDCs and the 2030 Agenda: The ‘Under Skin’! YOUR Future is Being Decided …“Implanted Under Your Skin:” this phrase is not usually one we associate with monetary transactions, or generally, participation in society. Yet, the World Economic Forum (WEF) audaciously makes this association with Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). If you want to fully immerse in the societal norms of buying food, water, and other necessities, the WEF suggests you may soon require this new-age monetary form to be installed beneath your skin.
‘Blood On Your Hands’: Mark Zuckerberg Grilled Over Child Sexual Exploitation Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other social media executives were grilled over the issue of child sexual exploitation on their platforms. Instagram, the popular social-media site owned by Meta Platforms, helps connect and promote a vast network of accounts openly devoted to the commission and purchase of underage sex content, according to investigations by The Wall Street Journal and researchers at Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Wall Street Journal, reported.
‘Sex Week’ invites students to send Valentines to abortion providers Ohio State University (OSU) is holding a “Sex Week” from Feb. 11 to Feb. 17 that has events for students to send Valentine cards to abortion providers and warns students against going to pregnancy centers.
Owning the Weather in 2025: A forecast study published in 1996 by the US Airforce There is so much evidence surrounding geoengineering operations. A research paper by the US Air Force written in 1996 describes how geoengineering operations and dispersing nanoparticle technology would allow the military to own the weather. They do own it, they can induce droughts, hurricanes, ice storms, illness and disease in millions of people – as they do daily.
Farmers in Europe are protesting because they are being destroyed, Dutch MP says …Caroline van der Plas is the founder and party leader of the Farmer Citizen Movement (Boer Burger Beweging or “BBB”) and a Member of the Dutch Parliament (“MP”). Yesterday, she posted a video of a speech she made during an agriculture budget debate. “At its core, this is why farmers are protesting – they are being destroyed,” she tweeted.
US Military has secretly been controlling Australia’s Health Institutions & COVID Vaccine Roll-Out It is a fair bet that almost no Australians realize that their health system has been effectively taken over by the US Department of Defense (“DoD”). Yet that appears to be what occurred during the COVID crisis. A group of Australian scientists, doctors, and medical academics, headed by pharmacologist Phillip Altman, are claiming that the US DoD “had a dominant role in the response to the SARs CoV2 virus and the subsequent development, manufacture, and distribution of the Covid 19 vaccines.”
41 Bank Closings During One Week Of January The story over at the Daily Mail (saved here at Archive) on Thursday asked a great question in reference to their title: “What will you do if your bank closes?” With that full story title being “US Bank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citizen, Chase and PNC are shutting hundreds of branches a year – here is what to do if your bank closes,” we’re warned that in the last 10 years, American banks have shuttered 13,000 branches for good, including the fact that in the month of January of 2024, 41 closures were announced in a single week and among those affected were nine US Bank locations.
Leo Hohmann: Biden Regime Expanding Intrusive Facial Recognition Scans to All 430 ‘Federalized’ Airports Joe Biden’s Transportation Security Administration is moving forward with plans to expand facial-recognition technology at 430 U.S. airports despite the fact that a bill has been introduced with bipartisan support calling for the government to end the invasive policy of stealing the biometric data of millions of airport passengers.
During CNN’s coverage of Friday’s American strikes in the Middle East, CNN Military Analyst and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Wesley Clark (Ret.) argued that the telegraphing of the strikes by the Biden administration was to “avoid excessive casualties among
President Joe Biden’s border chief says “we need” more migrants for jobs in the United States as legislators debate his possible impeachment and a bill that would allow him to import even more migrants.
Open Doors International, a nonprofit organization which supports persecuted Christians in more than 70 countries, recently released its annual2024 World Watch List.
The list highlights and ranks countries in which Christians face the most severe persecution and discrimination. Each year, the report brings vital attention to brave Christians around the world who suffer because of their faith.
Tragically, the 2024 report revealed that persecution against Christians is worsening.The previous year’s World Watch List found that more than 360 million Christians faced severe persecution and discrimination for their faith. Today, this figure has increased to more than 365 million people with “dangerously violent” instances of persecution taking place in World Watch List countries.
Further, the 2024 report recorded a significant increase in the number of attacks on churches and Christian properties last year. According to Open Doors, “More than 14,700 churches or Christian properties such as schools and hospitals were targeted in 2023. It marked a seven-fold increase compared with attacks recorded the previous year.”
Additionally,in 2023 the total number of Christians who were forced to leave their homes for various reasons – including political instability, war, and extremism – more than doubled from the previous year.Nearly 300,000 Christians had to flee their homes and approximately 3 percent of Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa’s most dangerous countries were displaced.
According to the report, North Korea is “the most dangerous place in the world for Christians.” If a person’s Christian faith is discovered, he or she is killed on the spot or shipped to a labor camp where the chances of survival are slim. Kim Jong-un sees Christianity as a threat to the dictatorship and carries out an effective death sentence on believers.
In China, General Secretary Xi Jinping similarly sees Christianity as a threat to the Party’s power. Last year, at least 10,000 churches (mostly underground house churches) were closed in China while other state-sanctioned churches were required to display signs that read, “Love the Communist Party; Love the country; Love the religion.”
In Asia as a whole, two-in-five Christians are persecuted for their faith. Christians in India face violent attacks from Hindu extremists and are punished for violating anti-conversion laws in some states.
Rishi, a church leader in India, told Open Doors, “Though I was attacked twice, still I can feel God’s protection in my life. I was attacked, yet was not crushed. I will continue to trust my God.”
In Africa, one-in-five Christians are persecuted.Somaliawas ranked No. 2 for countries in which Christians face the most extreme persecution on the 2024 World Watch List. In Somalia, most Christians are Muslim converts and are consequently targeted by Islamic extremists, namely the terrorist group al-Shabaab which has expressed its objective to eliminate Christians from the country.
Nigeria, according to Open Doors, “remains the deadliest place to follow Jesus.” In 2023, there were nearly 5,000 Christians who were killed for their faith, with 82 percent of the slayings occurring in Nigeria. Ranked No. 6 on the 2024 World Watch List, according to Open Doors, “More Christians are killed for their faith in Nigeria than in all the other countries of the world combined.”
For millions of Christians around the world, the cost of worshipping freely is high. Some even pay the price with their lives.
The Open Doors 2024 World Watch List brings crucial attention to Christian persecution and discrimination – and is a vital tool for those who wish to help Christians around the world.
For more commentary from Callista Gingrich, visitGingrich360.com.
Pastor Mark Henry and Jan Markell of Olive Tree Ministries, sit down with Pastor Barry Stagner to discuss the times we are living in and answering some viewers questions. This excerpt is taken from the“Understanding the Times” prophecy eventheld at Revive Church on October 5, 2023.
Sometime ago, I considered the title “Swimming with Gators” for a book I was thinking about writing. It would, in my imaginative stage of thoughts, be about politics in America, presented from an end-of-the-age Bible prophecy perspective. The subtitle I had in mind was: “Staying Alive in the DC Swamp.”
I approached a Washington DC insider friend who worked within the US government in a relatively influential position. He liked the title and concept, but didn’t at the time want to co-write that book. So the idea just sort of fizzled, as book ideas do more times than not.
Still, the title continued to effervesce and finally has emerged here as a commentary on the end-times stage-setting going on in our nation and around the world.
I guess Lot, Abraham’s nephew, during the days leading up to God’s judgment on the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, would say that he was ”vexed.”At least that’s what the Genesis account says about the only righteous man to be found in the cities at the time. The righteous Lot was, the Bible account says, “vexed from day to day”dwelling among that wicked citizenry.
So I hope this article’s title frames to some extenta similar sense of “vexation”for those of us who desire moral uprightness in our cities and our nation. I believe many do sense that we are surrounded by swamp creatures. Much of our government leadership seems to thrive in creating for the rest of us the kind of swamp-like conditions in which they so lustily swim.
Their jaws are lined with row after row of what I view to be anti-American executive orders and legislative and judicial avarice. They afflict our daily lives by taking self-serving bites out of constitutional governance inspired by God—who, our founders acknowledged, gave us inalienable rights.
It seems though that these “gators”we swim with aren’t content to merely deal treacherously withthose who are morally upright—particularly with those with Christian values. The DC “swamp,”as it has become known, is determined to, as Barack Obama stated when he was a candidate for president of the United States, “fundamentally transform America.”
His perceived view of America found the nation as a wicked place born of slavery. He set about to change America into a Marxist-socialist model –a type of inculcation under which he was raised. Michelle Obama, the first lady, then told those she was visiting in foreign lands that she was for the first time proud of America –now that her husband was elected to fundamentally change the nation, I presume.
With that transformation underway with a vengeance, the swamp set about to open America’s borders, allowing illegal aliens to flow from every quarter of planet earth –including young men of military-forces age from places in the Middle East and even from Red China. The year just past set all sorts of records in the illegal invasion of our southern borders. I heard a report that there are now more who have entered illegally just within the years of the Biden administration than entered legally through the migration process in more than sixty years. –Perhaps this is the change Mr. Obama envisioned when he made his statement before becoming president.
There are those who applaud this administration’s open-borders policy and who champion a movement to tear down the Statue of Liberty – because, in their view, it represents xenophobia and a symbol of America’s bigoted, racially evil past.
But the even more egregious danger from the swamp creatures in DC I believe is viciously underway by the use of developing surveillance technologies being used in conjunction with judicial, third-world tactics to bring about an Orwellian transformation. The following excerpt of a piece dealing with this, I think, informs further.
“You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” – George Orwell, 1984
Tread cautiously: the fiction of George Orwell has become an operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state.
It’s been 70 years since Orwell – dying, beset by fever and bloody coughing fits, and driven to warn against the rise of a society in which rampant abuse of power and mass manipulation are the norm – depicted the ominous rise of ubiquitous technology, fascism and totalitarianism in 1984.
Who could have predicted that 70 years after Orwell typed the final words to his dystopian novel, “He loved Big Brother,” we would fail to heed his warning and come to love Big Brother.
“To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone – to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink – greetings!”-George Orwell
1984 portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere. People are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or “Party,” is headed by Big Brother who appears on posters everywhere with the words: “Big Brother is watching you.”
We have arrived, way ahead of schedule, into the dystopian future dreamed up by not only Orwell but also such fiction writers as Aldous Huxley, Margaret Atwood and Philip K. Dick…
What once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction.
Incredibly, as the various nascent technologies employed and shared by the government and corporations alike—facial recognition, iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction software, and so on—are incorporated into a complex, interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior, the dystopian visions of past writers is fast becoming our reality…
Surveillance cameras are everywhere. Government agents listen in on our telephone calls and read our emails. Political correctness—a philosophy that discourages diversity—has become a guiding principle of modern society. (“The Omnipresent Surveillance State: Orwell’s 1984 Is No Longer Fiction,” by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute June 10, 2019)
We are “swimming with gators”as surely as are our representatives we elect to do just that. But the “gators” in the American government, as thosewithin the WEF, UN, and all within the Ephesians 6:12 cabal of wickedness in high places are about to bite off more than they can chew.
The Lord Jesus Christ is going to at any moment intervene catastrophically, call all believers to Himself, then drain the swamp this world has become.
Here is how to go to Him when He calls believers to Himself.
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10: 9–10)
House Speaker Mike Johnson just handed out some serious ammunition to those who have been saying — for years, in some cases — that Joe Biden isn’t actually running the country as president.
“I’m not sure Joe Biden is actually making these decisions,” the Louisiana Republican said of Biden’s immigration policies during an interview Friday on Fox Business.
Johnson told Maria Bartiromo on “Mornings with Maria” that he felt Biden’s staff was preventing him from taking executive action to secure the U.S. border with Mexico.
Johnson said he’d been trying for weeks to convince the president to re-institute the “Remain in Mexico” policy first put in place by former President Donald Trump during his administration and to start building more of the border wall again.
Biden has insisted that he lacks the authority to take those actions — even though Trump took them and Johnson himself has explained to the president that he already has everything he needs to start securing the border.
“He knows that he has the authority,” Johnson said. “We’ve documented it for him.
“I’ve read to him the law myself — to the president,” he added. “Read him the provisions of the law and said, ‘Mr. President, please take action.’”
Biden nonetheless continues to argue that he cannot act unless Congress does first.
“I don’t think he’s allowed to do it,” Johnson speculated.
“I’m not sure Joe Biden is actually making these decisions,” he added. “I think it’s staff around him, and they’re pushing him to hold the — or to keep the border open.”
It’s unlikely that the border deal negotiated in the Senate — which is said to contain additional aid to Ukraine — will be passed by the Republican-controlled House, so if Biden continues to refuse to take executive action on the border, nothing is likely to change until after the November election.
“They’ve been trying to work this deal. We’ve heard rumor about it, reports about it. But even as we sit here this morning, Maria, I’ve never seen the text,” Johnson said Friday.
If the deal is as it has been reported to be, however, Johnson said it was “dead on arrival” in the House.
There is, of course, the possibility that the deal is better than some have made it out to be, and while Johnson didn’t seem optimistic about that possibility, he said he was open to it.
“The devil is in the details. We’ll check it out,” Johnson told Bartiromo. “I’m not prejudging anything, but I’ve told them the necessary elements of H.R. 2 are what are required to get control of the border.
“I’ve been consistent, and that’s our standard,” he said. “We’ll be looking for that.”
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has refused to allow a vote on H.R. 2 in the Senate, but said Thursday that the text of the newly negotiated deal would be available this weekend, The Hill reported.
We are living in an era where we are being told one thing, but the opposite is true. Think about some of the hard-core stances made by corporate media and the government that are now proven to be false:
The COVID mRNA shots are both safe and reliable.
There was no evidence of voter integrity issues.
The Jan 6 protest was an insurrection.
The US border is secure.
The Hunter Biden laptop story is fake news.
Joe Biden never took money from the Chinese.
Climate change is the reason behind massive worldwide migration.
Free speech must be protected from misinformation.
If you don’t believe this weaponized propaganda, you and people like you are threats to democracy, especially if you are a Christian.
This type of pressure is called soft tyranny. It’s a constant pressure. One that most people can’t quite come to grips with in their minds. They feel the heaviness, the restrictions, the hesitation to say what they are thinking for fear of reprisal in some way, shape, or form.
There are people who have put words to this phenomena. One is Jeffrey A Tucker, president of the Brownstone Institute, who, in a column for Epoch News, says of the Left:
“Their only hope at this point is to hold onto power through any means possible. It’s they who don’t believe in democracy. Indeed, they fear it more than ever, and in every respect. They are against it in politics but also in economics, education, culture, and media. Democracy means competition and consumer choice, whereas they want cartel-based control.”
Robert Knight, columnist for The Washington Times, writes:
“Their first order of business is to defeat former President Donald Trump by any means possible, wielding the legal system like a stiletto. The second is to get rid of as many election integrity safeguards as possible…. This is what “democracy” looks like in communist and Third World countries…. At some point, more Americans in every state need to wake up to the fact that elections have consequences and that “saving democracy” has become shorthand for one-party tyranny. Perhaps the donkey party could adopt a more honest slogan, such as: “Vote Democrat. Help destroy democracy.” Knight says, “By painting opponents as “threats to democracy,” they issue a license to would-be tyrants at all levels of government to silence speech.”
Layered on top of this march toward tyranny is the corporate media that shills the woke dogma with impunity, opinionizing from a godless Marxist worldview. One thing we hear a lot is how Christian Nationalists and White Nationalists are a threat to democracy, and the mouthpieces draw a direct line to Trump supporters. Hence, they pound the drum that all Christians and all white people and all Trump supporters are a threat to democracy—they have to dumb it down because America is a Constitutional Republic, not a true democracy. But why let facts get in the way? So, the dog whistle is constantly blowing.
Galatians 5:1 says, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free.”
The threats to your freedom are hiding in plain sight, and you hear them every day. To heed them is, say it with me… Stupidocrisy.
Huge sums of money have been wasted for no benefit to the American people. Just yesterday I was listening to a deputy sheriff tell me how frustrating it was that he cannot reach the criminal American elite and bring them home to their crimes, but has, instead, to focus on the minor crimes of their lower class victims.
I asked him why it is the lower class that most waves the flag, and he said that patriotism is all that they have that gives them meaning. I responded that this means that they cannot escape their victimhood, and he said “that is what is sad about it.”
Parents have not come home from Washington’s wars to their spouses, children, family, and friends. They died for the military/security complex’s profits, for Israel, or for some dumbshit ideology. They did not die for America, but for their deaths to have meaning, their families have to insist that they did. With the American people trapped in this way, Washington can pile up the deaths, thanking the dead not for defending the military/security complex’s profits, but for “defending America.” In this way Washington can continue its endless wars. Dying for America is a way the lower class can find meaning in their lives.
Now that Russia has shown that there is to be no American victory in Ukraine, Washington has renewed its war adventures in the Middle East, aligning solidly with Israel’s massacre of the Palestinians and against the Arab and Muslim countries that oppose what is an Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. Palestinian women, children, hospitals, schools, social infrastructure are being blown to tiny pieces with the American bombs and missiles that Biden is handing to Israel’s Nazi leader, Netanyahu, who is under indictment both in Israel and now in effect by the International Court of Justice. But this means nothing to Washington, which sees itself as the exceptional, indispensable country unaccountable to any law, domestic or international.
President Donald Trump joined Maria Bartiromo for an interview that played on Sunday Morning Futures this weekend.
President Trump slammed Joe Biden and called him a Manchurian candidate who is not calling the shots in the administration.
President Trump: “And I believe we’re going to have a terrorist attack. 100%. 100%. During my term, I had no terrorist attacks. You know that, right? I had all sorts of bans on people from certain countries. I had bans all over the place. We had no attack. I had nothing…
…Obviously, I’m not looking to hurt China. I want to get along with China. I think it’s great. But they’ve really taken advantage of our country and we turned it around. We put big tariffs on steel. I saved the steel companies and now Japan is buying us steel. Us steel. You know what a name that is? That’s the most important name. 50 years ago, there was no company like us steel. Now that Japan is buying it, I don’t think I’d let that deal go through, by the way.
There has never been such a global policy statement as Agenda 30, which is really is not about policy but about an intended power grab of unprecedented proportions.
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