The Gospel Of Repentance

One of the criminals crucified with Christ to me is one of the most admirable people I have never met. Why? Because of his character. I want to take a few moments to carefully analyze his words. 1. He rebuked the other criminal for his insolence of the Lord and admitted that they were guilty and justly condemned for their crimes When the other criminal demanded that Jesus save him because he wanted a get-out-of-jail-free-card, the contrite rightly rebuked telling him, “Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Rarely do we hear people taking responsibility for their sins. This shows tremendous character on the part of this justly condemned. I used the word sins on purpose because our society looks at it as an antiquated word that it would love to totally dismiss from our vocabulary forever. The problem that ...

Now on the same occasion there were some present who reported to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. And Jesus said to them, "Do you suppose these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will likewise perish. Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower of Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will likewise perish."                                                                                                                            ...

In 1 Peter 3:18-20 we read these words, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit, by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison , who were formerly disobedient, when once the Divine long suffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared in which a few, that is eight souls were saved through water” (NKJV). The phrase He went and preached to the spirits in prison , is a subject of debate. Some, perhaps many that are aware of this account in the church believe this means Jesus between His death and resurrection went to an area in the underworld called paradise and preached the gospel to Old Testament saints like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Daniel, Isaiah, etc. Jesus had to reveal to them that He was the Messiah they must believe in order to receive salvation so they could be taken to heaven when he led captivity captive (Ep...

This is an age old question. I feel it is an appropriate one to ask in light of what the world is dealing with right now with this current worldwide pandemic Coronavirus (COVID-19). At the time of this writing in the US there are 50,818  confirmed cases, 333 recoveries and 678  deaths. Globally there  are 414,485  confirmed cases, 108,263  recoveries and 18,576  deaths. These numbers are according to WHO , CDC , CCDC  and ECDC . These are alarming statistics considering we have only known about this pathogen for about 3 months. The question has already been asked countless times, "Why is this happening to us? Are we in the last days?" Perhaps others are asking themselves is this a judgment from God? Fear has gripped the world. Hysteria abounds. Why else would people in a panic fight in the store aisles over toilet paper as if it can somehow save you. I still haven't figured out why people would want to hoard toilet paper. If this was the end ...

I cannot speak for anyone else, but for this writer, this verse in Proverbs 18:21 has been somewhat of a challenge over the years. Why? Because if one takes these words literally, then some if not many will believe that we can produce death or life with our words. Is that true? Can we do that with our words? What is the writer Solomon telling us in this verse? First of all, I would like to convey what he is not saying. This verse by no means is saying we can literally bring about life and death by our words. Our words do not have that kind of power. Only God has that ability. God is the one that calls things which do not exist as though they did (Romans 4:17).   So, the power of positive confession although popular is not Biblical. To help define this verse, we need to look at other verses. Please remember that the best interpreter of scripture is scripture. Here is what we read in Proverbs 15:4, “A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the sp...

Horror films have been made about the living dead for sheer entertainment and excitement. Dead bodies coming out their graves to scare and kill people - zombies we call them. They have animation, but are technically dead. They do not have feeling or any vitality. The flesh is rotting and they lose limbs easily. They do not communicate - they only moan.  The Bible describes people devoid of God's Spirit as dead. Both Ephesians 2:1 and Colossians 2:13 describes us as being dead in trespasses and sins before God made us alive. What type of death is this? It is spiritual death. Jesus when rebuking the Pharisees described them as beautiful whitewashed tombs on the outside, but inwardly are full of dead men's bones (Matthew 23:27). So, the word of God reveals to us that there are spiritual zombies - those that are alive physically but dead spiritually. How did man become the living dead? We were born this way unfortunately. We have to travel all the way to the beginning of...

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