Time with Abba, Singing Praising 親親爸父，唱詩歌頌 : DAY 822 - No More Space for Repentance (請按此處收聼廣東話Cantonese podcast click here)

Friday, August 22, 2014

DAY 822 - No More Space for Repentance (請按此處收聼廣東話Cantonese podcast click here)

Today's Reading: Revelation 16:1-9

** If you would like to learn a simple and good way of Daily Devotion method please read my “Count Down 5” from my Devotion on Fire blog:

http://bishopsilas.blogspot.ca/2009/08/count-down-5-subject-shifting-devotion.html

To use this simple and good way of Daily Devotion method please click this link:

.Subject Shifting Devotion.pdf

Please click this link to read Revelation 16:1-9

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation 16&version=ESV

Chinese: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=启示录 16&version=CUV

Bible Study

Quite a number of people wants only a loving God but not a God full of wrath and punishment. Is it possible? Is our God like that, just love, mercy and not justice? Starting from this chapter on John prophecies the coming wrath and justice of God.

Let's take a look at what Bishop N.T. Wright says (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N._T._Wright ) :

We would all much rather live in a world without wrath. We would all much rather imagine a God without wrath. Richard Niebuhr, one of America's most famous twentieth-century theologians once memorably described the message of much ultra-liberal Christianity: 'A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.'..We might have preferred a 'gospel' like that, but it certainly isn't the one we've got.
And it certainly doesn't match the world we've got. That's the problem. In any family, school, business, country - in any organization or system of whatever sort - there will be deep problems. Things will go wrong. Human pride, greed, fear or suspicion will take over. Unless it is spotted, named and dealt with, it will only get worse. If it is allowed to flourish unchecked, it can even be hailed as a new way of living. The story of the twentieth century was in part the story of just that, as new ways of being - Communism, Fascism and Apartheid being the three most obvious…
The 'wrath' of the creator God consists of two things, principally. First, he allows human wickedness to work itself out, to reap its own destruction. Second, he steps in more directly to stop it, to call 'time' on it, when it's got out of hand…What we see here, in the first four plagues, is a mixture of both type of 'wrath'…
These judgments are total. Before, with the seals and the trumpets, only a part of the world was harmed or destroyed( remember, again, that all this is symbolic), sending a warning signal to those who need to repent. Here that note is absent. This time, everything in the sea dies. All the rivers turn to blood (again, John is drawing on the plagues of Egypt). There is no more space for repentance.

N.T. Wright. Revelation for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p.141-143.

Now, do you understand why God is both loving and justice? Do you understand why God's wrath is necessary to you and this world in His own time?

Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage we have just read. Offer this time up to Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmax47l2hLU

Spiritual Journal

The title I heard from Jesus today is: No more space for repentance

What I receive today is a very important message that lots of people need but do not understand. Just a day ago, Michelle and I were having dinner with some of our friends. We were talking about someone we know who is in serious questioning about Christian faith. They said she started to listen to my blog some months ago and now almost comes to a state of becoming a Christian. The problem is she believes in Jesus and the Holy Spirit, but not God. The reason is she cannot accept God's wrath and justice. She cannot accept God is so cruel and not loving, but Jesus and the Holy Spirit is so loving.

I invite all of you to pray for this wonderful friend of us who is almost at the point of becoming a true Christian. Pray for her that she can read and listen to this blog and podcast. Pray that she can understand at last by the grace of God, the love of our Lord Jesus Christ and the out pouring of the Holy Spirit!

I always tell people it is their own choice to receive God's rewards or punishment. God's wrath and justice is to give us a chance to repent and return to His Kingdom of love and justice. And, when people do not repent, God's final judgment will come in His own time and there is no more space for repentance. Even Satan cannot escape God's final judgment!

Jesus is Lord! Not you, any king, any system or anything. Jesus is Lord! And,most important, Jesus loves you!

Dear Heavenly Father,

Help us to understand that you are a loving and merciful God and a God of justice. Lead us to help more people to repent before there is no more space for repentance. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

If you have not seen these pictures, please click this link to know what happened and how gracious God is: http://discipler123.blogspot.ca/2014/08/day-821-god-is-so-real-lets-come-and.html