Amen! I want to assure you, JC, that there are many who “have not bowed the knee to Baal,” and I claim that by faith! My congregation, for one, has been and continues to focus on the Lord our Righteousness, “Christ in us,” the only hope of glory. We recognize that we are nothing, helpless and weak - and yet there are so many promises to claim that Christ is doing and will finish His good work, if we will simply learn to cooperate with Him and allow Him to get on with it. And it is even He who is able to teach us how to cooperate! What a God we serve - Maranatha!

I just learned about this great inititive. And the first blog I read was this one. I am greatly impressed that the first thing I read is about the need to accept God’s promises and not think that we can promise Him anything and do it. We can make all kinds of promises but how to carry them out I find not. I thank God through Jesus Christ.
Just one thing about the about the blog from “loving4christ”. Yes, it is vitally important that we accept Christ in us by faith, but we also need to accept that we are ‘in Christ’ by God’s act. Jesus told us to remain in Him and He in us if we are to bear the fruit of the Spirit. Our title to heaven is “in Christ” (or justification). Our fitness for heaven is His working in us “Christ in us”(or sanctification) that doesn’t contribute one iota to our salvation; but which we must and will have if our faith union with Him is genuine.

I too have just learned of this wonderful call to a higher and hoier experience . I’ve told several about it. Thank you all for your comments about our great need of Jesus.
I find that if we are able to accept His promises moment by moment to keep us,we have all we need.Herein is the REST he promises.

In response to Clifford Force’s comment - yes, I certainly agree that what God accomplished for us and as us in Christ is of tremendous importance - indeed, I have been very blessed that the habit has been established in my life to daily praise God for the gift of His Son Jesus, to embrace my identity in Christ and the many benefits to not only me, but to the entire human race, through the death of the promised Messiah, Jesus, on the cross. As I thus “confess that Jesus is the Son of God,” I also know by faith that God abides in me and me in Him (1 John 4:15). By faith, I am then indwelt by Christ through the Holy Spirit - I receive a fresh infilling / baptism of the Holy Spirit for the day.
Yet, it is my understanding that what we are looking at as we contemplate the final outpouring of the Latter Rain must go beyond both our title to and our fitness for heaven. I say this, because it seems that there will be a group of believers in the last days who will allow themselves to be fully cleansed, allowing all of their sin to be blotted out (even unknown sin, which is one reason we cooperate with God by asking Him to search us and try us, because our own hearts are wicked and deceitful). This group will then be privileged to receive the Latter Rain, being empowered to proclaim the last call to a dying world, to lighten the earth with His glory, to endure the time of trouble such as never was, and to finally be translated without tasting death. Again, this does nothing to “earn” their salvation, but goes the next step beyond having embraced and received both our title to and our fitness for heaven.

Dear brothers and sisters:
Special thanks to you all for your precious comments. Yes Clifford the “in Christ” understanding of the incarnation and atonement of Jesus as us is the most fundamental truth that we can know. Although so poorly understood in the Christian world this imputed righteousness, or ticket to Heaven as loving4Christ mentioned,is the anchor, if you will, of our entire Christian experience. Without a correct view of what Jesus accomplished in His earthly ministry our attempts at Christian living will always end up in one of the two ditches of legalism (biblical name Galationism) or cheap grace which presumes on God’s mercy and forgiveness to continue in our sin.
Yes Stephanie your comment about resting in Christ is right on. This is what we will have to give to the people as we preach “the gospel of peace” as Paul called it. The binding up of the law and the gospel as the messenger described the light that began to shine upon us nearly 120 years ago.
Thanks loving4Christ for your words of encouragement as we allow Jesus to reveal to us sins “we would commit if we had the opportunity” or circumstance. This deeper cleansing for the final generation will make them so much like Jesus and as we deal with those fallen ones in the church and in the world we will have no condemnation but we will not mistake human love for that person by excusing or ignoring what these sins will do to them if we don’t speak to them or cry out to God for them. Bless you all as we contemplate these final days ahead.
In His peace, purpose, & power:
JC in China

Dear brothers and sisters:

Looks like we are all on the same page on this. I guess that in my thinking, the fitness for heaven would be our being so united to Christ that we would relect His character and be delivered from “all” sin as jayfusnorma is saying. Is our fitness not dependent on our accepting by faith that we are in Christ by God’s act and He is in us as we respond to His knocking at our hearts door, and invite Him in and trust Him to live His life in us. Can we not truly believe that our old man was crucitied with Him and that we are now a new creation created in Christ to do good works?

I was greatly impressed with brother Ivor’s explanation of justification that he presented on 3abn. If I understand correctly this is the message that would lay the glory of man in the dust but was rejected by most in that generation. By God’s grace this calling us together for His power will pull us together in love so that God can work in us the character transformation that will “give glory to Him” for the hour of His judgment has come. Yes we will be judged, but more importantly, He is the one that is being judged by the whole universe. One of the main things He is being judged on is can He have a people that have accepted that “same power that raised Jesus from the dead” so that we will be delivered, cleansed of all sin so that in this way we are giving Him glory.

Cliff

I really appreciate JC’s lead article above about Ezra, Ezra’s prayer, their community decision, and its very tragic consequences. Thank you JC!

I never heard anyone else comment on this, but God has made it clear to me through the Scriptures that in that event there is a great and most important lesson for us to study and learn such that we do not repeat the same mistake that Ezra and those men in Jerusalem did.

Isn’t it clear from the very beginning of creation how much emphasis God is putting upon the family unit?! I mean in Gen. 1:27 it is made clear that that which was created in the image of the ‘us’ that is God is “male AND female,” isn’t it? And what exactly is “male and female” if not the very beginning and foundation of the family. Jesus / Yeshua had this to say about it in Mat 19:6: “Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

Yes, it is true that then as now God has solemnly warned us not to covenant with unbelievers and such that we are not a good match with. But that is before the fact. Before the choice and the covenant is made. A covenant that God intended for each of us to be once and for all, or according to the familiar words “for better or for worse.”

Yet, all too often we miss out on the emphasis our Creator is placing upon the one covenant that is created in the very image of our Creator God… and we destroy it! Why do we do that? Isn’t it all too often because we mistakenly believe that it is God’s will? Because we mistakenly believe that is in the best interest of our children? But whose interest are we serving when and if we think and act as did Ezra and his cohorts? Aren’t we then in fact serving the powers whose object it is to destroy the family unit, indeed the very image our God has given each of us uniquely of Himself?

What were the results of Ezra’s and those other men’s decision to divorce their wives and children from foreign lands? Ever studied that? In fact, the bible makes it quite clear what the consequences were. Think about it! What did Nehemiah discover when he arrived in Jerusalem just a very few years after the foundation to the 2nd temple in Jerusalem had been laid? He found the temple deserted, desecrated, and almost forgotten by the people, didn’t he? No doubt the consequences of that whole sale family destruction had far reaching consequences that were not at all in line with the intent of Ezra and those other men who no doubt were all very serious about serving the God they professed to believe in.

Why did they make such a serious mistake? How could they do that? Perhaps it is not so hard to do serious mistakes like that? Perhaps we are making very similar mistakes today, even within our own beloved church?

Could it be that all it takes is being just a tad bit more superficial than we need to be? Could it be that we each need to study the Scriptures a little deeper, a little more intently? Could it be that each of us needs to be a little less dependent upon the “leaders” whom we each are placing between ourselves and our Creator? Isn’t that what those godly men of Israel did by buying the suggestions of Ezra wholesale and without reflecting more deeply upon what the Scriptures were teaching from the very beginning?

Or isn’t it true that in our society, even within our very own beloved church, we are giving credence to all kinds of excuses for family separation and divorce?

Aren’t we forgetting to consider, in view of what the Scriptures are clearly teaching, what the end results are upon the life and security of our very own sons and daughters, when they see their own parents unable to resolve successfully the problems related to the one most fundamental issue of all: Their very existence?

Can a child ever feel one with him or her self, when they are severed from one of the two whom they naturally identify more with than with any one else? Won’t such a child forever suffer severely? Emotionally as well as in untold other ways? Isn’t it much the same, emotionally, as for a woman to be raped? No doubt the worst part, by far, for a woman to be raped is the emotional trauma. There may be other consequences as well, yes, but I do not believe that without the emotional trauma many would consider the physical injury all by itself as being all that severe. And yet, why do we ignore this certainly very comparable trauma when we inflict it in our very own beloved sons and daughters? Are we in denial? Certainly it is well known that severe trauma frequently causes amnesia and even unconsciousness. After severe trauma, whether physical or emotional, there is amnesia. One does not remember. Thus denial. Failure to recognize the facts… Is that’s what is happening to us and to our society?

Isn’t that what happened to the People of Israel in the years following immediately upon that fateful decision of Ezra and men who believed themselves totally committed to God’s cause?

How can we avoid making the same mistake as is described in Ezra and Nehemiah? By prayer and by thoughtfully studying the Scriptures perhaps? Weren’t the Scriptures given us for the purpose of learning - even by the mistakes honestly committed by others before us? By Ezra and his contemporaries…

Do we need the Holy Spirit to cleans our thinking, our reasoning, our relationships, our actions, our families, or not?

Yes, let’s pray that we truly get a latter rain, a cleansing rain, a gentle rain, a rain that will not be so severe that it will kill the emotional life of our very own sons and daughters!

That is my prayer. Will anyone join me in this prayer for all of our sons and for all of our daughters?

Please, Father in heaven, save us from ourselves! For we do not know what we are doing even to our very own beloved sons and daughters, nor to ourselves. We need you! We cannot lift ourselves out of the mire into which we have put ourselves and each other. Father, show us more clearly how each name of ours is not ours at all, but yours! Help us respect and honor your property! Help us not to take any name of yours in vain! Not even the names we thought were our own!