WHY THEN, THESE FEARS? WHY THIS DISTRUST?

by Octavius Winslow 

Jesus has all the treasures of the everlasting covenant, all the fullness of the Godhead, all the resources of the universe in His keeping, and at His disposal! Look at the starry sky—Jesus strewed it with its jewelry. Look at that enchanting landscape—Jesus enameled it with its loveliness. Look at that cloud-capped mountain—Jesus reared it. Look at that beauteous lily—Jesus painted it. Look at that soaring bird—Jesus feeds it.

He, with whom is all this strength and beauty, is your Brother! Are you not better and dearer to Him than these? He has loved and chosen you from all eternity, ransomed you with His blood, and inhabited you by His Spirit. Why, then, these fears? Why this distrust? All He requires of you is to bring to His fullness your emptiness—to His sympathy your grief—to His unerring wisdom your confusion—and to His sheltering wing your temptations and trials. Spread your case before Him in the humble confidence of a child. Listen to His words—"I am the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt: open your mouth wide, and I will fill it."

http://gracegems.org/Winslows/Christ_sympathy.htm

FROM GLORY TO GLORY.

By John MacDuff

"When this aching heart shall rest,
All its busy pulses o'er,
From her mortal robes undrest,
Shall my spirit upward soar;
Then shall ever-growing joy
All my thoughts and powers employ.

"Jesus reigns—the life, the sun,
Of that wondrous world above;
All the clouds and storms are gone—
All is light, and all is love.
All the shadows melt away
In the blaze of glorious day."—Lange.

"The path of the just is as the shining light, that shines more and more unto the perfect day."—Prov. 4:18.

As the Believer's path on earth is, or ought to be, a progressive one, in knowledge, love, happiness, and joy; so, in a loftier and more ennobling sense, will it be in a future world. The sun of his bliss will ever be climbing higher and higher the skies, but yet never attaining its full meridian. Heaven, indeed, as we have seen in a former meditation, would be lacking in one chief element of happiness were advancement unknown. The glorified spirit, constituted as our feelings at present are, would not be satisfied with a stationary bliss. "Perfect security from all danger of a change for the worse,is a highly gratifying idea; but the expectation of a change for the better, is an essential ingredient in all our present notions of happiness," (Whately.) The Redeemed in heaven—"vessels of glory" "fitted for the Master's use"—while they will be always filled, yet, if it seem not a paradox, they will be always filling—ever increasing in the divine knowledge and likeness, progressing along the line of infinite blessedness flowing from God's presence and smile.

It is the privilege of the believer, even in this world, to be ever aspiring after a more intimate acquaintance with the Divine character, works, and ways. David, notwithstanding all that he had seen of Jehovah, says, "My soul THIRSTS FOR GOD," (Ps. 42:2.) Paul, notwithstanding his exaltedattainments, prays, "That I MAY KNOW HIM," (Phil. 3:10.) The whole Christian dispensation, from the earliest times until now, has been progressive in its character. Those living anterior to the flood had but dim perceptions of the glorious things which our eyes have seen, and our ears have heard. Redemption was more fully unfolded to the patriarchs—more fully still to the prophets—and "in these last days," in which He has "spoken unto us by His Son," more fully than all. This gradual development will still characterize "the ages to come"—each cycle of these ages evolving some new manifestation of the Divine character and attributes. As the saints advanced on earth from grace to grace; so then they will be ascending from "glory to glory"—each new pause on the steeps of the everlasting hills only unfolding new and more amazing discoveries of God's grace and love.

Nor shall we ever reach that point where our knowledge of the Infinite will be complete—where we shall be able to fold the wing in its upward soaring. An old English writer beautifully compares the believer's knowledge of God in a future world, to the two well-known mathematical lines, which, though approaching nearer and nearer to one another, never meet. So the ransomed spirit, borne upwards nearer and nearer the great Sun of all knowledge, will never reach the confines of that light which is spoken of as "inaccessible, and full of glory." Every new height reached in the infinite progress of the soul, while it will give more insight into the mysteries of God's dealings, will only inspire with greater longings to know more of His ineffable glories.

The song of the redeemed is represented as swelling louder and louder, the more that the mingled wisdom, and faithfulness, and love of the Almighty is unfolded. "The voice of a great multitude" increases to the "noise of many waters;"—deeper still, to "the voice of mighty thunderings," (Rev. 19:6.) Here we are but children-dreamers. Our path lies through misty shadows and murky clouds—our sun, either smiting with its beams, or wading through a stormy sky, or "going down while it is yet day." Here, the believer walks in darkness and can see no light; or when he has light for a time, it is often fitful and transient; like the luminous wake of a vessel on a midnight sea, which gilds, only for a moment, the waves over which it bounds, and then leaves them as dark as ever. But once across the threshold of glory, the "darkness is past, and the true light shines." His, then, is an "unsmiting and unsetting sun." "The sun shall not smite you," says one, (Ps. 121:6.) "Your sun shall no more go down," says another, (Isa. 60:20.) It is called "the inheritance of the saints IN LIGHT," (Col. 1:12.)

Have I begun this path of heavenly love and knowledge now? Am I progressing in it? Do I feel some dawnings of the heavenly light—pledges and foretastes of the full day of glory? Let all God's dealings serve to quicken me in my way. Let every affliction it may please Him to send, be as the moving pillar-cloud of old, beckoning me to move my tent onwards—saying, "Arise and depart, for this is not your rest," (Mic. 2:10.), Let me be often standing now on faith's lofty eminences, looking for "the day of God"—the rising sun which is to set no more in weeping clouds.

Wondrous progression! How will all earth's learning—its boasted acquirements and eagle-eyed philosophy—sink into the lispings of very infancy in comparison with this manhood of knowledge! Heaven will be the true "Excelsior." Its song, "a song of degrees;"—Jesus leading His people from height to height of glory, and saying, as He said to Nathanael, "You shall see GREATER things than these!" (John 1:50.)

And—most elevating thought of all!—I shall be advancing gradually in resemblance to my Divine Lord and Master! And yet the further I advance, with more fervent lip and devout ardor shall I sing—

"Nearer, my God, to Thee!
Nearer to Thee!
Still all my song shall be,
Nearer, my God, to Thee!
Nearer to Thee!"

http://gracegems.org/JM/GR24.htm

A DUE REAPING

by John MacDuff, 1849


"In due season you shall reap, if you faint not." —Galatians 6:9

Believer! all the glory of your salvation belongs to Jesus—none to yourself; every jewel in your eternal crown is His— purchased by His blood, and polished by His Spirit. The confession of time will be the ascription of all eternity: "By the grace of God I am what I am!" But though "all be of grace," your God calls you to personal strenuousness in the work of your high calling—to "labor," to "fight," to "wrestle," to "agonize;" and the heavenly reaping will be in proportion to the earthly sowing: "He that sows sparingly, shall reap also sparingly; and He that sows bountifully, shall reap also bountifully!" What an incentive to holy living, and increased spiritual attainments!

My soul! would you be a star shining high and bright in the firmament of glory?—would you receive the ten-talent recompense? Then be not weary. Put on your armor for fresh conquests. Be gaining daily some new victory over sin. Deny yourself. Be a willing cross-bearer for your Lord's sake. Do good to all men as you have opportunity; be patient under provocation, "slow to wrath," resigned in trial. Let the world take knowledge of you that you are wearing Christ's uniform, and bearing Christ's spirit, and sharing Christ's cross. And when the reaping time comes, He who has promised that the cup of cold water cannot go unrecompensed, will not allow you to lose your reward!


http://www.gracegems.org/book4/MacDuff_Promiser.htm

Military Homosexual Scandal Tied to WikiLeaks Treason

August 2, 2010

Cliff Kincaid

EXCERPT

In the scandal involving the theft and release of classified military information that could cost the lives of U.S. military personnel, the British Telegraph newspaper is reporting that the American soldier at the center of the scandal was “openly homosexual” and apparently held a grudge against the U.S. because of the military’s anti-gay policy.

In another bizarre twist, reliable reports suggest that Private First Class Bradley Manning, the U.S. ArmyIntelligence analyst accused of leaking the classified information to the WikiLeaks.org website, was not only a homosexual but was considering a sex change. Manning was arrested at the end of May and is being detained by U.S. authorities.

The Telegraph features photographs of Manning, who could face more than 50 years in prison for treasonous conduct, holding up a sign with rainbow colors demanding “equality on the battlefield” and participating in a gay pride parade.

READ HERE:

Depression-era scrawl an ode to Christ Church mission

Posted on Mon, Aug. 2, 2010

By Jeff Gammage
Inquirer Staff Writer

EXCERPT

Bruce Gill had gone searching for the source of a water leak in a Christ Church building, but he found something else:

A message from the past.

It contained but 17 words, scrawled in pencil on the side of a bathroom tub, written in an era when work was precious and food was dear. For nearly 80 years, it had lain hidden behind a wall.

"Tub set 1-9-33 by Louis J. Volpe," it said. "This work kept two men from starving during the Depression."

"My first thought was, 'Holy smokes,' " said Gill, who serves as the rector's warden, essentially the chairman of the church board. "Even during its construction, [the building] was doing what it was designed to do."

That is, to help people.

Gill and a colleague were looking for the leak in an apartment inside the Washburn House, named for former rector Louis Cope Washburn. The Washburn House stands next to the Neighborhood House, behind the church. Both buildings are being renovated.

"That voice from the past sort of broke through the plaster," said the Rev. Susan Richardson, the assistant minister. "It was so striking to me. It kept a person from starving. It brings home the human reality."

 READ HERE:

THE CHILDREN AND THE DOGS

Gospel of Mark, 42 - THE CHILDREN AND THE DOGS (MARK 7:24-30)
By G.A. Chadwick

"And from thence He arose, and went away into the borders of Tyre and Sidon. And He entered into a house, and would have no man know it; and He could not be hid. But straightway a woman, whose little daughter had an unclean spirit, having heard of Him, came and fell down at His feet. Now the woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by race. And she besought Him that He would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. And He said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs. But she answered and saith unto Him, Yea, Lord: even the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs. And He said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter. And she went away unto her house, and found the child laid upon the bed, and the devil gone out." MARK 7:24-30 (R.V.)

THE ingratitude and perverseness of His countrymen have now driven Jesus into retirement "on the borders" of heathenism. It is not clear that He has yet crossed the frontier, and some presumption to the contrary is found in the statement that a woman, drawn by a fame which had long since gone throughout all Syria, "came out of those borders" to reach Him. She was not only "a Greek" (by language or by creed as conjecture may decide, though very probably the word means little more than a Gentile), but even of the specially accursed race of Canaan, the reprobate of reprobates. And yet the prophet Zechariah had foreseen a time when the Philistine also should be a remnant for our God, and as a chieftain in Judah, and when the most stubborn race of all the Canaanites should be absorbed in Israel as thoroughly as that which gave Araunah to the kindliest intercourse with David, for Ekron should be as a Jebusite (9:7). But the hour for breaking down the middle wall of partition was not yet fully come. Nor did any friend plead for this unhappy woman, that she loved the nation and had built a synagogue; nothing as yet lifted her above the dead level of that paganism to which Christ, in the days of His flesh and upon earth, had no commission. Even the great champion and apostle of the Gentiles confessed that his Lord was a minister of the circumcision by the grace of God, and it was by His ministry to the Jews that the Gentiles were ultimately to be won. We need not be surprised therefore at His silence when she pleaded, for this might well be calculated to elicit some expression of faith, something to separate her from her fellows, and so enable Him to bless her without breaking down prematurely all distinctions. Also it must be considered that nothing could more offend His countrymen than to grant her prayer, while as yet it was impossible to hope for any compensating harvest among her fellows, such as had been reaped in Samaria. What is surprising is the apparent harshness of expression which follows that silence, when even His disciples are induced to intercede for her. But theirs was only the softness which yields to clamor, as many people give alms, not to silent worth but to loud and pertinacious importunity. And they even presumed to throw their own discomfort into the scale, and urge as a reason for this intercession, that she crieth after us. But Jesus was occupied with His mission, and unwilling to go farther than He was sent.

In her agony she pressed nearer still to Him when He refused, and worshipped Him, no longer as the Son of David, since what was Hebrew in His commission made against her; but simply appealed to His compassion, calling Him Lord. The absence of these details from St. Mark's narrative is interesting, and shows the mistake of thinking that his Gospel is simply the most graphic and the fullest. It is such when our Lord Himself is in action; its information is derived from one who pondered and told all things, not as they were pictorial in themselves, but as they illustrated the one great figure of the Son of Man. And so the answer of Jesus is fully given, although it does not appear as if grace were poured into His lips. "Let the children first be filled, for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to the dogs." It might seem that sterner words could scarcely have been spoken, and that His kindness was only for the Jews, who even in their ingratitude were to the best of the Gentiles as children compared with dogs. Yet she does not contradict Him. Neither does she argue back, - for the words "True, Lord, but . . ." have rightly disappeared from the Revised Version, and with them a certain contentious aspect which they give to her reply. On the contrary she assents, she accepts all the seeming severity of His view, because her penetrating faith has detected its kindly undertone, and the triple opportunity which it offers to a quick and confiding intelligence. It is indeed touching to reflect how impregnable was Jesus in controversy with the keenest intellects of Judaism, with how sharp a weapon He rent their snares, and retorted their arguments to their confusion, and then to observe Him inviting, tempting, preparing the way for an argument which would lead Him, gladly won, captive to a heathen's and a woman's importunate and trustful sagacity. It is the same Divine condescension which gave to Jacob his new name of Israel because he had striven with God and prevailed.


And let us reverently ponder the fact that this pagan mother of a demoniacal child, this woman whose name has perished, is the only person who won a dialectical victory in striving with the Wisdom of God; such a victory as a father allows to his eager child, when he raises gentle obstacles, and even assumes a transparent mask of harshness, but never passes the limit of the trust and love which he is probing.

The first and most obvious opportunity which He gives to her is nevertheless hard to show in English. He might have used an epithet suitable for those fierce creatures which prowl through Eastern streets at night without any master, living upon refuse, a peril even to men who are unarmed. But Jesus used a diminutive word, not found elsewhere in the New Testament, and quite unsuitable to those fierce beasts, a word "in which the idea of uncleanness gives place to that of dependence, of belonging to man and to the family." No one applies our colloquial epithet "doggie" to a fierce or rabid brute. Thus Jesus really domesticated the Gentile world. And nobly, eagerly, yet very modestly she used this tacit concession, when she repeated His carefully selected word, and inferred from it that her place was not among those vile "dogs" with are "without," but with the domestic dogs, the little dogs underneath the table.

Again, she observed the promise which lurked under seeming refusal, when He said, "Let the children first be filled," and so implied that her turn should come, that it was only a question of time. And so she answers that such dogs as He would make of her and hers do not fast utterly until their mealtime after the children have been satisfied; they wait under the table, and some ungrudged fragments reach them there, some "crumbs."

Moreover, and perhaps chiefly, the bread she craves need not be torn from hungry children. Their Benefactor has had to wander off into concealment, they have let fall, unheeding, not only crumbs, although her noble tact expresses it thus lightly to their countryman, but far more than she divined, even the very Bread of Life. Surely His own illustration has admitted her right to profit by the heedlessness of "the children." And He had admitted all this: He had meant to be thus overcome. One loves to think of the first flush of hope in that trembling mother's heavy heart, as she discerned His intention and said within herself, "Oh, surely I am not mistaken; He does not really refuse at all; He wills that I should answer Him and prevail." One supposes that she looked up, half afraid to utter the great rejoinder, and took courage when she met His questioning inviting gaze. And then comes the glad response, no longer spoken coldly and without an epithet: "O woman, great is thy faith." He praises not her adroitness nor her humility, but the faith which would not doubt, in that dark hour, that light was behind the cloud; and so He sets no other limit to His reward than the limit of her desires: "Be it unto thee even as thou wilt."

http://articles.ochristian.com/article11651.shtml

THE LORD MY HOPE

By Octavius Winslow, 1870

"The Lord is my portion, says my soul"

"The Lord Jesus Christ, who is our hope."--1 Tim. 1:1

What a precious possession of the believing soul, springing from the Lord as his Portion, is hope. Rob the poor worldling of his--though it be but earth-bound, and fading as a midsummer's evening sun--and you have plunged him in the dark and deep abyss of despondency and despair. Manwithout hope is the most miserable being in the universe. But with the hope of the Christian glowing in his heart--a hope of which God is the Giver, Jesus the Foundation, the Spirit the Author, and heaven the goal--and there lives not among the happy, a happier being than he. Thus the believer is "saved by hope." Look, my soul, for a moment at this inestimable part of your portion, and learn more thoroughly in what it consists--what the sweet soothing it imparts, the holy obligations it imposes, and the splendid revelations it anticipates and unveils to faith's far-seeing eye. HOW does the believing soul arrive at the possession of Christ as its hope?

The first step is to relinquish every other. A hope of heaven built upon obedience to the law, upon our personal merits, upon anything of good that we fancy we are or can do, is a false hope; and, persisted in, will most assuredly make its deluded and unhappy possessor lamentably and eternally ashamed. Hope, too, springing from church privileges, religious ordinances, charitable gifts and pious duties, is equally fallacious and fatal.

But you, O believer, have not so learned Christ, if so be you have been taught by Him the truth as it is in Jesus. The Holy Spirit has written the sentence of death upon yourself, and upon all the dead works springing from self; and fleeing as from a plague-tainted garment out of your own righteousness, you have run into Christ, and enfolding yourself by faith in His righteousness, wrought by His obedience and dyed in His blood, you are justified and saved. Accepted in Him you are "beautiful as Tirzah, and all your garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made you glad." And now you have a "good hope through grace," and "peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Then let us raise loud and high the thanksgiving anthem, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fades not away."

Look well to it that the lamp of your Christian hope is constantly trimmed and brightly burning. Thegolden oil that feeds the lamp is drawn from Jesus Christ, and the hand that trims the flame isfaith. Despond not if at times the sun of your hope--to change the figure--is for a moment shaded, or is partially eclipsed. Built upon, and springing from Jesus Christ, it cannot entirely expire, since He Himself is our hope. Corruption within may strive to weaken it, adversity without may seem to shake it, temptations from concealed sources may fearfully assail it, nevertheless, your hope shall not perish from the Lord, but, built upon Christ, nourished by Christ, kept by Christ, and looking forward to being with and enjoying Christ forever, like a fine setting sun it shall grow larger and brighter as it descends, until dissolving into heaven's eternal effulgence it is lost in the full fruition of glory.

With such a hope as Christ, how strong and solemn the obligation to deny all ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live godly, righteously, and soberly in this present evil world. How humbly and submissively should we bow to all our Father's afflictive discipline, since He has given us His beloved Son to dwell in our hearts "the hope of glory." Thus "every man that has this hope in him purifies himself, even as He is pure." Cheer up, then, disconsolate one!

 http://www.gracegems.org/Winslows/daily_need_divinely_supplied.htm