Quote: Jim Elliot, 14

~ The Greatest Prophet ~ 

As a Prophet Christ Spoke of Judgment

The following is an excerpt from a book.

Now I know that we’ve had the Scripture doctored up to us in the last hundred years or so. We’ve been saying that Jesus Christ was a meek sort of a loving kind of a Savior, and that He didn’t talk to us about punishment, that He didn’t talk to us about fire and vengeance like the Old Testament did. But, my friends, get a hold of this. Jesus Christ told us more about hell than any other prophet in the world.

Jesus Christ talked more about hell than He did about heaven. He had the right and the authority to describe hell because He had been on the other side of death, before birth. He was the only One who could have come into birth and say, “I came into the world.”  He wasn’t just brought into the world in the sense that we’re brought into the world, by natural principles. Jesus Christ came into the world in the sense that He chose to come, and He came because He was God and was able to take upon Himself the form of a man. Now He has gone back into heaven. When He was here on the earth He described to us the things that are on the other side of our life. Jesus Christ was a prophet in the full sense. Not through visions, not through ideas that had come into His head, but because He existed on the other side of death! He could tell us what heaven and hell were like. He knew it because He had been there. That’s what He Himself claimed in this passage, we read, “I don’t speak for Myself,” He says, “I tell you what I’ve seen and heard.” And in the third chapter of John, “I’ve been there and I know what I’m talking about when I speak about hell. Or when I speak about heavenly things, I know whereof I speak because I’ve been there.”  Jesus Christ is the only One who can say that, my friend, and that’s why His Word is so terribly important. So terrifyingly important.

~ from “JIM ELLIOT: A Christian Martyr Speaks to You, pgs 103-104  (ISBN: 9781615797646)

Learn more about this important book at Amazon, the Publisher, or the Author’s website.

~ Robert Lloyd Russell, ABUNDANT LIFE NOW

NOTES:

(1)     The current TOP 10 ALN posts are listed at the very bottom of this home page.

(2)     There is an INDEX of all ALN posts accessed by scrolling down the left column.

(3)     You may LINK to any ALN posts on your own blog or website. 

(4)     You may COPY any ALN post, but please credit ALN as the source by prominently displaying the following statement:  Reprinted from “Abundant Life Now,” a free blog which offers inspiring moments, thought-provoking comments, and solid Biblical insight at http://RobertLloydRussell.blogspot.com/ .

Quote: Jim Elliot, 13

~ Foolish Thinking ~ 

Can We Measure God’s Hatred?

The following is an excerpt from a book.

God’s hatred for sin is measured by His punishment of His Son. The Scripture says He made Him, that is He made Christ, to be sin for us. He made Him to become sin for us. God treated Christ as though He were sin. As God treats sin, as God acts toward sin, He acted toward Christ at Calvary. That’s what God did, He put Christ away from Him. He forsook Him.

Christ Himself also told us that God hates sin, so much that if it so much as comes near to Him—even though it be in the person of His Son—He takes and puts it away from Him. He’ll have nothing to do with it. God detests sin. He’s all pure in His being, and that’s the reason that the people in Isaiah’s day couldn’t get next to God, because they had sin in their lives. As a result, sin did something to them. Now, their sin was not necessarily open, immoral sin that could be judged in a law court. More evidently, it was those things that are subtle and underhanded.  

You know, Solomon says that the very thought of foolishness is sin.  Just the thought of foolishness. Proverbs twenty-four comes right out flat and says that the thought of foolishness is sin. Did you ever have a foolish thought? Well, my days are full of them. Foolish thoughts. My heart is continually meditating foolishness. The Scripture says that foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him.  Well, the rod of correction hasn’t been laid on me enough so that all foolishness is gone from my heart. Even the thought of foolishness in God’s eyes is sin.

We don’t usually consider foolishness as sin. We rather enjoy foolishness, don’t we? God says it is sin, and remember this: God is of holier eyes than to behold evil, and God cannot look upon iniquity. It’s humiliating for God to have to look down upon the stars. Scripture says of God that He “humbleth Himself to behold the things that are in heaven, and the things in earth!” That’s how high and holy God’s thoughts are. He humbled Himself. He humiliated Himself, as it were, to look down. That’s how great God is!

Now we don’t consider sin to be a terrible thing today because we don’t consider God as a very holy God. We aren’t concerned with the awfulness of sin because we are not concerned with the awfulness of God’s holiness. God is a holy God, and He cannot for one minute put up with sin. He will punish sin wherever it rears its head, anywhere. God has decreed that He will punish sin. It’s as much in His nature to punish sin as it is to love the sinner. God will punish sin, and He will punish it in you.

Now, God has some very high standards as to what sin is. James says this: “To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” Get that. What James is saying is this: If you know that there is some good to do and you don’t do it, you’re sinning in God’s sight. Has there been anything to do in your life that you didn’t do? You say, well, there’s a chance to do good, and you don’t do it? Well, we commonly call these the sins of omission, things we ought to do and don’t do. God reckons them just as much sin as those things that we oughtn’t to do and yet we do. “To him that knows to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”

~ from “JIM ELLIOT: A Christian Martyr Speaks to You, pgs 40-42  (ISBN: 9781615797646)

Learn more about this important book at Amazon, the Publisher, or the Author’s website.

~ Robert Lloyd Russell, ABUNDANT LIFE NOW

NOTES:

(1)     The current TOP 10 ALN posts are listed at the very bottom of this home page.

(2)     There is an INDEX of all ALN posts accessed by scrolling down the left column.

(3)     You may LINK to any ALN posts on your own blog or website. 

(4)     You may COPY any ALN post, but please credit ALN as the source by prominently displaying the following statement:  Reprinted from “Abundant Life Now,” a free blog which offers inspiring moments, thought-provoking comments, and solid Biblical insight at http://RobertLloydRussell.blogspot.com/ .

Quote: Jim Elliot, 12

~ Hell ~

Why Does God Send Men to Hell?

The following is an excerpt from a book.

Now, God can’t do anything else but send some men to hell. What would you have Him to do? Would you have Him pass over the whole thing, as soon as that man, after he’s lived his life of crookedness and passed sweetly into a coffin, comes before God? What would you have God do about it? Would you have God say, “Oh well, it’s all right. Forget it.” Well, God can’t do that. I mean, say that He would even like to. But don’t you see the problem, which to you is not just a theological problem, but also a practical one?

You now have a very real problem arising in your mind. The problem between justice and mercy. You’d like to see the man get off in a good thing. You’d like to see him, just because you’re a good fellow yourself, you’d like to see him get on by in eternity. But somehow, you say, it can’t be and really be just. There is mercy in you like there is in God, and there is justice in you like there is in God to a certain degree, and these things argue against one another.

What would you have God do? God’s got to do something with every man He has created because He just made men to live forever, that’s all. And as He does that, He also decides that He will give the ultimate Word to man, and that Word is given to us in the person of Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ taught us that those kinds of men were going to hell along with lots of other people who didn’t want to really say they were crooked. They wanted to say, “Well, I really haven’t hurt anybody.” But they still live for themselves, they have not given themselves over to God. God demands obedience.

Jesus Christ taught us this much about heaven, that it was God’s throne. And until a man was subjected to the idea that God was on His throne in heaven, he wasn’t going to receive anything from God by way of real blessing.

~ from “JIM ELLIOT: A Christian Martyr Speaks to You, pgs 108-109  (ISBN: 9781615797646)

Learn more about this important book at Amazon, the Publisher, or the Author’s website.

~ Robert Lloyd Russell, ABUNDANT LIFE NOW

NOTES:

(1)     The current TOP 10 ALN posts are listed at the very bottom of this home page.

(2)     There is an INDEX of all ALN posts accessed by scrolling down the left column.

(3)     You may LINK to any ALN posts on your own blog or website. 

(4)     You may COPY any ALN post, but please credit ALN as the source by prominently displaying the following statement:  Reprinted from “Abundant Life Now,” a free blog which offers inspiring moments, thought-provoking comments, and solid Biblical insight at http://RobertLloydRussell.blogspot.com/ .