"Come ye out from among them, my people"

This article is written for the Church, The Body of Christ. Its purpose is to shed light on how abortion became legalized in America, and to help us recognize similar patterns throughout the world. It will also enlighten the Church regarding what she must do to reverse this abominable travesty. The Church alone has the power and God given authority to do so, for "what ye bind on earth is bound in Heaven" and again, "all authority is given to Me in heaven and on earth, go ye therefore". We must put the ax to the root of abortion rather than tolerate and continually pick at the fruit of this wicked tree. Being instructed in God’s word by The Holy Spirit, we will be able to declare the truth in love, which will set the captives free (Rev 11:5). Knowing that Christ Jesus has already triumphed over every foe of life, making a public spectacle of them at the Cross, we "wrestle not against flesh and blood" (Eph 6:12). For the devil has taken many captive to do his will - to kill, steal and destroy (2 Tim 2:26; Jn 10:10). Now may The Holy Spirit rise up in your hearts and direct your meditation as you give ear to the following. The battle belongs to the Lord.

To begin with, we must come to know and believe the true value or worth, of every human being, and this we can do with our Lord’s help. On Calvary’s cross, where you and I were ransomed, Jesus measured out His blood equally for each one of us. Not a drop more or a drop less of His blood was for a white man or black man, male or female, old or young, retarded, crippled, blind, deaf, dumb or precious baby in the womb. He paid an eternal life for each one of us, and that was "while we were yet sinners, Christ loved us and gave himself for us"(Rom 5:8). Therefore, each individual human being is worth more than all the gold, silver, precious stones, cattle, stocks, bonds, oil, etc., in the universe. All of these resources combined together, could not purchase or equal the value of an eternal life. God has made this declaration of our worth, in His own blood through the person of Jesus Christ. To put any other value on any single member of the human race is an abomination to Jehovah God. For "an unjust scales is an abomination to God" (Prov 11:1).

Next, we need to understand what abortion really is and who "the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" are, that are behind it, "so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground" (Eph 6:12-13). Briefly, abortion is the devil’s counterfeit sacrifice of that which God accomplished when He sent His only Son (child) Jesus, to be the substitute, to die in our place. Because Jesus is God, the Word become flesh, He is worth more than everything and everyone that He created. All things were created by Him(Jesus), through Him and for Him. God, the only one who is worth more than the entire human race, for "every weight in the bag with God is perfect"(Prov 16:11), came to earth to redeem everyone of us, and this He magnificently accomplished at Calvary. Now if God sacrificed His only Son (child) because of His great love for us, then the devil, the counterfeiter, wants to have human sacrifice also. However, the devil wants it for our destruction. With God, the one (Jesus) was sacrificed for all, but with the devil, all (the babies) are sacrificed for the one. You see, Jesus was without sin, spotless, and blameless; "the lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world". How can the devil get a perfect sacrifice? Since the fall of Adam, all of us are born with original sin or the sin nature. By having the babies sacrificed to him before they are born, satan has the most perfect sacrifice on this side of heaven. Furthermore, just as abortion is satan’s mockery of the death of God’s Son, "partial birth abortion" is the devil’s mockery of Christ’s crucifixion. You see, Jesus died a horrible death. His body was tortured, bruised and pulverized for our sins. "He himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by His wounds you have been healed" (1 Pet 2:24). Similarly, the devil is not satisfied to just kill the little innocent babies, and so we have here in America, the legalization of this barbaric process called "partial birth abortion".

Moving onward, we must next come to know when life begins and biblically understand why. Leviticus 17: 11-14 tells us that "the life (soul) of the flesh is in the blood". Many times a baby in the womb has a totally different blood type than its mother. In fact, the baby’s blood supply (life) is totally independent of its mother’s. Therefore, the baby gets its blood (life, soul) at conception, the moment that the female’s egg is fertilized by the male sperm. This too, helps us to understand, that although Jesus was nourished and fed and loved in the womb of Mary, yet it was the blood of God The Father that ran through His veins, to be poured out on Calvary’s cross for the sins of the whole world. For "you were not redeemed with precious silver or gold, but with the very blood (life) of God"(1 Pet 1:18-19). "In the beginning was the Word….and the Word was God". "The Word became flesh and lived among us"(Jn 1:1; Jn1:14).

Up until the late 1960’s, the medical profession and pharmaceutical companies were in agreement with the Christian belief that life begins at conception. This all changed after the introduction of oral contraception, or "the pill". Whereas, the early pills contained an estrogen level high enough to prevent ovulation (release of an egg), thereby preventing conception, these dosage levels had to be reduced because of the adverse effects they caused to the female body. In the "mini pills" of today, estrogen has been completely eliminated. After fertilization, it normally takes the conceived child five to nine days to travel down the fallopian tubes and attach to the wall of the uterus (womb). However, one function of today’s pills is to alter the lining of the uterus in order to make it impossible for an already conceived child to implant itself, get nourishment, and continue to grow. Along with the pill, the only function of the intrauterine device (IUD) is to alter the lining of the uterus, making it 100 percent abortifacient. Other methods, such as Norplant and Depo-Provera are estimated to be about sixty percent arbortifacient. Today, the pharmaceutical companies and the medical profession very discretely promote this relatively new idea, that life begins once the conceived child attaches to the lining of the uterus. In so doing, they can look you in the eye and still call their products "contraception and birth control" rather than what they really are: abortifacient. You see, the devil truly is just as Jesus said, " a liar, a thief and a murderer, who comes to kill, steal, and destroy life". But, "the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work"(1 John 3:8), and " in this world we are like Him"(1 John 4:17).

From Adam to the Cross, and from the Cross up until 1930, God’s people, Protestant and Catholic, thoroughly condemned abortion, contraception, and birth control. The reformers, Luther, Calvin, and Wesley, just to name a few, were absolute on all of these issues. The use of condoms was known as the sin of Onan , whom God slew because of the gravity of his deed, which according to John Calvin was "to kill before he is born the hoped-for offspring". Onan would only have received a slap on the cheek in public, had he refused to perform his brotherly duty. However, condoms along with all forms of sterility, whether temporary or permanent, are even more clearly condemned in Hosea 9:11-12 which states, "no birth, no pregnancy, no conception. Even if they rear children, I will bereave them of every one. Woe to them when I turn away from them". Vasectomies and tubule ligations (tied tubes) are again condemned in Deut 23:1 which reads, "No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord". For God, who created us, designed the conjugal act to be both pleasureful and life giving, as opposed to one or the other. He has likewise made food to be delicious, but its purpose is to nourish the body. So, too, the conjugal act is pleasureful, but its purpose is co-creator life-giving. People sometimes will enjoy food and then deliberately vomit it out because they only wanted the pleasure of its taste. We call such people bulimics. Similarly, Martin Luther called the altering of the conjugal act in such a way, that it was for pleasure only, a sodomitic sin, even if they were husband and wife. St. Augustine said that "those who do this, although they are called husband and wife, are not, nor do they retain any reality of marriage, but with a respectful name, cover a shame". John Wesley said, "Those sins that dishonor the body are very displeasing to God, and the evidence of vile affections. Observe, the thing which Onan did displeased the Lord - and it is to be feared: thousands, especially of single persons, by the very thing, still displease the Lord, and destroy their own souls".

The very first commandment that God gave to man was, "to be fruitful and multiply"(Gen 1:28). His purpose was to "make man in our image and in our likeness, to fill all and be in all, until the whole earth was filled with His glory". He wanted each one to"be filled with all the fullness of God, to the full measure of the stature of Our Lord Jesus Christ" (Eph 3:19; 4:13.), until He is all and in all. Christ in us, our hope of glory. To the Old Testament saints, children were a blessing and the highest order of gifts from God. So, when they lived among people who did not share their beliefs regarding children, and who physically tried to prevent child birth using potions and herbs etc., the Israelites called them sorcerers. For instance, when Jacob’s family was living in Egypt, there were many approved methods of birth control, contraception. Hence the scripture verse, "rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry"(1 Sam 15:23). Mixtures of potions and herbs were used to abort the developing baby in the womb. Condoms made from leather instead of rubber were also popular down through the ages. The word sorcery, originates from the Greek word pharmakia, which in turn gives us our modern word, pharmaceuticals. The New Testament is also clear about where all un-repentant sorcerers will end up. Galatians 5:19-21 says, that those who practice "sexual immorality, idolatry, witchcraft (sorcery)....will not inherit the kingdom of God"(NIV). Revelation 21:7-8 says, "murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone"(NKJ). Revelation 22:15 tells us, "Outside are the sorcerers and the sexually immoral, and murderers and idolaters and whoever loves and practices a lie"(NKJ). In Acts 19:18 we are told the people repented and burned their sorcery books at the preaching of the gospel in order that they may receive Christ Jesus as Lord.

Down through the Church ages the teaching against abortion, contraception and birth control, remained constant. However, in 1930 at the Lambeth conference in England, the Anglican Church opened the door to contraception and birth control for the first time in all of biblical history. In 1958, again at the Lambeth conference, contraception birth control was further recommended and encouraged for all Christian couples. That same England which sent out missionaries throughout the world, can barely get one percent of its own people to attend church at the present time. "He turned rivers into a desert, flowing springs into thirsty ground, and fruitful land into a salt waste, because of the wickedness of those who live there."(Psalm 107:33-34). Instead of churches, now it is Moslem mosques that increase and multiply in England, for when you trample on the grace of God, you will find yourself back under the law of God. Following suit in 1961, the Council of Churches in the USA (made up of most, although not all of the Protestant denominations), totally embraced the same teaching, and in so doing brought about the legalization of abortion in 1973. Job 9:24 tells us that "when a land is given into the hands of the wicked, God blindfolds all of its judges". Jesus, in the beginning gave everything to Adam who lost it through sin to the devil. Jesus redeemed us back at the cross, and again gave all authority to His Church through whom He rules the nations "for the government shall be upon His shoulders" (Isaiah 9:6). But, when the Church in ignorance embraced contraception (contra = against; ception = fruitfulness) birth control in 1961, it was not at that time even legal for a doctor to prescribe contraception, or for a pharmacist to dispense it. That became legalized in 1964, three years after the Church embraced it and nine years prior to the legalization of abortion in the USA.

In America alone, anywhere from 5,000,000 to 20,000,000 babies are murdered by "contraception" each year, not including, the 1,500,000 babies that the abortionists sacrifice to molech and baal. It is estimated that the average couple of child bearing age using these products, will in some degree of ignorance, abort three children per year. Potentially more babies die during Sunday morning services in America, than are murdered by all the priests of molech and baal (abortionists) added together during the other six days of the week. "The Lord said to me: Son of man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah? Then confront them with their detestable practices, for they have committed adultery and blood is on their hands. They committed adultery with their idols, they even sacrificed their children, whom they bore to me, as food for them. They have also done this to me; At that same time they defiled my sanctuary and desecrated my Sabbaths. On the very day they sacrificed their children to their idols, they entered my sanctuary and desecrated it. That is what they did in my house" (Ezek 23:36-39). "I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies…away with the noise of your songs" (Amos 5:21). "Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit" ( 1 Cor 6:19 ).

Here in the USA, within 18 months of this horrific blunder on the part of the Church, the Lord allowed both prayer and the teaching of the ten commandments to be taken out of our public schools. "Even if they rear children, I will bereave them of every one"(Hosea 9:12). Instead of being taught self-control through the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:23, 1Pet 1:6), our children are taught that they came from monkeys, and so it would be normal for them to act like animals. You see saints, if we tell people that God is our creator and Father and that we did not evolve from a monkey, we completely lose our testimony the moment we send our wives to get their tubes tied, or we ourselves get a vasectomy or are made sterile. Because we are made in the image of God, we are able to be good stewards of our fertility as well as our finances, and we have the ability to practice self control, a gift of and by the Holy Spirit. Animals, however, do not have any self control but can be trained to use a condom, at least some of the time.

Since we have been given the gift of self-control by the Holy Spirit, it is only a matter of understanding another gift - the gift of fertility - in order to come to a moral solution to "planning families". God has created the female body to give distinct signs when she is about to ovulate. If achieving a pregnancy is desired, knowing these signs will help. If, for some grave reason, a couple is not open to conceiving another child for a season, they can exercise self-control by practicing abstinence for the few days the woman is fertile. Some will ask, "what’s the difference between using a condom or practicing abstinence?" Abstinence is moral and in keeping with "the image and likeness of God" in whom man is made. The use of a condom is immoral and, as we know, the end does not always justify the means. It is apparent that reading fertility signs is nothing new. In Genesis 19:32-36 we read that both of Lot’s daughters knew exactly when to get their father drunk in order to take advantage of him. Also, in Genesis 30:16 it appears that Leah understood her fertility signs. She traded her son’s mandrakes and conceived Issacher that night.

To learn more about these fertility signs, get in touch with the ministry of Couple to Couple League (www.ccli.org) or Billings Ovulation Method (BOMA) at (www.billings-centre.ab.ca). By teaching our brothers and sisters about these issues, we will avoid being like those whom Jesus said " put yokes around peoples necks without lifting a finger to help them"(Luke 11:46).

With the Church’s acceptance of contraception birth control in 1961, America experienced her first major drug epidemic which still rages even worse to this day in spite of all attempts to stop it, all of which are doomed to failure, unless God’s people repent of their sexual immorality and baby killing drugs, for "when the priests turn wicked, the people turn wicked"(Hosea 4:9).

Homosexuality was unleashed upon our nation because God's people perverted the life giving pleasureful act, making it instead a pleasure only act, which is what the homosexuals (whom Jesus also dearly loves) argue as their grounds for acceptance in the Church. In fact, we now ordain them to ministry, something even the wicked never expected according to the book of Lamentations 4:12-13; "The kings of the earth did not believe nor did any of the worlds people, that enemies and foes could enter the gates of Jerusalem. But it happened because of the sins of her prophets and the iniquity of her priests, who shed within her the blood of the righteous".

We unleashed the epidemic of divorce upon our nation, which up until 1960 was around five percent. As a sign to that wicked generation who were selectively offering their children to baal and molech, The Lord said "therefore, I will give their wives to other men and their fields to new owners" (Jer 8:10). Presently, divorce is around seventy percent in the Church, but more importantly, it is according to the Word of God, for Jesus said "a house divided against itself cannot stand". The flood gates opened so wide that divorce is now accepted for any reason, except in God’s eyes. We then had to acknowledge women as the heads of households, and though they are precious and of infinite worth, this is not God’s perfect plan for them. Both they and the homosexuals are now accepted into our military because they are in our pulpits. "Look at all your troops, they are all women" (Nahum 3:13). "Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims..........many casualties, piles of dead, bodies without number...because of the wanton lust of a harlot, the mistress of sorceries, who enslaved nations by her prostitution and peoples by her witchcraft. I am against you, declares the Lord Almighty. I will lift your skirts over your face" (Nahum 3:1-6).

The first generation to believe the contraceptive lie is now entering the rest homes of America. God's plan for them was to have their own children take care of them in their old age, but now there is no one to care for them but Uncle Sam. He looks at them sitting in their wheel chairs, staring at the ceiling all day long, and says it would be kinder to put those people out of their misery by killing them, not to mention all the money he will save. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are the latest bowl of judgment upon us, calling us to repentance from our sexual immorality of contraception birth control before its too late. Listen people of God, "what you sow, that shall you reap".

So also, our public schools are now reaping what has been sown into them. For years, condoms and abortifacient pills have been distributed to our teens through the school clinics by resident nurses, many of whom are pawns of Planned Parenthood. When a young girl becomes pregnant, she is often counseled and taken, without her parents knowledge, to the local killing center, and there her baby is sacrificed in secret. God’s word is sovereign over the affairs of mankind. Our schools have now become killing zones, reaping the harvest of what has been sown into them.

The first and second states to claim to legalize abortion were New York and Colorado in '67 and 1968, and then on to Roe vs Wade in 1973, which made it legal nationwide. Remember people, the Jezebel U.S. church in ignorance (I believe and I hope it was so) legalized it 1961. In other words, we brought abortion to America as surely as when the first Adam sinned, the whole creation fell, and until we repent of our chemical murders, and our sexual immorality, there will be no stopping it. To this very day "the creation waits in eager expectation for the sons and daughters of God to be revealed" (Rom 8:19). The apostle Paul tells us that God had mercy on him because in his ignorance he put Christians to death. Is there mercy and hope for us?

God has always declared children as His blessings, and that He alone is sovereign over the womb. "I will surely bless and multiply you" (Gen 22:17). "Give me children, or I'll die! Jacob became angry with her (Rachel) and said, am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children"(Gen 30:1-2). "For the Lord had closed up every womb in Abimelech’s house-hold because of Abrahams wife Sarah"(Gen 20:18). Yet, in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 28:53- 57, and in its New Testament counterpart, the seven letters to the seven churches, The Revelation of Jesus Christ, we covenant people are warned of the consequences of turning away from Jesus. In Deuteronomy 28, immediately after the exodus from Egypt and hundreds of years prior to the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, God told His people that if they abandoned His covenant with them, He would bring the enemy to their city, and the siege would be so great that they would eat their own children. Both 2 Kings 6:28-29 and Lam 2:20 describe how women ate their own children because Israel would not heed all the prophets sent to her by God, and repent. Lamentations 3:38 tells us that "every good thing and every calamity comes from the mouth of the Lord. In fact, "who can bring a thing to pass if the Lord has not decreed it" (Lam 3:37). The question for us here is, who is responsible for this calamity, God or the disobedient Church?

God sent prophet after prophet to warn the Israelites that the wrath of His word was about to fall upon them, and yet after they had lost everything and were walking in shackles and chains to Babylon, He was weeping over them and declared "in all their affliction, He was afflicted and the Angel of his Presence saved them" (Isaiah 63:9). "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see me no more till you say Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!"(Matt 23:37-39). If the people of Jeremiah’s day did everything they knew how, fasting (their fasting in Jer 36:9 did not lead to repentance), praying, offering sacrifices, marching on Jerusalem, participating in a Life Chain, sponsoring Crisis Pregnancy Centers, renting billboards, etc. (all highly commendable), but did not repent and obey the word of God through His prophets, do you think it would have made any difference? "Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen:…that you not hide from your own flesh and blood"(Isaiah 58:6-8). Notice also, and this is very important, that although the Israelites were burning their children in the fiery belly of molech and baal in the Valley of the Son of Hin’nom, God told Jeremiah "go to the door of the house of the Lord, and there proclaim this message;…do not shed innocent blood"(Jer 7:1-11). "Judgment begins at the house of the Lord". "Ye have a plank in your own eye while you try to remove the speck in your brother’s eye. First, remove the plank"(Mat 23:24). Ezekiel 9:4-6 tells us that everyone young and old must grieve over the abominable things that are done in the Lord’s house, and again the command is given to begin at "My sanctuary".

In the book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, chapter 2:18-23, Jesus tells us not to "tolerate that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she seduces my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols". She (a prophetess, a church) obviously claims to speak God's word. When we endorsed the use of contraception in 1961, in the process we approved the eating of food sacrificed to idols. If you speak with someone going into an abortion clinic to kill their children, many times they will say that they can't afford to have the child. In the church pew you will be given the same reason for the use of contraception birth control. Let us listen to what they both alike are saying. They "can't afford" means it would be the end of them if they have another child. Of course, they are referring to their way of life, sports car, boat, three car garage etc.. Therefore if they kill their children they will survive because of the now dead baby, and have their lives back the way they choose to live them (remember 2 Kings 6:29). We are surely more guilty of eating our children than those in Jeremiah’s day.

Revelation 2:21 says, "I gave her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways". Here we understand the epidemic of cancers in our land today. Breast cancer, uterine cancer, prostate cancer, pelvic cancer etc.. "When you tell them all this they will not listen to you"(Jer 7:27). "And they repented not of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts" (Rev 9:21).

Revelation 2:23 continues,"I will strike her children dead" This is a direct quote from Hosea 9:16 which states, "I will slay her cherished offspring"and in Hosea 9:11 we find, as quoted earlier, "no birth, no pregnancy, no conception". God is not a man that He should lie (Num 23:19). The curse causeless does not come (Proverbs 26:2). The statistics bear witness that over 80 percent of those committing abortion claim church affiliations. Even 6 percent say they are born again. I would not have believed this had I not seen it with my own eyes. The number of crucifixes, rosary beads and fish on the many cars of workers and worshipers at these churches of satan, throughout our land is almost unbearable. During the years prior to God opening my eyes to the real battlefield, the Church (Jer 7:1), I have seen the church buses dropping off people at abortion clinics, clergy and pastor emblems on the dashboards, and I even counseled with a youth pastor who brought his ex-girlfriend to the clinic from another city to avoid being seen in his home town. I’ve spoken with an evangelists daughter whom her father had told the night before to kill the baby and then ask Jesus to forgive her. Others stopped to let me hear that they were listening to faith preachers on the car radio as they went to sacrifice their children. A well known, and admired minister, preached abortion from his pulpit during funeral services for his abortionist friend.

There's nothing new under the sun. I stood outside Planned Parenthood in Houston, Texas, to watch and hear a lesbian drum-beating brigade as they circled the door of this church of satan. Planned Parenthood even has his symbol, a glass pyramid, up over their main door, and their workers of iniquity wear blasphemies on their clothing (i.e. I AM, the face of Pro-Choice). To the applause of the staff (altar girls) who daily participate in the offering of a counterfeit sacrifice to The Lord’s Supper, The Mass or Passover, they beat their drums as was done around the altars of baal and molech in the days of Jeremiah, to drown out the cries and screams of the innocent children, when the backsliding Israelites pitched their sons and daughters into the fire. Now we hear that people are eating the aborted babies and we should not be surprised, for we eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus Christ. "All the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. Come out from among them my people so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues: for her sins are piled up to heaven " (Rev 18:3-4).

"Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God. You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body"(1 Cor 6:19-20). "I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God - this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is - His good, pleasing and perfect will"(Rom 12:1-2). "It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God who gives you His Holy Spirit" (1 Thes 4:3-8). "I will cut off from this place every remnant of baal, the names of the pagan and the idolatrous priests - those who bow down on the roofs to worship the starry host, those who bow down and swear by the Lord and also swear by molech"(Zep 1:4-5).

"The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons"(1 Tim 4:1). "You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world. They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them"(1 John 4:4-5). "All of your prophets are vain people, because they could not expose your sin to ward off your captivity"(Lam 2:14). "The high places of wickedness will be destroyed - it is the sin of Israel" (Hosea 10:8), the sin of the Church. "We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us"(1 John 4:6). And, the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church because the Holy Spirit has been restored to us, "to lead us and guide us into all truth" (John 16:13). "Jesus Christ, who is the true and faithful witness" (Rev 1:5) and He is "The Amen" in our hearts (Rev 3:14) bearing witness to all that is true. He comes to convict us of sin, and not to condemn us, to reprove us and correct us and lead us on the path of righteousness. His work in us guarantees that The Church is "the pillar and foundation of the truth"(1 Tim 3:15), "the salt of the earth". But if the foundations be broken, what shall the righteous do? The name of The Lord is a strong tower, the righteous run into Him and are saved.

We know that we have come to know Him, if we obey His commands"(1 John 2:3). "Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commands is what counts" (1 Cor 7:19). This is My commandment, that ye love one another . Love does no ill towards its neighbor, therefore, love is the fulfilling of God’s law. Henceforth, by the grace of God, we can love one another, because Jesus commanded His love into the apostles hearts at the last supper. They likewise, and in His name, commanded His love into our hearts. "I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles" (2 Pet 3:2). He, Jesus, being God, watches over His word to perform it in our lives(Isaiah 55:11), for He ever lives to make intercession for us. And "I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith…the righteous will live by faith.."(Rom 1:16-17).

Now to conclude our meditation: "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, forgive their sin and will heal their land"(2 Chron 7:14). God is speaking to His people, The Church. He declares that they are living in "wicked ways", which He is willing to forgive if they will turn from them, and He will also heal (restore) their land. Here, Jesus has made a promise, and as the apostle Paul says, "every promise of God is yes and Amen". This, my brothers and sisters, is how we also will share in the victory of Our Lord if we can be brought to repentance from our wicked ways. The Holy Spirit bringing conviction upon our hearts, leading us back to the cross and the sprinkling of His blood. Then our prayers will be heard and answered according to 1 John 3:21, "because we keep His commandments". "So come now and let us reason together, and though your sins be as scarlet, I will wash you whiter than snow".

"For the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it, and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated, receives blessing from God; but if it bears thorns and briers, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned. But beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you, yes, things which accompany salvation, though we speak in this manner. For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love which you have shown toward His name, in that you have ministered to the saints, and do minister"(Heb 6:7-10). May the Holy Spirit take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

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