IT IS WRITTEN "GOD IS LOVE" - AND SO IT IS TRUE, THE
BIBLE TELLS US THAT OVER AND OVER AGAIN. BUT THE BIBLE
ALSO TELLS US GOD IS A JUST GOD AND JUDGMENT IS ALSO
PART OF HIS CHARACTER.
LET'S LEARN MORE ABOUT JUSTICE AND JUDGMENT.
FROM THE BOOK "750 ENGAGING ILLUSTRATIONS"
JUDGMENT:
After a three-month summer recess, on October 3,1994, the Supreme
Court of the United States opened its 1994-95 term. According to
the New York Times News Service, the court's legal business for
that first day could be summed up with one word: NO. The court
announced it had refused to hear more than 1,600 cases. The names
and docket numbers of the rejected appeals covered sixty-eight
typewritten pages. For those cases, that was the last court of
appeal, the final word.
There's something terribly final about judgment. The Supreme
Court says no, and that's it. No appeals. No arguments. The books
are sealed, and the decision is final.
On the great day of judgment there will also be a terrible
crescendo of no's. "No, you cannot enter my kingdom." And the
doors will be shut forever. No appeal. No time to change one's
mind. Those who have rejected Jesus Christ will have forever lost
their opportunity for eternal life.
Eternal Life, Repentance, Salvation
Matt. 25:1-13; 2 Cor. 6:1-2; Rev. 20:11-15
......
To learn how Americans feel about prayer, Life magazine once
interviewed dozens of people. One person they talked to was a
prostitute, age twenty-four, in White Pine County, Nevada.
"I don't think about my feelings a lot," she said. "Instead I lie
in my bed and think onto him. I meditate because sometimes my
words don't come out right. But he can find me. He can find
what's inside of me just by listening to my thoughts. I ask him
to help me and keep me going.
"A lot of people think working girls don't have any morals, any
religion. But I do. I don't steal. I don't lie. The way I look
at it, I'm not sinning. He's not going to judge me. I don't think
God judges anybody."
Few notions are more comforting than the idea that God judges no
one. The problem is that soothing idea is false.
Morals, Prayer, Self-Deception Rom. 14:10-12
......
In "Is It Real When It Doesn't Work?" Doug Murren and Barb Shurin
recount:
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Swedish chemist Alfred
Nobel awoke one morning to read his own obituary in the local
newspaper: "Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who died
yesterday, devised a way for more people to be killed in a war
than ever before, and he died a very rich man."
Actually, it was Alfred's older brother who had died; a newspaper
reporter had bungled the epitaph.
But the account had a profound effect on Nobel. He decided he
wanted to be known for something other than developing the means
to kill people efficiently and for amassing a fortune in the
process. So he initiated the Nobel Prize, the award for
scientists and writers who foster peace.
Nobel said, "Every man ought to have the chance to correct his
epitaph in midstream and write a new one."
Few things will change us as much as looking at our life as
though it is finished.
Repentance, Death
......
How do you get a great parking space at a New York Yankees
baseball game? One man thought he had a way. According to the
Fresno, California Bee, this man pulled his car into the VIP
parking lot and casually told the attendant that he was a friend
of George Steinbrenner, owner of the Yankees. Unfortunately for
the imposter, the person attending the parking lot that day was
George Steinbrenner himself, doing some personal investigation of
traffic problems at the stadium.
The surprised imposter looked at Steinbrenner and said, "Guess
I've got the wrong lot." You can be sure that he did not park in
the VIP lot that day or ever.
The owner knows his friends. The owner determines who gets in the
VIP lot.
God also knows who his friends are and who the imposters are.
Imposters, Heaven, Love for God, Obedience Matt. 7:21-23
......
According to the Associated Press, in fall 1997 the journal Cell
reported on an experiment that may have far-reaching potential
for fighting disease. Dr. John Rose and his research team at Yale
Medical School had successfully altered the genes of a virus that
normally infects livestock and turned it into a virus that
specifically and exclusively attacks AIDS-infected cells and
destroys them. In other words, they created smart bombs out of a
virus. They used infection against infection.
The experiments were successful in the test tube and had yet to
be tried on animals or humans.
Just as viruses can be designed to kill viruses, one of the ways
God judges evil is to withdraw his protection and allow evil to
come against what is evil.
Demons, Evil, Punishment, Satan, Sowing and Reaping 1 Sam. 18:10;
Ps. 109:6; Jer. 4;1 Cor. 5:1-5; Gal. 6:7-8
......
In the spring of 1995 columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote an
article explaining why the 1994 baseball strike dealt a fatal
blow to many fans.
The cancellation of the [World] Series reduced the entire '94
season to meaninglessness, a string of exhibition games
masquerading for a while as a "championship season." No
championship, no season.
The real scandal of the '94 season is not the games that were
canceled but the games that were played. The whole season was a
phony. The fans who invested dollars and enthusiasm in the
expectation that the winners and losers and homers and averages
would count were cheated.
More than cheated. By canceling the season in a dispute over
money, the players and owners mocked the fan who really cared
whether Ken Griffey broke Roger Maris's record or Tony Gwynn
hit.400.
Hitting records and the World Series give meaning to the regular
season. Judgment day gives meaning to life. Because God will call
every deed into account, everything we do matters.
Meaning, Obedience, Significance, Ten Commandments
Eccles. 12:13-14; Rom.14:10-12; Rev. 20:11-15
......
THE TOPIC OF JUDGMENT DAY IS MISUNDERSTOOD BY MOST
CHRISTIANS. ON THIS WEBSITE YOU WILL FIND MY STUDY ON
"JUDGMENT DAY" AND THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER - Keith Hunt
......
JUSTICE:
The name Al Capone brings to mind crime, gangsters terrorizing a
city, and Scarface himself beating three of his wayward
subordinates to death with a baseball bat.
But that view of Capone wasn't always the case.
During the 1920s many people viewed Al Capone as a respected
citizen, a sort of Robin Hood, says writer Ron Grossman. In 1930
students at Northwestern University's Medill School of journalism
were asked to name "the outstanding personages of the world."
Capone made the list, along with George Bernard Shaw, Mahatma
Gandhi, and Albert Einstein.
But Capone's days of power were short-lived.
In 1931 he attended a football game at Northwestern University.
In years past when he attended sporting events, he often was
saluted by fans. But this time he was booed out of the stands and
left the stadium in humiliation.
In 1931, after only six years as mob boss in Chicago, Capone was
convicted of income tax evasion. He ended up in Alcatraz. Eight
years later when he was released from prison, he was suffering
from the advanced stages of syphilis. He lived as a recluse,
dying in 1947.
During his time at Alcatraz, Capone worked in the prison shoe
shop and shared a cell with a convict who worked on the prison
newspaper. Capone told his cellmate one evening, "I'm supposed to
be a big shot and I've wound up in the shoe shop; you're supposed
to be a safe cracker and now you write editorials. What kind of a
screwed-up, lousy world is this?"
This world is a place where those who violate God's law may
flourish for a season, but their days are numbered. Sooner or
later, on this earth or at the great judgment seat, evildoers pay
for their evil deeds.
Judgment, Law of God, Reaping, Sowing
Ps. 37; 73
......
Life is unjust. Upon accepting an award, the late Jack Benny once
remarked, "I really don't deserve this. But I have arthritis, and
I don't deserve that either."
Suffering, Rights
......
In the 1990s Chee Soon Juan was one of the few opposition
politicians in the Parliament of Singapore. The ruling People's
Action Party had an iron grip on the country, holding 77 of 81
seats, and had been in power since 1959. Through authoritarian
means the People's Action Party had brought great prosperity to
the country, but political opponents like Chee Soon Juan felt
that the time had come to loosen up.
The People's Action Party did not take kindly to dissidents,
though, and for many years the way it had gotten rid of them was
financial. For one reason or another, party opponents would be
sued, fined, and financially broken.
In 1993 Chee Soon Juan was forced to sell his home to pay a
defamation suit brought against him by a member of the ruling
party.
In 1996 the harassment continued. Chee Soon Juan made a report to
Parliament, and to his regret it contained a statistical error.
According to Seth Mydans in the New York Times, Chee Soon Juan
reported that "government spending on health care had fallen from
40 percent of the nation's total costs in 1970 to 5 percent in
1990. The actual 1990 figure was 25 percent."
When party officials discovered the error, they pounced on it.
Chee Soon Juan was accused of perjury, misconduct, and giving
false information to Parliament. He blamed it on a typing error.
Late in 1996 "the Parliamentary Privileges Committee issued a
196-page report on Mr. Chee's statistical error and found him
guilty as charged." He was fined $18,000.
In Singapore that may be legal, but most people would agree it is
unjust. And injustice grieves the heart of God.
Control, Error, Fairness, Forgiveness, Injustice, Mistakes,
Oppression, Parenting, Punishment, Retribution, Vengeance
Prov. 29:14; Isa. 11:4; Micah 6:8; Matt. 23:23
......
SINGAPORE IN MANY WAYS FOLLOWS THE LAWS OF GOD AND
PUNISHMENT FOR NOT OBEYING IS TOUGH - ACCORDING TO THE
LAWS YOU BREAK. HENCE IT HAS LITTLE CRIME COMPARED TO
OTHER NATIONS OF THE WORLD. BUT SAD TO SAY HUMAN BEINGS
ARE NOT ALWAYS JUST, AS THE ABOVE SHOWS. WITH GOD ....
HE IS PERFECT AND HOLY AND RIGHTEOUS, HIS JUSTICE AND
JUDGMENT WILL BE FOREVER PERFECT, HOLY AND RIGHTEOUS -
Keith Hunt.
To be continued
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