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Mustard Seed November/December 2003
Take Heed That You Be Not Deceived
True Essence of Believers
Mustard Seed - November/December 2003
The month of December marks the 100th year anniversary of the motorized flight. Two brothers Orville and Wilber Wright took their overgrown, oversized kite; strapped an engine on it and launched it into history off of the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina…….
Their airplane was quite simple by today’s standards. However, if you consider what these two men had to work with, their simple little airplane was ingenious!
Over the coarse of these 100 yrs., many innovations, design advancements, and new technology have brought about many changes to this early design. The original airplane was made of wood and canvass to being made of aluminum allows. Today's most modern jetfighters are made of carbon fiber composites (I’m sure you’ve heard of the stealth fighter).
I can only encourage you to take some time and go to the library or even go online and visit the Smithsonian institutes aircraft museum so that you can see for yourself just how much change has occurred. Between 1903 and the 1st World War (only about 14 yrs) this modern marvel became a killing machine, by the end of World War II, the airplane is now made of metal and can reach speeds of 450 miles per hour flying level. By the late 60’s and early 70’s the modern jet now flies at twice the speed of sound of coarse the stealth fighter of today can’t even be detected by the most sophisticated radar system available today.
The first airplane had wooden propellers, our modern planes have turbofan jet engines. The wing designs have changed, the flight controls, even the instrument have changed. From the very beginning there has been nothing but change, change and MORE CHANGE!!!!
Now that you can see just how much the airplane has advanced and changed, I have a question for you. With all of this “change” in the airplane, has the air that keeps and supports these planes in the sky ---- changed? The answer of coarse is No! Without “air” the plane would never get off the ground, if a plane was in flight and the air is taken from it; the plane plummets to the ground.
I have another question for you. Has God ever changed? Has He changed His character? Has He changed His Holiness? Has He ever changed His Holy standards as they pertain to His commandments, statues and ordinances. Has God in anyway ever changed His righteousness? Again the answer is NO!!
If you would open your bible to Malachi 3:6 it reads: “For I, the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed”. Also go to Hebrews 13:8, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.”
But there is a being that did change; that being is our adversary and his minions. It’s because of this fallen being that there is so much controversy. You can read about it in Ezekiel 28 and verse 14.
During the Feast of Tabernacles this year; it was mentioned that there is group of supposed believers of Gods true way of life, that keep the Sabbath and the Holy Days, yet they teach that you only have to keep the first day and the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles. Apparently, they must not have read Leviticus 23:34-36. Go on and read verse 37, did you know that the largest seventh day keeping organization in the US teaches, that because we don’t offer sacrifices anymore; that’s the reason we don’t have to keep the Feasts of God anymore. Yet, they will teach with conviction and overwhelming emotion that you have to observe Christmas and the other pagan holidays that God never authorized or sanctified. I have to ask the same question, Has God ever changed? You have to answer that question with the full conviction of your heart with the revelation of God’s Holy Word.
What does God say and teach: Repent, sin not, and obey my voice!!! God says turn from our iniquities and our lawlessness…..why? you might ask, turn to Proverbs 14:12, “There is a way which seemth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
We have faced the teaching that; out of love for family or someone special, it’s ok if we sin, after all doesn’t “love, cover a multitude of sin?". Far too many of God's people, are listening to the whispers of the adversary; they are being deceived, and worse, they are deceiving others.
The Plan of Salvation wasn’t made by man; it certainly wasn’t created by the church of God. The Plan of Salvation is from God, He sets the standard, we’re the ones that are supposed to follow it “in spirit and in truth.” Go to I John 3:, “Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous; even as he (Jesus Christ) is righteous.”
As long as we have an adversary in the world, we’re going to have controversy. That’s the reason we are given the warning in I Corinthians 10:21,” Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils”. Those who have been called by God the Father will have to stand on the “faith once delivered,” each one of us need to be practicing righteousness on a daily basis. So, that in the great Day of Judgment, our Father in Heaven will say; “Well done you good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of the Lord.”
I hope you now realize that just as “air” is the essence that keeps planes in the sky; obedience to God is the very “essence” that keeps us right with God the Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ..
-Joel Maldonado
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