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Mustard Seed November/December 2011
The First Resurrection: Part Six
Listen To What The Spirit Says
Letter from the Editor
Mustard Seed - November/December 2011
Hello brethren,
We have many phrases that have been placed into our everyday language, such as twenty-four-seven, this phrase came from a TV show called “Twenty-Four” on the Fox network in the early part of this century. We can go back to around 1979, when a movie entitled “Ten” was popular, and we have a phrase from that movie asking people “on a scale of one to ten?" As you can see that this world influences our language, dress, entertainment , buying and selling. The world is the cause, the arrangement or the way of doing things. The bible tells us that this cosmos is: “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. (I John 2:16)." The ideas of the world become attached to us so easily through the avenues of lust and pride. When we read the bible you do not see God speaking good about pride or lust.
Our world promotes these core elements of this cosmos. The subtlety of these two things have been given to us like the phrase: ‘twenty-four-seven’ and ‘on a scale of one-to-ten.’ There isn’t anything wrong with these phrases, I am using them to point out how easily and quickly we can be told something and accept it. There is a stern warning in one of Jesus Christ’s parables about how this world can choke us. Read Mark 4:18-19: “and these are they which are sown among thorns, such as those who hear the word, and the cares (solicitation/distraction) of this world (age) and the deceitfulness of riches and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.”
This parable tell us the danger of this world (age). Let’s remember when Jesus Christ spoke this parable in the first century that was the world of that day. Read 2 Tim. 4:10 “for Demas has forsaken me having loved this present world,” The system that exist at the time of your existence is the present world. Notice Titus 2:11-12 “for the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, Teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts we should live soberly, righteously and Godly, in this present world, Looking for that blessed hope and glorious appearing of the great God and our savior Jesus Christ…”
We are to look at this present world that is dying and to look at the appearing of “The Great God and Savior Jesus Christ, (Titus 2:13)” and make a choice. We can see the mind of God about this in Deuteronomy 30:19 “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing, therefore choose life…”
In Christ Service,
John Shavers