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“But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” —2 Peter 3:13 On December 2, 1942 in the late afternoon, a group of U.S. scientists huddled together on an abandoned football field near the University of Chicago, and there produced for the first time in human history controlled nuclear fission chain reaction. Just three years later President Harry Truman gave the order to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. That bomb leveled two-thirds of that city, and what the world saw at that time was devastation like we've never seen before, and I pray we never see again. With the explosion of that atomic bomb and the other that followed, a new age came to the world, the Atomic Age. When they experimented with the bomb in New Mexico, a scientist watched it, tears coursed down his face and he cried out, "Oh, my God, we have created hell!" The prospects for global destruction are greater than ever before. It's not just the preachers and the evangelists that are saying this now, but the social scientists and the nuclear scientists and the ecologists are all predicting devastation in our times; that a final holocaust is coming. And we wonder is there any hope? But the fact is there is hope for the Christian. There is a new world coming. And while this world as we know it will one day explode with fire, it will not be at the hand of man, but it will be at the hand of God, and the same fire that destroys this current age will fashion a new age and a new world order in which righteousness dwells forever. The same God who created the world in the beginning, now controls this world and He's in charge of it.

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

The Eternal Throne

by Dr. Paul Chappell

“And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever. According to all these words, and according to all this vision, so did Nathan speak unto David. Then went king David in, and sat before the LORD, and he said, Who am I, O Lord GOD? and what is my house, that thou hast brought me hitherto?”

2 Samuel 7:16–18

The promises that God made to David concerning the continuation of his royal line were not broken by the destruction and conquest of Israel. Though Israel has not had an earthly king for thousands of years, the promise of God was not just for a ruler to sit in Jerusalem. Instead He was declaring, long before it came to pass, that the Messiah and Saviour would be born from David’s family. And both Mary and Joseph were descendants of David through different sons, fulfilling what God had said.

Christ did not come to the world as a ruler. Instead, He came in humility and poverty, set aside all that was His rightful glory, and lived a sinless life as a man. He chose a manger over a palace for a birthplace and spent most of His years on earth in obscurity in a small village in northern Israel. In the three years of His public ministry Jesus attracted a small group of followers, but for the most part He was rejected or ignored by those in power.

Yet despite leaving behind all the trappings of glory, Jesus was and will be the King. When His ministry was completed on earth, He returned to Heaven to resume His rightful place. “But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;”(Hebrews 10:12). The next time He appears, it will be in full kingly power, and all the world will bow down and acknowledge that Jesus is Lord.

Today’s Growth Principle: 

Far more than a baby in Bethlehem, Jesus is the rightful King of Heaven and earth.

33But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all  [not some, but all] these things will be added unto you. Matthew 6:33