LITTLE BOY AT THE BAPTISM
There is a true story of a little boy who was looking intently into the baptistry after the baptism service, when his mother came up and asked him what he was doing. He said, ‘I’m looking for that ‘old man’ the pastor said we left in the water!” You see, this is the true meaning of baptism by immersion - our total identification with Christ in His crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection, ascension and glorification.
THE THIRD COMING OF CHRIST?!?!!.
A friend of mine was in a church meeting, when someone died. There was a nurse present who verified the lack of respiration and breathing, the bodily functions ceased, the color of death was present. The people continued to worship while the ambulance was coming. About 15 to 20 minutes later, the man opened his eyes and lived a wonderful life for many more years. His granddaughter had had a dream just two weeks before that her grandfather was going to die in church, and that he would come back to life.
THE THIRD COMING OF CHRIST!
Assume with me for a moment that God wants to return to the earth in a THIRD Way. He came as a Babe, and He’s coming in the clouds. But pretend with me, that between His 1st and 2nd coming, He wants to come in a 3rd way. Imagine that this time, He wants to do it like this: Suppose someone is sitting in church, and has a cardiac attack, and dies, God forbid. Instead of rushing to give the person ‘artificial recuperation”, the rest of the people, if they notice at all, think that that person just fell asleep for a minute. Suppose that before anyone else knows of this, Christ comes into this person, blinks open his
eyes, and starts walking around in his shoes in disguise, incognito, speaking, talking, loving, LIVING, His LIFE, --- the very LIFE of Christ Himself!
The Jehovah’s Witnesses believe in the First and Second coming of Christ, but do not believe that Jesus, as God, can come and live inside of us as our Life. Because they don’t believe In this Third Coming, they are going to a hell that they also do not believe in.
Jesus wants to be glorified and magnified now in all who believe!! Notice this Scripture! “When He shall come to be glorified IN His saints and to be admired IN all them that believe, (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day” II Thess. 1:10. ‘Christ IN YOU, THE HOPE OF GLORY!” Colossians 1:28. The LIV calls it ‘the MYSTERY which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but NOW is made manifest to HIS saints! To whom God would make known THE RICHES OF THE GLORY OF THIS MYSTERY AMONG THE GENTILES,
WHICH IS - - - CHRIST IN ~ THE HOPE OF GLORY!!!”
The Williams translation calls this, God’s Glorious ‘OPEN SECRET = CHRIST IN YOU!!!” and Beck’s Translation says, THE GLORY OF THIS HIDDEN TRUTH = CHRIST IN YOU!!!” I have called this, ‘THE KING’S GREATEST SECREI”l!!!!!!!
This is none other than what The Creator King of Everything, In the Bible, calls “THE MYSTERY OF THE GOSPEL OF THE AGES”!!!! In other words, this is the GREATEST GOOD-NEWS SECRET OF ALL TIME!!!!!! Please, dear Dear One, please do NOT let this truth pass you by! Please stay with this until this ‘Secret Truth” becomes nitty gritty gut-level REALITY IN YOUR HEART! IN JESUS’ Name, Amen.
So, back to the illustration - Say that Christ came into your available dead body and BECAAAAAAAAAAAAAME it’s Life, that is, started living His Glorious Life THROUGH you, loving THROUGH you, loving, talking, loving, walking, loving, living, loving, blessing, loving, healing, loving, BEING ALL THAT HE IS – IN YOU, - BElNG your Salvatlon, NOT giving you Salvation as an experience APART from Him, but living it, BE-ing it, DO-ing it through you!!
I Corinthians 1:30 says that Christ, “IS MADE unto us Wisdom, and Righteousness, and Sanctification, and Redemption”. These things: Resurrection, Salvation, etc., are not a ‘thing”, or an ‘experience” apart from Him, but are a PERSON. That Person’s Name is YAHWEH YAHSHUA, The Mighty Right Now God, The Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!!! Even in the Old Testament, please notice all of the times it refers to Yahweh as BEING our Sword, our Shield, our Fortress, our Buckler, our Exceeding Great Reward, our High Tower ‘I will run into Him and be safe”!!! Not “gives us a sword” but ‘IS MY SWORD”!!! Dear Heart, please - can you see the difference???
Some people come staggering into church on Sunday morning to get their “weakly” (weekly) injection fix of righteousness to last them barely till next Sunday, but Jesus wants to BE our Righteousness!!! BE our LIFE, our Salvation and Protection. Salvation
is not a ‘thing”. Salvation is a Person! And His Name is Jesus Christ! As I John says, ‘He that hath the Son hath LIFE and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”
INFERIORITY COMPLEX
They tell about a man who was down at the altar praying. ‘Lord, show me I’m nothing, show me I’m nothing.” Then the preacher came along and said, ‘Take it by faith, brother.” Story is told of a man used to have a terrible bad inferiority complex. Then somebody came along and told him he didn’t have a ‘feriority complex - he was just PLAIN INFERIOR!!! I used to do things constantly to ‘compensate” for my deep-seated feelings of Inadequacy. The ol’ one-room country school we went to was called ‘Wild Cat School”. Then we went into town to the citified junior high school, and, truth to tell, I didn’t rightly know how to act around all those city-wise kids. So, to try to do something about my 9th grade inferiority complex, I thought maybe I could get a book from the school lie-berry. The first book I got said “Act natural!” But that didn’t help much, you see, ‘cause the thing that I ‘naturally” was, I knew I couldn’t afford to publicly be!”
So, I got another book, - an’ it said, - ‘Be yourself” But that didn’t help either, because MY old self definitely WAS inferior! Later on, my friend, Lee Eliason, told me to ‘be sincere”, and that helped some, but here, as a senior at Bethel College, my discovery of this ‘Greatest Secret” fully met the needs of my life along this line because Christ BECAME my sufficiency and my adequacy!!!!!!! This really Really REALLY solved the “complex” problem!!!
So, you don’t need to die or commit suicide- because Christ wants to BECOME your LIFE by your acceptance. Accept what He did when He took NOT ONLY our sins and sicknesses, so we can be forgiven and healed completely, but He took our SELVES. (Rom. 6, Col., Eph., etc.) He put US to death with ALL of our insufficiencies, inadequacies, inferiorities, inabilities, instabilities, everything negative, nasty, weak and sinful, and took us to the Cross, put us to death, buried us and raised us up in newness of life, a whole, new, beautiful, glorious, adequate, sufficient, wonderful, able, stable creation fashioned in His Image, that He wants to actually BEEEEEEE the Life of!!!!!!