Resurrection Sunday - Come Lord Jesus!!!

  

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
Revelation 21:1-4

He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.”
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.
Revelation 22:20-21 

The book of Revelation can be summed up in two words: God Wins! Believers in Jesus Christ can look with joy and anticipation to the future, when our risen Lord joins heaven and earth together. We know, with the certainty of a promise from Jesus Himself, that the glorious, amazing day described in Revelation 21:1-4 will someday come true. Every tear will be wiped away and we will finally live as God created us to live, totally within His will, reaching our full potential. Our prayer, "Come, Lord Jesus!" is a cry that that day comes soon! 

But it is also a cry for today. Our work now is to bring glimmers of this future glory to our present reality. We can only do this with the help of our living, risen Lord. As Christians, our task is to cry out, "Come, Lord Jesus!" at the face of injustice, poverty, heartbreak and anguish, and together with Christ reach out to offer prayers, relief, truth, comfort and grace. Jesus asks to be invited into every place where His kingdom has yet to be realized, even the depths of our hearts. Come, Lord Jesus! 

Prayer: Dearest Lord Jesus, Thank you for Your death for our sins! Thank you that you rose from the grave! Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven! Come, Lord Jesus! In Your precious name I pray, Amen

* This devotion taken from The Sanctuary for Lent 2016 by Sue Mink

The Great White Throne Judgement

 

At the close of the Millennium, when unbelievers again make war against God, the war is ended by God destroying the world and the universe, as we read in Revelation 20:11-15: “Then I saw a great white throne and Him who was seated on it. From His presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”

This is also the judgment Jesus talked about in Matthew 25:31-46 where we see the separation of people to His right and left. Everyone in the history of the world will stand before Him at this judgment – everyone, except the believers in Jesus of this time which we call the Church Age. We will have been judged for our works during the Tribulation (after we met Him in the air in the Rapture).

The judge on this throne will be Jesus – see John 5:19-29. No one who stands before this judgment throne will ever be able to say the judgment was unfair because the judge did not know what the individual had been through in their life.

One of God’s purposes for all of history and this creation in which we live today, is to make an end of all sin. We read this in several places in Scripture, but one we have already seen in a previous lesson is Daniel 9:24. God allowed sin to enter His creation when He decided to give us free choice. While this free choice did not include everything in our lives, it does give us the choice for where we will spend eternity – with God or not with God. We cannot choose HOW we can please God – that is His choice, and He chose to make Jesus the only way to Himself. We also cannot define what sin is and what is not sin – God says HE is the standard, and anything which does not meet His standard is not good enough (called sin, or missing the mark).

The first sin ever committed was the statement “I will” from one of God’s creations. Our greatest sin is also “I” in some form. Anything we try to do for ourselves is always leaving God out, and therefore is sin. God told Daniel that a certain time was set for all transgressions to be finished and then all sin to be ended.

Prayer: Dear Jesus, help us to understand that time is short and You want us who believe in You to be at work for Your kingdom rather than for ourselves. Give us hearts that are broken for the lost and may we go out into Your harvest fields to bring them the truth of how You are Lord Jesus. In Your name we pray, Amen. 

From Global Media Outreach