DAYS OF NOAH II: In the wrong bed trying to look innocent!

"And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all."

Luke 17:26-27

A several years ago, Reader’s Digest ran a splendid story which illustrates the similarity between our generation and that of Noah.

It seems a man brought two young dogs to town with him to get farm supplies; one was a German Shepherd, the other a Golden Labrador. He sternly told both dogs to remain in his pickup until he returned.

Later a woman came into the store and asked if anyone owned the dogs which were running in and out of the building next door. Shocked, the man hurried to his truck. When he arrived, he found his dogs faithfully sitting in the truck bed … of the wrong pickup!

Likewise, we're undone; we've no excuse; we're guilty! We shouldn't pretend innocence!

Our generation, the one preceding the Second Coming of the Son of Man, is no different than the one preceding the flood, and is almost identical to the generation just prior to the Son of Man's first coming!

Christianity, Illustrations,
Lasciviousness, Religion

DAYS OF NOAH: I am my father's son-in-law and my mother-in-law is my stepmother!

"And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all."

Luke 17:26-27

The April 12, 1993, issue of Newsweek unknowingly reported the signs of the times.

Bill Wyman, of The Rolling Stones, married his son's wife's daughter, a woman 34 years his junior. Her mother married Wyman's son, Stephan, a man 16 years her junior. That makes Stephan his father's son-in-law and his mother-in-law his stepmother.

No wonder Jesus made this prophetic comment: “And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it shall be also in the days of the Son of Man … .” Truly, those days are upon us!

Christianity, Illustrations,
Licentiousness, Religion

LICENTIOUSNESS: Writing our own hall passes!

“ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness” Jude 1:4

A few years ago, California Highway Patrol officers ticketed to a man on the one of their Interstate freeways. The officers observed a vehicle heading south toward San Diego, at freeway speed, with a lone driver and two legs hanging out from under the hood. It seems the carburetor linkage broke, so one steered and the other laid under the hood accelerating for his friend. The driver couldn’t believe he had been cited. [FxLine News, April 24, 1994]

This points out that relativism isn’t the only social ill we are dealing with today: licentiousness is another. Though the driver and his friend were going in the right direction, at the correct speed, they were driving the wrong way … just to get what they wanted.

Licentiousness is what I call “writing your own hall pass.” In our Jr. High School, we needed hall passes, signed by a teacher, to be in the halls during class time. In order to circumvent the rule, my friends and I stole a pad of passes and forged our teachers’ names. We did this for no other reason than that we wanted to do what we wanted, irrespective of right or wrong. [No, I’m not proud of what we did.]

Check the dictionary and you’ll see licentiousness is generally defined as “lacking moral discipline or ignoring legal or social restraint; having little or no regard for accepted rules or standards of behavior.”

Look around at the world today; you’ll be surprised at how many people are driving down the road of live with legs hanging out from under their hood.

Christianity, Illustrations,
Licentiousness, Religion

BLOOD - O' The Precious Blood!

AS CLEAR AS MUD! [1 Samuel 16:7; cleansing, heart, righteousness]

Rudy, one of the men in our church, took on the job of cleaning and waxing the floor of the ladies bathroom. After stripping the floor, we both marveled at how clean it was compared to its earlier condition. I then had to leave to run a few errands.

While I was gone, Rudy decided to try a detergent cleanser on the floor, just to see if it might improve the appearance even further.

I returned in the middle of his efforts. Half of the already once-cleaned floor was bright and like new, the other dark with grime ... this was the same floor we’d just a short while earlier thought was "very" clean.

Man labors in his efforts to live a clean life ... but the Bible says "there are none righteous, no not one" [Romans 3:10-18]. Man examines himself and says, "I’m not so bad! At least not as bad as so-and-so." But God doesn’t look at the outer man, as we do. What we see with our natural eyes appears clean but what God sees is far from clean.

The blood of Jesus cleanses in such a way that is beyond man’s understanding. That which is stained permanently black from sin is cleansed to pure white. Had we known how truly dirty the floor was in the first place perhaps we would not have been fooled into believing it clean. Were man to know how desperately polluted his sins have made him he would never claim to be "Worse than some but better than most; after all I’ve never murdered anyone or robbed a bank or plundered and raped."


BLOOD STAINED TESTIMONY! [1 Peter 1:19; atonement, power]

A Gideon friend recently told of how their well-known, pearl-white New Testaments were distributed to the Pacific Fleet prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese.

He also told of how, on a later occasion, the evangelist Harry Rimmer was speaking to a meeting of believers interested in military evangelism. During the speech, Dr. Rimmer displayed his own personal copy of the white Pacific Fleet New Testament.

Following the meeting, a member of the audience tarried to show Dr. Rimmer another white New Testament, one given to his son prior to the bombing of the Hawaiian base ... one stained with blood. The man smiled and said, "Yes … this little book is very precious … it’s … stained with the blood of my son." Dr. Rimmer paused for a moment, then held up his personal Bible and said, "God feels the same way about that Book. He loves [it] too. Its pages are stained with the blood of His Son." [Thanks to Brian Stromsoe, of The Gideons, for recently sharing this vignette with our church.]

Indeed it is; each page of Holy Writ is covered with that precious, precious blood which flowed from pierced and bleeding side of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.


MAJOR FOWL UP! [1 Peter 1:17-19; iniquity, licentiousness, permissiveness, secular humanism, sin]

Except for two weeks out of the year, Geese are federally protected game birds. Yet they're killing cattle. Recently a Virginia Beef Corp. spokesman informed WorldNetDaily (WND) that wildlife protections have resulted in overpopulation of the species; they’re crowding – and fouling – pastures where livestock graze.

WND was told that goose droppings, which carry swine and other viruses, are causing a profusion of stillbirths among heifers. Some 65 calves, valued at about $3,000 each on the market, have been lost this year at Virginia Beef's Louden County, Va., pastures … only one of many such pastures affected.

Similarly, federal protection of sin has resulted in the eternal damnation of tens of thousands of American citizens. In recent years representatives of the Christian community have been trying to warn public and private groups about the ever increasing problems associated with the licentious and permissive behavior of our fellow citizens.

Like most birds, sinners have been fouling their own and our nests with government sanction. The absence of moral clarity and its accompanying devaluation of human life has resulted in a holocaust of murders among unborn children. This moral and ethical dysfunction has brought about the eternal loss of an untold number of Americans … at what cost? Just the precious blood of Jesus!