Christmas Greetings!
Krys and I want to send our warmest Christmas greetings to you and your family at this very special time of the year. What a precious time of year to deeply focus on the incarnation of our Lord Jesus, and to meditate in God’s Word on what His coming has meant. “Joy to the world, the LORD has come!” Happy are those whose eyes and hearts have been opened to see Who He really is, and what He came to do! Love on conquest to rescue the perishing! He was crucified and then “laid behind a stone”; raised from the dead and “then ascended to the Throne”; crowned Lord of all and now soon “coming for His own!” This same Jesus Who was crucified for our sins was raised from the dead by the Father, and today He sits on the throne of all eternity as the Risen and Reigning Lamb of God. He has given us the privilege of knowing Him and being indwelt by His very Life and nature. Oh, we need to more deeply understand the glory of Who He is, and what He has done…and who we are to become IN HIM. I have been meditating afresh in those glorious, fathomless chapters in John 14-17.
Overwhelmingly awesome! His gracious promises to us are literally mind boggling, and they should stir our hearts with “heavenly burnings.” Christmas time is a good time to ask the Holy Spirit to remind us afresh, from the Word of God, of these amazing things. “Re-ignite us Lord!” He is longing to make these truths literally burn in our bones, and to give us a fervent, authentic intimacy with Himself that brings glory to His Name. Christmas is really all about that. Thank God for the privilege of having a holy relationship with Him. He wants that! He is Lord! As we gather with our families and friends this Christmas may we each be filled with a profound awareness of what a privilege He has given to us to know Him. “Oh come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.” We gather together unto Him and worship Him gladly. God gave His Word, and He meant what He said !
The Bible is very clear about it – Jesus Christ is coming to earth again !!! Over 300 times His first coming was specifically predicted in the Word of God. The details of His life were told, prophesied in stunning clarity in God’s Word years before He came. We have the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, written down about 250 BC…irrefutably proving that the prophecies were given hundreds of years before Jesus came.
The odds against even eight of these 300 prophecies being fulfilled as they were are 1 in 10 to the 17th power. That’s a ten with 17 zeroes following it! To understand the magnitude of this number consider in your mind a helpful picture. Take Texas and cover it in silver dollars two feet deep. Then, pick out one of the silver dollars and clearly mark it. Then, fly over Texas and throw that marked dollar somewhere back into the whole mix, and shake Texas well. Blindfolded, walk any direction, reach down and pick up a silver dollar. The odds of getting the same one again that was marked are 1 in 10 to the 17th power. But that picture deals with the odds of only 8 of the 300 proven prophecies coming to pass. We need a bigger picture !
Let’s take the odds of even 48 of the 300 prophecies coming to pass “as it is written.” The odds of only 48 of these 300 well known prophecies coming to pass are 1 in 10 to the 157th power. We will have to go really big for this one! Take one inch of electrons, one of the smallest particles known to man. It would take you 19 million years, counting at 250 a minute, day and night to count them. But you would need a cubic inch of electrons to have a number large enough to illustrate this probability! It would take you 19 million x 19 million x 19 million years to count a cubic inch of electrons. Do the same thing that you did with the silver dollars…taking one electron out and marking it. Then put it back in and shake well. Reach in and take out one random electron. The odds against your picking out the same electron that you marked would be 1 in 10 to the 157th power. This illustrates the odds of only 48 of the specifically known 300 prophecies coming to pass. Just think of it for a moment and realize we are dealing with only one sixth of the proven prophecies! But, to go further is beyond the human possibility of comprehension. No truly honest person can deny this, and every thinking person must deal with the absolute proof of it! He came to fulfill the Word of God. The amazing thing is that there were twice as many prophecies of His second coming as there were His first! In our day the signs of His imminent coming multiply! What a comfort this is for God’s people. He came before “as it is written” and He will come again “as it is written.” What a comfort and hope, and what a provocation to worship. Worship Him, the infinitely merciful and holy Eternal One! How blessed to be exhorted by the Scriptures and meditate on 1 John 2:28 through 1 John 3: 1-3… “Blessed assurance, Jesus is Mine, Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine.”
In Christ alone, Pastor Bill