Tag: D. James Kennedy

THE HAMMER

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Guest Column

By Dr. D. James Kennedy

As early as the seventh century, Muslim forces led campaigns to spread Islam across the Middle East. At one time the Islamic Empire eclipsed that of the Roman Empire. However, attempts by Muslim forces to push their way into Christian Europe were stymied by the famous 732 a.d. Battle of Tours in France. Charles Martel, popularly known as “Charles the Hammer,” led this battle against the Muslim armies and is largely credited for preventing Europe from succumbing to Islam’s control.

Today, militant Islamists are back and willing to lay down their lives to destroy both Europe and America. The President of Iran has promised that, “The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world.

Now is not the time to cut and run. Now is not the time for retreat. We need patriots and Christians like “Charles the Hammer,” to rise up and oppose those who would destroy this country.

Rick Mathes, minister of Mission Gate Prison Ministry in Missouri is a real Christian patriot standing up for the truth. Several years ago Mathes participated in a training session in which Roman Catholic, Protestant and Muslim clerics explained their respective beliefs to inmates.

Afterwards, during a question and answer period, Mathes asked the Muslim Imam this questions: “I understand that most Imams and clerics of the Islamic faith have declared a holy jihad (this is a holy war) against the infidels of the world and that by killing an infidel, which is a command to all Muslims, they are assured a place in heaven. If that’s the case, can you give me the definition of an infidel? As Mathes recounts, the Imam answered immediately: “A non-believer.”

“So let me make sure I have this straight,” Mathes said. “All followers of Allah have been commanded to kill everyone who is not of your faith, so that they can go to Heaven. Is that correct?” the Imam sheepishly answered, “Yes.”

Mathes, not surprisingly, told the Imam he had a problem with being his friend when he, his  fellow  clerics and followers, wanted to kill him.

“Would you rather have your Allah, who tells you to kill me in order for you to go to Heaven, or my Jesus, who tells me to love you because I am going to Heaven, and He wants you to be there with me?”

Mathes asked. The Imam offered no answer.

There needs to be more champions like Mathes who are willing to stand against those who spread deceptive teachings. I believe such patriots exist. I also believe that America is not going to cut and run. I believe that we are going to take our stand and defeat the plans of the unrighteous. The future of our nation depends on it.

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Rick Mathes

www.MissionGateMinistry.org

www.RickMathes.org

 

WHY NOT?

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WHY NOT?

By Rick Mathes

There are two questions that have nagged me from as far back as I can remember: Why and what is Truth? Apart from Jesus and the constant teaching of the Apostles, neither question can ever be objectively answered. To this day my mind goes haywire when I hear people philosophize in a relative and often circular manner of reasoning. To them, truth is whatever they believe to be true. They cross their eyes when I remind them of the law of non-contradiction: A cannot be both A and B at the same time or A and B cannot both be true.

Socrates drove everyone nuts with his incessant questioning of “Why?” His dialectic method of questioning made fools out of those who lived without constants, nothing objectively secure.

My parents would say, “You need to be in by 10PM!” I’d ask, “Why?” and they would say, “Because we said so!” Made no sense to me the difference between 9PM and 11PM so I would stay out until midnight which made more sense to me.

And my second nagging question was, “What is truth?” I read almost every word in the Great Books Library, had a I Q of 140 and still didn’t know what truth was. I didn’t learn until I read the Bible Jesus say, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

I still can’t understand how Jesus can be the truth. I can understand how he has the truth, or he knows the truth, or he teaches the truth but how can a man be a concept, and why?

There I go again, I’m right back to where I started!

YOU WILL SEE

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YOU WILL SEE

By Rick Mathes

John 1:39 He •said to them, “Come, and you will see.” They came therefore and saw where He was staying; and they stayed with Him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.

How can anyone resist His central command, “Come.” When the King issues a demand, all he wants to hear from you is, “Yes Sir!” Yet, with just a gentle invitation, one of the greatest Apostles, John and his brother stepped forward and spent the afternoon with Him.

I don’t know what Jesus discussed with the two teenagers but they never left His side until James was martyred and John lived out his old age in Ephesus.

Here are more notable requests:

  • Follow Me:
  • John 1:43 The next day He purposed to go forth into Galilee, and He •found Philippians And Jesus •said to him, “Follow Me.”
  • Come to Me:
  • Matthew 11:28 Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
  • Learn of Me:
  • Matthew 11:29 “Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and YOU SHALL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS.
  • Abide in Me:
  • John 15:14 “You are My friends, if you do what I command you.

I can’t tell you how many times I have taught my sheep to hear, listen, learn, apply and evaluate. We are the sum total of all our choices and for the life of me I will never understand why anyone would have a problem with the Lord’s good news.

He lays out for us to follow, come, learn and abide.

Many shallow, carnal Christians will put on a wonderful show of following Him. They are dot-to-dot perfect in the church attendance, Bible studies, good works and fellowship. But when things don’t go their way the turn inward to self and lose themselves in their own feeble and failing efforts.

Others only come to Him in time of need. They believe that Jesus is their servant not the other way around. Our mentors, those we learn from, are found often by chance instead of choice. We all need to hold on to Paul and drag along a Timothy. It is then that when you follow His steps the Holy Spirit will make His dwelling in you like your father’s blood runs through your veins; He will abide in you and you in Him.

YOUR BODY

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 YOUR BODY

By Rick Mathes

Romans 12:1 (NASB77) 1   I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

In no creature except man is there any act which involves such an interactivity of matter and spirit, boy and soul.

We are the sacrificing priests within the Temple of our bodies. This Temple is a house possessed by the Holy Spirit and preserved by the faith and blood of believers throughout the whole world. We, men of God, must be diligent keepers of His law in our heads and His passion in our hearts. As obedient slaves we go about the Father’s business and we don’t even notice we are doing so. Being a saved believer is a serious choice that cannot be violated or broken: a covenant.

C.H. Spurgeon: I scarcely like this word “sacrifice” because it involves nothing more than a reasonable service. If we gave up all we had and became beggars for Christ, it would display no such chivalrous spirit or magnanimous conduct after all. We would be gainers by the surrender.

Faith keeps the man who keeps the faith.

Our Body of Faith has:

  • Eyes to see
  • Ears to hear
  • Hands to grip
  • Feet to walk
  • Mind to think
  • Heart to love
  • Taste to appreciate.The first most grievous sin is to have a god more important than God. The second is to desecrate the Body which is the Temple of God. Immoral sex, obesity, alcoholism, drug addiction, crime, etc. is essentially spitting in the face of our crucified Savior!How dare you shame the House of God, your body and then yet expect God’s blessing.God is reaching out to touch you physically, mentally, educationally, vocationally, and spiritually. It’s your body to do with as you choose. It is my expectation that this devotional will motivate you to do some housekeeping and wash your soul in living water.

YOUR CHURCH

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YOUR CHURCH 2

By Rick Mathes

Matthew 16:18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it.

Sad to say but His Church can and probably is a far different place than your church or the ones that Paul preached in. I can’t help but apply simple logic to my faith and understand form the Word that if my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, where I stand is Church. However, like metal drawn to a magnet, others of like blessing are drawn to each other to form the visible Body of Christ which is the fellowship we attend corporately. So there is the invisible Church within us and the visible Church where we can gather together.

Putting worldly merchandising and marketing strategies to building a successful church really depends on what we consider successful and the manner in which we seek to attain it.

Inevitably we end up with programs and no prayers. We feverishly do all we can to have classes on anything that will attract the masses to attend. Prayer, if there is any at all is manufactured, mechanical and without life. People go to church on Sunday morning because they love the fellowship. They go on Sunday night because they love the Pastor but they attend the Wednesday night prayer meeting because they love the Lord. If your church has abandoned the mid-week prayer meeting, run from it!

So the main effect of this worldly effort to stage church gives you religion (in the image of man) without regeneration. All it becomes is a lot of ritual that escapes the reality fo the pure Gospel that if perverted. Paul said you would be accursed. Can you see the deplorable condition of what we accept as church? It has become nothing more than as entertainment center in most cases. Anything to draw a crowd but too much like a bright blue bug light that is eventually the demise of the unsuspecting bugs that fly too close to the flame and get zapped!

The sermons offer no salvation to those in the congregation who are not looking for it. Preaching “turn of burn” is not politically correct. It is ancient and certainly old-fashioned to preach “Repent, the Kingdom of God is here!” as John the Baptist did followed by Jesus, Peter and Paul. Open your spiritual eyes and pray that the Holy Spirit will lead you to His holy ground.

BEARING FRUIT

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BEARING FRUIT

By Rick Mathes

Colossians 1:10 so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;

No one can say for certain if another person is saved or not because even God’s elect will slip and sin from time to time. As a shepherd, I look for the fruit of the Spirit to craft a sermon or Bible study for my sheep. There are definite sign posts along the narrow road to heaven or the wide highway to hell.

One very telling characteristic of a fellow believer is we put away childish things. There was a time when we did some really crazy things and we marvel that we escaped unscathed. So thee was a time when it was fun to say it was fun, then it because fun to say it was crazy but then came the time when it was crazy to say this was fun. That’s when we had to put them away.

Another effort a born again believer will make is to cultivate a good solid understanding of God’s Word. Unless someone has their head in the bible, I really doubt they know Jesus for who He is. If you are His, you read His love letters to you (The Bible).

Striving after Christ’s ideal model of a follower of His is found in Mathew chapter 5 and is called the Beatitudes. These guidelines are in a progression so you need to do the first before you tackle the second and then the third and so on to of all things, persecution. If you do the opposite of each step you have the stairway to hell.

The best signpost of your being on the narrow road is your partaking of deeper things. The Word is shallow enough for an infant to splash in and yet can be deep enough to drown an elephant.

It mainly boils down to overcoming temptation. My surest test of your salvation is when you consider the temptation a testing of the Lord to find out how deep your love for Him is. The most valid assurance of your love for Him is your hate of sin. You hate the sin that killed God’s Son. That despising of evil things means you are bearing good fruit of good things. Sounds like you are saved! AMEN.

AMBIENCE

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AMBIENCE

By Rick Mathes

Acts 28:2 the natives showed us extraordinary kindness; for because of the rain that had set in and because of the cold, they kindled a fire and received us all.

There is a special comfort in building a campfire to gather around in Christian fellowship. The chill of the winter air is so refreshing but the crackling flames, songs that fill the air and wholesome laughter transform both body and soul. Such is the emanation from Holy Spirit from the pages of God’s love letter to us. The Bible brings an enlightenment that awakens a love within that only His cross could provide. It embraces our body, mind and soul in a rush of His resurrection and the enablement of the Holy Spirit to step forward as an ambassador of the King, in peace.

Prayer is that special ability to bridge the gap from the created to the Creator: this is a privilege for believers only. In private, we can dialog with Jesus our deepest secrets and fear without restraint. It’s a social intercourse that words sometimes cannot capture. The Holy Spirit intercedes, the Lord brings our praise or petition to the Father and He nods His approval. Think of what can be accomplished in our church society if we would all point our swords in the same direction: that’s when the warming assurance and comfort comes up on the Body of Christ.

We then lift our spiritual ears to the heavens and have that special communion and fellowship with Jesus. Meditation is the lesson we receive from Him often prompted by our prayers. For a seeking sinner or forgiven saint, it’s a big bear-hug from our best friend, Jesus. If you are astute and have your spiritual antennae up you feel that in the fellowship of like believers. The Body of Christ, the church, the visible and invisible engulf our very being when this experience occurs with a repentant heart.

The fellowships of Christians help us to return to our first love, to worship and enjoy our Savior and Lord. The Holy Spirit invites us to join Him in the friendship and love of fellow believers. This is a fulfillment of returning to our first nature of actually being love in His Shekinah light: perfecting once again an ambience that only a submission to Him can provide in holiness.

ALL OR NOTHING

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ALL OR NOTHING

By Rick Mathes

Luke 9:23 (NASB77) 23 And He was saying to them all, ” If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.

Salvation is not free. It costs everything. We must exchange all we are for all His is. It is a total displacement of who we were for who His is. That’s Christianity, being Christ-like. Not religion.

If you sense in your heart a yearning for Jesus to be Lord, praise Him because you have been especially chosen to be His. No one comes to Him except the Father gives to Him. You are elect and like metal to a magnet, you can’t avoid coming to Him. You are not able to turn back for long for the urge to be His is too great to resist

If you confess Jesus as your Lord, you must submit to His Lordship in everything. This includes those times and places when no one is watching. Well, He’s all present so there isn’t anything you can get by Him. He sees it all. You are His slave and He owns you totally. So like boing water through coffee grounds you process your every move through Him.

We know the cross He carried for us but we usually don’t accept the cross we need to carry for Him. We have been charged with sinning and sentenced to die to self so that we might live to serve Him. It all begins at the foot of the cross when we collapse under the weight of our sinful life and repent of our sins at the feet of the Master.

We must be wholly His to be holy. You can’t be part saved either. You are or you aren’t. When you do, submission to His will naturally follows and He becomes the Hand and we become the glove. He goes about the Father’s business in our skin.

Michael Angelo was asked how he knew that David was I that discarded block of marble. He replied that he just kept chipping on that marble that which wasn’t him. So it is with us as our Lord chips away at our sins so that we might repent, say “Ouch!” and slowly return to our first nature which was to walk in the presence of God. It’s our second nature to sin but all that changes when you are brought to that moment of truth by the Holy Spirit where it is all or nothing.

AGAINST GOD

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AGAINST GOD

By Rick Mathes

Acts 5:39 (NASB77) 39  but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them; or else you may even be found fighting against God.”

No matter what your denomination or form of church government may be, we all have a commonality as evangelical Protestants that the liberals and catholic heretics just cannot quench no matter h0w hard they try. I would like to name a few and expand on them a bit.

Take up your Cross: True sermons include somewhere in the message repent, submit or obey. All others are largely ear-tickling stories, pontification, or catchy illustrations designed to hae you return next Sunday. Evangelical services hammer on the soul to pursue holiness.

I know what is from Satan; don’t pray right now. The devil doesn’t want you to do the very thing God created for you: to pray to Him. He loves prayer.

Division divides! How can the Body of Christ function if its body parts are scattered about or in conflict with each other? I’m not really fond of my big toe. It’s really ugley and usually smells but when I stub it, my whole body says ouch! WE must be in one accord: this is from God.

When others have the cancer and you have the cure, you shout it from the roof-tops. And when you know the Savior and His salvation, you become a soul-winner. It’s the natural thing to do.

This will drive ou to the Scriptures to study the Word. When I first became a Christian ghe Bible was a big book with a small, simple message. Now several generations later it is a small book with more big messages than I could ever preach in many lifetimes.

Preach only to the willing and you will have learned a responsible message from God: don’t cat your pearls to the swine. Go only where you are invied and the doors will open for you to eshort and encourage the children of the promise

Remember, Jesus said, “Whatever you have done these my brothers, even the least of them, ou have done it to me!” This is real heavy dude, heavy! Rebuke and correct the saints and the lessons will fall back on hou just when you need them. But if you look into the eyes of God and spit in the wind, you know what will happen.

ABSORBED

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ABSORBED

By Rick Mathes

Ephesians 3:19 (NASB77) 19  and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

I am an evangelical Baptist, conservative, Calvinist, fundamental no nonsense ordained minister. Whew! I am not dazzled by others claims of celestial fireworks, the raising of thousands of the dead in Africa and testimonies of those who died and then went bowled a line or two with Jesus. However, I did have a theophany personally that made a profound change in my attitude toward death.

I was in my bedroom praying at night and repenting of sins back to the day I was born whn my invisible body burst from the darkness into an expanse of sky blue. I knew my body was there but I couldn’t see it. All of a sudden love encompassed me like being under water except it was love. Then like a sponge, I soaked in all that love and I became love. What an unbelievable rush

I believe Jesus gave me a taste of heaven.

Now let’s get back down to earth with you and ask, “What can you hold of the Holy Spirit?” Do you have the will and capacity to soak up love into not just your heart and body but completely including your soul? What would you think then of being filled with the Holy Spirit?

Let me put in the best words I can. Father God is the lover, the Son is the loved and the Holy Spirit is the love between them. It really is because I personally experienced this infilling of the Holy Spirit that I understand this on a new level.

Can you even imagine the works of God you could accomplish if this happened to you? I have now continued in Him by turning lives from crime to Christ for over 30 years. What would happen to you? God only knows!

What is the fullness of the Holy Spirit? How much Holy Spirit is there and how much room do you have for Him in your life? And what would happen if you received all the fullness of God? Wow!

When you were drinking and drugging to the max you weren’t afraid to die so why are you afraid to mainline Jesus and live? Try it you will like it and life will never be the same again.