Friday, May 31, 2013

What next?





The barbaric beheading of Lee Rigby an off-duty soldier on Wednesday 22nd May in London was reported in the Daily Mirror, ‘Horrified witnesses told last night how the off-duty soldier beheaded by two Islamic terrorists yesterday was hacked at “like a piece of meat”. The unnamed serviceman, wearing a Help for Heroes T-shirt, was brutally butchered with knives and meat cleavers after a car mounted the pavement and ploughed into him. The barbaric killing that has shocked the nation happened at 2.20pm on a busy main road just 50 yards from a primary school and 200 yards from Woolwich Barracks in South East London.’ I cannot recall a beheading in the UK In my lifetime, it could have happened but if it did it escapes my memory.

Wikipedia gives a comprehensive list of beheadings which was a mode of execution in the UK during the 14th. to 16th. Centuries. Henry V111 used it and Hitler guillotined many who opposed him, one says, ‘Franz Jägerstätter (1943) – Guillotined in Berlin as a conscientious objector.’

Murder is one thing but Lee Rigby’s death was an execution carried out in the name of Allah! I have asked myself which of the countries in the world today practice beheading? It is more than brutal, it is barbaric. So if the streets of London have been bloodied by the wilful decapitation of a random target, WHAT NEXT?

The same question could be asked in relation to other immoral excesses, of that which goes beyond the bounds of decency and righteousness. The first same sex marriage in France, a few days ago, attracted thousands of protesters who believe that a same sex union is in God’s eyes, an abomination. 

Leviticus18:22 reads  “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination,” and ch.20:13  “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”  

Many countries have legalized same sex marriage and pose the question ‘WHAT NEXT’? The door is opened for these unions to be acceptable for adopting children and surrogate parenting with third parties. There are many children that have HIV from heterosexual parents, my wife and I met and support such children. How many more children are going to be brought into the world to die of Aids from Sodomite unions?

One fears that as it was in Hitler’s regime, that there will be no room for conscientious objectors to declare their unwillingness to officiate at such marriages, and will lose their employment and livelihood.

John the Baptist is a typical example of what happens when a stand is made against immoral unions. He proclaimed that Herod’s marriage to Herodias was an adulterous union, because he had taken his brother Philip’s wife. She schemed John’s death and Herod sent soldiers to behead him in prison. Her daughter Salome demanded the head to be brought to her on a charger, and she gave it to her mother.
On another occasion, tradition says that Herod had James the brother of the apostle John beheaded and later in Rome tradition states that Paul also was beheaded.

In the program of God the next event to take place is the coming of Christ to the air to take His Church to Heaven. Every born-again person from the day of Pentecost to the rapture (the Church caught-up to meet the Lord in the air) will be present. The dead in Christ will rise first and then all living Christians will be changed and given bodies suitable to live in Heaven. When the Church is safely home with her Lord there will be events in Heaven and simultaneously judgments will take place on earth. Matthew ch’s 24 and 25 tell us of happenings during the Tribulation, a seven year period of unparalleled happenings, particularly during the second half, depicted as forty-two months and twelve hundred and sixty days, or in Daniel’s language, ‘time, times and half a time’. During this period God will raise up and send out 144,000 Jewish evangelists to go through all the earth and preach the gospel of the Kingdom. They are the genuine Jehovah Witnesses, 12,000 from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Both Jews and Gentiles will believe their message and own Christ as the coming King to reign over all the earth from Jerusalem. Some will seal their faith with their blood. Revelation 20:10 says, “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.”

One might be tempted to say, ‘Is confessing Christ as Lord worth it?’ let Paul tell you his thoughts, “For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;  While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

If you receive Christ today you will never see the troublous times on earth, you will be safe in Heaven, far away from the axe man.

Are you saved? WHAT NEXT?  May God help you to trust His Word and receive the Saviour.  God bless.


Written by Stan Burditt for FTMP May 2013
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