The way of Jesus lies in the shadow of the cross

Return (Isaiah 1:1-20)

²Hear, O heavens, and listen, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me. ³The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.
⁴Ah, sinful nation, people laden with iniquity, offspring who do evil, children who deal corruptly, who have forsaken the Lord, who have despised the Holy One of Israel, who are utterly estranged! ⁵Why do you seek further beatings? Why do you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. ⁶From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and bleeding wounds; they have not been drained, or bound up, or softened with oil.
⁷Your country lies desolate, your cities are burned with fire; in your very presence aliens devour your land; it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners. ⁸And daughter Zion is left like a booth in a vineyard, like a shelter in a cucumber field, like a besieged city. ⁹If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we would have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah.
¹⁰Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah! ¹¹What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. ¹²When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; ¹³bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation—I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.
¹⁴Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. ¹⁵When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. ¹⁶Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, ¹⁷learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
¹⁸Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. ¹⁹If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; ²⁰but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Is 1:2–20.

It is difficult to read words like this, especially when they are presented as proceeding from the mouth of God. Some Christians find it hard to believe God would ever speak in such a way. The caricature of Jesus that is drawn in many modern descriptions of Jesus is so tender and gentle that a few contemporary theologians seem to suggest that Israel only imagined these words into the mouth of God in hindsight after the devastation the Babylonians brought to Israel in the 500s B.C.

And yet, these words should not be surprising to us. The covenant God made with Israel at Mount Sinai promised such curses if Israel broke the covenant, which the people did, over and over again. God sent prophet after prophet, curse after curse, judgment after judgment for over 800 years before these words of Isaiah were finally fulfilled. And yet, God’s children did not return to the covenant God had made with them. They continued to follow their own hearts and to go their own way.

Though, the question still remains: Do such words still apply in the New Covenant of Jesus? After all, those of us who have been reconciled to God by faith in the faithfulness and trustworthiness of Jesus did not enter into a written covenant with God. We simply let our yes be yes and our no be no. We agreed to be the people of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob Who became flesh in the Person of Jesus by following Jesus and honoring Him as Lord. There was no written Law. We are being saved by faith. So, without Law, there can be no just consequence, can there? Perhaps this covenant, this agreement, allows for no tangible correction.

And yet, the same God who authored the covenant of Sinai, is the God Who became flesh in the Person of Jesus. What does it mean to have faith in Him? What would be the consequence of faithlessness? Perhaps part of our response must begin with a different question. Were the curses of the covenant of Sinai more like punishments or more like consequences? This could be a distinction without a difference, but I do not believe such to be the case.

My sense of the curses of the Covenant of Sinai is that they were specified consequences of God’s turning away from Israel. In the beginning, when God created, the earth was formless and void and darkness covered the deep, while the Spirit of God was brooding over the waters. This primal chaos was created by God in the beginning, but God did not leave the chaos as it was. He proceeded to shape the chaos through separation and organization. He separated light from darkness and then water from water and then land from sea. And then, He organized the light and darkness with the creation of sun, moon, and stars, the waters and sky with sea creatures and birds, and the land with land creatures.

God created space for life by separating the chaotic waters. Life depends on God. But, what was happening in Israel in the days of Isaiah was akin to what happened with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The people wished for autonomy—they wished to chart their own course. When we rebel against God, seeking autonomy and self-direction, we ask God to depart; we fail to appreciate our and creation’s utter dependence on God for its existence. The covenant of Sinai anticipated this eventuality, and prepared the people for it by describing a world without God. In the curses of Sinai, God identified specific aspects of the waters—the chaos—that He would allow to flow into Israel if they were intent on making their way without Him. These were punishments, certainly, but they were punishments precisely because they were inevitable consequences.

Essentially, these curses were meant to convey a truth to Israel: If you get what you want, and God vacates creation, chaos and lifelessness will ensue. There is no world in which creatures exist without their Creator. There is no life without God and His creativity. And the guidelines God gives are essential to the maintaining of the world He has created. Without God’s Laws, there is no life, no universe. Nothing created is simply free to do as it sees fit. Creation depends fundamentally on the architecture of God.

Understood in this way, the Covenant of Sinai is as much a caution as it is an agreement. Part of what this implies for me is that even in the New Covenant of Jesus, the rules of creation have not changed. The consequence for endeavoring to build a world without need of God is always the same—chaos and lifelessness. And over and over through history, God has endeavored to demonstrate the truthfulness of this testimony. Of course, we are still here, but Scripture teaches that such is the case because God made a promise to Noah that remains in effect and is signified by the rainbow. God has promised to keep creation from total devastation until the coming of the end.

So, Isaiah still speaks to the church, even if it speaks to us out of a different context. These warnings to Israel were rooted in covenant. These warnings to the Church are rooted in creation. The world has been asking God to depart for a very long time, whether consciously or unconsciously. The Lord has been insisting to me in my spirit that the upheaval of our day—personally, societally, and environmentally—are consequences, God’s preview of what it would look like to live in this world as the atheists and agnostics imagine it.

These events are muted, of course. If God truly withdrew, nothing would survive. He promised that He would not do that again until the end. But, over and over, God continues to call to His children, asking them to depart from their pursuit of independence and return to Him. So, perhaps we should read Isaiah’s prophecy again as not only covenantal, but also as cosmic.

The sins from which God warned Israel to turn still persist in the nations of the world. And it is not surprising that the pursuit of secular humanism has resulted in chaos, war, tyranny, and ever increasing moral depravity. The road of independence from God always results in these things. They are inevitable. Without God, there is no life. Chaos is the natural state of things. The more freedom from God we possess, the further from life we progress.

In these days, the Lord is once again turning His face from the nations of the earth; once again He is providing us a foretaste of the world without Him. But, God is doing this to warn us. For it is not only unbelievers who pursue independence and freedom. Those who call themselves Christians value these things, too. The body has lost connection with the Head. The church, in many places, has become indistinguishable from the world. We have allowed the Gospel of Jesus to become a license to live free of God and the boundaries He has set.

The world can hear the warnings and experience the foretaste, but the worldly mind cannot comprehend the meaning of these things. They see only godless nature and natural consequence. They cannot hear the voice of God calling to the people of the earth to forsake the path of independence and return to Him that they might live. But, the children of God must see and hear differently. We must recognize the warning God is giving us, and the opportunity.

All that we’ve experienced so far is consequence…a small foretaste of what the withdrawal of God means for life on earth. If we are to heed these warnings, we must return to the teachings of God, as they have been preserved by His prophets and apostles in the Christian Scriptures. We must place faith again in Jesus by living as God has taught us to live, within the bounds of His creativity.

However, so that God’s children might hear His voice, what comes next has been declared in advance. What comes next is not random consequence. God has chosen it. These are His locusts. What is coming on the east coast of the United States is for our reclamation.

Repent, children of God. Depart from your rebellion. Relinquish your buildings and your institutions. Release your desire for significance and influence. Follow God again into the wilderness. Pursue godliness. Depart from greatness. Call God’s people to repentance. Worship God not in song or celebration. The pagans pursue these things, and God is not hungry for them. Worship God in holiness of heart and life, by denying yourself daily, by embracing the cost of discipleship, and by walking in the way of Jesus.

The world and its ways are passing away. Do not tether yourself to the nations of the earth. What follows is for our reclamation. Repent, for the kingdom of God draws ever nearer.

~ J. Thomas ~

Eternal Life (1 Corinthians 13)

Recently, I watched an episode of Star Trek Voyager that aired in the mid-1990s. It was called “Death Wish,” and it recounted the tale of an immortal, omnipotent being who wanted to die but was condemned to go on living forever. He explained his dilemma to Voyager’s Captain Janeway as follows:

Because it has all been said. Everyone has heard everything, seen everything. They haven’t had to speak to each other in ten millennia. There’s nothing left to say. Captain, you’re an explorer. What if you had nothing left to explore? Would you want to live forever under those circumstances? You want me to prove to you that I suffer in terms that you can equate with pain or disease. Look at us. When life has become futile, meaningless, unendurable, it must be allowed to end. Can’t you see, Captain? For us the disease is immortality.
Star Trek Voyager, season 2, episode 18: Death Wish (February 19, 1996).

As I reflected on this exchange, I began thinking about the purpose of life. The question is not so simple as it may first appear. In this episode of Star Trek, the chief end of all creatures is to learn, to grow, to acquire knowledge and experiences. That road, of course, has an ending. Once all knowledge has been acquired and all experience has been tasted and all places have been known, what then? In the words of Wallace Stevens:

We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Wallace Stevens, “Sunday Morning (1923),” Cleanth Brooks, R. W. B. Lewis, Robert Penn Warren, eds., American Literature: The Makers and the Making, Vol. II (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1973), 2154-2155.

In Christian teaching, the acquisition of knowledge and experience is not the chief end of existence. In fact, the Christian Bible begins with the cautionary tale of the deception of the first humans by a spiritual being called, in Hebrew, the nachash, translated usually as “the serpent.” It was humanity’s thirst for knowledge that the nachash exploited in Genesis, chapter 3 as he enticed them to eat from the Tree of Knowledge—a tree God forbade them from eating from.

But, if not exploration, knowledge, experience, what then is the purpose of life? Christians have long pondered this question. Perhaps one of the more oft-cited responses in recent centuries has come from The Westminster Shorter Catechism, which was published in A. D. 1647.

The first question addressed therein was:

“What is the chief and highest end of man [sic]?”

And the response was:

“Man’s [sic] chief and highest end is, to glorifie [sic] God, and fully to enjoy him forever.”
“The Westminster Shorter Catechism, A. D. 1647,” Philip Schaff, ed., The Creeds of Christendom with a History and Critical Notes (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1983), 676.

Whenever I’ve heard this response, I’ve assumed that the enjoyment of God implied here is a road of perpetual discovery. I’ve imagined serving God, worshipping Him, and exploring creation in proper relationship to God and to all He has made. And until recently, I’ve been content with those assumptions. After all, if God is infinite, then the journey to glorify Him and to enjoy Him forever would be eternal, as well.

However, in reflecting again on the purpose of life this week, I was reminded of Paul’s discussion of hesed—of love (translated from Hebrew into Greek as agape)—in 1 Corinthians 13.

¹If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
⁴Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
⁸Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. ⁹For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; ¹⁰but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. ¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. ¹²For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:1-13, NRSV.

In these verses, Paul seems to agree with the character of the immortal being in Star Trek Voyager. Prophecies will end, speaking will cease, and knowledge, too, will find its conclusion. All these roads are finite. But, then Paul speaks of three aspects of reality which will abide, which are eternal, which define a road without end: faith, hope, and hesed (love)—the greatest of which is hesed.

Now, as Paul’s description of hesed in these verses makes clear, this is not love as an experience, or as infatuation, or as unconditional acceptance, or some other contemporary conceptualization of love. This is not an experience reserved for lovers or for family relationships or even for close friendships. Hesed, as Paul has explained it, is the incarnation of patience, kindness, contentment, humility, unselfishness, and purity. Hesed is loyalty, longsuffering, steadfast endurance, which is why Paul explains it as bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, and enduring all things.

In other words, hesed—love—is not a road, but something more akin to character—a way a person is irrespective of circumstance. The part of life that endures is the engagement of life itself. The purpose of life and the permanence of life is one and the same—hesed (love). The following exchange from the life of Jesus may help to strengthen this reflection:

³⁴When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, ³⁵and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ³⁶“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
³⁷He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ ³⁸This is the greatest and first commandment. ³⁹And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Matthew 22:34-40, NRSV.

“What is the chief and highest end of humanity?” When the question is put to us, how might we, as Christians, respond?

Perhaps, it is as simple as it is profound… The chief and highest end of humanity is to embody hesed first to God and secondarily to other creatures in all circumstances, thereby embracing our creation as beings made in the image of God—a God Who is hesed (1 John 4:6).

~ J. Thomas ~

When the Deliverer Comes (1 Samuel 30:1-31)

Cain killed Abel because Abel’s sacrifice was pleasing to God and Cain’s was not. Esau sought to kill Jacob because Jacob had swindled his birthright and his blessing. But, as with Cain, we were told at the beginning of the boys’ lives that God had chosen Jacob and had not chosen Esau. So, Esau’s vengeance was born of envy, as was Cain’s.

Over a millennia later, the story was repeating itself again in the persons of Saul and David. Saul had forfeited his anointing due to his failure to obey what God had told him to do through the prophet Samuel. David had been anointed to replace Saul, and, though Samuel never told Saul whom he had anointed to succeed him, Saul realized quickly that David was the most likely candidate. So, as Cain conspired to kill Abel and Esau conspired to kill Jacob, Saul conspired to kill David who, at that time, was one of the most successful soldiers in his army.

And yet, despite Saul’s repeated attempts to end David’s life, David refused to take any hostile action against Saul, even when given the opportunity. And, perhaps more surprising still, David also continued to fight the enemies of Israel on Saul’s behalf while Saul was pursuing his life. But, David could not carry out his campaign while living in Israel due to the threat of Saul. So, David lived amongst the Philistines and pretended to fight for them, while, in fact, he continued to raid Israel’s hostile neighbors.

While playing this dangerous game, David resided in Ziklag. And during one of David’s excursions, Ziklag was raided by a band of Amalekite warriors. The events that follow are preserved for us in 1 Samuel 30:

¹Now when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, the Amalekites had made a raid on the Negeb and on Ziklag. They had attacked Ziklag, burned it down, ²and taken captive the women and all who were in it, both small and great; they killed none of them, but carried them off, and went their way. ³When David and his men came to the city, they found it burned down, and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. ⁴Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept, until they had no more strength to weep. ⁵David’s two wives also had been taken captive, Ahinoam of Jezreel, and Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel. ⁶David was in great danger; for the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in spirit for their sons and daughters. But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.
1 Samuel 30:1-6, NRSV

After inquiring of the Lord and receiving assurance from God of victory, David pursued the Amalekite raiders. He set out, at first, with six hundred men, but two hundred dropped out before the search was completed. After having found an informant who revealed the location of the raiders, David and his remaining four hundred men descended upon the Amalekite camp.

¹⁶When he had taken him down, they were spread out all over the ground, eating and drinking and dancing, because of the great amount of spoil they had taken from the land of the Philistines and from the land of Judah. ¹⁷David attacked them from twilight until the evening of the next day. Not one of them escaped, except four hundred young men, who mounted camels and fled. ¹⁸David recovered all that the Amalekites had taken; and David rescued his two wives. ¹⁹Nothing was missing, whether small or great, sons or daughters, spoil or anything that had been taken; David brought back everything. ²⁰David also captured all the flocks and herds, which were driven ahead of the other cattle; people said, “This is David’s spoil.”
1 Samuel 30:16-20, NRSV

Having recovered what was taken, David also decided to share the bounty with the two hundred men who had neither completed the journey nor fought in the battle. Needless to say, a number of those who had remained to the end objected to David’s decision, but not only did David share the spoils anyway, but he also sent some of the proceeds to the elders of the tribe of Judah in whose territory the Amalekites had been operating.

When reflecting on a story like this it is tempting read oneself into the story in the role of David. But, the canon of Christian Scriptures cautions us from reading this story in that way. Why? Because David was the anointed king of Israel. He may not yet have ascended the throne, but God had already anointed him through Samuel. We cannot anoint ourselves king. We are not David. In fact, only one is truly the heir of the promises made to David; only one is the true Messiah who has been anointed by God to rule His Kingdom—Jesus, our Messiah.

When we read the tales of David, it is important to understand that Jesus is the fulfillment of David. And though it is true that David’s story includes moral and legal failures to which Jesus did not succumb, it is Jesus who fills the role of the true King of Israel in the Christian Scriptures. Read in that way, this story from 1 Samuel 30 finds fulfillment in the second coming of Jesus.

As Adam and Eve found themselves alone with the Serpent in Genesis 3 and as the people of Ziklag found themselves alone with the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 30, so, we too, have found ourselves alone with the enemies of God since Jesus ascended into the heavens. Of course, the Holy Spirit has been poured out on the Church, and God has not left us as orphans in the world. But, the Kingdom of God is not yet manifest and the King is not yet with us in the flesh. Our Messiah has not yet returned.

And while Jesus has been seated at the right hand of the Father in the heavens, the book of Revelation tells us that the Serpent has been pursuing the woman who gave Him birth—Israel—and her children—those who have become children of God by faith in Jesus, our Messiah, our King. We are those in Ziklag, and we have been taken by the enemies of God while our King has been away.

Some of us know we are now living in enemy territory, whereas others have forgotten that we were kidnapped at all. Some seem convinced that the Amalekites are working for David. But such convictions are folly. The children of God have been kidnapped, and the second coming of Jesus, the gathering of the remnant, the awakening of those who are sleeping are ways of saying that just as David led an army to liberate those who had been stolen, so Jesus is coming to deliver His children from their bondage to the enemies of God.

Wherever we live—in whatever nation or tribe or culture—we who follow Jesus must remember that we are exiles in a land not our own. We are citizens of another Kingdom—a Kingdom not of this world. And though we are enslaved by the enemies of God in bondage to our captors, both human and spiritual, our King will not leave us in exile. Our King is coming to deliver His children; our Shepherd is coming to gather His scattered sheep. The enemies of God have prepared themselves for Jesus’ coming, and they will not surrender to Him. So, as God did battle with the gods of Egypt in the events of Exodus, God must do battle with our captors, as well.

For those who have not followed Jesus and have not given their allegiance, both body and spirit, to Him, the days to come will be terrifying. But, for those of us who know we are living in slavery to foreign leaders and false gods, we will shine as lights in the darkness, rejoicing in the suffering of those days for the joy set before us will embolden us. As David rescued the captives of Ziklag, so Jesus is coming to gather His children. Do not waver in your faith in the days to come, children of God. However powerful the Amalekites, as God assured David of victory, so the Father has declared victory for the Son. Do not turn back, children of God. Jesus is coming.

~ J. Thomas Johnson ~

The Day of the LORD – May 25, 2021

During the week of June 16, 2019, the word of the Lord came to me twice. Prior to the first, I received a vision from the Lord.

I was in Massachusetts. I saw a wooden box on a dock near the ocean. It was shut up tight. I had a deep desire to open the box, but I did not approach it.

The Lord then showed me a future time when the cover would be pried off and the box would be opened. From that image I saw a path of destruction being torn through a countryside. It looked like what happens when a powerful tornado tears through a region, but there was no funnel cloud and no storm. I saw dust and grass being torn up and tossed into the air, revealing a scar in the landscape. I saw houses and barns being torn to pieces, as though an unseen set of hands was tearing them asunder and throwing the pieces aside.

Then, the word of the Lord came to me, saying:

I will strike America from the head to the tail, and a scar will mar the land. The scar will remain until the end.

Some days later, as I was in prayer, the word of the Lord came to me again. At the time I had a rash in a couple of spots under my arm. The word of the Lord said:

This is a sign to you. A plague will strike your people. Sores like these will cover the people from head to toe.
As I exposed the falseness of the idols of Egypt, so I will expose the falseness of the idols in which your people have placed their trust. Children will rebel against their parents. Medical science and its miraculous cures will be impotent in fending off the diseases that are yet to come. Those who try to live in harmony with nature, will find nature turning on them from the insects to the animals to the very plants. They will find no safe place. For those who have come to rely on my steadfastness in maintaining the laws of nature, they will find what was once stable becoming erratic and unpredictable.
They must learn that I am the Lord, the one who holds the chaos at bay, who brings order and life, who sustains my creation by my powerful word. What have been called laws are in truth my steadfast love, what has been called a cure is in truth my mercy. Your people have assigned my glory to created things and, like their ancestors, have worshipped the creation rather than the Creator. I have already turned them over to a debased mind, but soon I will upend their understanding of the universe itself to reveal the foolishness that has been embraced as truth.

Some years later, now, during the week of May 16, 2021, the word of the Lord came to me again and returned me to these instances two years prior.

Again, I was given a vision. I was floating high above the earth. I was able to see the entire east coast of the United States laid out below me. It was in the evening, and I could see the lights of cities illuminating the earth. Then, I saw beams of light raining down from the heavens upon America’s east coast, from Georgia to Maine. The lights did not touch Florida. There were thousands of little beams of purple and green light that began somewhere below me and were falling upon the coastline.

As the lights continued to fall upon the coast, they began to move inland. From Georgia to New York City, they moved in as deep as Washington, D.C. (perhaps 200 miles). The area upon which the lights fell turned dark after they passed. But something different occurred in the northeastern states of New England. The lights kept advancing until they had passed over all of New England, stopping at the border of Canada. All of New England and sections of northeastern New York turned dark as the lights passed over.

Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying:

An ecological disaster is coming. If I did not set its limits, it would wash over the whole continent. It comes from the oceans, and boils come with it. These are my locusts.

When I asked why the east coast and particularly New England had been singled out, the word of the Lord came to me again, saying:

The first Europeans who came to this land took it upon themselves to make a covenant with me. I made no covenant with them beyond that which I have made with all who put faith in Jesus. But, they took the initiative to covenant with me. They swore an oath to sanctify this land to My glory; they covenanted to respect my teachings and to live out faithfully their trust in my Son, Jesus; they committed themselves to living faithfully before me so long as their colonies existed.
But, almost immediately they rejected the teachings of my Son, picking up instead the covenant I had made with ancient Israel as their own. They did violence in this land, and their descendants have rejected me entirely as their God. In the days to come, I will hold them to the vows they made before me. Though I sought no kingdom on the earth, they pledged their allegiance to Jesus. To this day this oath has been betrayed over and over again.
I have sent prophet after prophet, judgment after judgment, plague after plague upon their descendants that they might turn from their wickedness and fulfill the vows of their ancestors. But, they would not turn. They have given their hearts to foreign gods who are not gods and to the worship of created things by which they claim they have been made.
I release now the locust storm I have held back in my mercy. A nation reaps what it has sown. To those who are faithful, faithfulness will be shown. To those who are faithless; faithlessness is their lot. I am the Lord; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God Who became flesh in the Person of Jesus. Hear, O people of the earth, and tremble. I will no longer hold silent. The sound of My voice will once again shake the heavens and the earth. For the people of the earth have forgotten themselves, and the false gods, who are not gods, have fallen with them. Woe to those who do not repent and turn from their faithless ways, for the day of salvation wanes! The day of the Lord is at hand.

A Word for the Church – Jan. 17, 2021

J. Thomas Johnson

Like Jonah was sent to Nineveh and preached a three-day sermon in the city, over the last three years I have been sent to preach a message of repentance and warning. The message I’ve been sent to preach is for individual followers of Jesus, for the Church of the Nazarene, and for the Church of Jesus Christ around the world.

For individual followers of Jesus, you must lay down your idols. You must return to loyalty to the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your self, and with all your strength. And you must, out of loyalty to God, be loyal to those with whom you labor. The Lord has been offended by your worship of your nation, your worship of your children, your worship of your right to leisure, your worship of your desire for respect, your worship of your rights and of your own values, your worship of your own feelings and inner turmoil. “These are idols in my presence,” says the Lord God. “My faithful ones will leave the worship of these things and return to me.”

For the Church of the Nazarene, the Lord says, “I raised up the holiness movement to call my church in America back to repentance and back to the teachings of my Son. But, you have exalted yourself over the word entrusted to you. Rather than submitting to my prophets and apostles, you have wielded authority over those I have chosen, adding what you thought was lacking and removing what you thought was superfluous. Rather than bearing the message I had entrusted to every generation of my church, you wrote your own message. You have added and taken away. Unless you repent, I will remove your lampstand from its place.”

For the church throughout the world, the Lord says, “You have forsaken the gospel of Jesus for a gospel of demons. You have neglected the way of righteousness for the way of indulgence and licentiousness. Your forgiveness was for holiness, not for the covering of wickedness. You have claimed promises I have not made, and you have hidden your deeds from your own eyes and called that concealment, grace. No one who puts his hand to plow and then turns back is worthy of me. Understand this parable. No one who receives my forgiveness and turns back to the life he lived beforehand has placed faith in me. I am not with him. He remains in his sin. Repent, or the judgment coming on the world will come on my people, as well.”

All these things have been embedded in the sermons I have preached over the last three years in central New York and the six years that preceded them in New Hampshire. I have proclaimed a gospel of repentance in both places where God’s revivals were born in America. And in six more weeks, the sermon He has sent me to speak will be completed.

The Lord will not forsake those who repent and follow Jesus.