A news flash: The Day of the Lord has Begun; He is Beginning to Arrive, and His enemies are scattering (the Brightness of His Coming is beginning to Destroy Many…and will continue)

Does this make sense?  How can someone believe in killing innocent babies by abortion, but not, by that same reasoning, believe in killing guilty men by capital punishment?  Of course, I know the answer lay in their wrong interpretation about when someone is human; also, some believe both killings are wrong (that’s better than the first error at least), but I believe there is a place for capital punishment (of course done only as righteously as man can do it).  But this is the bane of our time; spiritual blindness has become so dark as to effect even human logic and reasoning.  Our nation, our people, and the whole world have gone mad; we are perhaps even more stupid and ignorant than those who lived in the Dark Ages.  But, the question of the hour is: “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11: 3).

The answer I believe is contained in the realization that we are at a critical time in history: the dawning of the “Day of the Lord.”  A day of gross darkness for most, but a day of tremendous enlightenment to those who have allowed the purifying effects of the cross to purge them (“blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” [Matthew 5: 8]).  Indeed, God’s Day is man’s night (for most).  Those who have rejected Christ overtly and wholly are of course completely blind, without any understanding; but there is a whole class of people, carnal Christians, who have inadvertently and partially rejected Christ and are consequently without a full understanding (in many degrees along this spectrum of sight and enlightenment).  Of course I know we all technically belong to those who see partially, but whole sight is about maturity of person not perfection of sight (only God sees it all; that’s why He’s the Judge!). 

 

But contained in these words of our Lord is a truth for today: “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.   As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9: 4-5).  Remember, He first came to save; but His Second Coming is about judgment: its examination time and many are not ready. 

 

I had a profound experience just yesterday morning (9/18/2013).  As I awoke to the day, God gently whispered to my spirit: “Plumb-bob Ministries.”  I had been a brick mason as a young man and knew what a plumb bob was (I’ll explain more in the next paragraph).  Though only a whisper, it was strong on me.  Obeying the Holy Spirit’s prompting, I decided to secure a domain name for Plumb-bob Ministries.  When my computer booted up, there before my eyes was an image of a plumb-bob at the end of a string (actually it was a drawing of Foucault’s Pendulum depicting a brass-coated lead bob at the end of a wire used to measure the Earth’s rotations; Google put it up to commemorate Leon Foucault’s contribution to science).  Then, later that day, I received a book in the mail I had ordered sometime back; the name of it is “En Punto,” meaning “on the dot.”  It is about spiritual exactness.  Guess what was on the cover?  You got it, a PLUMB-BOB!

Thus He showed me, and behold, the Lord stood upon a wall with a plumb line, with a plumb line in His hand.  And the Lord said to me, Amos, what do you see? And I said, a plumb line. Then said the Lord, Behold, I am setting a plumb line as a standard in the midst of My people Israel. I will not pass by and spare them any more [the door of mercy is shut].  (Amos 7: 7-8, emphases added, Amplified Bible).

A plumb-bob is the anchor or weight that is tied off at the end of the plumb line.  It is designed to hold the plumb line straight and taut so that it can be used as the standard or guide to construct a wall that is straight and taut.  When God talks about putting a plumb line in the midst of His people, and that the door of mercy is shut, it simply means the time of examination has arrived: the day of judgment is here.  It is ONLY bad if the person or nation is not ready.  But whether people are ready or not, He’s here (and still coming, still downloading His infinite Person until the noonday zenith of His day). 

To the Antilapsarian: those who Deny the Fall of Mankind

G. K. Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy, said that some people he knew had a “too fastidious spirituality,” believing in “divine sinlessness,” something he claims they could not see even in their dreams.  He further elaborated that “they essentially [denied] human sin, which they [saw] in the street.”  The antilapsarian doctrine is especially pervasive today.  Perhaps all the self-esteem indoctrination we have experienced since the 70s has warped us.  It is of no small matter that the essence of the antichrist is about the evolved self without Christ.  In other words, someone completely steeped in self-esteem without Christ.  It is Adam fully flourished.

The second Adam, Jesus Christ, and the born-again experience born out of this fact, is the only premise from which man can lawfully express himself.  Whenever man develops and expresses his person without the requisite foundation, he is a monster, a monstrosity.  He is an animated dead flesh expression; he is the Frankenstein monster; he is an antichrist.  When God sent the angel to guard the way to the tree of life, after Adam and Eve had fallen, He did so to preserve them and all of humankind.  Whether or not it was a literal tree or not I will not debate here; suffice it is for this line of reasoning to say that it represented the idea that God did not want them to eat from the tree of life while yet in their fallen state of being. 

 

To eat from the tree of life without first being corrected or fixed is to nourish a perverted form.  The fall of mankind was an implosion of being activated by God’s response to Adam’s sin.  God disconnected from humankind, and humankind fell down in a hierarchal sequence from top to bottom down into their base, or flesh.  The spirit on top of their soul on top of their flesh was now laid at their feet (metaphysically speaking).  God begins to call humankind “flesh,” because that was now their dominating aspect.  God said they would die if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; they did, immediately, and throughout their now abbreviated lives.

This insidious doctrine of antilapsarianism undermines any hope of believing in God’s only solution to the biggest problem of their lives: the fact that they are dead and dying and have no hope for the future.  By denying they need help they remove the ground upon which redemption is built.  With God nothing is impossible, sure, but someone in this state is irrepressibly stubborn and practically apostate.  Their conscience must be completely seared because they deny all conviction based on the inner voice of God inside them, which is inherently what conscience is.

What is especially troubling is the fact that they have eliminated all grounds for argument based on the reasoning component of those things God might say to them concerning redemption.  It is utterly reasonable to believe in God and His redemption plan, but they are stubborn without reasonable justification.  In conclusion, I again quote Chesterton who said:

In this remarkable situation it is plainly not now possible (with any hope of universal appeal) to start, as our fathers did, with the fact of sin.  This very fact which was to them (and is to me) as plain as a pikestaff, is the very fact that has been specially diluted or denied.

When someone denies the obvious and fundamental things of life they are beyond the reach of human hands; as we know, only God can save people (but not through our direct influence in this case).  Indeed, “the night cometh, when no man can work”; I would suggest, that that night has come (John 9: 4, KJV).  God help us all!