Word of Prophecy

Fellowship

March-April 2005

THE

GOOD

NEWS - LETTER

I SHALL NOT PASS THIS WAY AGAIN

abridged by Bro. Ray Pringle, Jr.

Part 1 of 2

I got this message while I was in Cortez, Florida this past week. Folks will hear this all over the world, and I like people to know that I am not one of these easy-living preachers who wants everything smooth, and juicy, and comfortable. I have been uncomfortable all week, praise God! I have been working hard, and I have worked hard as a commercial fisherman all my life. Sometimes, down in that little town of Cortez where I was born and raised, people will say to me, "You know what? I do not know whether you are a preaching fisherman, or a fishing preacher!" Well, I am not quite sure about that either, because I love to fish, and I love to preach! Now, I do not like fishing just for "funsies." That does not interest me one little bit. Even if I am fishing out here on our own pond with a hook and line, I am interested in finding a big catfish that weighs about five pounds, so I can go skin him, and cook him! I am not interested in catching fish and throwing them back into the water just for fun. If something bites that hook, he is going to get eaten! And that is the way I am about net fishing, too. When Ray and Jeff and I are down there in Cortez, we are after meat: we are not out there to have fun although it is fun, in a way, when the net is shaking with a big catch of fish in it. Then later we can go pick up our check, come back home, and put the money into God's work. Now that is pure pleasure! The aching back and legs and hands, and the misery of being out on the water in the cold or heat, none of that bothers you when you know the reward is of greater recompense than a little bit of suffering.

WE HAVE ONE CHANCE

We are going to pass this way but one time, and whatever we do, we are going to have to do it with haste. You can not waste any time if you want a good record when you reach the end of the line and we are all going to come to the end of that line. On this particular thought, I want to begin with a scripture today in the book of Job, "Also now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high. My friends scorn me: but mine eye poureth out tears unto God. O that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbour! When a few years are come, then I shall go the way whence I shall not return." (Job 16:19-22). Every unkind word, every unkind act, every thoughtless deed you did, no matter how honest you might have been, is all being recorded in heaven--and it is not going to be a pleasant thing to meet our record if we have been unpleasant, or a bad example, or uncharitable, or unthoughtful, or careless and apathetic about our lifestyle and the projections of the living Christ that is in us! We are going to have to face that record, as Paul the Apostle said, "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men;" (II Corinthians 5:10-11). What do we persuade men to do? While we are passing this way but one time, we have one chance and one chance only to do something good and worthwhile! We must strive to do something that will be remembered something that will be rewarded when we meet the Lord. One shot at it is all you have got! When you waste an entire day, and fail to do anything worthwhile in it, you have lost that twenty-four hours--and you will answer to God for it.

I know that I am not going to come back again! Ecclesiastes 11:3 says, "If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth: and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be." That means your life's record is completed, and there is not a thing you can do to change or alter it, regardless of whether your lifetime was short or long. Job said, "When a few years are come, then I shall go the way whence I shall not return." (Job 16:22). Once you are gone once they cross your arms and close your eyes, and stretch your body out in a coffin, and people look upon that old tabernacle you used to live init is final. And whichever way that tree falls, and dies, its record also lies with it: and you will go on to meet God with the record that you died with!

THE MESSAGE

The Lord gave me this message while I was out on the boat looking for fish, and it came to me along with several other thoughts about people I have known, who were close to me and who have died; and I began to ponder how final, how terminal it is, when you look into that lifeless face, and on that lifeless form of a mother or father, a wife or husband, a son or daughter especially. They were close to you, but you know that it is the end of the line for them, and they will never pass this way again. You will never see them again in this life never! That relationship of mother and father, husband and wife, son or daughter, will never be established again, because Jesus said that when we rise from the dead there will be neither marriage nor giving in marriage: no courtship or betrothing, no marrying or divorcing. Jesus said we will be like the angels of God, so that there will not be any family life as we have known it here in this world. Our experiences as a husband or wife, father or mother, son or daughter, brother or sister, are all over. You will never have the same relationship with that person again, and they will never return to have any part in anything `under the sun' that is ever done again. Now I tell you, that is finality is it not? Peter wrote, in II Peter 1:14, "Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me." In other words, I am going to leave behind this tabernacle that I lived in, and I am not going to come back! You will never see this old body again after I die. I will never come back to preach another time. I will never come back to kiss my wife goodnight, or tell my children I love them, or to tell you that I love you, or to pray for you if you are sick, or to visit you, or in some way help you to make heaven your home. I will not be privileged to come back and change one thing!

HELPING OTHERS

With that thought in mind, as I was steering my old boat with the tears just streaming down my face, an old song came to me, and it went like this: "If I could but help somebody as I go along life's way, then my living shall not be in vain." In other words, if I can help make life better for my wife and my children, my family and my friends if I can get a little kinder, a little nicer, a little sweeter in my acts and in the performance of my duties that are perfunctory, and that are not fun if I can be a little more agreeable and a little sweeter about those things, then I'm going to make life nicer for a lot of people as well as myself. Then when my life comes to an end, I can look back with no pangs of regret. We should look for the opportunity to help someone, to make life better for someone, to speak a word of kindness that will strengthen somebody with a burden that seems greater than they are able to bear. Give them a smile and a friendly pat on the back! You can help expedite the preaching of the word of God and the salvation of a soul!

OUR APPOINTMENT

We know that we are headed for an appointment with death, and every day there should be a consciousness within us: I SHALL NOT PASS THIS WAY AGAIN! I like the way that the great writer, Solomon, expressed this particular thought in Ecclesiastes 9:5. Listen closely to this: "For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished." You see, the record of everything you have done has been closed, and if you had a charitable and loving husband or wife, father or mother, son or daughter, you will never have another opportunity to express that love to them any

more except through the memories that you left them because of your kindness. You are not coming back to bless them, or to aggravate them we are not coming back to do anything more for God or man!

There are a lot of people who, when they are dying, can see that grim reaper's clammy old hand coming upon them (and you know it you know it if you do not die suddenly), and the great apostle Paul left us with an expression which applies to the many that have already met that appointment with the grim reaper: "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment." (Hebrews 9:27). We are not coming back until the judgment--that is the next time we will appear on this earth! Many people would like to be able to come back and alter their record somewhat, and change some of the things that they did in this life, which is utterly impossible. We know these records the Bible is full of them. I do not usually like to deal with the records of our contemporaries, or of men and women from this past century, but I do want to recall just one man Robert G. Ingersoll a self-styled atheist, who lived during the time preceding the great boom of the early 1900's known as the "Roaring Twenties." Times were good then, and it had become increasingly popular for Americans to profess atheism or skepticism toward God. But God humbled America with the Great Depression, a time of severe economic hardship that lasted for ten years, followed by World War II, a war which resulted in the death of the flower of the youth of our nation. Ingersoll, during much of his lifetime, had travelled lecturing and preaching the doctrine of atheism extensively, and declaring that God did not exist, and that only a fool could believe in the existence of a supreme being that could not be seen. He taught that it was absurd for a person to give their life and allegiance to an unknown or unseen God. Yet the Bible says, in Psalm 14:1, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." And in the end, when Robert Ingersoll lay dying, he began to scream, "O God if there be a God save my soul!"

ALL SHALL PASS

Many years ago, a renowned Chinese philosopher was summoned to appear before his Emperor, who gave him an unusual assignment. "I want you to invent a philosophy that will endure in all generations," the Emperor said, "a philosophy that will be true now, and will continue to be true in future generations long after I am dead and gone." The philosopher went out for many days, and when he finally returned he announced to the Emperor, "I have found the philosophy that will endure in all generations!" "What is it?" the Emperor asked with great interest. The philosopher then quoted his new philosophy to the Emperor in one, brief statement: "And this, too, shall pass away!"

Beloved, everything we are looking at is going to pass away. Everything the eye can see is going to dissolve even the elements will melt with fervent heat! "The earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?" (II Peter 3:10-12).

We need to keep in mind that we shall not pass this way again, and daily remember the words of the apostle James, "Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil." (James 4:13-16).

ETERNITY

We are taking a trip. It started when we were born, and for Christians it is going to conclude at the judgment seat of Christ: that will be the end of what we have done in this life. If we have served God faithfully, then eternity opens up at that point but there is no `eternity' until we have died and faced that judgment seat of Christ. And then we will face eternity with the reward that we received for being a valiant soldier of the cross, a projector of Jesus Christ, an example that projects what Jesus Christ really is, showing Him to the world through our deeds and thoughts and acts. The very life that Jesus Christ himself lived when he was here, and what he would do under the same conditions that you and I are under, we

are obligated to manifest through the same spirit, the same charity that Jesus would manifest if he was in the same place that you and I are in. This is God's daily challenge to us! It is a challenge we cannot ignore.

OUR TIME IS SHORT

Death sometimes seems so far away to us, while it can be very real to other people. When somebody dies or some family suffers the loss of a loved one, you always want to relegate death to somebody else "Not me!" But we have seen that old hand reach out in the past week, and almost take someone away right in our midst, in an automobile accident. We do not want to relate death to ourselves, yet we are just like a shadow that passes by. Our life is so brief! It is done in such a hurry that someday you will look back and think, Where in the world did I spend all those years? Where are all the birthdays I commemorated, to manifest the fact that I have spent so many years on this planet? Where did they go?

I love to read what David said in the 89^th Psalm. It is a warning, yet it expresses wisdom to a real Christian. "The days of his youth hast thou shortened: thou hast covered him with shame. Selah. How long, LORD? wilt thou hide thyself for ever? shall thy wrath burn like fire? Remember how short my time is: wherefore hast thou made all men in vain? What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave? Selah" (Psalm 89:45-48). Remember how short my time is! David was very aware how short his time was, and how near he was to death, even as he expressed it in I Samuel 20:3, saying, "There is but a step between me and death." Death is always around us; we see evidence of it everywhere. Seldom do you go on a trip of any sort in the daylight hours that you do not see a funeral procession threading its way through the traffic, going to the cemetery to bury some departed soul, or rather the body that housed a soul that has met the Lord according to the way that they lived this life. They will never come back again, and they will never make any more history. What they have done is all ended. The books have been closed on their record and that is the record they are going to meet with finality.

To be continued...

This message will be concluded in our May-June 2005 newsletter.

Reader!

Whoever thou art,

Remember this!

And in thy sphere,

Practice virtue thyself,

And encourage it in others.

-Patrick Henry

Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus. He who follows this steadily need not, I think, be uneasy.

-Thomas Jefferson

Word of Prophecy Newsletter

Published by: Word of Prophecy Fellowship

P O Box 10200, Jacksonville, FL 32247

WWW.WordOfProphecy.org

Editor Bro. Ray Pringle, Jr.

an ordained minister of the

Calvary Chapel Church of God, Inc.

Associate Editor ... June Carpenter

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