May-June 2005

Word of Prophecy

Fellowship

THE

GOOD

NEWS - LETTER

I SHALL NOT PASS THIS WAY AGAIN

PART 2 of 2

Abridged by Bro. Ray Pringle, Jr.

ALL-PLEASING

We have to stay important with the Lord! In John 8:29, Jesus said, "And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him." Let us shore up our lives and make ourselves all-pleasing to God, and allow Him to judge our displeasing ways by stirring us up, and making us conscious of them. It is better to let God judge us day by day through his Word, so that our lives will stay shored up and trimmed up, than to let our offences build up till one day we are hauled violently into court. God's pruning is a little painful, but it is better than going into His court with violence! May God help us to understand His ways and perform them through all our acts and thoughts and deeds, so we can keep a good rapport with Him and with our fellow man, and be charged with having the true love of God manifested in our homes, and throughout our lives.

OUR PURPOSE

God put us here with a definite purpose in mind, and we have to understand that purpose, or else when we meet Jesus Christ in judgment we will have to hear Him accuse us of being a foolish servant. I thank God that there are men recorded in the Bible whose lives were not spent in vain, but were spent wisely. They adjusted to the problems of life, and even became sweet, and generous, and charitable through the great crises that filled their lives, one after another. They became filled with the love of Jesus Christ until it was a soothing balm in their lives, calming the panic caused by irritations, and helping their uncharitable responses become charitable, according to the projection of that love that was manifested from Christ. The Lord is searching you and I, and desiring to affect our lives in such a manner that our responses and our projections will bless others, and will leave a commendation behind us when we cross over Jordan to meet our record in judgment and stand before Jesus Christ--that our lives shall not have been lived in vain!

ONE TIME

We are passing this way just one time, and we are soon going to take that trip from whence we will never return. Job said, "Also now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high...When a few years are come, then I shall go the way whence I shall not return." (Job 16:19, 22). After we die, we are not coming back to do anything else for God or man. I like the way the great writer Solomon expressed this in Ecclesiastes 9:5-6, "For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, 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; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun." At death, all the records have been closed: everything you have ever done is now ended. If you have been an aggravating old coot, you will not aggravate anyone else ever again! If you have been a charitable husband or wife, father or mother, son or daughter, you will never have any more opportunity to express your love to your family, except through the memories that you left them because of your kindness. Your love, if you did love others, or your hatred, or your envy, will all perish when you die: and you will eventually meet those things again in judgment.

Every one of us is going to have his own personal record opened before Christ, and it is going to be your record that you will have to face in judgment. In the Army, they call it an M-1 file, in which they write down all your little personal quirks and personality traits--funny ways, good ways, and everything else--and when it comes time to evaluate you for a promotion, they pull out your M-1. God has a file on every one of us that is even more intricate than an M-1 file, and more in-depth than anything the world uses in the operation of corporations or governments, and we are going to have to face it. If you have not been loving, and kind, and generous, that file will show that your life only served to make others more miserable. Therefore, we ought to weigh every thought, and every act, and fill each one with love and kindness, so that we will not be ashamed when it comes time for us to face our record. We face it every day, in fact: God judges us every day.

OPPORTUNITY

We have to take advantage of the time that God has given us! "Remember how short my time is," David prayed, in Psalms 89:47. David understood the brevity of life, as he also expressed it here in I Chronicles 29:15, "For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding." In Psalm 90:3-6, we read, "Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth." That is the way our life is: brief, and uncertain, like a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. (James 4:14). The Psalmist continues, in verse 9, "For all our days are passed away in thy wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told." When your life is over, it is like someone telling a story...Once upon a time, there was a man upon the earth, and his name was Ray Pringle, and this is the record that he left behind! And there will be nothing more you and I can do about that record--it stands forever. Your children will talk about it, either for better, or for worse! They will either praise you, or curse your memory. They are going to bless you--or just be silent, because they do not want to talk about how bad their ancestors were. Therefore the Psalmist concludes, in verse 12, "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." We need to use the opportunity God has given us to apply our hearts unto wisdom.

FOOLISHNESS

We can shorten our days by being foolish, or we can lengthen our days by letting God have His way in our life. In Ecclesiastes 7:16-18, the Bible says, "Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself? Be not over much wicked, neither be thou foolish: why shouldest thou die before thy time? It is good that thou shouldest take hold of this; yea, also from this withdraw not thine hand: for he that feareth God shall come forth of them all." Do not be foolish and shorten your days! Be wise and lengthen them, so God will have a great and wonderful purpose in leaving you here--even beyond your seventy years. Psalm 90:10 tells us, "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." You have a very, very grave responsibility that you face every day to not be foolish, or make yourself over wise, and destroy yourself--nor let folly or wickedness cause you to die before your time.

LOVE

God, speaking to the prophet Jeremiah, said, "Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the LORD; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness...how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?" (Jeremiah 2:2-21). Israel had once been loving and kind, but they had degenerated, and it seems like most Christians also have a tendency to do the same thing. Our behavior patterns sometimes degenerate, rather than regenerate into the beauty of Christ. We go backward instead of forward, we get worse instead of better, and we get more uncharitable instead of becoming filled with charity! But we need to be an example of growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in being filled with the love of God.

That love of God has more ways of expressing itself than anything you can imagine. "Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth:" (I Corinthians 13:4-8). If you have the love of God, you have something that never fails, and you have something that you can always improve on--which is your expression of that love. Christians do have the love of God, but where they fail is in their expressions of that love. But most of our expressions are

terrible! Most of our responses are usually not very charitable, or kind, or generous (that is, not generous in extending understanding to others), and we are not always courteous in the manifestation of what we claim to be 'love', and in the things that we say and call quickly in retort to something which we ought to be more generous and more charitable in our response to. But we can improve the manner in which we manifest the love of God.

START TODAY

Start today with your wife, and your children; start with the way you treat one another in the church, and with all your brothers and sisters in the Lord; start it off tomorrow morning in the place where you work. Make your responses more charitable, and become aware of all your little actions that are a source of grave irritation between you and others, until you have completely cut those offensive things out of your life, to the point where there is no more `rub and scrub,' and your record is beautiful! Then your life will be manifesting the real love of Jesus Christ, for the Bible says in I Peter 4:8 that love shall cover the multitude of sins--not unrepented sins against God, but the multitude of sins that Christians commit against one another. In Matthew 18:21-22, Peter asked the question, "Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven." The love of God is what covers the multitude of those irritations that arise between brothers and sisters in the Lord, and within the family of God's people. Therefore Jesus declared, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." (John 13:35). Jesus came to establish the Law of Love among us, and we need to adjust our lives to it in all we do, and be diligent to keep it, once it is established in our hearts. We are going to pass this way just one time, so we ought to get ourselves as full of the love of God as the Holy Ghost and fill us!

OUR RELATIONSHIPS

We cherish our family members, and hate to suffer the loss of a loved one, but those relationships that we have in this life as husband or wife, son or daughter, brother or sister, grandfather or grandmother, must all come to an end. When a family member dies, it is terminal, and it is final: and in eternity, they will never again have the same relationship with you that they had in this life. That was only an experience for your lifetime. Once death has separated you, you will never have that relationship again! If we could keep that thought in mind throughout each day, I am sure that we would become more charitable, and have a better attitude, and keep sweet in our souls. It would help us to eliminate a lot of our bickering and backbiting and animosities, so that even our irritations would be less traumatic and simpler to deal with, and be overcome more quickly.

THE FAMILY OF GOD

I Corinthians 13, the chapter of the Bible about love, Paul writes something that identifies with only a true Christian, beginning in verse 9: "For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." I cannot believe that the relationships of a natural family--husband and wife, son and daughter, mother and father--could possibly be better than the relationships God has planned for us in eternity! We will still know one another as we are known among one another here, but those relationships will no longer bind us together into the kind of family unit we had in this life. The family of God will be our family unit, knit together by the love of God, and with His presence in our midst. We will have one Father, and we will all be brothers and sisters in the Lord throughout eternity: and in those relationships there will be eternal happiness. There will be no more family problems, no family fusses, no deaths, and no separation.

IF I KNEW OF A LAND

I got up this morning with a song on my mind, one which my daughter Amber sang in our Sunday service a couple weeks ago, and it goes like this:

If I knew of a land where no sorrow ever came,

Where the weather was just right,

and there were no sick nor lame;

Where there'd be no goodbye's, and the people lived for aye,

I would sell all I have and move today...

Well, I know of a land where joys are waiting,

Where the people live forever and for aye;

Twill be one eternal day, without a sorrow,

And some morning when He calls I'll move away.

I would like to move to a place where there would be no death, or sorrow, or pain; a place where there would be no jails to put people in, and where everybody would speak the truth with his neighbor, where we could trust each other, love each other, and be kind to one another. Hell is not that place! There will be no kind words in hell. People will be cursing and screaming at each other throughout eternity. Husbands and wives will be screaming at one another, saying, "If it had not been for you, I would not be in this terrible place!" Children will be screaming at their parents, "If you would have told us the truth, we would not have come to this terrible place!" But God has something worked out and planned for us, which Paul tells us about in I Corinthians 2:9. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him."

This is what the songwriter was describing when he wrote, "Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made; were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade; to write the love of God above, would drain the ocean dry; nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky. O love of God, how rich and pure, how measureless and strong; it shall forevermore endure, the saints' and angels' song." Praise God! In Romans 5:5, Paul says that "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us," which means that we get a measure of the Holy Ghost in this life, and a measure of the love of God; but one day we will find ourselves in a sea of God's love, along with our loved ones who have gone on before us, and who will follow after us.

SELL OUT TO GOD

We would like to sell everything we have, and move to a place where no sorrow ever came, where there were no goodbye's, and the people lived forever. If I knew of such a place, I would sell all I have and leave you folks today! But when God calls me home to that land where joys await me, I will not need to sell anything: there will be nothing left for me to sell, because I will have already given it all to God. The great Psalmist David spent his lifetime preparing to give something great and wonderful to God, and to His people. As he was preparing to die, he told his son Solomon, "Now, behold, in my trouble I have prepared for the house of the LORD an hundred thousand talents of gold and a thousand thousand talents of silver;" (1 Chronicles 22:14). From the spoils of all the wars he fought, David was able to store up gold and silver in abundance to prepare for that great temple that was to be built in Jerusalem, and he had also given an offering from his own property: "Moreover, because I have set my affection to the house of my God, I have of mine own proper good, of gold and silver, which I have given to the house of my God, over and above all that I have prepared for the holy house, even three thousand talents of gold, of the gold of Ophir, and seven thousand talents of refined silver..." (1 Chronicles 29:2-4).

David did not leave that legacy of wealth to Solomon! Solomon had to get wealth on his own, through the blessing of God on his life. You can spoil your children by leaving them a legacy. Let God bless them, instead! He blessed you, in order for you to get what you have. Now, make them do what is necessary to get God's blessing on their own. Otherwise, your lifetime will have been spent in vain, if you leave your wealth for a fool to spend after your departure.

A PRAYER

As I close this message, I would like to quote the words of the Apostle Peter (II Peter 1:12-14), "Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth. Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance." Let us pray.

Father, we ask you to touch us and strengthen us for your glory and honor. May the Holy Ghost grip our hearts in this message, and may we go from here realizing that we will not pass this way again, nor will we have a chance to come back again and correct our record. In the place where the tree falls, there it shall be at the Judgment Seat of Christ! I pray that you will help us to realize those things, Lord, and that you will help us to be sensitive to the things in our life that need correcting before we are called to court. God touch us, and help us to be sensitive, and have these things always in remembrance, knowing that we will one day put off this tabernacle, and meet you with the record that we die with, and that there is no correcting it, no altering it whatsoever, no coming back and saying, "I'm sorry!" I pray that you will help us to live the kind of life that we can meet God with today! In Jesus' name, Amen.

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,

Associate Editor...June Carpenter,

Copyrighted - All rights reserved