Editorial

They tell the story about two ladies who approached the golf pro with great enthusiasm, The pro says to the one, “Would you like to learn to play golf?’ to which she replies, “Oh, no, not me. Don’t you remember. I learned yesterday; my friend here wants to learn today.”

Golf is not learned in a day. In fact, some would wonder if it is learned in a lifetime, and yet it takes only a few minutes to learn the object of the game. All one has to do is hit a little ball with a club into a hole that is some 300 yards away. Count the number of times you hit the ball, and the one with the lowest score wins! That sounds simple enough but just try it!

They say that a little knowledge is dangerous! ‘The lady who thinks she learned golf yesterday will be a menace on the golf course tomorrow, because she doesn’t know, and she doesn’t know that she doesn’t know!

Many people are this way with God! They think that they were saved yesterday and do not realize that they do not know His plan and purpose with the earth. It makes as much sense to think that a few words said, or a card signed, makes one saved as it does to believe that one can learn golf yesterday!

Instant foods are the rage now, and many churches have jumped on the band wagon with instant salvation.

In contrast to this, our Bibles teach us to work out our salvation and that it will take us the rest of our lives working every day! It isn’t that we earn salvation, for we realize that it is the gift of God but He will only give it to those who want salvation more than anything else in the world! A student who receives a full scholarship realizes that it is a gift, but it is only ,given to outstanding students who have worked cry hard to receive the gift.

Jesus tells us that it is his Father’s good pleasure to give us the Kingdom, and what a wonderful gift it is Let us recognize its true worth and live our lives accordingly.

We need to be as dedicated to our profession as the golfer is who makes his living on the pro circuit! He literally eats, sleeps, and breathes golf! He practices every day and even when he sits in his easy chair at the end of the clay he visualizes in his mind the course he has just completed! He does all this to win some prize money, In addition, he must meticulously obey all the rules of the tournaments! A few years ago Doug Saunders finished the 18th hole leading all the other golfers! Instead of waiting to sign his score card, he first went into the clubhouse because it was cold, and when he emerged a few minutes later he discovered that he had been disqualified from the tournament because of his few minutes delay,

God wants us to be meticulous in obeying his commands too! It is a matter of life and death! The command may be a little one, but God expects complete obedience! People understand this principle in sports and then seem to think that when it comes to religion, it really doesn’t matter whether or not we practice every day or tend to the little details God has laid out for our salvation. The man who gathered sticks on the sabbath was stoned! We are not under the law, but this rigid observance of God’s commands is just as incumbent upon us today as it was then!

Let us remember that we didn’t learn yesterday all we need to know in order to serve Christ! Let us work at it every day so that it may be said of us that we have fought a good fight and kept the faith, for then there will be laid up for us a crown of righteousness which the lord, the righteous judge. will give us at the glorious day of His coming!

There is an old saying about biting the hand that feeds us and while this is not literally true in our case, we do have two new dogs at our house who have not yet accepted us. Our dog died recently and these two dogs were owned by an elderly lady who passed away and so we were asked to give them a new home.

Hosea speaking of Israel says, “I called . . . but the more I called, the further they went from me.” “I had bent down to feed them.” Hosea 11 NEB. These two dogs refuse to come when we call, yet they eat the food we give them. We have prepared a warm bed which they accept as their own, yet they have little to do with us. Our new dogs have accepted their surroundings as belonging to them, yet they do not acknowledge the ones who have provided them their new home.

Our two dogs are so very much like us. God has provided us with all we have, yet how many people eat their food without ever giving a thought to the fad that all we have has come from Him. How many crawl beneath the warm covers at night and never acknowledge that God provides sleep to refresh the soul. Day and night, warm and cold, the rain and the sunshine are all provided by a loving Father who knows that we have need of all these things.

People are so much like our dogs. They accept the things given them and even feel possessive of the very things provided by others without even a “thank you!” Of course, in the case of our dogs, this is understandable since they are “dumb animals” and cannot be expected to know the circumstances that caused them to belong to us. In our case, God gave us minds with which we can reason and we should know that we were made in His image and our sole purpose in life is to glorify His Name. So many continue to act as if they are the master of their own destiny and ignore the One who created them.

Our dogs do not know us yet and when we try to give them love they become frightened and run the other way. How many people do not know God and try to run away from Him when He wants us to come to Him. We cannot force our dogs to love us but no doubt in time this will occur as they become accustomed to being around us. In our case, God is not visible so we will continue to be afraid and unloving if we do not take the necessary steps to get acquainted. Time is on our side with our dogs because they will learn by being around us that we really do love them and care for their needs. Time can be on our side when it comes to God but only if we spend our time getting to know Him and learning how He loves us and takes care of our needs. God challenges us through Malachi saying “Prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”

Hosea asks us to “{^turn thou to thy God: keep mercy and judgment, and wait on thy God continually.” “Who is wise, and he shall understand these things? prudent, and he shall know them? for the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them: but the transgressors shall fall therein.”

“He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled.”

These words of John the Baptist still apply today. They were certainly true as John applied them to his joy of seeing and hearing the Lord Jesus Christ.

John took a general truth and applied it to his specific situation. We can still do this same thing here in the twentieth century while we await the coming of the bridegroom from heaven to take his faithful as his bride. While we wait it is quite right and proper for marriages in the Lord to take place and we recently experienced the joy John spoke of when he said that the friend of the bridegroom rejoiceth greatly”.

It has been our happy lot to travel to Western Canada to witness and hear the voice of the bride and the bridegroom as our son was married in the Lord to a sister in Christ. Weddings are truly a happy time when two who both love Jesus decide to walk hand in hand together towards his kingdom.

When these two young people married, they joined two families who previously had not known one another. Now we feel a strong affinity for those we had not previously met. As a result of this marriage, those who might never have met are now drawn close together in love. The young people in love are in the center but the circles of love radiate out from them and encompass many others who are now drawn together because of our mutual love for our children and those they love.

Isn’t this the way it is in Christ? We, by becoming his, come to love so many others who also love him, who without this common bond of love, would not otherwise have known one another. We feel a closeness to our brethren and sisters be­cause they love the same Lord we love. We have the most precious thing in the world in common, our love and devotion to Jesus.

Just as we love the members of our new daughter-in-law’s family, so we love the other members of Christ’s family and if we belong to Christ, then we belong to the family of Abraham and become an heir to all the glorious promises God made to him.

As in the natural, so in the spiritual, by becoming related to Christ we become related to a host of new relatives we have not here-to-fore known. Some of the members of our family in Christ we may not meet personally until Christ returns to join us all together in one big happy family reunion at the marriage supper of the lamb.

What joys there are in this life in being related to Christ. But what greater joys there are in store for us in the future! Right now we can rejoice greatly because of the happy family ties that bind us together but this is nothing in comparison to the joy that is set before us when that glorious wedding of the future becomes a reality.

We are now in the engagement period and our engagement may be long or short, we do not know the date of our wedding. We do know this, that it is imperative that we continue to look and long for the return of our bridegroom who will accept us only if we have been faithful to him while we waited.

Let us be happy and faithful while we wait, living out the sentiments so beautifully expressed by the prophet Isaiah who said, “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with garments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.”

We recently went to jail, in fact we were in the felony section of the Los Angeles City Jail and it was an eye opener even if the iron doors wouldn’t.

A sergeant in charge of the felony section invited us to some down and have a conducted tour. It was an interesting experience although one we would not care to repeat. In contrast to the jails of by-gone days this one was no doubt luxurious. It was clean, light and airy. Some walls were of thick glass instead of bars. The prisoners have all kinds of rights. There are pay telephones on rollers everywhere, so they can be rolled up to the cells and the prisoners can make phone calls through the bars.

The Los Angeles City Jail is a far cry from the kind of prisons Paul knew so well. He spoke of being in prison frequently and we remember how he was thrown into the inner prison and chained to the wall, his back bleeding from the scourging he had received even though he was a Roman and uncondemned. At midnight, in that dark, damp prison, uncomfortable from the bleeding back and feet held fast in the stocks, Paul and his companion, Silas, were singing hymns of praise to God. The prisoners we saw were not singing, they looked hard and bitter. Paul in his distress was conscious of the well being of his jailer and refused to escape when he had the opportunity, while many of the prisoners today would kill anyone who got in their way if they had the opportunity to escape.

Today the laws protect the criminal to such an extent that some of those we saw in jail had arrest records numbering in the hundreds and yet each time they are released to roam the streets and commit their evil deeds all over again.

This world needs the righteous judge who will do right and who will execute judgment and justice in the earth. He will rule with a rod of iron and all nations shall bow before him and his enemies will lick the dust.

Capital punishment is discussed by the highest court in the land, as hundreds sit in death row cells while the debate continues as to what should be done to them. The day will soon be here when the slain of the Lord will be from one end of the earth to the other, for Jesus is coming in flaming fire to take vengeance on them that know not God and they shall be punished with everlasting destruction.

The coming of Jesus is the best thing that can happen to this world, but there is a question we must each answer for ourselves: Is the coming of Jesus the best thing that can happen to us? The answer is yes if we believe in Jesus and are faithful, but the answer is no if we are engaged in the works of the flesh.

The day of vengeance is coming, woe to them to whom it comes. It need not be us. Isaiah wrote that beautiful prophecy which we just read in our daily readings. Jesus reads it in the synagogue and applies it to himself, yet he stopped reading Isaiah’s prophecy right in the middle of the verse. The first part has to do with being in jail for it says that Jesus is to “preach good tidings unto the meek; he is to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn. That in italics Jesus did not read for it has to do with his second coming and he will soon come to finish the verse.

When he comes will he come to us to take vengeance or to comfort us ? The way we are living now will decide his answer then.