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This is Daniel Whyte III, president of Gospel Light Society International with the Whyte House Family Devotional Reading of Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening podcast. This is Episode #20.

Charles Spurgeon was a prominent English Particular Baptist preacher. He was very influential among the Christians of various denominations during his age and even today, and is commonly called the “Prince of Preachers”. After some time of alternately searching for God and running from God, he had a powerful encounter which led him to give his life to Christ. Spurgeon was only 16 when he preached his first sermon and he began publishing books shortly afterward. At the time of his death, he had preached nearly 3,600 sermons and published 49 volumes of commentaries, sayings, anecdotes, illustrations and devotions. Spurgeon said, “encouraging thoughts are like honey to the heart”, and wrote this devotional in hopes that its uplifting messages for each day of the year would bring comfort and refreshment to our walk with God. He was inspired by Isaiah 50:4 which reads, “He wakeneth morning by morning. He wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned” and Psalm 63:5-6 which says, “My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips; when I remember Thee upon my bed, and meditate on Thee in the night watches.”

Job 19:26 reads: “And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:”

Mark the subject of Job’s devout anticipation “I shall see God.” He does not say, “I shall see the saints”—though doubtless that will be untold felicity—but, “I shall see God.” It is not—“I shall see the pearly gates, I shall behold the walls of jasper, I shall gaze upon the crowns of gold,” but “I shall see God.” This is the sum and substance of heaven, this is the joyful hope of all believers. It is their delight to see him now in the ordinances by faith. They love to behold him in communion and in prayer; but there in heaven they shall have an open and unclouded vision, and thus seeing “him as he is,” shall be made completely like him. Likeness to God—what can we wish for more? And a sight of God—what can we desire better? Some read the passage, “Yet, I shall see God in my flesh,” and find here an allusion to Christ, as the “Word made flesh,” and that glorious beholding of him which shall be the splendour of the latter days. Whether so or not it is certain that Christ shall be the object of our eternal vision; nor shall we ever want any joy beyond that of seeing him. Think not that this will be a narrow sphere for the mind to dwell in. It is but one source of delight, but that source is infinite. All his attributes shall be subjects for contemplation, and as he is infinite under each aspect, there is no fear of exhaustion. His works, his gifts, his love to us, and his glory in all his purposes, and in all his actions, these shall make a theme which will be ever new. The patriarch looked forward to this sight of God as a personal enjoyment. “Whom mine eye shall behold, and not another.” Take realizing views of heaven’s bliss; think what it will be to you. “Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty.” All earthly brightness fades and darkens as we gaze upon it, but here is a brightness which can never dim, a glory which can never fade—“I shall see God.”

PRAY.

Thank you for listening to the Morning and Evening podcast. If you do not know the Lord as your Savior, here is how you can be saved from Hell and walk with the Lord morning and evening until you go to that wonderful place called Heaven when you die:

First, accept the fact that you are a sinner, and that you have broken God’s law. The Bible says in Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”

Second, accept the fact that there is a penalty for sin. The Bible states in Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death…”

Third, accept the fact that you are on the road to hell. Jesus Christ said in Matthew 18:8: “Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.” Also, the Bible states in Revelation 21:8: “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”

Now that is bad news, but here’s the good news. Jesus Christ said in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Just believe in your heart that Jesus Christ died for your sins, was buried, and rose from the dead by the power of God for you so that you can live eternally with Him. Pray and ask Him to come into your heart today, and He will.

Romans 10:9 & 13 says, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved… For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

If you believe that Jesus Christ died on the Cross for your sins, was buried, and rose from the dead, and you want to trust Him for your Salvation today, please pray with me this simple prayer: Holy Father God, I realize that I am a sinner and that I have done some bad things in my life. I am sorry for my sins, and today I choose to turn from my sins. For Jesus Christ sake, please forgive me of my sins. I believe with all of my heart that Jesus Christ died for me, was buried, and rose again. I trust Jesus Christ as my Savior and I choose to follow Him as Lord from this day forward. Lord Jesus, please come into my heart and save my soul and change my life today. Amen.

If you believed in your heart that Jesus Christ died on the Cross, was buried, and rose again, allow me to say, congratulations on doing the most important thing in life and that is accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour! For more information to help you grow in your newfound faith in Christ, go to Gospel Light Society.com and read “What To Do After You Enter Through the Door”. Jesus Christ said in John 10:9, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.”

If you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior today, please email me at [email protected] and let us know. There is some free material that we want to send you. If you have a prayer request, please e-mail that to us as well, and we will pray for you until you tell us to stop.

God loves you. We love you. And may God bless you.

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This is Daniel Whyte III with The Scripture & The Sense Podcast #405, where I read the Word of God and give the sense of it based on an authoritative commentary source such as the Bible Knowledge Commentary. This podcast is based upon Nehemiah 8:8 where it says Ezra and the Levites “read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.” The aim of this podcast is that through the simple reading of the Word of God and the giving of the sense of it, the church would be revived and the world would be awakened.

Today we are reading Amos 1:3.

3 Thus saith the Lord; For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron:

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That was Amos 1:3. Now here is the sense of it.

The Bible Knowledge Commentary reads:

The general declaration of irrevocable judgment occurs through the repeated phrase, For three sins or even for four, I will not turn back My wrath. The use of a number followed by the next higher number is frequent in the Old Testament. Usually the higher number is enumerated in detail, with special emphasis given the final item. Here Amos cited only the last of the crimes, the one which had finally gone beyond God’s patience. Meir Weiss argues that the phrase should be translated, “For three sins of … even for four,” as a poetic way of expressing the number seven, “a clearly typological number which symbolizes completeness”. If this is correct, it means irrevocable judgment was pronounced on each nation for its full and complete sin. In the case of the surrounding nations, only the final and culminating sin was named. But for Israel, the complete list of seven was given. Israel’s panic would likewise be sevenfold in the day God judged them.

The cause of judgment for each nation was its “sins,” its covenant violations. The word for “sin” means “rebellion” or “revolt,” and was used in secular treaties to describe a vassal’s disobedience of the terms of a covenant. The Old Testament prophets also used the noun peša‘ or the verb pāša‘ in denouncing Israel’s rebellion against God’s covenant with her.

Amos specifically viewed the sins of Judah and Israel as violations of the Mosaic Covenant. She had failed to observe the terms of God’s Law. But not only Israel had sinned against a covenant with God. The Gentile nations also were guilty of peša‘—rebellion against a divinely established and universally recognized agreement. Apparently Amos had in mind their rebellion against God’s universal covenant with humanity made at the time of Noah. In exchange for God’s suzerain promise never again to destroy the earth with a flood, the vassal peoples were to refrain from shedding blood because disregard for human life is an assault on God’s own image in man. Human life, rather than being destroyed or curtailed, was to multiply and increase on the earth. This mutual agreement, whereby God would preserve the earth and people would honor and extend human life, was called an “everlasting covenant”.

This is the covenant, Amos charged, that the Gentile nations had rebelled against. By their acts of barbarism (Amos 1:3), their wholesale deportations of slave populations (vv. 6, 9), their unnatural and stubborn hatreds (v. 11), their sickening atrocities (v. 13), and their desecrations of the dead (2:1), they had broken the covenant that forbade such inhuman acts. Because of these sins, the earth’s sovereign Lord declared, “I will not turn back My wrath.”
Similarly Isaiah (Isa. 24:4–6; 26:20–21) said that God would bring a “curse” of drought “to punish the people of the earth” because they had “broken the everlasting covenant” by shedding blood. As the New Testament confirms, though Gentiles may not have received the spoken or written Law, the requirements of human decency are nevertheless known to them, and their own accusing conscience tells them when they violate God’s standard (Rom. 2:14–15).
The culminating sin of Damascus, the capital of Aram, is that she threshed Gilead (also mentioned in Amos 1:13) of Transjordanian Israel with sledges having iron teeth. Threshing (cutting and separating the grain from the husks) was done on a threshing floor by pulling a heavy sledge over the grain. The sledge was a pair of roughly shaped boards, bent upward at the front, studded with iron prongs or knives. The reference here could be quite literal, describing a method of torturing prisoners; it is also a figure for harsh and thorough conquest (cf. Isa. 41:15; Micah 4:13; Hab. 3:12). Aram’s armies had raked across Gilead, slicing and crushing it as though it were grain on a threshing floor. This Israelite territory east of Jordan had suffered greatly during constant battles with the Arameans, particularly during the time of Hazael (841–801 b.c.) and his son and successor Ben-Hadad III (Amos 1:4; cf. 2 Kings 8:7–12; 10:32–33; 13:3–7; note the reference to “threshing” in 2 Kings 13:7).

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Thank you for listening to the Scripture & The Sense Podcast. Remember to read the Word of God each and every day and pray without ceasing to God for wisdom to understand it and apply it to your life. Most importantly, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Please stay tuned for a complete presentation of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ so that you can get your soul saved from Hell to that wonderful place called Heaven when you die. May God bless you and keep you is my prayer.

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Chynna Phillips, the well-known singer who is also one of the music industry’s most outspoken Christians, says her niece and nephew-in-law — Hailey Baldwin and Justin Bieber — can make a difference for the kingdom of God.

“They are awesome examples of what it is to be a Christian and I feel like they’re going to help pave the way for other young people to see it in a new light and see that Christianity is cool,” Phillips told the New York Post’s Page Six.

Phillips, 51, is a member of the group Wilson Phillips and the daughter of John and Michelle Phillips of the 1960s group Mamas and the Papas. Her husband is William Baldwin, whose brother, Stephen, is Hailey’s father.

Phillips holds a Bible study in her Los Angeles home. Bieber and Hailey Baldwin don’t attend the Bible study, but Phillips said it “would be really fun” if they did.

She told Page Six she became a Christian at the age of 12 when classmates offered to pray for her.

“I knew in that moment,” she said, “that I had been touched by God and that Jesus was real and Jesus truly was the son of God and that I needed to come to terms with that reality because it was the truth. Ever since that moment I’ve known that Jesus is Lord.”

Her teen years, though, included alcohol and drug use, which she now says were a “Band-Aid to cover up all of my abandonment issues with my father and grief surrounding his drug use.”

Source: Christian Headlines

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HYDERABAD, India, February 4, 2020 (Morning Star News) – Hindu extremists in southern India who beat Christian children during worship on Jan. 19 and then filed a police complaint against the congregation left them with a warning.

“If we hear that you stepped out of your homes and told anybody about this, we will set your homes on fire and will burn you alive,’” some of the 20 assailants told Christians gathered for worship on the terrace of a home in Malasamudra village, Karnataka state, according to those present.

The Christians had begun worship at 7 a.m. when the radical Hindus came up the stairs to the terrace, unnoticed. Soon the small congregation saw the intruders taking photos and videotaping them, said Mary Bellary, who along with her husband Hanumanthappa Bellary was hosting the worship.

“They flashed camera lights at children, and we requested them to please go and not disturb the prayers,” Mary Bellary said. “But they continued taking pictures, videotaping us and passed comments, saying, ‘Look! Christians gathered here on the terrace to carry out conversions.”’

When Bellary and other women tried to stop them from taking video of the 12 children present, the intruders pushed them away, she said. The Christians asked them to leave, and the intruders put their hands on the women’s chests and pulled their sarees, tearing them, she said.

“They punched my 15-year-old son in his stomach, and other kids also got hurt,” she told Morning Star News. “They were kicked to the floor and were beaten up on their backs. My uncle and husband tried hard to protect the women and children, but those men were very aggressive and physically stronger than us.”

The neighbors only watched, the 32-year-old mother of three said.

“The children just kept looking at us crying for help,” Bellary said.

The attack and threat so terrified them, she said, that they did not leave their homes in Gadag District for the rest of the day. At about 7 p.m., officers from Gadag Town Police Station showed up with word that a complaint had been filed against them, she said.

“The police officer told us that we had attacked some people during Christian prayers that morning, and that they were injured and hospitalized,” Bellary said. “After attacking us on Jan. 19 morning, the Hindu extremists got themselves admitted in a hospital and filed a false complaint against us.”

When police summoned the Christians to the police station the next morning, they did not know what to do, she said.

“Our people were injured, yet we didn’t step out of our homes fearing for our lives, and there at the police station our attackers were influencing the police to frame us in cases,” Bellary told Morning Star News.

Michael Rosario, a lawyer with legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom-India, along with Christian volunteer Johnson David, set out to Gadag to accompany the victims to the police station.

“We ensured that the injured received treatment at the nearest government hospital,” Rosario told Morning Star News. “Basavanappa Malingpur [Bellary’s uncle] had injuries on his head and leg and had to remain hospitalized for three days. The rest, the injured children and women, received first aid.”

By the time Rosario and David reached the police station on Jan. 20, the Hindu extremists and their supporters were already there. The inspector informed the Christians’ counsel that since police had already received a complaint from the village president – who had led the attack – and his cohorts the previous day, he had no option but to book cases against the Christians, David said.

Rosario said their discussion with police continued for some time.

Source: Christian Headlines

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An atheist organization is calling for an investigation after 26 Alabama high school football players were baptized at midfield in the team’s football stadium, saying the event ostracized non-religious students and gave the appearance of school endorsement.

The superintendent, though, says the school followed the law.

At issue is a Nov. 21 event in which 26 members of the Reeltown High School football team who had made professions of faith were baptized in a trough at the 50-yard-line on a day the team didn’t play. The players had accepted Christ at an assembly held outside school hours and wanted to be baptized together, on the field where they play, AL.com reported.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), though, says the event was improper and possibly illegal. It sent a letter to Tallapoosa County Schools Superintendent Joe Windle asserting that “reasonable” students would have perceived “it was endorsed by the school.”

“The District should take the appropriate steps to ensure there will be no further religious rituals, including baptisms, during school-sponsored activities,” the FFRF letter said.

Further, the letter said, the event “ostracizes those students and families who identify as nonreligious.” FFRF calls itself an organization of “atheists, agnostics and skeptics of any pedigree.”

Family members were present, as was head football coach Matt Johnson.

Windle says he investigated the matter and found no wrongdoing. He also says he signed off on the baptisms. Players weren’t required to attend, and local pastors performed the baptisms, Windle said.

Source: Christian Headlines

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