We Will Remember His Name

October 10

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me,” Revelation 3:20.

"Return to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, weeping and mourning; and rend your heart and not your garments. Now return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving-kindness and relenting of evil. Who knows whether He will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind Him, even a grain offering, a drink offering for the Lord your God?" Joel 2:12-14

“Thus he said: The fourth beast shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which shall be different from all other kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, trample it and break it in pieces,” Daniel 7:23.

The Lord our God is ever calling to us. It is His fervent desire that all men be saved, as stated in II Peter 3:9. To that end, He has written the entirety of His Holy Word, the Bible with the specific goal of man’s salvation in mind.

Some, such as Revelation 3:20 are tender invitations to fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He speaks here in familiar terms of sweet fellowship that invites us to partake of a meal with Him, as we would with an intimate friend or family member. The only prerequisite to such intimate interaction with Him is that we invite Him into our lives when He knocks at the door of our hearts.

But, He doesn’t stop there. He doesn’t desire to be part of our lives only when we are eager for fellowship with Him. In Joel 2:12-14, He extends His grace to us when we have failed Him, when we have let Him down, and at the point of our failure, He invites us to return to Him.

All of this—our initial salvation and our restoration when we fall short of His “unspeakable gift,” II Corinthians 9:15—is available to us because Jesus Christ has sacrificed Himself in our behalf; because He has paid God’s righteous penalty for our sin.

It behooves us to claim His offer of salvation because eternity is too precious a gift to disdain, salvation is too costly a treasure to ignore, yet there is another reason, perhaps more immediate to our sensibilities than the far-off-notion-of-our-ultimate-demise. That reason is the fact that God’s ancient arch-enemy is mustering his resources for one last assault on the People of the Book and the Christ who has redeemed them.

We may be on the front lines of his attack or we may be sitting in our comfortable houses or relaxing on serene beaches or dining on sumptuous fare, but we are no less the targets of the evil one. It is his intention that we either be destroyed or that we worship him.

In Isaiah 14:14 he clearly states his intent, “…I would be like the Most High.” It is not his goal to attain unto the goodness and mercy and kindness and truth and love of our Savior and King, but that he be worshiped as He is worshiped!

There are among us those who extend this worship to him; they embrace his ‘theology of death,’ they promote his purposes, “to steal, kill, and destroy,” John 10:10, and we are blinded by the deceit of “the one who was a murderer and a liar from the beginning,” John 8:44, if we turn a blind eye to the machination of his purposes that are afoot today.

As stated in Daniel 7:23, “Thus he said: The fourth beast shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which shall be different from all other kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, trample it and break it in pieces.” There are those who believe this prophesy was fulfilled with the Empire of Alexander the Great, but some subscribe to the evidence that he was a conqueror who was in the vein of many others.

Some look for fulfillment of this prophetic word in our modern world, which many believe is on the threshold of Christ’s return. Some see the rise of global terrorism with ruthless and godless men employing inhumane and indiscriminate death and destruction without regard to the rules of war or the impact of their violence upon the innocent as the last great battle in which mankind will engage before that “great and terrible Day of the Lord,” Malachi 4:5.

However the end time scenario plays our, whether it is upon us or whether it is millennia away, we must recognize that we are at a juncture in time when we must flee to the One True and Living Christ for our safety. We must say with David, “Some trust in chariots, some trust in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God,” Psalm 20:7.