SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
04/08/2004
My Worship Time Focus: Part 3
Looking at Lot
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 2 Peter 2:6-10
Message of the
verses: “6 and if He condemned the
cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having
made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter; 7 and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed
by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men 8
(for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among
them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds),
9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the
godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day
of judgment.”
I want to continue with some things that Dr. Wiersbe has
been writing on this section: “But the
same God who delivers the godly also reserves the ungodly for judgment. It has well been said that if God spares today’s
cities from judgment, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. Why is God’s judgment lingering? Because God is ‘long suffering…not willing
that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance’ (2 Peter 3:9). Society in Noah’s day had 120 years in which
to repent and believe, yet they rejected the truth. Though Lot’s example and testimony were weak,
he at least represented the truth; yet his immoral neighbors wanted nothing to
do with God.”
One of my favorite books in the Bible is the book of
Revelation, a book that in the past looking at it in my devotions over the
years I have written over 800 pages of commentary on it. One of the things that I see in the book of
Revelation is that the seven churches that the Lord speaks to in chapters 2-3
are in prophetic order beginning with the church in Ephesus and ending with the
church in Laodicea. There are certain
things that the Lord has to say about these churches and in some of the
churches He has nothing really good to say about them. Laodicea which is the last church written to
as far as I am concerned is the worst church in the seven. Jesus is portrayed as being on the outside
looking into the church as He states that He is standing at the door knocking
wanting to get into it. Now when I say
that they are prophetically in order I mean that the dominant church of that
particular age is the particular church of that time period. I won’t bother going over the dates that I
have in one of my commentaries, but it is my belief we are now living in the
Laodicean church age. I am not saying
all churches are like this, but the dominant church is. Why do I say this? Well if we are like many believe in this age
then our world is very similar to the world that Noah lived in and that Lot
lived in too. We see that in both cases
that the Lord spared these righteous people before judgment came about and so
if that is true then I believe along with many others is that the Rapture of
the church is close where the Lord will take His bride, the church out of the
judgment that will soon take place once the church is removed.
We are living in an age when the church is very weak,
where people care more about their comfort here on earth and not realizing that
we have a job to do to tell others how they can escape the coming judgment that
will soon take place.
I am thankful that I could not find my Spiritual Diaries
on this section of Scripture as the Lord has used these verses to speak to my
heart in wonderful ways.
We continue to look at 2 Peter in our next SD.
9/4/2017 9:23 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment