CHAPTER 8
OUR DESTINY
GOD, OUR CREATOR AND SAVIOUR, HAD NOT DECIDED OUR DESTINY! EACH MAN DECIDES HIS DESTINY BY HIS OWN CHOICES AND DECISIONS OF HIS OWN FREE WILL!
SINCE MAN MAKES CHOICES AND DECISIONS BY HIS FREE WILL, GOD WORKS IN MAN TO WILL AND DECIDE TO DO OF HIS (GOD’S) GOOD PLEASURE (Phil. 2:13). BUT THERE IS ALSO SATAN, WHO WORKS IN MAN BY DECEIVING HIM AND THE WHOLE WORLD (Rev. 12:9// 2Cor. 4:4// 2Tim. 2:26) SO MAN WILL MAKE WRONG CHOICES AND DECISIONS UNAWARE THAT THEY WILL KEEP HIM FROM HIS SALVATION AND WILL FINALLY DESTROY HIM IN THE LAKE OF FIRE AND BRIMSTONE (Rev. 20:14,15).
Though the Grace of God that brings Salvation has appeared to all mankind (Tit. 2:11// Ps. 98:3b) and though this Salvation was freely provided by God to every man on this planet, God has never made His Salvation mandatory for any man! Man has the power to refuse it by his free will, and millions do! Why? Well, it is far beyond the common sense of any sane human being with a healthy brain and logic. Yet the very fact that millions refuse their salvation still stands and it shows the awesome power of Satan’s deceptions that can cost us our lives, not earthly lives, but our ETERNAL lives!
This fact also shows that God had not only created darkness and evil (Is. 45:7), but He created darkness and evil so powerful that man would not be able to free, to extricate himself from it by his own power, own wisdom or own ability (see also p.191 of our book “Mystery of Reality”[11]). What does that mean? It simply means that for man there is only one way to evade hell, the lake of fire and an everlasting condemnation, and that way is IN his Saviour and not IN man himself!… though he may be a good man. Why?
Man fell into this powerful evil, darkness and condemnation using his natural senses – eyesight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, the desires of his natural heart, understanding of his natural mind and decisions of his natural will. All these senses and abilities of his human soul had been contaminated by that great power of darkness and evil and thus rendered useless for man’s way back to His Creator and Saviour, to his freedom and God’s Life!
Lies have replaced the truths and man IS NOT ABLE to distinguish one from the other. If man does not deny his natural senses and abilities, he will never know the spiritual truths and CANNOT BE SAVED! He cannot be even redeemed and put on the road to his salvation. He is doomed for ever. And even if he becomes redeemed and baptized, he cannot continue on the way to his salvation by his natural senses and abilities which remain useless!
Man must deny his natural senses and abilities (Mt. 16:24) and God must replace them with spiritual senses and abilities. THAT brings the Salvation to man!
Now, we know that there are millions of pagans who refused to abandon their reasoning and thoughts and feelings and desires and imaginations and own convictions. They have no future. But I do not want to devote any time to pagans; I desire to speak to born-again believers.
There are millions of believers who were redeemed and baptized and who never made one step toward their salvation, their perfection, during their lifetime (Heb. 6:1)! They lived a miserable Christian life which benefited neither them nor anyone else around them including their families, who also lived miserable lives. Here, I need to point out the following important facts from my personal experiences:
a) Many believers have done absolutely nothing to find the narrow way (Mt. 7:14), to go on unto their perfection (Heb. 6:1), to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Mt. 6:33) or just to seek truth. On the other hand, many of them have tried “their best” to achieve what they may have seen with more successful believers or what they planned or desired for themselves and their families. Many of them finished their life in a never-ending merry-go-round of “trying their best” and achieving nothing. These believers were governed by their own false sense of justice and righteousness, understanding and feelings, they never received truth brought to them by anyone. All these were in a constant danger of losing their salvation (Rev. 3:5// Heb. 6:4-6). They wasted their entire earthly life as an opportunity from God to seek and find what He provided for them!
b) It took others 10-20-30 years to finally find out that, by themselves, they can achieve nothing. They never used in their lives the Word of the Lord “without me ye can do NOTHING” (Jn. 15:5b). Nor have they ever used another Word of God “I can do ALL things through Christ which strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13).Before those 10-20-30 years, they were just “verses in the Bible” that were read, mentally accepted and believed, but never used in their lives. Only six words (in Jn. 15:5b) which, if you did not heed and take seriously, you would waste your entire earthly life as a believer and achieve NOTHING in your spiritual life! They wasted ONLY 10-20-30 or more years of their earthly lives!
c) There were others, who after only few years of unsuccessful “trials” decided in their heart and mind to “allow” the Spirit of God some access to their soul and “some say” in correcting their ways, understanding and decision making. Also, to start showing them some of the spiritual problems in their souls, which they did not want to see or even admit that such may exist in them (it is by no means easy for anyone to even admit their spiritual problems).
And even if they admitted that there might be “some” pride, fear, stubbornness, selfishness, foolishness or other “virtues” of their sinful flesh, it did NOT mean that they immediately desired to be delivered from it. Should the Lord one day open the “window to our soul” and show us that our “soul garden” is actually a jungle, we may be forced to admit it, but then we may close the window and leave the “jungle” untouched for, maybe, even few years. And should the Lord show us again the pride He showed us last year, we might be stunned and say: “Not again?” As if our pride could be wiped out of its existence once and for all in one 3 minute repentance and a few tears.
Now, I wouldn’t say that the believers in this group wasted years of their life, no. They may not have wasted years in the same way the other two groups above have. I say that they not only have found the narrow way, but started to walk on it. Yet, many times it seemed that any turtle on crutches could have passed them by.
d) There have been very few that have not only found the narrow way (Mt. 7:14), but kept going steadily. They have become a true instrument and a blessing in the hand of the Lord, which He could use for His Purposes and pleasure. They already possess the crown of righteousness and do hold it fast that no man takes it from them (Rev. 3:11).
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May I now ask a very simple, but profound question? What is the ONLY FACTOR that creates these four different groups of born-again believers with their different spiritual conditions and destinies? My answer is this:
WILLINGNESS OR UNWILLINGNESS TO BELIEVE AS THE SCRIPTURE HAS SAID DISREGARDING THEIR HUMAN SINFUL SENSES! THAT IS ALL (Jn. 7:38)!
Are we willing or unwilling to pause and consider the origin of our thoughts, beliefs, convictions, plans, intentions, desires, lusts, purposes; to see our own foolishness and misery and stop blaming others for everything? Are we willing to stop being “gods” knowing everything, understanding everything and being blameless in all our life and conduct, infallible in our wisdom so that we don’t have to ask anybody any questions or be accountable for our mistakes and failures? Are we also willing or unwilling (fearful) to speak truth to others? Do we admit that we do not know everything? That we were born with sinfulness and stupidity in our blood and nobody can get it out only God? And that it usually takes years? If God would show us the depth of the depravity of our sinful flesh, we would not survive it! Are we willing to believe this? The depravity of our flesh prevents us from seeing the depravity of our flesh. Please, keep reading.
We distributed our literature to over 70 countries of the world and my ministry was mostly by correspondence. I ministered in person continually only in North America and Central Europe. In other countries of the world, my personal ministry was very sporadic and occasional. The Lord allowed me to meet all kinds of believers and human characters that you can imagine and cannot imagine; from warm and enthusiastic to cold and quite hostile, from sincere and good-hearted to speculative with sneaky hearts, from knowledgeable to naïve, from wise to fools, from humanly humble and good to proud and arrogant and wicked, from open minded to fearful, and many, many others. It was a true challenge to minister to such individual characters “truth in love” rather than “truth in fact” (Eph. 4:15), judging righteous judgments in the Spirit of the Lord and keeping a loving attitude also toward those that were or later became mine enemies (Mt. 5:44// Gal. 4:16) at least inwardly, if not outwardly.
The Lord had also arranged for me pretty difficult and irrational lessons, which otherwise one would never have to learn and experience and suffer. One such unimaginable lesson has been to see and experience the true power of evil and darkness and deceptions on living human beings and their devastating effects. Such men experienced an inexplicable change of their normal human nature with the ensuing inability to even see and understand what came over them.
Human beings ceased to be human beings! I am now talking about believers who might have been born-again and baptized or not, whom I met and talked to or to whom I ministered either for a short time or for many years! I call “human beings” those men that still retain some degree of human dignity, common sense and intelligence. If they had lost these basic human virtues and abilities, many animals pass them by in their intelligence, wisdom, faithfulness or usefulness.
They may read Bibles, pray, even cry on their knees repenting from their sins, fellowship with us and be exposed to the Light and Truth of Christ. And then “one day” something cracked in their soul and Satan got into the “crack”, and they changed beyond recognition, even beyond any logic. They did not want to see me any more without giving any reason! Those that expressed love to me began to hate me repaying evil for my good. They began to hate me without a cause (Jn. 15:25b). Why? I have no clue! You now deal with creatures, which you cannot understand and cannot help in any way. Unless you experienced such cases on your own skin, you will never understand me and never even believe me that such “inhuman” creatures may exist among Christians! But that is not all, the Lord declared from His own mouth that they shall throw you out of the synagogues (churches) and that the time is coming (End-time, which is now) that if someone will kill you, will think that he did a service to God! Now, “to kill you” spiritually means “to separate from you”. Why? Because they have not known the Father nor the Lord (Jn. 16:2,3). They started as human beings, who believed and later ended as “aliens from outer space” without any human dignity or senses.
So, what happened? It was the same thing that happened to Judas Iscariot. When he “purposed in his heart” to betray Jesus, he opened the door to Satan to come into him (Lk. 22:3). And Satan was delighted to come in, claim his soul and change his eternal destiny in one second! And the Lord has NOT offered to him any repentance and forgiveness, rather, he commanded him to DO IT QUICKLY (Jn. 13:27)!
On the other hand, when the Prophet Daniel “purposed in his heart” that he would not defile himself, the Lord’s Spirit enabled him to do that purpose and desire of his heart and made him like none other that stood before king Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 1:8-21). I am adding this opposite example just to show what the “purposing in heart” will result in.
My first question is: What are the real PURPOSES IN YOUR HEART at this time of your earthly life? Do you know your heart? (Jer. 17:9,10) Do you see and understand its purposes and their consequences? Do you realize the dangers to which wrong intentions and purposes in your heart may lead? Do you realize that one day, even without your conscience, when their fruit ripens, they may change your destiny in one second? Without remedy? (Pr. 6:15; 29:1)
My second question is: Is your heart flirting with evil, darkness, unrighteousness even without realizing it? Are you following its deceptions and lures for your comfort and prosperity as bulls follow the fenced path to the abattoir?
If you have no true answers to these two questions, you are in the same danger as Judas Iscariot! His real intentions were not wicked or bad. In his understanding he just desired to give Jesus an opportunity to explain Himself to the religious leaders of his time and once they understood Him, everything would be resolved. Was it bad or sinful? Was it an innocent naivety? From human standpoint, yes, from God’s standpoint he had a wicked heart! He never asked anybody ANY QUESTIONS, never verified the consequences of his ideas and plans with other disciples. Are you possibly in the same shoes as Judas? Do you ask questions? Do you ever verify the possible consequences of your heart’s plans and purposes? Or are you also following your desires and plans and purposes as bulls follow blindly the fenced path to the abattoir? I do not ask you sarcastic questions; I am asking you the questions, which from my experience can determine your life and destiny! Are you interested in your life and destiny? If not, then why are you reading this book? This book is not a religious romance; it is a report from YOUR WAR and a prophecy for your DESTINY.
It is clearly not an innocent naivety when, after being exposed sometimes for years, to the Light and Truth of the Almighty God, one turns against Him and opens his heart to Satan. Many preachers may be preaching the Word of God and have a wicked heart! Their outward activity may not indicate the inward state of their heart and they may not know at all how deceitful, above all things, and how desperately wicked their heart may truly be! (Jer. 17:9) Do they sometimes check their heart by its fruit? I sincerely doubt it.
My life experiences with Christians also showed me how ignorant they really are and how lightly they take even the very serious warnings from the Word of God. They are willing to literally gamble with their eternal life, inheritance and destiny just to temporarily satisfy themselves in any particular desire or lust of their soul during their short earthly lives!
Who comes to mind is Esau. He sold his birthright to Jacob for a pottage of lentils (Gen. 25:30-34)! Stupendous! What was then the result of his utmost stupidity? Instead of inheriting the blessings, he was rejected and found no repentance though he sought it carefully with tears (Heb. 12:16, 17)! And after his wicked deed, God hated him (Rom. 9:13// Gen. 27:41). You say: “I am not Esau”. Really? You may be selling not only your birthright, but your own soul for some sandwiches and drinks at a pick-nick somewhere in nature listening to a religious idiot or to a servant of Satan and you have no conscience about it. You have fun, you laugh and are happy and satisfied, but you never verified anything with anybody, you NEVER ASKED QUESTIONS, never checked the Word of God whether you are fellowshipping with the Lord or with Satan! And if you continue like that for 3½ years (as Judas) or more, then one day, it will take one second and you will be gone! No man will help you and the Lord might tell you: “I never knew you; depart from Me…” (Mt. 7:23)!
We are quite able to purpose or conceive in our heart anything that may eventually, usually later in our life, cost us our life and we may not care about it. The tragedy is that a deceived man DOESN’T KNOW that he is deceived and his ONLY way out is to believe those that SEE and KNOW.
Another example which comes to mind is Ananias and Sapphira, his wife. They both “purposed in their heart” to keep back part of the price of the land, which they sold and were supposed to bring the money to the Apostles. It could have taken a short moment of time for their hearts to purpose that stupidity and wickedness. But once they purposed this wicked act in their hearts and agreed on it with one another, it later on took 1 second and they were gone! They both literally dropped dead and were buried for their conspiracy against the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:1-10).
All these persons quoted above may be the most well known from the Scripture, but the principle they represent is applicable to every believer, who is not walking on the narrow road. And we cannot tell how many believers, which are not named in the Scripture, have become similar victims of their own foolishness, wickedness or plain ignorance and naivety and disregarding the Word of God pointing to these dangers.
I am also aware of people, who believed, were baptized and started to attend a church. After some time, they changed their church for night clubs, started smoking and drinking, doing drugs and immoralities and bringing horrible shame to their Saviour, Who died for them! Their parents or grandparents or church leaders couldn’t handle them being themselves weak in spirit and faith. Also, many Christian couples are being divorced, and that includes leaders in the church! And after their divorce, they keep preaching as if nothing extraordinary happened! And their sons and daughters also “minister” even though I have no idea what.
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To be continued next week in chapter 8 – part 2
brother Hanola
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