Category: The Hour has arrived

Everything is on the move. Time, sound, development and even this year is moving towards its end. We find people constantly on the move – new places, opportunities, goals. Everything seems to be moving….. except the church.

Pieter looked at the boy in front of him in disbelief. “Do you want to tell me that you have never owned a Bible?”

“Yes, sir, I do have a children’s Bible at home but I haven’t read it in years.”

Another boy stood up and walked over to Pieter holding out a book with 365 short daily Scriptural devotions. “Would this count for a Bible, sir?”

Let me bring you into the picture of what happened above. This did not happen in the seventeenth century but in 2010. Pieter, my brother in-law, is a minister who is doing Bible study with senior pupils of a high school. They are staying in a hostel during the week and Pieter uses his time to bring them closer to Jesus. Astonishingly, he discovered that many of these boys did not own a Bible and consequently know verylittle about Jesus!

This happened not in Hollywood or Hillbrow, but in a rural town in the Free State.

This meant that their parents and/or the church failed to supply the children with the most important Tool for life. At this point one question comes to mind – Why would most Christians decide that to be a member of a church would mean to go to church every Sunday, sit quietly for an hour or less and then go home again to resume life as they did an hour before?

No one is a member of a church! We are the church. As a church we should be walking, moving forward, not sitting.

Jesus did not go to one place and stayed there until He was crucified. He walked from town to town, sharing the promise of life with all the people He met. He walked up a mountain to pray and even crossed a sea on foot to meet the people on the other side.

Jesus is still walking today from one person to the next one who needs salvation, but He needs us to do the walking and talking. That is why Jesus gave us the command that we should follow Him daily. There are 21 verses in the Gospels where Jesus told people to follow Him.

Following does not imply following Him physically when He was on earth with His disciples but also, and especially after His crucifixion, resurrection, ascension and forever after (John 13:36).

Jesus says: “Follow Me”. This is a command. Jesus used a verb, a “doing” word, and we are supposed to be active, doing followers, not the inactive, immobile witnesses of opportunities we have become, allowing moments of value to slip through our fingers.

Many parents assume the church would teach their children everything they need, whilst they forget that they are the church. Attending church is important but it does not stop there. After church Jesus is standing outside, waiting for every believer to follow Him to different people He wants them to minister to. Sadly, after 20 minutes, He is standing there all alone, before He walks to people in need on His own.

He would comfort them but the words that He wants to share, cannot be heard because the person with the audible voice has not followed Him!

The person who is supposed to hand over the loaf of bread, has gone home to have himself fed instead.

Following Jesus is meant for every day of our lives. It is never too late to start. Jesus is still leading the way, pleading, urging, “Follow Me.” Time to do that is moving towards the last opportunity.

The McLaughlin family is a normal average family. Granddad McLaughlin lives with the family of his son John, since grandma McLaughlin died. Granddad is big in posture with a small heart and everybody calls him Big Mac. John and his wife, Mary, have three children of whom the eldest is nicknamed Mackie. He is his mother’s pride and joy and they have a very good relationship. Whenever Mackie wants something, he would ask her first and although she would remind him to ask his dad too, he most likely will get what he desires without any effort.

Their youngest child is nicknamed Little Mary and she and her dad have the same relationship Mackie and Mary have with one difference, in his eyes she can do anything without consulting her mom and it still would be fine, except of course, dating.

The middle child has earned himself the nickname of MacGyver because he has a very lively and adventurous nature, fiddling with everything he can lay his hands on.

MacGyver appears to be the happiest child on the face of the earth because he always smiles and moves around with vigour and excitement in every step. He favours all three elders in his home similarly and obviously is equally friendly with his brother and sister too. When MacGyver enters the room, the face of everyone in the family lights up because he gives everybody the attention they deserve and whatever they might need. He is equally loved by the whole McLaughlin clan.

What has the story of the McLaughlin family to do with us?

The answer is not much and yet, quite a lot. We have a loving Father who allowed His Son to die for our sins. Then He gave us His Holy Spirit to indwell us. Like Mackie and Little Mary many of us give attention to either the Father or Jesus and only occasionally include the Spirit.

I usually gave Jesus all the attention until He told me this past weekend that I should give more attention to the Father. Jesus loves the Father so much He cannot bear to watch Him longing for my attention.

Jesus did not die on the cross to replace God or the Spirit in our hearts. Jesus died to cleanse us in order for us to be constantly in their presence. Jesus said we must be in Him, showing our love to the Father and caressing the Spirit while doing that. It is awesome to worship Jesus but He wants us to worship the Father more.

Jesus and the Spirit guide and talk to us 24 hours every day and because they are realistically involved in our lives, we tend to give them all our attention, neglecting the Father unintentionally.
We have been reborn into the family of God. Just like the McLaughlin family above, we have the same surname Jesus has.

The Father loves us very much and He loves to look at us, listen to us and touch our hearts. We should make special time and effort to sit in front of Him and just love Him back. We are one family with the Father as Head, and when we need something we should ask the Father first. If we express our appreciation, it should be to the Father first, and then we include Jesus and the Spirit too.

Stink, the demon spy, moved over the small town of Sleeping Trees. He had been commissioned to watch over the people because a terrible thing had happened there. A pastor from a Christian denomination visited the town and convinced its sleeping inhabitants to become Christians!

Sleeping Trees was not far from a big city and if the people would do what they were supposed to do, it could wreak havoc in the big city for satan. For three months now, Stink had kept a close eye on them.

Then he noticed something which made him realise there was nothing to be worried about and he sent satan an sds (Short Demon Service). “Boss, no need to worry, the people are doing it for you, lol (hah… hah).”

Satan was so surprised, he immediately replied with another sds – “What do you mean, Stink? They heard the message, their sins are forgiven, they are h-o-l-y… oh, I can’t mention the word, they can go to heaven!”

“Yeah, boss, their sins are forgiven, they are clean, he he, but somehow they don’t believe it. As soon as someone thinks about something he can do for God, he remembers his sins, and stops thinking. It is as if he just cannot place himself in a position where his past is wiped clean. Every time I see the hand of God with blessings for these people, but before it can be taken, their guilt kicks it away. You should see this, boss, it works perfectly in our favour. I think we should change the name of this town to Coma, he he.”

All over the world billions of Christians have received the power of God through redemption. Billions upon billions of Christians are washed as white as snow and have the power of God in their hands, the power to live a complete life as God intended it to be. However, somehow guilt about their past got stuck somewhere in their minds, wiping out the power available to them.

Unless we receive it by faith, It is hard for every one of us, for every murderer, thief, sorcerer, adulterer, cheat, lier who has received forgiveness, to accept that his slate has been wiped clean. The truth is that every person who confessed his sins before Jesus, is cleansed of all his sins and wrongdoings…. completely.

When anyone should continue thinking about sins that are forgiven, allowing guilt to set in, he is doubting the redemptive power of Christ. When he doubts, he has nothing.

That is the main reason why billions of Christians live in extreme poverty right in the middle of the endless treasures of God – they do not believe and accept their redemption. How different this world could have been if only they would have faith in their redemptive condition!

It is safe to assume that Darwin and all his followers are fools. That’s not me talking but the Bible. Psalm 14:1 and 51:1 states that a fool says there is no God. Believing in a big bang, self-evolved creation is the same as saying God does not exist.

If you believe in God you would also believe in the mighty power of God creating something as awesome as our universe. These fools will be confronted with the judgement which, by the way, is close at Hand.

We have a way of looking at the powers in nature that either leaves us in awe or trembling in fear. Recently in particular we’ve been put on the edge of our seats, experiencing the earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, fires, storms, heat waves and snowfall all over the earth. These events are increasing in number and intensifying in magnitude every year.

We usually look at all of these and regard them as disasters of a planet that is falling apart due to human abuse. We are not innocent but there are more involved.

For two days in a row Jesus has lead me to read Psalm 98 and I believe the events in nature is about something far more significant that we can imagine. Al the events could be the signs of an anticipation of something that is coming our way, something the world has been looking forward to since sin has entered it – the final coming of Christ. (Rom 8:19,22)

What we experience in nature could be a response, an exclamation of joy, rather than falling apart.

Psalm 98 was written many years ago but the essence could not be more relevant now than ever before. It shows us that God has revealed the secret of His salvation to the world. His righteousness is made known to mankind. (Verse 2,3)

We should therefore be rejoicing, singing and playing musical instruments to express our joy before our Lord and King because His final return is imminent. (Verse 4-6)

The earth is rejoicing. The seas roar with all that is living in it. The rivers are clapping their hands and the hills are joyful. (Verse 7,8)

The REASON – God is coming to judge the earth and everything that lives on it. (Verse 9)

Rest assured – We know that Christians have already been judged and made righteous.

No one knows the exact date and hour on which Jesus would appear. It could still take anything from 1 to 120 years, but Jesus is coming. Rejoice with nature!

Here it is. I’m dead, and this is my last post to my blog. In advance, I asked that once my body finally shuts down from the punishments of my cancer, then my family and friends publish this prepared message I wrote—the first part of the process of turning this from an active website to an archive.

The paragraph above is an abstract from a blog of a man who had colorectal cancer. The blog had been in existence for ten years or more and the publication was his last post. He wrote it as a final farewell.

The plus side of the blog is that he encouraged readers to grasp the full concept of life. He was 41 years of age, met his wife 23 years before and they had two teenage daughters. He loved his wife and children very much.

This man’s last letter to the world serves as encouragement for every living being to take what life offers and to give what is important in life, because every action in this world soon becomes a memory.

The sad part about this blog is that according to him, his life- his existence- had ended. Oh yes, I do realise that he had died and in that sense his life on earth had indeed ended, but for him the final curtain was drawn and he had moved into “nonexistence.”

It is hard to imagine that there are people living in this world that do not believe they are body, soul and spirit. The body is the fragile part that will come to an end due to illness, accident or age but the spirit cannot die.

When a person dies, his spirit will either go to heaven or to hell. The sad part about this blog is that this man apparently chose not to believe in Jesus Christ because he simply saw his life as being ended. The last sentence in this man’s letter read, “I loved you deeply, I loved you, I loved you, I loved you.”

If only he chose Life his words could have been: “I don’t think life on earth is always fair but I enjoyed every second of our life together. I love you and look forward to the time in future when we would be re-united again. Enjoy your life on earth with the children. I cannot say I hope to see you soon but rather that I know we will see each other again. It is so good being alive!”

His name was Derek, past tense. If he had made the right decision, we could have said that although he had died, his name remains Derek because he is in heaven.

I once ministered to cancer patients in the oncology ward of a hospital in Bloemfontein. One day I visited a patient who was very weak and in my prayer I committed this person into the hands of God because he was too weak to fight on his own. The intention was to strengthen the patient and to have him healed and rejuvenated. Sadly, soon afterwards the patient died.

I felt very sad about this until I discovered that this happened every time I prayed this particular prayer for a person in that condition. Then the Holy Spirit revealed to me that when a person is very weak, the devil torments him even more because he is defenceless, but when I submit someone into the hands of God, He steps in and takes the person out of his suffering.

Years later a friend of mine confirmed that he experienced the same while serving terminally ill patients. The highest purpose of the devil is to torment human beings and the more vulnerable they are, the easier it is for him to achieve that goal.

Last week we were reminded what Jesus had gone through on the cross because of His love for the Father and for us. One of my sons, Jan, drew my attention to the suffering Jesus had to go through and he sees the death on the cross as an act of love and an act of worship to God. Time and space does not allow me to publish his full report in this postcard and I will only focus on one aspect in particular.

Just after Jesus was crucified, God left the scene. Although the sun was shining, it became dark, indicating the absence of God and the presence of evil. That happened at the sixth hour and it carried on until the ninth hour when Jesus surrendered His life to God and died with the words, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:45-51)

Apart from the humiliation and torture by human hands, Jesus had to experience the torment by evil powers for three hours all on His own! He was nailed to a cross, defenceless, weak, thirsty and longing for the presence of His Father who had left the scene.

Before you think that the Father should not have left Him alone in His hour of suffering, we should consider the fact that due to this, no person can ever claim that it was easy for Jesus to accomplish this because

He was in the presence of God. Jesus suffered and died without the aid and support of His Father being there for Him in His hour of greatest need. Even if we should suffer persecution we would be supported by Jesus through the Holy Spirit. Jesus however, did everything on His own as a normal, completely defenceless human being – and He prevailed.

For three hours He held on to proof to the world that He was on His own, beaten, tortured, stripped from His clothes, His dignity, the presence of His disciples and most horribly, the presence of His Father to take the punishment for our sins on Himself. He was ALL ALONE!

That is LOVE! For three hours the devil tried to kill the Spirit of Jesus by tormenting His body, but he failed.

Jesus conquered the devil and through His death He made us one with Him so that we can follow suit triumphing over evil and sickness and death, with one difference – He aids us.

Let us love and worship our God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit!

On this day, approximately 2018 years ago, we (humans) witnessed how we took an innocent Man and hit Him, spat on Him, slapped Him, mocked Him and hit Him some more until He was unrecognizable. Finally we crucified Him.

We did not understand it then, but we know now that Jesus did it for us. It was something horrible, beyond our wildest imagination, to grasp what Jesus had gone through. However, true to our loving Lord, He doesn’t think about Himself or us when He recollects the events of that day – He had His Father in mind.

The Father suffered even more. When Jesus was hanging on the cross in His final hour, He could not bear to watch His Son suffer any longer and He turned His back on Him. That was the moment when Jesus cried out; “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” And then He died.

The Father had to watch every detail of what we did to His Son and allowed it to happen for our sake. God could have stepped in, take His Child and wipe us out of existence but He did not.

Jesus gave me a song one day to tell me that we should consider closely what the Father had to endure having us redeemed.

Did you cry My child, the day when I died?
Did you wipe a tear from your eye?
Do you wonder how this could be?
Do you know the reason why?

For three days My child, the Father cried.
The only time in heaven, when… He cried.
You know My Father, His love and joy,
For three days… He could not smile

It was Me and it was you He had in mind
When He suffered the loss of His only Child
He called My Name and woke Me up
So that you My child, could do the same

God allowed this to happen because He loves us and He knew Jesus loves us just the same. The Father did it for Jesus. Jesus did it for the Father. And we are in the center of their love – that is why they did it for us.

All we have to do is to love them back.

This day is the most significant day of the year .

Remember Gert? He was the one I told you about some time ago who had a quiet neighbour, called Steve. Steve was the farmer who walked through life almost absent while Gert was the loud and busy one.

Remember when Steve died and Gert’s wife told him about the death of his neighbour and how Gert responded, “Steve died? I didn’t know he was alive.”

The day arrived when Gert also died. The nurse looked down at the lifeless body and removed all the life supporting equipment. Everything went silent…. No sound of pulsating heart monitors, no more, “Hello nurse, how are you? How is your family?” The big body and everything around him suddenly fell silent.

Gert always talked. He managed to sustain a conversation with people around him whether they were acquaintances of his, or not. When he was alone he did not stop talking either.

His prayer life took a form of constant communication with Jesus. Even when he could not speak out loud, for instance when he was in church, he talked to Jesus in his mind.

He asked Jesus to heal the poor woman in the second aisle. To bless the young couple with the new baby. Even asking Jesus to forgive the preacher for leading the man in front of him into a deep coma with his soothing, monotonous voice.

Every action, healing, change of heart, smile or miracle that so often took place where Gert was, had ended because his voice fell silent. Someone who knew how to express his love for Jesus and fellow men, that was Gert. What a loss for us, his friends when he died, but what a glory to God his life had been.

Every person has a word counter, or rather and more importantly, a word evaluation counter. When we would buy a secondhand car, the first instrument we would check, is the odometer. Some cars may appear to be new but the odometer would reveal the true picture.

I suppose Gert’s word meter would suggest he was well-used. His meter could have been flipped over to zero a couple of times. (Mat 12:36,37)

The number of words used, is not important however, but their impact, the meaning and intent of those words. Gert’s life was like a road map with roads leading into all directions with colourful pictures of lives he touched by speaking to Jesus. Many knew what Gert had done and many are totally unaware of his influence. Jesus knows.

Now, while he is in heaven, I can imagine how he and Jesus are enjoying his short history on earth, looking back at their involvement in life together, because Gert was never silent. (Prov 10:11, 18:21, 2Co 13:1)

I’ve known Jason for a few years and thought I knew the guy – a pleasant, likeable young man working in his dad’s business, happily married to his wife who bore him two children and he was deacon in the church.

Whenever one looked at Jason he portrayed an image of a perfect son, husband, father and servant in his community. He always appeared neat, confident and knowing where he was heading. All of this was shattered one day when Jason left his family and his job to become a drunk somewhere else.

After a long time of counseling and prayers, it was discovered that Jason’s life was not as picture-perfect as it seemed, in fact, he led a pitiful life. He did not like his job because he only did it to please his dad. He loved his wife but he hated the fact that she expected of him to be a man of distinction. He was a genuine believer but agreed to become deacon only because it was expected of him to do so.

In reality, he was moving around in society dressed in a tailor-made suit with his head held high, but he dragged himself along on feet that seemed to be stuck in sticky, gooey, ankle-deep mud. His slogging around in this “mud” reminded of another word with the same root: muddling = to busy oneself in a confused and ineffective way; to progress in a haphazard way.

With his head held high, while muddling through life, he could only carry on until he just got too tired and the mud got too deep for him to muddle along any further.

I don’t know what happened to Jason in the end but I do know that he made us think about our own muddling in life.

Jesus doesn’t want us to muddle. He became our Saviour to get us out of the mud. Sin is mud but the cares and expectations of this world have the same effect. Our sins are forgiven but somehow we carry on muddling along in the desires and cares of this world.

Sometimes we allow things in our lives to mud us down so much that we are left tired and wasted at the end of the day.

There is only one way of getting out of muddling and that is to seek the face of Jesus. You see, He does so much more than forgiving sins. Before His crucifixion He took water and washed the feet of the disciples. He also wanted them to stop muddling. What He did then had nothing to do with sins because He told Peter that he was clean already, but he still needed this washing of his feet. (John 13:14)

I imagine myself sitting down in front of Jesus with my two feet covered with mud reaching almost to my knees. How wonderful to feel His hands, marked by the scars, washing off all the mud. Then He would look at my face and tell me, “Stop muddling, My child, just follow Me…… just follow Me!”

When Jesus washed the feet of His disciples He added the words, “You also ought to wash one another’s feet.” That is exactly what we should do.

Serve people as Jesus did and look for Jason and company and wash their feet before they quit. In the meantime, stay out of the mud.

I was standing in line at the information desk at the bank, facing people in the same queue moving towards the same counter but in a different direction. The winding queue was long and crawling slowly towards our common goal. If there is one thing that I hate, it is standing in a queue doing nothing but wait. Gradually the end of the line was in sight and suddenly the miserable feeling of waiting in line was replaced by a feeling of joy and relief – I had reached the counter at last!

“Sorry, sir, but you’ve been standing in the wrong queue. You need to go to another department first.”

“NO! Why don’t you have the proper signs here?”

All living creatures are standing in a queue moving towards the end of their lives. Everyone has a final destiny. If we would look at ourselves however, it seems we are living as if our end would never arrive. It is understandable because who would want to think of the end of life when life is great?

On Friday the 11th of March 2011 an 8.9 tremor struck Japan, unleashing 10 meter tsunamis along its pacific coast. It has been reported that the tsunami travels at a speed of 800 km per hour. That would be the fastest way of reaching the end of line for thousands.

Warnings were issued but time was running out too fast to get out of the way. On television I saw people frantically driving up and down in their cars, looking for escape routes until they were overcome by the wave and swept away. The end of the line had suddenly arrived for them.

The biggest question though, is whether they reached the counter they were hoping to reach. Or did they hear a voice telling them, “Sorry sir, before you can enter into heaven, you had to meet the Saviour first.”

“Where can I find Him?”

“Sorry again, sir, your time is up. Your account is closed. You’ll be ushered to the only counter left, hell.”

Most of us are so glad we are living in South Africa. Although we have a vast stretch of coastline, the chances of being hit by a tsunami are slim, or so we hope.

However, end of lines are reached daily in many ways. Accidents, heart attacks or sudden illnesses are only a few tsunamis present in our life. The most important question is whether we are standing in the right queue.

Mario Marchio’ wrote a story about a man who needed to extend his bank balance. I would love you to read his story bearing the title “Time’s up”