Witchcraft's Deception Part 4

But even in the face of the truth of His great mercy and grace, God tells me He has standards.  Revelation chapters 2 and 3 reveal the Lord’s Holy Standards, the things we must overcome in order to sit down with Jesus as He overcame and sat down with His Father on His throne.  Jesus wants His churches to know what He has against them and He wants us to know what to do about it because He loves us and He wants us to overcome!  He even sent us His Holy Spirit to guide us and teach us all things so that we could overcome!  I want to skim the first two standards and then focus on the third one.

Here’s the first one we need to overcome: (Rev 2:4-5)

·         “But I have against you that you left your first love. Then remember from where you have fallen, and repent, and do the first works. And if not, I am coming to you quickly, and will remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.”

Remember when you were first saved, how zealous you were for the Lord, how much you loved Him and wanted to tell everyone?  Remember how much passion you had?  What did you do?  You went around telling everyone didn’t you?  You were on fire for the Lord! Are you still on fire for the Lord?  Is Jesus Christ the most important thing in your life?  If you feel prompted by the Lord to shout out to Him or call out His name, do you do it or has the fear of man crept in and stolen the freedom of life that the Holy Spirit imparts? Here is the promise; Jesus says that if we overcome this, He will grant to us to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God!

Ok, here’s the next standard: (Rev 2:9-11)

·         “I know your works, and the affliction, and the poverty; but you are rich. And I know the evil speaking of those saying themselves to be Jews, and they are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not at all fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw you into prison, so that you may be tried; and you will have affliction ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life. The one who has an ear, hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies. The one overcoming will not at all be hurt by the second death.”

God tells us here to be faithful until the end in the face of imprisonment and affliction.  He says there are going to be evil people pretending to be something they are not. But even in the midst of poverty and affliction, Jesus says, we are rich!  Here’s the promise; if we overcome, we will not be hurt by the second death! To appreciate that we need to know what the second death is.

This is a quote from Matthew Henry’s Commentary for the Whole Bible,

“(1.) There is not only a first, but a second death, a death after the body is dead. (2.) This second death is unspeakably worse than the first death, both in the dying pangs and agonies of it (which are the agonies of the soul, without any mixture of support) and in the duration; it is eternal death, dying the death, to die and to be always dying. This is hurtful indeed, fatally hurtful, to all who fall under it. (3.) From this hurtful, this destructive death, Christ will save all his faithful servants; the second death shall have no power over those who are partakers of the first resurrection: the first death shall not hurt them, and the second death shall have no power over them.”

Praise God!

To be continued...