Let us turn to John 16. I will begin reading from verse 1. John 16:1-15:
These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me. But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them. And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you. But now I go my way to him that sent me; and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou? But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart. Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe not on me; Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged. I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you.
Let us have a word of prayer. Dear Father, we thank You for Your Word. We do ask that You would apply Your Word to our hearts and bless Your Word for Your own purposes to all who are listening. Father, we pray that Your Spirit would lead us into truth and that You would guide us into Heaven itself and into Your presence. May You lead us this day and in the few remaining days that we have to live as You would have us to live, which is in a good way and in a right way and in a way that is pleasing to You. May we forget all of the days that are past and all of the time that we have wasted in our life. Help us to forget the things that are behind and to reach forth unto You who is before us. Father, we pray that You would have mercy on our children and on anyone here who may not be a child of God. We do thank You that today is the day of salvation. Father, we pray these things in Christ’s Name. Amen.
I wanted to go back over John 16 slowly because I think that there is a lot of information here for us who are living at this time. For instance, in John 16:1, it says:
These things have I spoken unto you…
What things has Jesus spoken unto us? He has spoken unto us His Word. The whole Bible is the Word of God and Jesus has spoken this because He is “the Word [that] was made flesh.” Not only the words that He spoke during His time on earth, but “all scripture is given by inspiration of God.” Christ spoke to us in the Bible and throughout the whole Bible. We also know that “without a parable spake he not.” This is what the Bible tells us and this covers the whole Bible, also.
By the way, some people try to use John 16 to say that there are places where Christ did not speak in a parable. For instance, in John 16:25:
These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs…
“Proverbs” is another name for “parables.”
…but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall show you plainly of the Father.
The disciples responded in John 16:29:
His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb.
Well, guess what? In this statement of John 16:25 where it says:
…the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs…
Christ is not speaking plainly at this time when He is saying this to the disciples, because they actually have no clue as to what He just said to them. This is because in John 16:25, this word “time” is the Greek word hora, which is often translated as “hour.”
…the [hour] cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs…
It was not then; it is now in our day. This is the “hour” when Christ or God, who are one and the same, is no longer speaking in proverbs.
The Bible is a proverb. It is a parable. “Without a parable spake he not,” but now God is interpreting it for us. He is revealing these things to us so that we can know what the Bible means at this time. This is because “the hour is come.”
We have to keep in mind that when we look at the bare essence of a parable or if we would break it down to its main element, what would that be? It would be hidden truth, hidden truth.
When Jesus would say, “The kingdom of heaven is like,” He would then give a parable. This was a parabolic statement. Proverbs are, of course, parables. Job spoke in historical parables. It says a couple of times in the book of Job, “Moreover Job continued his parable.” There are historical parables of the account of Abraham and his wives and their sons, as Galatians 4 reveals to us.
All of that is parabolic; however, it is easy for someone to ask, “What we read in Romans 5:1 concerning being ‘justified by faith,’ is that a parable? You say that Christ spoke in parables and that without a parable, He did not speak, and that the whole Bible is a parable, so is Romans 5:1 a parable?”
Yes, it is. This is because we do not know what God is saying concerning being “justified by faith” until He opens our eyes to see that this is “the faith of Christ.” Yet all kinds of people throughout the church age have thought that this was referring to their faith, that it was their faith, so there is hidden truth.
So in Romans 5:1 where it tells us that we are “justified by faith,” the hidden element is that this is Christ’s faith and not our own.
And in Genesis 1:1 where it says:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
This is very clear and very plain, until you look at the Hebrew that shows us that God is the Hebrew word ‘elohiym, which is a plural word.
Wow! If the rest of the Bible did not help us, how would we ever know that God is One God but three Persons? So there is hidden truth even in Genesis 1:1.
Then it goes on to speak about the Spirit upon the waters and the light coming to remove the darkness, and this is all parabolic. It is true history but parabolic descriptions of the Gospel, as we also read about the Lord Jesus Christ as “the light of the world.”
So, yes, “without a parable spake he not”; and in John 16 where He says that He will speak plainly, it is a parable when He says this because He is looking ahead to nearly 2,000 years later when “the [hour] cometh.”
Again, John 16:1:
These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended.
Now go back to the previous chapter of John 15. This is leading into John 16, so this is the context. John 15:16-20 says:
Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. These things I command you, that ye love one another. If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.
The context of this is the world’s hatred of God and God’s people and of keeping Christ’s Word, which leads to the world’s negative reaction.
So Jesus is saying in John 16:1:
These things…
As well as all of the Bible:
…have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended.
Let me ask you a question that is for me, too. Has the Bible ever offended you? Has the Word of God ever offended you? (I can see some heads nodding.) God’s Word, in some ways, we would say that it is not soft. Maybe this is a good way of saying it. God’s Word is not soft. It can be hard.
When Christ was speaking to His disciples and telling them, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood,” many of them responded, “This is an hard saying; who can hear it?”
It is very difficult to understand the Bible. It is complex. What adds to this complexity is that people think that it is simple. They approach it like it is a schoolbook when, actually, we have scientists who could never understand it. It is extremely difficult to understand what God is saying. Actually, it is impossible for you and for me, for any of us, because we would need God’s mind. The Bible reveals the mind of God and we need His Spirit to teach us what His mind is declaring, what He is saying to us.
Of ourselves, we get nowhere. This is the reason why there are so many religions and so many gospels that are not true. It is because man is putting forth his own effort to understand God, to understand the Bible, and they always, 100% of the time, get it wrong.
There needs to be God’s Spirit to guide us. This is the blessed news that John 16 gets into where it says in John 16:13:
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth…
This says “all truth.” We could think about Acts 2 and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost in 33 A.D. Did God the Holy Spirit guide the churches into “all truth” at that point?
No. If so, then why up until today does the church not understand salvation? They think that it is your faith and they think that the job of the preacher is to convince you, to stir up your emotions in order to get you to make a movement in accepting Christ and coming down the aisle to get you dunked or immersed or sprinkled with water and baptized. They think that this is the church’s job, but it is not because salvation is of the Lord. It is completely in God’s hands, and it is not in any individual’s hands.
If the church was guided into all truth, then why are there so many different opinions on baptism? How many churches out there teach differently on baptism? Just about all of them conflict. They do not have agreement on baptism. If the church was guided into all truth by the Holy Spirit, why do they struggle with just about every doctrine that is out there? They are not coming to truth in numerous ways. Again, this is because Christ spoke in parables.
It is true that Holy Spirit came in 33 A.D. on the day of Pentecost to evangelize the world and to begin the church age for 1955 years. But God also speaks about a second outpouring of the Holy Spirit, does He not, with the latter rain?
He says in Isaiah 11:11:
And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people…
This is referring to God’s elect. God is going to do this a second time. It is the second Jubilee.
If we go to Mark 8, there is an account of a blind man who Jesus finally heals, but it is interesting that there was a little bit of a struggle in relation to this blind individual receiving his sight. Jesus did not struggle with Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus. He gave him sight right away. We also read of other blind people whom He gave sight to immediately. He did not even have to touch them. But here there is a problem with this man, as it says in Mark 8:22-24:
And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him…
This was the first time.
…he asked him if he saw ought. And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking.
Kind of like me if I take my glasses off.
…I see men as trees…
This is not very good eyesight, even though he could see. He could see, but he could not see clearly. Actually, he did not see well at all if he saw men as trees, an oak tree or a fig tree or one of these other trees.
What does this remind us of? How about 1 Corinthians 13 (in the “love” chapter) where it says in 1 Corinthians 13:9-10:
For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come…
Now let us look at John 16:13:
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth…
Of course, the Holy Spirit is perfect.
Turn back to 1 Corinthians 13:10-12:
But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly…
Like seeing “men as trees.” This timeframe would be the first century A.D., the church age. They saw. They had some light. They could see some things but very dark, very mysterious, very veiled truths.
It continues in 1 Corinthians 13:12:
…but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
We made an error with this passage by thinking that in Heaven when we enter into the presence of God is when we would see completely; when, actually, it is now. Now. The hour comes. The hour comes.
This is what John 16:13 says:
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth…
Let us go back to Mark 8 with this blind man who for some reason, of course, God did not want him to see perfectly the first time after Jesus had set his hand on him. It says in Mark 8:25-26:
After that he put his hands again upon his eyes…
That is, God “set his hand again the second time,” as Isaiah 11 says, “to recover the remnant of his people,” to send forth the Holy Spirit once again, to send the latter rain, to sound the Jubilee when the captives are to go free. This is the second Jubilee.
All of this I think is involved here:
…and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly. And he sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.
Just like today. Today we see clearly concerning the end of the world. We see clearly concerning things such as annihilation, things like the five-month period that was never previously known, things such as the unsaved being resurrected to be scattered across the face of the earth rather than being returned to conscious existence to stand for judgment. We see all of these things now at this time because God had sealed them up till the time of the end, which means that the whole church age saw in part. They saw some things and they could understand a little bit about them but not completely.
Okay, John 16:1 again:
These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended.
I was asking you if you have been offended by the Word of God. If we look at this word “offended” or “offend,” I think the Bible definitely helps us to understand what God means in Matthew 11:6, which says:
And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.
This is Christ speaking.
Also, Matthew 13:19-21, which is an explanation of the parable of the sower:
When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side. But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon [or immediately] with joy receiveth it; Yet hath he not root in himself…
And Jesus is the “root of Jesse.” So this is basically saying that the person does not have the Spirit of Christ in them.
…hath he not root in himself, but dureth…
We would say “endureth” or “endures.”
…but dureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended.
I know that I have seen this happen with people over the last decade. From one year to the next, sometimes it seems like there are new people sitting here. We can go back to the end of the church age when we had some friends whom we were pretty close with, but they could not bide the teaching that God was finished with the churches and congregations. That really provoked some to anger. You could hear it in their voice.
I do not get to see every person, but from time to time when I teach, I sometimes look up to see people actually turn red with anger because of what I am teaching. For example, one time I was referring to the information that we learned about concerning the fact that God does not have a place called “hell” where He is going to throw the sinner into forevermore; rather, He is going to destroy man. I forget when but this was awhile back when we were going into some detail in trying to show the verses that prove this, and I could see the offense literally boiling up within this person as they turned red. I know that I was right because after that day, this person never came back.
This is the wonderful thing about a fellowship if it is done correctly; that is, we are a group of individuals who gather together to read the Bible. People come and people go, yet they are not going to get a phone call. No one is seeking to build anything here, to have a congregation, to have a bunch of members. We have no members. Since we have no members, what does it matter if people come or if people go? It really does not matter at all.
However, sometimes I do wonder, “Is it me?” You probably think, “Well, yes!” Well, let me tell you what you do wrong. I am sure that you could give me a list! However, normally, people put up with other people. You put up with me and I put up with you. (Just kidding.) You know, we put up with one another; however, at times when there is a teaching that comes up, some people are so—I do not know how to say this—they are so identified with that teaching, they have hold of it and say, “If you are saying that the Bible no longer teaches this, then I am out of here!”
Why? Because we have to be corrected by the Bible. We have to allow God to show us what truth is, especially today because the Spirit of Truth has come and He is revealing things to us.
As far as this goes, it is not even Mr. Camping. He is not the problem. The problem is the Bible. The Bible is the offense. Christ is that rock of stumbling. He is the offense. It is His Word and He identifies completely with His Word.
So if you do not like the Word and what it says, that is how you feel about Christ. It is against Him and not the individual. This is how God reassured Samuel, “For they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me,” because Christ is the One who sends His people out into the world.
Look at Mark 13:9-11, which says:
But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them. And the gospel must first be published among all nations. But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour…
Revelation 14:7 speaks of:
…the hour of his judgment…
Revelation 8:1 says:
…there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.
This is because this was the first part of the Great Tribulation, which is identified with an hour, and so this silence took place for the 2300-day period.
Mark 13 is answering this question of the disciples, just like Matthew 24, “What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?”
“In that hour” of Christ’s coming and the end of the world, we are not to think about what we are going to say, “Neither do ye premeditate,” which is about as unusual a command that God could give in the Bible, because elsewhere He tells us, “Meditate upon these things”; “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed.”
But, “‘In that hour,’ do not bother. Do not bother, Calvin. Do not bother, Matthew Henry. Do not bother, Luther, Knox, Zwingli. Do not bother all of you men of old, all of you theologians because you cannot know it. It is sealed up.”
They would have saved themselves a lot of trouble. They would have saved themselves a great deal of trouble when they wrote their commentaries and their theological treatises and all of the writings that they wrote, because they did not get it right. Not one of them got it right. It was not pre-mill, it was not post-mill, and it was not a-mill. It was none of the above. It was none of the above; instead, it was what God determined it to be “in that hour.”
This is what Mark 13:11 goes on to say:
…neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.
So it is not Mr. Camping. Sorry. It is not even me and I am on a much lesser degree. It is not John and it is not Greg and it is not Robert. It is not anyone except the Holy Ghost. It is the Holy Ghost.
If we were not going to the Bible and looking at Scripture compared with Scripture, which is what the Bible tells us is how “the Holy Ghost teacheth,” if we were not doing this, then you could certainly say, “Well, it is you men.” However, if we are following the methodology that God has laid out, which is “comparing spiritual things with spiritual” and as a result “the Holy Ghost teacheth,” then we would have to say, “This is the hour. This is the time. It is now, for real. This is it and God is speaking and He is correcting doctrine, correcting a great many things.”
So I am sorry if it is your favorite doctrine. Really. I can sympathize to a degree. I did not want the church age to end after we just formed a church. I did not like that. The Bible was an offense to me; and yet, by God’s grace, He taught me that we need to just follow His Word and not our own thinking or our own reasoning, and so, too, with all of these other doctrines.
It is sad. It is really sad; however, God has many purposes in opening up the Scriptures at this time. One of the reasons for revealing these things through progressive revelation is to strike at the heart of man, that proud heart, that proud nature that is within people. He has developed these things to humble us and to test us to see if we are a true child of God, because that proud nature is no longer within the believer. They have been given a new heart and a new spirit.
Again, John 16:1:
These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended.
I have so many other verses on being offended, so how about we go to just one more. Let us turn to Matthew 24:10-13:
And then shall many be offended…
Again, Matthew 24 is a chapter dealing with the time of the end, the Great Tribulation. It continues:
And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
I have another question for you. We are to endure what? Persecution? Yes, to some degree. Endure Bible teaching? Are you trying to make a statement about my teaching? Endure Bible teaching? Yes. Enduring temptations and other issues are involved with this, but remember the parable of the sower. Individuals are offended when persecution or affliction arises for the Word’s sake.
So all of those things are related to the Word and to the doctrine that God is going to bring forth. Many are offended; however, God would say to us to endure whatever offense there is in the eyes of the world. We are to endure affliction for the Word’s sake, for holding onto the truth of what the Bible teaches at this time. We are to “endure unto the end.”
The true believer, of course, will. Where else can we go? We can only go to the Lord. We can only go to His Word and we can only say, “‘Lord, not my will, but thine, be done.’ Not my word, not my gospel, but Your Word, Your Gospel.” This is how it has to be and we are to be in submission to what He says in His Word, the Bible.
Well, I wanted to get into at least the first four verses of John 16, but I do not think we will today, so why do we not stop here and then next time, Lord willing, we will pick this up in the following verses of John 16.
Let us close in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we do thank You for Your Word. Father, we know that it is a light thing, it is a light burden to be identified with Your Word and to experience the wrath of man and their displeasure. Father, it is far better to suffer these little things for a little while because this light affliction does give way to an eternal weight of glory. Father, we thank You that like the race that many have run in Your name, the Christian race is almost over. It is like we are a runner who has come around the final bend and we can see the finish line ahead of us. Father, we pray that You would help us to finish well. May You be with Your people, as You were with Job when You blessed his latter days more than the beginning. May You bless the Gospel as You blessed Samson who slew more in his death than he had previously. Father, we pray that You would bless Your people at this time. Help us to be faithful witnesses and true witnesses of what the Bible is saying. We ask that You would help to make our conversation honest amongst the people around us. We pray for the rest of this day. We do ask that we would remove our foot from polluting in any way Your Holy Day. May we not try to find our own pleasure in this day. This is not a day for baseball or football or hockey or basketball. It is not a day for that kind of thing. It is a day for spiritual activity, and we all need help in living this day in a glorifying way to You. So we ask that You would help us to be involved with spiritual things the rest of today. Father, we pray these things in Christ’s Name. Amen.
Questions and Answers
Chris: If anyone has a question that you would like to bring up or a comment that you would like to make, now is a good time.
I was informed this past week when someone came up to me and said, “Let me ask you something.” Actually, they came up to me and I could not talk to them at that time, so later they wrote me an email where they said, “Let me ask you something. Do you think that Jesus is eternal?”
I wrote them back and said, “Yes, of course, Jesus is eternal God. He is the Word. He has always been.”
This person wrote, “I thought so, but I was talking to someone and they said that you did not think that Jesus is eternal.”
I thought, well, we have open forums here, we have Paltalk during the week, anybody can call my house or people can send me an anonymous email if anyone would think something like this. In other words, there are many ways of asking me.
So I said, “Maybe you heard something related to Christ being declared to be the Son of God, I would guess. But Jesus has always been the Word. He has always been God, but He died from the foundation of the world. As He rose, He was declared to be the Son. As far as His name of ‘the Son’ goes, He became the only begotten Son of God at that point.”
This is why we have these times. More than that, these opportunities also provides a check on the teaching. If you heard something that you do not think was right or correct, please bring it up, please raise your hand. You can come up here and ask or you can do it anonymously by leaving a message on our phone system or by sending an anonymous email, or go into the Paltalk room where you can make up your own name and nobody knows who you are. You can say, “Look, here is the problem that I have.” We provide these different ways that are available for anyone should you have anything like that.
1st Question: Chris, I wanted to stick with this question of no man knowing the day or hour. People say, “If 2011 comes and goes, what should we do?” I heard that for those who do not believe that 2011 is the end, it is just like saying that Christ is not their Saviour.
Chris: What you are saying is that the information about Christ being the Saviour comes from the Bible and the information regarding May 21, 2011 comes from the same source, the Bible, and so we trust the Bible. We trust the Bible. As a result, I personally would not get involved with people who want to talk about May 22 and what if it does not happen. I would not get into this kind of a conversation or anything like that, because we have been given confirmation by God.
I know that I heard about the five-month period and May 21 several times, and I think that it went in one ear and out the other. It was being discussed on the “Latter Rain” Yahoo group where there are a lot of Family Radio listeners way before Mr. Camping ever talked about it. I heard it and I knew what they were saying, and yet I never understood it. Then I heard Mr. Camping as he learned it and was finally tying two and two together, but I had to listen to him several times. Then one day, it just hit me.
The Great Tribulation is 23 years long. It began the day before Pentecost, May 21 in 1988. We knew that it was 23 years long; therefore, we could calculate it to May 21, 2011, which is the 23rd year, to the day. Then we recently learned that there are 8400 days involved in this, and 84 has everything to do with the Great Tribulation.
But that was all developed separately. Nobody was thinking of the flood of 7,000 years. Nobody had all of the pieces and was trying to put them all in place at the same time. That information was developed years, really, before we learned about the information of the flood being 7,000 years.
It was not until we learned further that the Feast of Tabernacles permits an extra day for travel that this date was nudged from October 20th to the 21st, and then the five-month period could be seen. Then someone else—Who is this someone? I do not know—someone else realized that May 21, 2011 is the 17th day of the 2nd month of the Hebrew calendar, which is the exact day that God shut the door on the ark.
How is it possible that this information was derived completely separate from anything else, this 23-year period, which is the end of the Great Tribulation and is the same day in the year 2011 that is the equivalent date to when God shut them in the ark?
And, by the way, May 21, 2011, is the 17th day of the 2nd month. May 21, 2012 is not. May 21, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 is not, nor May 21, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010. May 21, 2011 is the only year in that twenty-year span that is the 17th day of the 2nd month of the Hebrew calendar, which is precisely 7,000 years from the flood and also the time when God shut the door on Noah and his family.
2nd Question: I was at the parade in Brooklyn yesterday when someone came up to me and said something about the Mayan calendar; however, I gave them the date of 2011.
Chris: Yes, the Mayan calendar points to 2012 as a change of the Great Cycle; however, we are not going to get there. The world is not going to reach that date. Without fail, if you are handing out tracts, in many parts of the world you are going to find people who either bring up “no man knows the day or hour” or the Mayan calendar.
This is one of the reasons why I wanted to get into that last week. I wanted to see if it might be possible to develop a tract so that when individuals like this come up we can pull it out and hand it to them.
But we do not have to worry about this. This is a manmade calendar that has no authority and, therefore, no power. The Bible’s calendar has God’s authority and God’s power behind it to make it so. No earthly calendar has that.
Does anyone else have anything? Okay, let us close with a word of prayer. Dear Father, we, once again, thank You for Your grace and Your mercy and Your goodness. Father, we thank You that this is Your character, that this is what You are like. You are not an evil judge but a just judge. You are not an evil Father but a righteous Father. Father, we do pray that You would have mercy on our children. May they go to You in prayer. May our children begin, if they have not already, to read the Bible and to find time alone. We have the rest of this day, which is the perfect day for this. There is no school or schoolwork to divert their attention. We ask that they might get alone and pick up the Bible without being told and just lay down and relax and read like they would read a novel, that they would eagerly at times put a few hours into reading. May You move our children to read and to pray to You. Father, we wonder why it is that they do not want to pick up the Bible. We pray that it is not an offense to them and we pray that You would not be an offense to any of us. May we not be ashamed of You and Your Word, because the horrible result would be Your being ashamed of us. We ask that we would go to You and trust You and lean on You for the days that we have left, and may You be with us and bless each one of us according to Your perfect will. Father, we pray these things in Christ’s Name. Amen.