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Satan is a thief. The lie satan has told Christians is that there is eternal life coming … later. Satan says, after you die and go to heaven you will have eternal life. Satan lies to us. God says we have everlasting life now. We have believed the lie rather than God. So satan kills us. Satan is a thief. The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. Satan wants to kill Christians. Revelation 12:17 says satan makes war with those which keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. God says satan is subtle. He truly is. Did you see just how subtle his lie is? Satan says, after you die and go to heaven you will have eternal life. It is actually a fully true statement. Only satan doesn’t mention the timing of when things happened. Satan implies your death is in your future. Satan doesn’t tell you the full truth, that you died in baptism and your death has already occurred. Satan doesn’t mention you were translated into heaven in baptism. Hebrews 9:27 it is appointed unto men once to die Romans 6:3 Know you not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Romans 6:4 we are buried with Christ by baptism into death 2 Corinthians. 4:18 the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. God appointed you to die only once. You die in baptism and your death is forever behind you. It has happened. You will never die again. That’s the good news. You die in baptism and you never die again. Satan says you have to see your death for you to have died. God says the death you don’t see is your eternal true death. The lie satan has told Christians is that there is eternal life coming … later. Satan says, after you die a seen death you will go to heaven and have eternal life. Because we believe the lie, satan kills us. We have our seen death. Satan destroys our body. Satan is a thief who steals, kills, and destroys. He steals our inheritance, he kills us, and he destroys our body. We are a spirit and a soul living in a body. If we die, what happens? A seen death is temporary. We are saved by Jesus, our sins are forgiven, so we do not go to hell after we die, we go to heaven. We do have eternal life in heaven with Jesus, our spirit lives, our soul lives, but satan just destroyed our body and took our inheritance away from us. We were alive on earth having inherited everything. We are no longer on earth. In heaven we hear the truth and we see what satan did to us because we believed his lie. Why did Adam die? He sinned. Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins. If your sins are washed away in baptism, why would you die? You don’t. One death is all that God planned for us, and he sent Jesus to be the one who would die the seen death in our place. When we are baptized we are buried with Jesus into death, and then raised up out of the water alive forevermore. We have our one death and resurrection in baptism. Romans 6:7 For he that is dead is freed from sin. We are freed from sin in baptism. We are permanently free from sin. We are righteous. We are freed by God from both sin and death in baptism. We are righteous and alive forevermore. Jesus takes away our sins, Jesus gives us eternal life, and Jesus gives us our inheritance of the earth. Matthew 5:5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Proverbs 37:29 The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein forever. Proverbs 10:30 The righteous shall never be removed: but the wicked shall not inhabit the earth. Where are we now? On the earth. We have received our inheritance. The question is not when will we receive our inheritance, the question is, will we keep it? If you listen to Jesus you will know the truth and keep your inheritance. If you listen to satan lie to you, he’s going to steal your inheritance, and you will be the one who let him do so. David fought Goliath. The challenge made was straightforward – whoever wins the battle, the losing army would serve the winner’s army. Two would fight in place of two armies battling. Jesus fought Satan. And Jesus won. He won on behalf of the people of God. Because Jesus won the battle, God exalted him. God has subjected all in heaven and on earth, all seen and unseen, to Jesus. The kingdom of Jesus rules over the kingdom of satan. After Jesus rose from the dead, he came and spoke to his disciples and said, all power is given to me in heaven and in earth. (Matthew 28:18) Jesus victory over death, over satan, over darkness – it’s finished. The very next thing Jesus says to the disciples is, Matthew 28:19, go you therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Do you see it? Go to all the nations, tell them I won, and baptize them – give them freedom. When you die in baptism, you are freed from sin. When you die in baptism, you are freed from death. Your one death is behind you in that baptism. You are now blessed. You are righteous and inherit the earth; you shall never be removed from the earth. Love your neighbor as yourself. Give them the same freedom I gave to you. Set them free. The situation today is like the end of the civil war in the united states. The union army defeats the confederate army and the government sets free all slaves. Two years later, the union army arrives in Texas to tell the slaves they are free. The war had ended two years prior, the slaves were free, but the slave owners in Texas didn’t tell them that truth because they wanted them to remain slaves. The slaves didn’t know how to read. They couldn’t read the proclamation which set them free. Satan treats us the same way, don’t read the word for yourself, I’ll tell you what is says. When you listen to a liar, you hear lies. The union army came to Texas to enforce the victory and set the slaves free. That is what we do for the nations. The winning army goes to all the nations and sets the people free. Jesus has given all nations, Jews and Gentiles, freedom from sin and death. Go to all the nations, tell them I won, and baptize them – give them freedom. Set them free of sin and death and free of satan’s lie. We enable satan to hold the nations hostage to his lie because we do not know the truth and remain on the earth, living and never dying, celebrating our 200th birthday, our 500th birthday. Satan says to the nations, these people preaching Jesus, they can’t set you free of sin. The penalty for sin is death. See, they are dying, just like you are dying. We are conformed to the world because we don’t know the truth, and both we, and those around us in the nations suffer for our believing a lie. Jesus is the end. Jesus in us is the end. When we live and do not die, people will see Jesus in us, they will believe and be baptized, be set free of sin, and they too will live. There will be no more death on earth. 1 Corinthians 15:26 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. Jesus rose from the dead on the third day. Jesus is alive. We join with Jesus and defeat death at our baptism. We come out of baptism alive forevermore. Jesus has given us peace. Satan has been crushed under Jesus’ feet. After the resurrection, when Jesus appears to his disciples, the first thing Jesus says is, Peace to you. He says it twice in a matter of verses. He’s telling them the good news that the war is won, all the enemies are defeated. You can put down your swords, the fight is over. There is peace. I give you rest. Enter Zion. Celebrate. We go and tell the nations the good news, we set the nations free of sin and death, and we enter Zion and we celebrate. We rest. We rest individually, free of sin, and alive forever. We rest corporately, as nations gathered together to Jesus. Isaiah 14:7 The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into singing. Don’t let satan steal your inheritance. You have everlasting life. Jesus is your everlasting life. If you spend time with Jesus every day you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. You will remain living forever on the earth. You will be free of sin, free of death, and free of satan’s lies. And because you are free, you will be able to give freedom to others. It is good to be a disciple.
The world has been judged Jesus, on the way to the cross, says in John 12:31, now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. 12:32 And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. Judgment of the world happened at the cross. God is not bound by time. It is why God can write in the Psalms that the soldiers who crucify Jesus will cast lots to decide who gets his robe. God didn’t cause the soldiers to do that, he just knew they would, and so he wrote down the detail for us about a 1,000 years before we would see it happen. God knows every person who will be born in every place in all time and he knows the details of our lives. God is good to all. Even the most wicked man receives a call to come to Jesus and be saved. God knows the decision we will make, to believe in Jesus and be righteous, or to deny Jesus and remain wicked. Thus God can judge the world at the cross and do so with righteous and perfect justice. The wicked are cut off from the land of the living. God has already spoken this judgment. Mankind is going extinct. Judgment has already happened. We are simply watching it unfold. The wicked are perishing from the earth at a rapid rate. The old earth is just that – old. Man dies when they reach 70 – 120 years old. Birthrates are below 2.1 in almost every nation in the earth. When the birth rate is below 2.1 the population is shrinking. There are not enough children being born to sustain even a level population number. China at 1 billion people will soon have only 300 million. That is happening in nation after nation. People will die all around the earth in ever increasing numbers of death each year, if they do not hear the good news, become righteous, and receive life from God. The righteous will live. The wicked shall not inhabit the earth. They return to dust. The earth looks like it is filled with people at 7 billion and is ever increasing, but the majority of nations are actually contracting in population. You don’t see the fall yet, but wait 120 years. Every man alive today will be dead. The number of children they have had is a dramatically smaller population. The generation after that, the children of their children, is even smaller. To see what God is doing, think as God does, and consider the generations. The wicked are cut off from the land of the living. The memory of them, their name, is being erased from the earth. They have no more children. The children of God, however, are being born at a rapid rate. While the wicked die and disappear, the righteous thrive and multiply. God is in the generation of the righteous. Every baptism brings another child of God into the world. God has a lot of children. Jesus brings many brethren to glory. The world has been judged. The old world has passed away. We are seeing it vanish. All things are become new. We become new in baptism. We are watching the righteous heaven and righteous earth appear. 2 Corinthians 5:17-18 If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who has reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ. The earth was made to be inhabited. Those who remain on the earth are the righteous. The new heaven and new earth are a very personal event for the Father. His children are being born. God knows all his kids names. God knows your name. He knows where you live in your Father’s house. When the last man has been born and has made his decision regarding Jesus, there will be no more men to save in baptism. The children of God will have all been born.
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BEING A DISCIPLE OF JESUS CHRIST
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