Two Minutes With The Bible

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The Resurrection Mourning
by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam


    “But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping” (John 20:11).

Why did she weep? Because the tomb was empty! What needless sorrows follow in the wake of unbelief! Those tear-dimmed eyes did not see the evidence of the Lord’s resurrection. And when the angels asked: “Why weepest thou?” she said: “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him.” Poor woman! She would rather have found His body there!

But here are two on their way to Emmaus, no less sorrowful. They are talking together about all that has happened during the past few days and “[as] they communed together and reasoned, Jesus Himself drew near and went with them, but their eyes were holden that they should not know Him. And He said unto them: What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?” (Luke 24:15-17).

The word “walk” here does not mean to walk on but to walk about — to wander aimlessly. They were on their way to Emmaus, but they were so brokenhearted that they did not care whether or not they got there. What had caused them to give up hope? Listen to their own explanations:

    “We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, today is the third day since these things were done” (Luke 24:21).

They had given up hope because this was the third day since the Lord’s crucifixion, yet this was the very day He was to rise from the dead, according to His own oft-repeated promise.

Mary weeps because the tomb is empty! The two disciples are brokenhearted because this is now the third day since His death! We smile at the irony of unbelief. But what about ourselves? The risen, glorified Christ exercises far greater power and offers far greater blessings to believers now than His followers of old knew anything about.

“Oh, what peace we often forfeit! Oh, what needless pain we bear!” All because we do not take God at His Word.

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Life-Savers
by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam


    “The world passeth away” (1 John 2:17).

    “The whole world lieth in wickedness (1 John 5:19).

Christians who spend their time and energy in social service, civic reform, programs for the uplift of the community, etc., forget that this world is like a sinking ship. They are wasting their time and energy trying to save the wreck instead of saving individuals from the wreck.

Paul lived in a day when politics were corrupt, when power trampled righteousness under foot, when society was degraded, when purety was laughed at, and immorality was exalted. He saw what was called “art and culture” dragging thousands down as it tempted them from statues that almost lived, and from writings and pictures so vile that they were only surpassed by the actual immorality from Nero’s court down.

Yet you never find him taking part in political campaigns, nor urging social reform. His great aim was to present the Lord Jesus Christ as the One to whom individuals must fly for salvation.

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The Grapes of Wrath
by Pastor Paul M. Sadler


    “And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs” (Rev. 14:20).

The great winepress of God is the area around the holy city of God. It extends from north northwest to south southeast of Jerusalem, from Mt. Megiddo, known as Armageddon (Rev. 16:16), to Bozrah (Isa. 63:1-4). Tactically, the Scriptures seem to suggest that the Antichrist will launch an attack simultaneously from both the north and the south. The center of the battlefield will be the narrow Kidron Valley, called the Valley of Jehoshaphat, located just east of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. According to the Spirit of God, the area of the battlefield is said to be “a thousand and six hundred furlongs,” a distance of exactly two hundred miles.

Christ will crush the Antichrist’s forces of evil with merely a spoken word and the brightness of His coming. When He tramples His enemies in His almighty power, their blood will stain His garments (Isa. 63:2-4; Rev. 19:13). The blood from this innumerable host of godless unbelievers and their horses will run high to the horses’ bridles, according to the Apostle John, writing in the Spirit. Many commentators shrink from taking a literal interpretation here, saying it is utterly preposterous. We feel, however, more comfortable taking God at His Word. On average, an adult male has about five quarts of blood. Millions upon ten millions of men would bleed a deep river of blood. Interestingly, the Spirit emphasizes that the winepress is “trodden without [outside] the city” of Jerusalem in direct connection with the blood rising to the horses’ bridle. In all likelihood, the blood will probably run the deepest in the valley of Jehoshaphat (Kidron Valley), which is a rocky, mountainous ravine that’s about 20 miles in length.

Responsibility: Only the believer in Christ can fully understand the seriousness of the coming wrath of God. Many of the unsaved are clueless, and Satan would like nothing better than to keep it that way. We must therefore bear in mind that, if an unbeliever refuses to receive God’s gracious offer of reconciliation and foolishly rejects Christ as his personal Savior, he must be warned about the bloodbath that lies ahead.

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Our Manifest Destiny
by Pastor Ricky Kurth


    “In hope of eternal life, which God…promised before the world began” (Titus 1:2).

In the Law of Moses, God promised the people of Israel that they could “live” (Lev. 18:5)—live eternally—if they kept His commandments.  We know that’s what Leviticus 18:5 meant because the Lord Jesus quoted that verse to a Jewish man seeking eternal life (Lu. 10:25-28).

But God promised us Gentiles eternal life before the Law, even “before the world began.”  But unlike the promise of life He made to the Jews in the Law, He didn’t reveal His promise to us Gentiles for thousands of years!  Speaking of that promise (Titus 1:2), Paul added,

    “But hath in due times manifested His word through preaching, which is committed unto me…” (Titus 1:3).

When God finally decided to reveal His promise to give the Gentiles eternal life, He “manifested” it through Paul.

If you’re not sure what that word “manifested” means, it is well defined in something the Lord said about things that had not yet been revealed about God’s prophetic program for Israel:

    “…nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest, neither any thing hid, that shall not be known…” (Luke 8:17).

So to make something manifest means to make known something that was secret or hidden.  That means when Paul says that God “manifested His word through preaching, which is committed unto me,” he meant that he preached a secret that had been hid but now was made known.  Doesn’t that sound like what he wrote in Colossians 1:25,26?

    “…I am made a minister, according to…the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest.”

But now, here’s the thing about the hidden, secret mystery that Paul made manifest.  It involved more than just the fact that God promised eternal life to the Gentiles before the world began.  It involved what Paul talked about in Ephesians 3:8,9,

    “…unto me…is this grace given, that I should…make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God.”

Paul wasn’t just called on to reveal the mystery that God promised eternal life to Gentiles before the world began.  He was called on to reveal the fellowship of the mystery, something he explained a few verses earlier in that passage when he said,

    “…God…made known unto me the mystery…that the Gentiles should be fellowheirs and of the same body…” (Ephesians 3:2-6).

The fellowship of the mystery is that Gentiles could not only have eternal life, they could be fellow or equal* members of “the same body,” the Body of Christ, with Jewish believers.  And Paul was raised up to make this equality manifest.

In the 19th century, many Americans believed that it was the “manifest destiny” of the United States that our nation would expand across North America.  But in the 1st century, the Apostle Paul made it manifest that even Gentiles like us are destined to live eternally as equal heirs with Jewish believers in the Body of Christ for all eternity.  Glory!

* We know the word “fellow” means equal because in speaking of Christ, God the Father called Him “the man who is My fellow” (Zech. 13:7), and Christ was God’s “equal” (Phil. 2:6).

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It's All In the Bible
by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam


We couldn’t help hearing it! This woman had a voice that could be heard at considerable distance and we distinctly heard her say: “I got it all out from the Bible.”

“Well, at least somebody’s interested in the Bible,” we said to each other.

But as she prattled on it turned out that she had used the records in an old family Bible to establish her claim to part of an estate. These records, introduced in court, had won the case for her.

There was, after all, no indication that she was interested in the Bible — only in those pages between the Old and New Testaments which, in some editions of the Bible, are kept for family records.

Actually she was no different from the masses about us who go about from day to day interested only in the things of this life and ignoring almost completely the things that really matter: God, heaven, hell and their own eternal destiny.

If these people only knew what treasures are to be found in the Bible! Among these are “riches of mercy” (Eph. 2:4), “riches of grace” (Eph. 1:7), “riches of glory” (Phil. 4:19), “riches of wisdom and knowledge” (Rom. 11:33), “the riches of the full assurance of understanding” (Col. 2:2), “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8). And the best part of it is that anyone may have these riches simply for the asking:

    “For there is no difference… for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him,

    “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Rom. 10:12,13).

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True Liberty
by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam


As true Americans celebrate their liberty, true Christians should rejoice in the even greater liberty which they have in Christ.

Our Lord said: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” and “If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:32,36). Likewise St. Paul declares that believers in Christ have been made “free from sin” and have become “servants to God,” who deals with us in grace (Rom. 6:22).

It is strange that so many sincere religious people actually wish to be in bondage to the Mosaic Law, which can only judge and condemn them for their sins. Peter called the law: “a yoke… which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear” (Acts 15:10). Paul called it “the handwriting of decrees, that was against us, which was contrary to us” (Col. 2:14). He called it “the ministration of death” and “the ministration of condemnation” (II Cor. 3:7,9).

He challenged those who “desired” to be under the law:

    “Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?” (Gal. 4:21).

“For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written. Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them” (Gal. 3:10).

Thank God, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13). Man always responds better to grace than to law. The law was “added because of transgressions” (Gal. 3:19). “By the law is the knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20). But Christ died for our sins and now true believers serve God from gratitude and love. Hence Rom. 6:14 says: “Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law but under grace.” Since Christ has redeemed us from the law (Gal. 4:5) God says to every true believer:

    “Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Gal. 5:1).

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Spiritual Victory
by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam


If we go to the Scriptures and claim, by faith, the Spirit’s help in overcoming our sins, we enter into the enjoyment of the fullness of spiritual life and blessing. If we fail to do so, we wither and die — as far as our spiritual experience is concerned. We can never lose our salvation, of course, for “everlasting life” was obtained by faith in Christ, not by walking in the Spirit. This is confirmed by the fact that the same apostle who pleads: “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God,” hastens to add: “WHEREBY YE ARE SEALED UNTO THE DAY OF REDEMPTION” (Eph. 4:30).

But failure to appropriate God’s gracious provision for victory over sin does result in death as far as our Christian experience is concerned. This is what the Apostle means, when he says, by the Spirit:

    “FOR TO BE CARNALLY MINDED IS DEATH; BUT TO BE SPIRITUALLY MINDED IS LIFE AND PEACE” (Rom. 8:6).

    “FOR IF YE LIVE AFTER THE FLESH, YE SHALL DIE: BUT IF YE THROUGH THE SPIRIT DO MORTIFY [PUT TO DEATH] THE DEEDS OF THE BODY, YE SHALL LIVE” (Rom. 8:13).

To the careless Corinthians, the Apostle Paul exclaimed:

    “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?

    “For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (I Cor. 6:19,20).

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Everybody's a Somebody in the Body of Christ
by Pastor Kevin Sadler


This article is an excerpt from the booklet Everybody’s a Somebody in the Body of Christ, by Pastor Kevin Sadler, based on episode 6 of the TV series, Transformed by Grace.

    “For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased Him. And if they were all one member, where were the body?” (1 Cor. 12:14-19).

These verses in 1 Corinthians 12 teach that each and every member of the Body of Christ is vitally important. Nobody’s a nobody. Everybody’s a somebody. Each has an essential role.

Many of the Corinthian believers were not happy with their gifts, and many in the church wanted a gift that someone else had. Paul says “the Body is not one member.” That is, we simply cannot all hold the same position in the Body. God has graced different people with different abilities, and God in His wisdom and sovereignty has placed each of us in the Body where we will be the most useful for Him: “God set the members…as it hath pleased Him” (v. 18).

The “honourable” / “less honourable” and “comely” / “uncomely” members (v. 23) that Paul refers to is from man’s point of view (“which seem,” v. 22; “which we think,” v. 23). From God’s vantage point, all members of the Body of Christ are important and necessary.

“Sir Michael Costa, the celebrated conductor, was holding a rehearsal. As the mighty chorus rang out, accompanied by scores of instruments, the piccolo player — a little pint-sized flute—thinking perhaps that his contribution would not be missed amid so much music, stopped playing.

“Suddenly, the great leader stopped and cried out, ‘Where is the piccolo?’

“The sound of that one small instrument was necessary to the harmony, and the master conductor missed it when it dropped out. The point? To the conductor, there are no insignificant instruments in an orchestra. Sometimes the smallest and seemingly least important one can make the greatest contribution. Even if it doesn’t seem to make that big a difference to the audience at large, the conductor knows it right away!

“In the church, the players and the instruments are diverse — different sizes, different shapes, different notes, different roles to play. Like the piccolo player in Sir Michael’s orchestra, we often in our own sovereignty decide that our contribution is not significant. Our contribution couldn’t possibly make a difference, so we quit playing, stop doing that which we’ve been given to do. We drop out, but the Conductor immediately notices. From our perspective, our contribution may be small; but from His, it is crucial.

“I just have to believe I’m talking to some piccolo players who have dropped out of the orchestra for whatever reasons: pain, exhaustion, insecurity, criticism, laziness, misbehavior. Convinced that your contribution doesn’t mean a hill of beans in the bigger scheme of things, you have buried your talent in the ground.” 3

That’s what Paul says in verses 15,16; to paraphrase, “Should the foot complain that he is only a foot and not a hand, or the ear that he is not the eye?” That is, the foot is a part of the body, the ear is a part of the body, and they’re both needed. For a body to be a body, it must have different parts and diverse members. Similarly, as members of the Body of Christ, we have particular functions to perform. Our purpose in life should be to perform our separate functions as well as we possibly can, and in His strength for the glory of God.

God does not want us to envy other people’s gifts and positions in the Body of Christ, and He also does not want us to judge others who may have a different gift. Some are prayer warriors, some are evangelists, some are teachers, some are pastors, some give, some rule, some show mercy and compassion, some minister by caring for the poor, providing for the sick, or watching over the local church. We’re not all eyes, nor hands, nor feet, and we’re not all ears.

If we were all the one same part of the Body, like the eye, Paul says in verse 17, then how would we hear, and if we were all an ear, how would we smell? In other words, if we all had the same position in the Body, how would the Body work? How would we minister? It would not even be a Body as verse 19 shows. The diversity in the Body allows Christ’s Church to reach more people, to help more people, to minister to more people. The Church is most effective with its members faithfully performing the different ministries to which God has called them.

Notes:

1    J. Michael Shannon, contributor Preaching Today, accessed August 4, 2018, https://www.preaching.com/sermon-illustrations/illustration-service/. This source attributes the anecdote to a sermon by Richard Love entitled “Blowing Your Horn.”
2    J. Michael Shannon, contributor Preaching Today, accessed August 4, 2018, https://www.preaching.com/sermon-illustrations/illustration-service/. This source attributes the anecdote to a sermon by Richard Love entitled “Blowing Your Horn.”
3    J. Michael Shannon, contributor Preaching Today, accessed August 4, 2018, https://www.preaching.com/sermon-illustrations/illustration-service/. This source attributes the anecdote to a sermon by Richard Love entitled “Blowing Your Horn.”

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Full Assurance
by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam


It is wonderful to have the full assurance of salvation, and it is God’s will that every one of us enjoy this assurance. Toward the close of his life the Apostle John wrote by divine inspiration:

    “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life…” (I John 5:13).

There are three bases upon which believers in Christ may enjoy the full assurance of salvation: First, God urges every true believer: “Let us draw near, with a sincere heart, in full assurance of faith…” (Heb. 10:22). This is the full assurance that results from simply believing God; much as a child implicitly believes what his father has said and is absolutely sure that it is true. God says: “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life” (John 3:36). We may simply — and with good reason — believe His Word and enjoy the full assurance of faith.

Second, we may enjoy what Heb. 6:11 calls “the full assurance of hope.” The hope of the Bible, however, must not be confused with wishing. The Christian’s “hope” is “an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast” (Ver. 19). It comes from having proved God. Thus the full assurance of hope is the confidence that results from having accepted God’s Word.

But third, and best of all, is what Col. 2:2 calls “riches of the full assurance of understanding.” This full assurance is God’s reward to Christians who study His Word and His purposes, beginning with His plan of salvation as revealed in “the gospel of the grace of God.” When one not only believes God’s Word, but begins to understand it he cannot but be gripped by its sublime reasonableness, its powerful logic, and its provision for his deepest needs, and thus he comes to enjoy “all [the] riches of the full assurance of understanding.”

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Conversation Peace
by Pastor Ricky Kurth


    “Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel” (Phil. 1:27).

Interestingly, whenever Paul uses the phrase “stand fast,” it is always to challenge people to stand fast in an area in which they were not standing fast! For instance, he tells the Corinthians to “stand fast in the faith” (I Cor. 16:13), for they had lost their faith in one of the fundamentals of the faith, the resurrection (I Cor. 15:12-50). He told the Galatians to “stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” (Gal. 5:1) because they were forsaking grace for the law. He told the Thessalonians to “stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught” (II Thes. 2:15), especially the “tradition” of working for a living (3:7-12). The Thessalonians had become so excited about the Rapture that many of them quit their jobs in anticipation of the Lord’s coming!

But here in Philippians 1:27, Paul tells the Philippians to “stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel.” This is because two ladies in the church were quarreling (4:2), and some in the church were siding with Euodias and some with Syntyche. “Striving together” is the Greek word sunathleo. The prefix sun means together with, and athleo is the word from which we get athlete and athletics. Athletes are often teammates who must strive together to achieve a common victory, and this is what Paul was calling on the Philippians to do for the cause of Christ.

Notice Paul isn’t talking about faith in the gospel. The faith of the gospel is our faithfulness or fidelity to maintaining the gospel as God gave it, just as old “high-fi” or “high-fidelity” records claimed to be highly faithful to the sound recorded in the studio. We are to strive together to maintain fidelity to the gospel God gave to Paul.

Finally, Paul does not say we should strive with one another for the faith of the gospel. He rather says we should be striving “together” as those who see the fellowship of the mystery with those who don’t. With all the talk about “peace on earth”, how refreshing it would be if we could enjoy the “conversation peace” Paul longed to see in Philippi! (Psa. 133:1; Eph. 4:3).

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The Visiting Preacher
by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam


Paul and Barnabas had seated themselves in the large synagogue in Pisidian Antioch. They were soon recognized as “clergymen,” however, for “after the reading of the law and the prophets” they were asked whether either of them might have some word of “exhortation” for those who had gathered.

These details are important, for as Moses, in giving the Law, had declared God’s moral standards, the prophets had for centuries challenged the people to obey the Law and had warned them of the dire consequences of breaking its commands. Hence, in the synagogues passages were generally read from the Law and the prophets, and the religious leaders would then “exhort” the people to heed the prophets and obey the Law.

Paul and Barnabas, the visiting preachers, therefore, were asked whether either of them had a “word of exhortation for the people.” Paul responded to the invitation but, rather than merely exhorting his hearers to keep the Law, he proclaimed Christ, who in love had died for all lawbreakers, closing with these words:

    “Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins; and by Him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:38,39).

How we need this message today! We may forever exhort one another to keep the Law, but who of us has not already broken it? Let us thank God, then, that He is a loving Savior as well as a just Judge and that as God the Son He paid for our sins Himself at Calvary so that we might be “justified freely by His grace.”

    “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13).

    “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31).

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The Purpose of Prayer
by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam


The question is sometimes asked: If God’s will and purpose are unalterable, why pray? The answer is simply: Because the divine purpose, which any answer to prayer must represent, includes the prayer itself. It is enough that He “who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will” (Eph. 1:11) invites and exhorts His people to “come boldly unto the throne of grace” to “let [their] requests be made known unto God” (Heb. 4:16; Phil. 4:6).

But prayer is not merely petition, as many suppose. It is one aspect of active communion with God (meditation on the Word being the other) and includes adoration, thanksgiving and confession, as well as supplication. Hyde, in God’s Education of Alan, Pp. 154,155, says: “Prayer is the communion of two wills, in which the finite comes into connection with the Infinite, and, like the trolley, appropriates its purpose and power.”

We have an example of this in the record of our Lord’s prayer in the garden, for, while He is not to be classed with finite men, yet He laid aside His glory, became “a servant” (Phil. 2:7) and “learned obedience” (Heb. 5:8; Phil. 2:8). In this place of subjection He made definite and earnest requests of His Father, but closed His prayer with the words: “Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine, be done” (Luke 22:42) with the result that He was “strengthened” for the ordeal He had to face (Ver. 43).

Thus prayer is not merely a means of “getting things from God” but a God-appointed means of fellowship with Him, and all acceptable prayer will include the supplication — as sincerely desired as the rest: “Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine, be done.”

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When The Lord Asked Why
by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam


There are two occasions when the Lord asked “Why?” that stand out from all the rest.

Once it was to God He cried it and once to Saul of Tarsus. Once to the Holy One and once to the chief of sinners. Once He cried it from the shameful cross and once from His glory in heaven. In each case the name was repeated.

In Matt. 27:46 we find the first anguished “Why?” as He cried: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” The other is found in Acts 9:4, where He called from His exile in heaven: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?”

These two questions represent the greatest riddles of history and yet strangely, one of them is the simple solution to the other! Why did God forsake His Son? You will find the answer when you ask why mankind, represented by Saul, forsook and even persecuted God’s Son. God’s action, in giving Christ up to die, was the antidote to man’s. Christ’s death was the remedy — the only possible remedy — for man’s sin. It was because of the utter unreasonableness of man’s sin that God, to save him, had to be more than reasonable.

Saul had led his nation and the world in rebellion against Christ, but this is just why, in infinite love, God chose him to become the great apostle of grace, telling the world that “Christ died for our sins.”

Hear him tell how he had been “a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious” but how “the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant” (1 Tim. 1:13,14). Hear him say:

    “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief, Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all long suffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting” (Vers. 15, 16).

Since the “chief of sinners” is now in heaven, there is hope for us all if we but trust in the Christ who died for us.

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Be Ye Reconciled to God
by Pastor Ricky Kurth


“Why does Paul beseech the Corinthians to be reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:20) if they were already justified ‘saints’ (1 Cor. 1:2; 6:11)?”

    “…be ye reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20).

In this verse, Paul is not telling the Corinthians to be reconciled to God, he is telling them what to tell unbelievers.

If we back up to verse 18, we see Paul tell the believers in Corinth that God “hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.” He then goes on to define the ministry of reconciliation when he begins the very next verse with the words “to wit.” Those words mean “namely” or “that is to say.” So Paul is telling believers what to say to unsaved people when they go forth with the ministry of reconciliation. We might paraphrase him to say:

“God has given us the ministry of reconciliation, so go out and tell the lost, ‘God was in Christ as He hung on the cross, imputing your trespasses to Him and not to you. He then committed this message of reconciliation to us believers, and now we are His ambassadors. If He were here, He’d be begging you to be reconciled to Him, but He’s not, we’re here in His stead.’”

The Corinthians were already righteous (1 Cor. 1:30), so we know Paul was telling them to tell unsaved people that they “might” be made righteous (2 Cor. 5:20) by believing the gospel.

[nChrist]

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Water Baptism And The Future Day Of The Lord
by Pastor Paul M. Sadler


The following was our response to a friend who inquired if baptism would be practiced again in the future Tribulation.

It does appear that water baptism will play a role in the terms of salvation during the coming day of the Lord. We know, for example, the gospel of the kingdom will again be preached, which included this water ceremony (Matt. 24:14 cf. Mark 16:15,16). When baptism was practiced by John and the twelve it was to manifest Christ to Israel (John 1:31). This will again be needful during the future Tribulation period following the Rapture. Since Israel was to be a kingdom of priests it was essential for John the Baptist to baptize believing Israelites into the priesthood (Ex. 19:5,6; 29:1-4; Isa. 61:6). It will be necessary for this to be continued during the time of Jacob’s Trouble as well. As we know, in time past, water baptism symbolized the washing away of Israel’s sins. While this aspect of the water rite will be replaced with the understanding that believing Israel will be redeemed by the precious blood of Christ (I Pet. 1:18,19), baptism will still be observed as an expression of faith in Christ’s death.

It is our firm conviction that water baptism will again be practiced when God resumes the prophetic program in the coming day of the Lord. God will pick up right where He left off at Pentecost. What we witness in Acts Chapters 2 and 3 will be reinstated at the beginning of the Tribulation.