Gates of the City

Since early 2011 there has been much chatter across the web about Comet Elenin and what appeared to be a correlation of seismic activity with its alignment with earth. We had no shortages of doomsayers and predictions concerning the end of the world and the timing of an imminent rapture of the church . . . but we are still here. I too labored many long hours in an effort to examine all the information available and submitted it for public scrutiny with my exhortation to give greater heed to God’s word foremost.

As it seems to stand today, apparently Comet Elenin was blasted by solar winds which blew away much of it coma. Now according to various accountings Elenin was destroyed, fragmented, is deteriorating, and/or has been reduced to even less significance than the seemingly correct unbelievers of doom had said it was. At the moment Elenin is now on its way back out into the vast expanse of the universe perhaps taking with it the threat of imminent death and destruction that so many had attached with it.

For almost two months I have been sitting back and praying that God help me to rightly divide and understand what I have been observing (and not observing) in my own Christian responsibility to “watch and pray.” There have been various things I felt God was impressing upon me, but there was also a sense of waiting before the Lord as Elenin continued it course past it inner alignment with Earth and the Sun on late September 26. It appears Elenin came and made alignment with no great calamity befalling the earth . . . apart from this year’s predicted increase of solar activity, record breaking droughts in one part of the world while storms and floods make new records in other places. Currently we are having a huge snow storm in the northeast while elsewhere volcanism and seismic disturbance continue about the world . . . but seemingly with no absolute correlation to the comet.

Many of the “unbelievers of doom” now boastfully say they knew it was going to be a non-event, while so many “believers” are now certainly obligated to humbly acknowledge that much of their hasty predictions were wrong, but like Harold Camping they were only wrong in their sense of timing and not in the certainty of the biblical events yet to be visited here upon God’s footstool. I too admittedly said, “. . . 37 days after alignment of the end of the biblical year Earth’s orbit takes it through Elenin’s path and debris trail during November 3-8 when doubtless if this is a but a comet we should see some “stars falling from heaven,” something I may well have to acknowledge as incorrect, I also stressed the following in one of my previous Elenin articles –

Even though God’s word clearly tells us that God placed all these lights and heavenly bodies in the universe for “signs,” I cannot strongly stress enough that far more credible than what we can see and witness with all our modern technology is what God’s word tells us. It is there believers must first look for understanding and discernment with much prayer and waiting upon the Lord. It is His Spirit that illuminates and makes proper application of what “is written.”

That said, I would again like to stress in this post too that I have not enjoyed Elenin or having to labor through the volumes of info and misinformation regarding it. As I stated in “God’s Word and Elenin’s Position and Earthquakes,” I have countless hours, too many days and several weeks invested in it, but felt obligated to do so. It is my conviction that none of my time invested in prayer and searching the scriptures was wasted, nor was it wasted in the researching the various concerns and predictions of other believers, for even that falls under scriptural exhortation to “prove all things.”

However, I would like to stress here and will re-address later is that though Elenin may now appear to have been a “non-event,” it was nonetheless indeed an authentic God created event. Comet Elenin is indisputably a real comet whose coming and timing correlated with actual earth events and its late September 26^th alignment with biblical holy days and should not carelessly be dismissed as irrelevant, not to mention the astronomical sign of the woman of Revelations 12 occurring on September 29^th.

Though I did not feel a release to write about this weeks ago, at this point I do feel free to share and start a few posts on what I felt the Lord has been impressing upon me. In this post I want to touch on what I believe the Lord impressed upon me while praying about Israel, Elenin, the church and the times and the seasons.

Amos 5:18 Woe unto you that desire the day of the LORD! to what end is it for you? the day of the LORD is darkness, and not light.  19 As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him.  20 Shall not the day of the LORD be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?

 Elenin seem to bring with it a stirring among the church in that there were many brothers and sisters in Christ who were continually looking at dates as the next possible rapture date. Such a thing is dangerous because just like the Harold Camping predictions, such efforts often give legitimate cause to unbelievers to scoff at our faith and the certainty of God’s word. After all, when those who claim to know God say boldly that God is going to do something with a defined “when” and “where,” the absence of the event proves they did not know what they were talking about. For years I have stated without a doubt I believe in end-time prophets, not only because God’s word mentions them, but because the devil has not been slack in sending forth his false prophets prior to the actual time so as to bring damage the reputation of the ministry.

But in regards to many of those who were endeavoring to lock down the timing of the rapture, I feel many may be among those who fall into the category the Lord was addressing above in Amos as “you that desire the day of the Lord.” We should all know the Lord is not slack concerning His promise of coming again, but perhaps among some of those attempting to determine the time of the rapture there were some too over-confident that they are going to escape His displeasure and wrath because they confess His name – yet are still guilty of taking His name in vain. What I mean might best be clarified by Paul’s admonition to Timothy and his church as well as to the church of Corinth –

 2Ti 2:19 Nevertheless the foundation of God stands sure, having this seal, The Lord knows them that are His. And, Let everyone that names the name of Christ depart from iniquity.

 2Co 13:5 Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know you not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except you be reprobates?

 We are told to examine and to prove our own selves as to whether we truly are in the faith, or have we taken to ourselves the name of Christ in vain? Many believers wrongfully limit the Third Commandment to carelessly using the name of the Lord when in actuality it refers to our having His name attached to us as His people, those following His Spirit and as Paul said are “espoused . . . to one husband . . . as a chaste virgin to Christ.”

When God entered into a covenant with Abram, God changed his name to Abraham and his wife Sara’s name to Sarah. What God did was give part of His name to them because He was now in covenant with them, similarly as my wife abandoned her maiden name and assumed my last name when we entered the covenant of marriage. It is in this light we do well to consider the Third Commandment –

 Exodus 20:7 You shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that takes His name in vain.

 We cannot assume the name of Christ to ourselves and be unfaithful anymore than the Jews could go whoring after other gods and not be accused of adultery by the God who had redeemed them. The Lord was very clear; He will not hold them guiltless who do such. He requires those that are His own to walk even as He walked and to be holy for He is holy . . . which we can do through Christ in us which is the gospel –

 1Corinthians 15:1  Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein you stand;  2 By which also you are saved, if you keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless you have believed in vain.

 Many of today “Christians” are like the Jews in Amos’ day desiring “the day of the Lord” that He would come and judge His enemies . . . but they were completely unaware that they too were the Lord’s enemies because they were not loving Him with all their hearts and had committed whoredom with the world and its idols.

 James 4:4 You adulterers and adulteresses, know you not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.

 1 John 2:15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

 As I stated earlier, there were many brothers and sisters in Christ who seem addicted to looking for the next possible rapture date desiring the Lord’s coming,  yet doubtless find when the time does come many of them may be found left standing with the foolish virgins who did not have oil in their lamps. That is because their faith wasn’t a saving faith; one coupled with love for God and an unfeigned love for others evident with good works and fruits of holiness. Theirs was a love only in words and not of deeds, a faith without faithfulness, a body without a spirit.

Such are they who desire the day of the Lord with a confidence that certainly they have escaped the mouth of the lion . . . only to be met by the bear, or think they have made it into the house for safety only to be bitten by the serpent. In Amos’s day this was the judgment of God on those whose religion lacked the fruits of holiness, gave their polluted gifts and entertained themselves with musical noise and called it worship to the Lord-

 Amos 5:18 Woe unto you that desire the day of the LORD! to what end is it for you? the day of the LORD is darkness, and not light. 19 As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him. 20 Shall not the day of the LORD be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it? 21 I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies.  22 Though you offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. 23 Take you away from Me the noise of your songs; for I will not hear the melody of your viols.

 Jesus told us clearly, “But the hour coming, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeks such to worship Him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”  Today’s “praise services” have replaced true worship. People stand up and sway to the contemporary “Christian” music while the lights are continually adjusted and the praise leaders go through the predictable formula of exciting upbeat praise music to the slower more solemn “worship” songs.  Meanwhile many of their lives as well as those in the congregation are still entangled in the world, earthly gain is still an attraction to their eyes while they relish the praise of men more than the praise of God. Too many Christian men are more interested in being a man amongst men, comparing themselves amongst themselves; instead of being a true man of God. Likewise the Christian women have forgotten how much God considers a meek and quite spirit to be of immeasurable worth and have allowed themselves to be caught in the snare of worldly fashion and costly apparel. But nonetheless they still go to a church that has not just one, but three great praise services each Sunday . . .

True worship our Lord said must be “in spirit and in truth, ” something that can be only understood if one seriously considers the realm of the spirit apart from all the religious spiritual “in the spirit” hype rampant in countless tare gathering churches out there. In the spiritual realm there are no gray areas, there is the only true God who is Light with no shadows or variables of turning and there is the adversary who can only deceitfully appear as an angel of light, but is really the prince of darkness void of true light. God is truth and cannot lie, while the adversary is the father of lies and there is no truth in him whatsoever.

Likewise is true of our service and worship of God, it is either truth or it is lies and hypocrisy.  Jesus said “Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit.” We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking we can worship God while we actively entertain sin in our hearts . . . though many do. Jesus clearly said we are either with Him or against Him; gathering or scattering others to Him by our lives and actions.

 1 John 3:7 Little children, let no man deceive you: he that does righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous. 8 He that commits sin is of the devil; for the devil sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. 9 Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for His seed remains in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. 10 In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever does not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loves not his brother. 11 For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.

 Back to Comet Elenin, as I said in my other post I believe it is without a doubt a sign for those who would take heed to it, a warning to examine ourselves, whether we are in the faith; a reminder to prove our own selves. The majority of the whole world, believers, atheists, people of all faiths have a sense that if it is not soon going to be game-over, then certainly a new game is about to begin. Therefore some call Elenin a sign, others call it a harbinger,  some call it a wimpy little icy dirt ball. Regardless what we call it, my Father created it way back when for His unique purpose and set it into motion to be here right on time to be seen of men . . . just as sure as He did the star of Bethlehem. Certainly that star in the east wasn’t Jesus; it was only a sign of His coming. It’s what comes after the sign that ultimately matters.

For those who know me personally and have asked me what I think about Elenin and what is going on with it, I have simply been telling them this; Elenin was the lion and not the bear. It came and caused fear in many, but Elenin certainly was not “the day of the Lord,” it was just a sign, a warning of something yet to come, sent before hand as another extension of God’s longsuffering and mercy in that He is not willing that any should perish.

We have not even touched on all that is happening in/with Israel, but it is sufficient to say we need to earnestly pray for her peace . . . the one that matters most, peace with their Creator.

Peace to those who live the Lord Jesus.

Live for the King!