Month: August 2023

Bob Prichard Via Bulletin Gold

A tune was stuck in my head. It was a jazzy clarinet
tune. I was racking my brain trying to figure out
what it was, and where it came from, when I
happened to see a Land Rover TV commercial
playing the tune. I had picked up the tune without
paying attention.

Without even trying, our minds scoop up what we
see, hear, smell, and feel. God has created us in such
a way that we can remember an event from twenty-
five years ago like it happened yesterday.

Knowing it is possible for us to absorb so many
things without even thinking about it, shouldn’t we
be extra cautious about where we go, what we do,
and what we expose our minds to? The more we fill
our minds with good things, the more good things
there will be to well up into our conscious or
unconscious minds. We need David’s attitude:
How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, 0
God! how great is the sum of them!” (Psalm
139:17).

The song was “Baby Elephant Walk,” written by
Henry Mancini for the 1962 movie Hatari. Listen to
it, and it will probably get stuck in your head, too!
Why not spend some time this week putting good
things from God in your head!

Joe Slater – Via Bulletin Gold

Jesus respected the question of authority. On the morning after
He drove the merchants and money changers out of the temple,
the Sanhedrin demanded to know, “By what authority are you
doing these things? Or who is he who gave You this authority?”
(Luke 20:2). They viewed the temple as their own domain, and
they certainly hadn’t given Jesus permission to teach there, much
less to regulate what occurred on temple grounds. After all, He
had not graduated from rabbinical school, so they viewed Him as
intruder.

Jesus didn’t deny the need for authority, but neither did He
accept their demand for human approval. In an absolutely
brilliant maneuver, Jesus changed the focus to divine authority
and the Sanhedrin’s total lack of fitness to judge His credentials.
He asked a simple multiple-choice question: “The baptism of
John – was it from heaven or from men?” (Luke 20:4).

The Sanhedrin certainly hadn’t approved John’s work. He had
rebuked some of them, calling them a generation of vipers!
(Matthew 3:7). The people, however, correctly counted John to
be a prophet (thus having authority from God in heaven), Since
the Sanhedrin feared the people, they refused to state their true
convictions that John’s authority was from men, that is, he was
acting on his own. Instead, they claimed not to know, thereby
confessing themselves unfit to judge Jesus’ source of authority.

We should follow Jesus’ example of asking not for human
authority, but for divine authority. Every teaching and practice
should be put to the test: “Is this from heaven or from men?” Let
us teach and do what God authorizes in His word while rejecting
all that lacks divine sanction!

• God’s Grace – Ephesians 2:8
• Christ’s Blood – Romans 5:9
• The Gospel – Romans 1:16
• Sinners Faith – Acts 16:31
• Sinner’s Repentance – Luke 13:3
• Sinner’s Confession – Romans 10:10
• Believers Baptism – I Peter 3:21
• Christian’s Work – James 2:24
• Christian’s Hope – Romans 8:24
• Christian’s Endurance – Revelations 2:10

Gerald Cowan Via Bulletin Gold

Before the hills appeared,
Before the rivers and the seas,
Before the clouds were formed,
Before the stirring of the breeze;
Before a man was born,
Or any other living thing;
Before the rain or snow first fell,
Before the flowers of spring;
Before the paths of earth
By mortal men were trod-
Before it all, from everlasting was
The Great Eternal God.

When everything on earth
Decays and disappears,
As darkness of the night
Dissolves when daylight nears;
When all the starry universe
Burns up and fades away
With nothing left to measure time,
No sense of night or day;
When challengers and skeptics all
Lie dead beneath the sod –
Through everlasting there will be
The Great Eternal God.

Bob Priclhard Via BulletinGold

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in
the night; in the which the heavens shall pass
away with a great noise, and the elements shall
melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the
works that are therein shall be burned up” (2 Peter
3:10).

In the World Trade Center rubble after 9/11,
President Bush rallied the people: I can hear you!
The rest of the world hears you! And the people …
who knocked these buildings down will hear all of
us soon.”

The heavens shall pass away with a great noise.”
That great noise, literally a roar,” will come as the
elements melt with fervent heat, and the earth and
its works are burned up.

Jeremiah prophesied, “At the noise of the taking
of Babylon the earth is moved, and the cry is heard
among the nations” (50:46). After marching quietly
around Jericho, on the seventh time, “Joshua said
unto the people, Shout; for the LORD hath given
you the city” (Joshua 6:10), a fearful noise as the
walls fell.

At the day of the Lord, those who were deaf to
the will of God will hear and understand that God
was serious about His commands and promises.
Will we hear?