Matters of Life and Death

For those of us who have and love our pets, this story my be a familiar one to us.

One Saturday morning I received an urgent call from a friend of mine, who told me her dog was very ill.

As she didn’t have a car of her own, she asked me to help her take her dog to the vet.

The dog was lying on the floor on an old sheet and was unable to move his legs because they had stopped working – this was serious. With the help of another neighbour, we managed to carry him to the car and laid him down in the back. Then, with the sick dog settled in the back, my friend and I drove to the vets. When we arrived, the vet and a veterinary nurse lifted him out of the car and took him into the surgery.

The vet told us he didn’t know what was wrong, but the dog was obviously very sick. It would cost a lot of money to investigate, which my friend could not afford, and the vet felt there was little likelihood of a recovery. The only other option was to ‘put the dog to sleep’.

After a brief discussion, my friend decided on the second option, although it was a painfully sad one.

She was upset, and I was too because I’d known the dog since he was a puppy. The vet gave him the lethal injection; he went from a creature that was obviously alive to a lifeless corpse.

He lay there with his eyes open, a solid unyielding body that had once been a much–loved pet; but now the life had gone from him, he was transformed into a lifeless, dog–shaped lump. Read more

WHY DO MANY PEOPLE IGNORE RELIGION?

WHY DO MANY PEOPLE IGNORE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SEE BEYOND THIS LIFE?

Surely nobody can be happy about living such a short life, I mean 75yrs goes by in a blink, you ask anyone who is there and they will all tell you “I don’t know where the years have gone…”  “it seems like I was only young yesterday…”  “life has gone by so quickly, it is hard to know how it has gone by so quickly…”

It’s sad but very true, that this life seems to be over in a blink and for a lot of people not only do they have little to show for it, they have nothing they can take with them to their eternal home in the ground ie. from dust we were made, unto dust we return.  There is no doubt about this, dig up anyone who has died and there they are or rather what’s left of them.

Now is there any after life?  Well no one has ever come back in any shape or form to prove this except for one man – Jesus Christ – and this is a fact of history.

But most people seem to ignore this fact, or willingly disbelieve it, by this I mean they don’t even bother to research it or look into it to find out if it was true.  Yet it is a fact of history apart from the record of the Bible.  Goodness our dating system alone proves it to be so and every time you reference the year you are reminded of the birth and death of Christ. Read more

Are You Saved? If So How Are You Saved?

Is YOUR knowledge of the BIBLE and YOUR belief and worship of GOD able to SAVE YOU?

Not sure? Well consider this passage from JOHN CHAPTER 17

“1 These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: 2 As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. 3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. 4 I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.”

The Greek word for “know” is ‘genosko’ and it means to have a thorough intellectual understanding of what something is all about.

Do you have this understanding of God and His Son Read more

1. WHERE MODERN CHRISTIANITY FAILS

Starting right

Somebody once said that you will never find atheists on a life raft. This is another way of saying that when people are in desperate situations, they cannot afford to leave God out of their reckoning.

The stark fact is that we are all in a desperate situation, always. When people swagger and snap their fingers in God’s face, they are living in a dream world. They are not awake to the fact that life, at its best, is brief and precarious.

That is at its best!

And in these days of world wars and hydrogen bombs, life is more uncertain than ever. There is but a step between us and death.

Let us then begin by acknowledging that we need God. We are all on the same life raft; the sea is rough, and the sky is dark and threatening. We dare not pretend that we don’t believe in Him.

As believers in God, we ask the question: can we find a sensible and satisfying way of worshipping this God in whom we believe?

Would I be right in assuming that we believe in Jesus Christ too? Good! So it looks as if we ought to be enthusiastic members of the community that Christ founded. Read more