Are You Truly Saved and have been called? You Better think twice-

You cannot love this world and live in this world and Be saved-Man cannot serve two masters-

And those whom he predestined he also called.

 Romans 8:30

In the second letter to Timothy, first chapter and ninth verse, we read these words: "who saved us and called us to a holy calling." Now here is a touchstone by which we may test our calling. It is "a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace." This calling forbids all trust in our own doings and turns us to Christ alone for salvation, but it afterwards purges us from dead works to serve the living and true God.

As He who called you is holy, so must you be holy. If you are living in sin, you are not called; but if you are truly Christ's, you can say, "Nothing pains me so much as sin; I desire to be rid of it. Lord, help me to be holy." Is this the longing of your heart? Is this the substance of your life toward God and His divine will? Again, in Philippians 3:13-14 we are told of "the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." Is your calling an upward call? Has it refined your heart and focused it upon heavenly things? Has it elevated your hopes, your tastes, your desires? Has it raised the constant tenor of your life, so that you spend it with God and for God?

We find another test in Hebrews 3:1—"you who share in a heavenly calling." "Heavenly calling" means a call from heaven. If your call comes from man alone, you are uncalled. Is your calling from God? Is it a call to heaven as well as from heaven? Unless you are a stranger here, and heaven is your home, you have not been called with a heavenly calling, for those who have been called from heaven declare that they look for a city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God, and they find themselves strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Is your calling holy, high, heavenly? Then, beloved, you have been called of God, for such is the calling by which God calls His people.

Written by

Allistair Begg

Be patient with our Time on This Earth ,Even though our Hearts Long for the day to be with the LORD -Taken form the writings of Alsistar Begg

"Come Up Here!"

Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, 'Come up here!' - Revelation 11:12

Without considering these words in their prophetic connection, let us regard them as the invitation of our great Forerunner to His sanctified people. In due time there shall be heard "a loud voice from heaven" to every believer, saying, "Come up here." This should be to the saints the subject of joyful anticipation.

Instead of dreading the time when we will leave this world to go to the Father, we should be longing for the hour of our emancipation. Our song should be--

My heart is with Him on His throne,
And ill can brook delay;
Each moment listening for the voice,
"Rise up and come away."

We are not called down to the grave but up to the skies. Our heaven-born spirits should long for their native air. Yet the heavenly summons should be the object of patient waiting. Our God knows best when to bid us, "Come up here." We must not wish to antedate the period of our departure.

I know that strong love will make us cry,
O Lord of Hosts, the waves divide,
And land us all in heaven.

But patience must have her perfect work. God ordains with accurate wisdom the most fitting time for the redeemed to live below. Surely, if there could be regrets in heaven, the saints might mourn that they did not live longer here to do more good. Oh, for more sheaves for my Lord's harvest, more jewels for His crown! But how unless there be more work? True, there is the other side of it, that, living so briefly, our sins are the fewer; but oh, when we are fully serving God, and He is asking us to scatter precious seed and reap a hundredfold, we would even say it is well for us to stay where we are. Whether our Master shall say, "Go" or "Stay," let us be equally well pleased as long as He indulges us with His presence.

PASSOVER  Taken from church of Great GOD

God reveals His plan of salvation for mankind in His commanded holy days. The first step in that plan is shown in the observance of the Passover. The world around us is filled with sin and evil of every kind, and it has been that way since Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. For God to fulfill His plan of reproducing Himself, He had to provide a way to redeem man from his sinful condition and implement a means of forgiveness. Passover God is holy and will not tolerate sin in any form. Because He will not allow sinful people into His Kingdom, humans must be “justified.” By this, God forgives a person’s sins, brings him into a right relationship with Himself, and imputes Christ’s righteousness to him. Only after being forgiven can people take the additional steps of character development and overcoming to qualify to enter the Kingdom of God. Our annual keeping of the Passover reminds us of this initial step in fulfilling the plan of God. 1 .When God called the children of Israel out of Egypt, did He need to show them when the year began? Exodus 12:1-2. COMMENT: During their long sojourn in Egypt, the Israelites lost track of time. God had to show them when His year began so that they could begin observing His holy days. Israel’s calling out of Egypt symbolizes God calling us out of this evil world. 2. Is Passover one of God’s festivals? Leviticus 23:4-5. COMMENT: Passover is a feast of the LORD, not of the Jews! 3. How was Israel to keep the Passover? Exodus 12:3-11. COMMENT: God told each Israelite family to choose an unblemished lamb on the 10th day of Abib. On the 14th day at twilight (just after sundown as the 14th began), they killed the lamb, putting its blood on the doorpost and lintel of their homes. Then they roasted and ate the lamb. 4. Why did they put the blood on their doorposts and lintels? Exodus 12:12-13. COMMENT: The blood was a sign to the death angel to “pass over” their homes when it went through Egypt. Thus, Israel’s firstborn were saved, while Egypt’s firstborn died. 5. What did killing the lamb and putting its blood around the door represent? Isaiah 53:7; John 1:29; Acts 8:32; Revelation 7:14; I Peter 1:18-19. COMMENT: These yearly rituals represented the death of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. The innocent lamb had to be without blemish because it represented the only Man who ever lived a perfect, sinless life. Jesus was the Lamb of God, who gave His life and shed His blood so that we may be saved from eternal death by paying the penalty for our sins. Through faith in His sacrifice, we receive forgiveness of sin and come into a right relationship with God. Because His life was worth more than all human life combined, His sacrifice paid the price for all sin. He redeemed us from the penalty that God’s law imposes and freed us to live righteously. 6. Was Jesus crucified on Passover? John 18:39; 19:13-18. COMMENT: Our Savior was crucified in the early afternoon of Passover day. This further confirms He was the One who was to give His life as a ransom for many. Even to the very day, He completely fulfilled the symbolism of the lamb. 7. Did Jesus observe the Passover during His life on earth? Luke 2:40-42; John 2:13, 23. COMMENT: Jesus kept the Passover because God had commanded it. In this, He set us a perfect example, showing us that we should observe this festival too. 8. Are New Testament Christians commanded to keep the Passover? I Corinthians 5:7-8. COMMENT: Paul instructs the Corinthian Christians to observe the Passover as a memorial of Christ’s death, our Passover. 9. What did Jesus teach is the first step in observing the New Testament Passover? John 13:1-5, 14-15. COMMENT: While His disciples ate the Passover meal, Jesus washed the disciples’ feet. Considered a lowly responsibility in that culture, footwashing was performed by servants when visitors entered a house. By performing this act of humility, Jesus shows us how we should serve each other. He commands Christians to follow His example. 10. What else did Jesus teach His disciples to do in keeping the Passover? Matthew 26:26-29; Luke 22:19-20. COMMENT: Jesus told His disciples to partake of unleavened bread and wine during the Passover service. Through this command, He charged His followers to observe it as a memorial of His death for all time. Since Christ’s death completely fulfilled the symbolism of killing a lamb, we no longer need to slaughter a lamb in keeping the Passover. 11. Must all converted Christians observe the New Testament Passover every year? John 6:48, 51-54. COMMENT: Unless we eat His flesh (represented by the unleavened bread) and drink His blood (symbolized by the wine), we have no life in us and will not inherit eternal life! How vital it is for us to keep the Passover every year! 12. Did the New Testament church of God continue to keep the Passover yearly? Acts 12:4. COMMENT: Some translations grossly mistranslate the Greek word pascha as “Easter.” It always means “Passover.” 13. Did the apostles teach the Gentiles to observe the Passover? I Corinthians 11:23-26. COMMENT: The apostle Paul carefully taught the Gentile Corinthians to keep the Passover using the symbols of bread and wine that Jesus had instituted. Christians must keep the Passover “till He comes,” and the true church of God will still be observing the Passover as He commanded. All those who have accepted His redemption eagerly anticipate His return to share the eternal life He makes

GODS Plan and Symbolism of HIS Feasts

Rehearsing God's Plan

That story is God's magnificent plan of salvation, told in a set of parable-like vignettes, which His people rehearse each year as a reminder of what God is doing among mankind. As the Bible shows, certain holy days commemorate major events in the history of Israel, and these events stand as types of spiritual realities brought about by God. While it may sound strange to our ears, some of the holy days are memorials of future events—pre-memorials, we could call them. God reveals enough in His Word, especially in the book of Revelation, for us to feel certain about what events they prefigure.The beginning of another year means that we will observe another round of God's holy days, the seven high days between the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread in the early spring and the eighth day of the Feast of Tabernacles a half-year away in the autumn (see Leviticus 23). These seven appointed times of holy convocation are by no means mere spiritualized celebrations of ancient harvest festivals, as modern critical historians are fond of asserting. (They say this because of their evolutionary biases that force them to conclude that the religion of the Old Testament is nothing more than the previous Canaanite religion transformed by the peculiarities of Hebrew culture hardened into monotheism by the rigors of the wilderness. Clearly, they also have a bias against any recognition of God Himself, since He is the One who commanded Israel to worship Him in the ways demonstrated in Scripture. No, to them, Israelite religion separated from its Canaanite roots in the distant past and developed "naturally" over centuries until it was codified by the priestly caste in Holy Writ.) To the contrary, God's holy days are a carefully crafted series of memorials that tell a story.

Although Passover is not a holy day with a holy convocation like the other festivals, it plays a major role in the story of God's plan, explaining the first, vital step. Exodus 12:1-13, 21-27 explains that the Old Testament ceremony of killing, draining the blood, roasting, and eating a male lamb without blemish is a yearly reminder of the Death Angel "passing over" the Israelites in Egypt because of the blood on their doorposts and lintels. Thus, they were spared the plague of the firstborn and redeemed—bought back—from their slavery. The Passover service, then, is a picture of redemption by the blood of a perfect sacrifice.

Jesus, of course, is that perfect Sacrifice. He lived among us for more than 33 years and never once sinned; He was spiritually perfect. And since He was also our Creator, His unjust, cruel death, in which His blood was drained from Him upon the ground, was more than sufficient to cover all sin and redeem all humanity from its captivity to sin and this world's god (I Corinthians 4:4), Satan the Devil. The New Testament picks up on the theme of redemption, recording the spiritual antitype of the historical event that took place roughly 3,500 years ago in the land of Goshen. Today, the Passover service concentrates on Christian service (in the footwashing; see John 13:1-17), Christ's broken body (in the broken bread; see Luke 22:19), and His shed blood, which ratifies God's New Covenant with His people (in the wine; see Luke 22:20).

The day after the Passover begins the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which Exodus 12:14-20 and other passages show to commemorate Israel's flight from Egypt into the wilderness. It took the many thousands of Israelites, as well as their livestock, an entire week to journey to and through the Red Sea, where they were finally free from the clutches of their former slave masters. They left in such a hurry that they had no time to allow their bread to rise, so they had to eat unleavened bread, which the Bible calls "the bread of affliction" (Deuteronomy 16:3). Thus, in commemoration of this momentous occasion, for the week of this Feast, the Israelites were commanded to clean their homes of yeast, which the Bible always paints in a negative light as an agent of corruption, and eat unleavened bread.

In I Corinthians 5:6-8, the apostle Paul points out the spiritual application of this festival. It is a time of remembering that we are on a spiritual wilderness journey, and instead of coming out of a physical, oppressive nation, we are fleeing from the corruption of sin. With God's help, we are putting off the sins and habits of our evil nature and putting on the character of our Savior Jesus Christ. Each year, then, we remember that our job is to quit living Satan's way and engrain God's way of holiness and righteousness into our characters.

Pentecost is the next holy day on the calendar, seven weeks after Unleavened Bread. It is called the Feast of Harvest, giving us a giant clue that it depicts, not just a harvest of grain (barley is ripe at the beginning of the seven-week count to Pentecost and wheat at its end), but of people. This is the first harvest festival and a smaller one than the Feast of Tabernacles, so it represents a small, early harvest of God's people. It also contains a wave offering of two leavened loaves of bread, symbolizing God's acceptance of once-sinful people in two groups. We believe that these loaves represent those whom God brought to salvation before Christ and those converted during the church age, which will continue until He returns.

The next four holy days—Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles, and the Last Day—are celebrated in the fall. The events that these days look forward to are conveniently summarized in the narrative of the prophecies of Revelation 19 and 20. Revelation 19 is all about the return of Jesus Christ, which is announced with great blasts of a trumpet (see Matthew 24:31). The Feast of Trumpets, therefore, covers His second coming, His rewarding of the saints, and His defeating of all opposition to His rule.

Revelation 20 contains the fulfillments of the last three holy days: Atonement, when Satan is bound and led "outside the camp" (see Leviticus 16 and the ritual commanded for this day), removing his evil influence over all people; the Feast of Tabernacles, when Christ reigns with the resurrected saints for a thousand years and the earth blossoms like a rose (see Isaiah 35); and the Last Day, when the great majority of humanity will have the opportunity to live under the gracious judgment of God, accept salvation, and live for eternity (see Isaiah 65:17-25).

This is the time of year, as the apostle Paul says on another matter, to think on these things.

- Richard T. Ritenbaugh