“I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear” (Philippians 1:12-14 ESV).
So, what did happen to Paul? He was arrested in Jerusalem,
and he was held in captivity for many years, first at Caesarea, then at Rome.
Why? For teaching the truth of the gospel that many did not want to hear,
particularly the Jews who had rejected Jesus Christ as their Messiah – the
Christ who had been promised to them to be their Savior. They were of the
people who had put Jesus to death, to silence him, and now they were after Paul
to silence him, too, for they did not like the message that he was teaching.
But, just like when Jesus was put to death in order to
silence him, so did the attempts to silence Paul backfire against his
persecutors, for their crucifixion of Jesus Christ and their arrest of the
apostle Paul only served to advance the gospel of Christ which they were trying
to squelch. Amen! What they had meant for evil God meant for good to advance
the kingdom of heaven and the gospel of our salvation from sin. And the more
they fought against the gospel, the more that the truth of the gospel got out
to the people.
And not only did Paul’s imprisonment and his testimony for
Christ serve to advance the gospel, but it also encouraged other believers in
Christ to be bold in their faith and in their testimonies for Christ and for
his gospel of salvation, despite being persecuted.
So, what is the message of the gospel that Paul taught? It is
that by faith in Jesus Christ we are crucified and buried with Christ in death
to sin, and we are raised with Christ to walk in newness of life in him, no
longer as slaves to sin, but now as slaves to God and to his righteousness.
Therefore sin is no longer to reign in our mortal bodies, to make us obey its
desires, for if sin is what we obey, and not righteousness, and not obedience
to our Lord, then we will die in our sins. We will not inherit eternal life
with God.
My Testimony
Now, I have my own testimony of how this took place in my life,
not in the same exact way as with Paul, but with the same result. For the Lord
had his hand on my life from even before I was born, and he had a specific
calling for my life which I received early on in my life, but not yet in its
final form. For I knew early on in my life that God was calling me to be a
missionary and that he was giving me a call similar to that of Jeremiah,
although to me who is merely a woman of God who serves the Lord Jesus with her
life.
But Satan was fighting against me from birth, first through
an extremely abusive father and an emotionally neglectful mother, who was a
good mother other than that. But then a lot through pastors, too, many who
misjudged me, only one of which I know ever admitted it. And it wasn’t because
I was doing anything wrong, or that I was not being submissive to their
authority. I was being submissive unless they required that I sin. But it was
because I was speaking the truth, and the truth of the Scriptures.
And as the years passed, and the church at large here in
America became much more worldly and were turning their gatherings into
businesses to be marketed to the people of the world, the truth of the gospel
in these gatherings began to take a giant nosedive. And the gospel was reduced
to a prayer prayed to receive Christ which guaranteed the adherent full
forgiveness of all sins, the guarantee of heaven, and that it could not be
taken away, but regardless of how the person lived his life on this earth.
And so more and more I got rejected because I was still
holding on to the message of the gospel that Jesus taught and that his NT
apostles taught, and that is not what they wanted to hear. For they didn’t want
the whole truth, for the truth offends those who are living in sin and who want
to hear the lies, instead. I even had one pastor say to me, “I was warned about
people like you in my training… people with strong convictions.” He meant his
church planting training, I assume, since this was a church plant.
So, I have been asked to leave and to “go someplace else
where you will be a better fit.” And I have been banned from one “church’s”
physical property for speaking the truth, and I have been put on church
discipline because I refused to tell a lie, and I have been falsely accused of
doing things I did not do in some “churches.” And finally the Lord spoke to me
and he told me that he had something else for me to do, and so he sent me to
the internet to share his gospel message here, and to share what he was
teaching me.
So, for the past nineteen years I have been writing down
what the Lord teaches me from his word each day, and I have been posting these
writings on the internet, and these writings are going to people all over the
world. So, what those pastors did to me in rejecting me and my testimony for
Jesus Christ only served to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the
world to maybe hundreds of thousands of people. So, what Satan meant for evil
in my life, God meant for good for the salvation of human lives. All glory and
all honor and all praise belong to God and not to me.
By
G. M. Eldridge
“He
will wipe away every tear from their eyes…” Revelation 21:4
In the moment He appears
And the light from heaven shines,
I’ll forget ev’ry fear,
Ev’ry pain I’ll leave behind.
Then I’ll see Him as He is
And I’ll know Him as I’m known.
Ev’ry tear wiped away when I go home.
Ever present is the tho’t
That a moment waits for me
When unworthy as I am,
His glory I will see.
I will empty all my praise
Before my Father’s throne.
Ev’ry tear wiped away when I go home.
If the trial I endure,
And your presence I can’t find,
Be near me, Lord, I pray,
Bring back unto my mind
That your promises are firm
And I’m never on my own.
Ev’ry tear wiped away when I go home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z98Zvr1CyXg
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