The Sword of the LORD

After Jesus called Phillip to follow Him, Phillip was excited to share his newfound faith and discovery of the Messiah with his friend Nathaniel.   Phillip went to his friend and told him, “We have found Him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph,” (John 1:45).     It’s perfectly natural for us, when we have discovered something extraordinary, to want to share what we have found with those we love.   Nathaniel, however, was skeptical.   After all, the prophecies were very clear about where the Messiah was to be born.   It was Bethlehem, not Nazareth, that the Prophet Micah spoke of when he prophesied about the Lord's birth and said, “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto Me that is to be ruler in Israel; Whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting,” (Micah 5:2).   Nathaniel, not knowing that J...

I remember well as a young man growing up in church, I wanted to do well and make right choices; but I found that, despite my best intentions, I still did things of which I wasn’t proud.  Afterwards, I would resolve to do better, only to fall to the same weaknesses a brief time later.  Unfortunately, the church that I grew up in could not offer me the answers to the conflict I was feeling.  The Pastor himself admitted openly that he didn’t believe in much of the Bible and so he substituted a social gospel that was devoid of any true power to change lives.  For this reason, I thought I had seen religion and found that it had nothing to offer me, so I turned my back on Christianity.  I wandered for years in confusion and gave myself over to many hurtful pursuits until finally God called me to Himself.   I was amazed one day when I discovered a passage in scripture that exactly described the dilemma that I faced as a teenager.   I read in Romans 7, “F...