Acts 4:4

THEY HEARD ... THEY BELIEVED!

Every house a Church, every street corner a pulpit, every coffee table an altar, every living room a Holy of Holies  ...  SO IS this hour before the Rapture of the Church!  If we tell them; they will hear and they will believe!

"Howbeit many of them which heard the Word believed;

and the number of the men was about five thousand."

We have lived to see the day that people are looking up!  There's one thing about disaster, trouble, war, a broken world, a faltering America, and whirling storms around our questioning heads; it's makes people ... all of us ... call out to The One who is greater than these problems, the Lord Jesus Christ.  And, while we're at it, we might as well join hands with neighbors, friends, foes, and anyone who will "hear," and take them with us to the One who holds all the answers.  

    

                                                      "... And the Lord added to their number daily

              those who were being saved."

             (Acts 2:47)

The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ; repentance, baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the infilling of the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in other tongues as the Spirit gives the utterance, is easy to swallow when one has no other distractions.  Sometimes, life with all its possessions, jobs, and kids has a way of taking our focus away from our Creator.  So, if we happen upon hard times and times when the laws or others, or circumstances, treat us unfairly, which we all happen on those times if we live long enough; we reach a place where we are ready to "hear and believe."  Barnes' Notes on the Bible says it so perfectly, "This was one of the instances (speaking of this period of time in the Book of Acts), which has since been so often repeated, in which persecution is seen to have a tendency to extend and establish the faith which it was designed to destroy."  The bottom line ... "trouble makes us stronger and we believe!"                              

                                                                                 

                                                            "And He (Jesus) said to them, Follow me,

                                                                  and I will make you fishers of men." 

                                                                                   (Matthew 4:19)

We are about to hear the last trump; the clock is ticking for the countdown to the last number, the final soul, to enter the kingdom before the door is shut and the Rapture of the Church occurs.  That last one may be your friend, my friend, your neighbor or my neighbor, your relative or mine, so it's time that we make a way for them that they will step into "newness of life," maybe in your home or mine.  Nobody argues with a personal experience!  We just relate to them what happened to us; the beauty and splendor of being filled with the Spirit of Almighty God; the awesome wonder of going under the waters in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and coming up a new, innocent, "free" creature; the stupendous joy of feeling His presence and hearing His whispers; and His touch, Oh, His touch ... there's nobody like Jesus!  We just tell it like the adventurous incredible novel that it is!  Then, when we stand before the Lord at the throne and He says, "thou good and faithful servant," it will be because of what we did; "they heard ...  they believed."                                                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                                                                                      By Sheryl Fowler

                                 (Visit promiselandchurch.net and theexperience238.com.

                              PromiseLand Church, Austin, Texas, Pastor Kenneth Phillips)