Day after day the heavens pour forth speech

The Morning Glory cloud is a rare meteorological phenomenon observed in Northern Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria. A Morning Glory cloud is a roll cloud that can be up to 1000 kilometers long, 1 to 2 kilometers high, and can move at speeds up to 60 kilometers per hour despite there being little wind.

Apparently people do not really know what causes them (nice to still allow for a sense of mystery in creation instead of killing it with scientific explanations).

Why do Morning Glory Clouds exist? Easy …. for the glory of God as they proclaim his handiwork! And in that sense the purpose of our existence is not dissimilar!

source: wikipedia

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Suffering, eggs and potatoes

When by God’s providence suffering enters into someone’s life, the divine purpose of that suffering may be compared to the effect of boiling eggs and potatoes in water – one may be hardened while the other is softened.

(source: Thanks for the illustration Dulcie 🙂

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Pastoring a small congregation

A letter, written by a pastor called John Brown, to one of his students, who had been appointed to a small congregation.

It’s a gentle warning to those who aspire to ‘greater’ things.

I know the vanity of your heart and that you will feel mortified that your congregation is very small, in comparison with those of your brethren around you; but assure yourself on the word of an old man, that when you come to give an account of them to the Lord Christ, at his judgement seat, you will think I have had enough.

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New Heavens and New Earth

In Revelation 21:1 and 2 Peter 3:10 we are told that the present earth and heavens will “pass away”.

Does this mean that they will cease to exist? Not entirely. The old creation will give way to the new creation in such a way as there will be a radical transformation of what now exists.

This might be illustrated as below:

This earth will pass away as a new creation emerges.

The caterpillar will pass away and the butterfly will emerge.

The tadpole will pass away and the the frog appear.

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The Final Perseverance of the Saints

We detest the doctrine that a man who has once believed in Jesus will be saved even if he altogether forsook the path of obedience. We deny that such a turning aside is possible to the true believer, and therefore the idea imputed to us is clearly an invention of the adversary. No, beloved, a man, if he be indeed a believer in Christ, will not live after the will of the flesh. When he does fall into sin it will be his grief and misery, and he will never rest till he is cleansed from guilt; but I will say this of the believer, that if he could live as he would like to live he would live a perfect life. If you ask him if, after believing, he may live as he lists, he will reply, “Would God I could live as I list, for I desire to live altogether without sin…”

source: Charles Spurgeon, 24th June, 1877

#1361 “The Final Perseverance of the Saints”

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Hell Never Produced a Single Pleasure

From C.S.Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which he has forbidden…. An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula…. To get a man’s soul and give him nothing in return—that’s what really gladdens Our Father’s heart.

source: http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1940_hell_never_produced_a_single_pleasure/

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Death … God’s servant ?

When Death comes he comes with no power of his own or sting, instead he comes as God’s servant to do his biding.

The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (Destroyer) refers to one who is “regarded as the emissary of Yahweh, and subservient to His will, and sometimes was not clearly distinguished from Yahweh Himself.”

Sometimes the destruction by ‘the destroying angel’ is the action of  ‘the angel of the Lord’ e.g. the plague on Jerusalem in David’s time and the plague on the Assyrians.

The plague on the firstborn in Egypt is said to be have been accomplished by Yahweh himself who passed through the land of Egypt and by ‘the destroyer’. Psalm 78:49 refers to “a band of destroying angels”.

Likewise the plague in Numbers 16 following Korah’s rebellion was the work of ‘the destroying angel’.

C.f. Revelation 6 where Death is summoned by the cherubim to approach God’s throne to receive his orders.

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The Plowman’s Education

“In Isaiah 28:26 we read that God instructs the plowman, teaching him how he is to do his work. But this instruction does not come to the plowman in writing, in so many words, nor in the form of lessons at school; it is a teaching, rather, which is contained and expressed in all the laws of nature, in the character of air and of soil, of time and place, of grain and corn. What the plowman must do is conscientiously to get to know all those laws of nature, and in this way to learn the lesson which God teaches in them.”

—Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith (Eerdmans 1956), p. 65.

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