|
TITLE: Searching for More Gold 1/15/15 By Richard McCaw 01/15/15 |
 SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
SEND ARTICLE TO A FRIEND
|
Searching for More Gold
When gold is discovered ground has to be broken to extract if from the earth. What a challenge! The best things in life are found by those determined to search until they find the treasure they seek.
God told the Israelites through Jeremiah, “Ye shall seek me and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your hearts.” Knowing Jesus is the most priceless treasure for which we must dig like men searching for gold.
To Corinthian believers, Paul, the Apostle, declared, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God, and not of us.”
However,today even Bible believing people sit back and listen to well-known Bible teachers and accept whatever is taught. As I searched the scriptures I read how Paul preached in the synagogues of Thessalonica and how easily the believers there accepted what he taught. But when Jews there became envious of him and accused his team of “turning the world upside down,” the believers sent him away by night.
Afterwards he came to a city called Berea.
As Paul preached in Berea, believers did not say, “See how powerful Paul’s preaching was in Thessalonica. We can accept anything he says.” Instead they diligently searched the scriptures DAILY to ensure that he was teaching the truth. The Bible describes them as “MORE NOBLE than the Thessalonians.”
Today we are still commanded to SEARCH THE SCRIPTURES so that the TRUTH can set us free from Satan’s power.
The well-known Jonestown tragedy illustrates why it is important to search the scriptures, and to be sure we are not being led astray into false interpretations that do not come from the Spirit of God. Jesus promised that when the Spirit of Truth came that He would “guide the disciples into all truth.”
Jim Jones was a voracious reader as a child and studied Stalin, Marx, Gandhi and Hitler carefully developing also an intense interest in religion.
In 1951 as he became sympathetic to the plight of African-Americans, he began attending Communist Party meetings. Frustrated with the ostracism of open communists he considered demonstrating his Marxism by infiltrating the church.
After witnessing how a faith healing service attracted people and their money, he concluded that such resources could accomplish his goals. In 1956 he organized a large religious convention in Indianapolis and arranged for the Rev William M. Branham, a well-acclaimed healer to share the pulpit with him.
Not long afterwards Jones began the Peoples Temple, and revealed his alternately agnostic and atheist views. He began using religion to entice people away from the “opiate of religion.” At one meeting, he slammed the Bible on the table and yelled “I’ve got to destroy this paper idol!”
Eventually in the mid-1960s he moved the temple to California, then opened branches in San Fernando, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In the early 1970s the move of his headquarters to San Francisco gained much notoriety. In 1977 Jones and several hundred Temple members made the sudden decision to move to Guyana.
In November 1978 the mass murder-suicide of about 918 of its members in Jonestown, Guyana, and the murder of five individuals at a nearby airstrip, including Congressman Leo Ryan shocked the civilized world. Some 276 children had been also murdered, almost all by cyanide poisoning, while Jones apparently shot himself.
Before Jesus returned to heaven, He warned the disciples of false prophets, but He also promised that the Spirit would come upon them to lead them into all truth. One day He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit!”
On another occasion, He promised, “You shall receive power, after the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth”
When the power came on the day of Pentecost, it was like dynamite and caused a great harvest of souls! I remembered how I had sensed the Spirit’s presence on the University campus. I was sure that there was more where that had come from, and so I had to do some prospecting.
Jesus taught many parables about the kingdom of heaven. He taught that the kingdom is “like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he went and sold all that he had, and bought that field.” He taught that the kingdom is “like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.”
When the woman of Samaria met Jesus, that most transforming encounter changed her entire life. She ran and called all the men that she had known. “Come see a man that told me all things that ever I did! Is not this the Christ?”
Meeting Jesus is our first and most important appointment. Building a relationship with Him will require giving up everything to know Him intimately.
Paul, the Apostle, declared, “What things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed, I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ, and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.”
Paul was willing to give up everything to obtain this priceless treasure: an intimate knowledge of Christ! We too must be willing to give up all earthly goals in order to lay hold of the very life of God revealed in the image of our Risen Lord.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.