2-28-18 Our Flashlights and Our Purpose
On Flashlights and Our Purpose :: by Alice Childs
Have you ever used one of those fancy flashlights? You know, the ones where you can adjust the width of the beam from wide to narrow? Our purpose as believers is kind of like one of those flashlights. In the past, the beam of our purpose, if you will, has been set on wide angle. We had the angle of our sights set on wide beam and tried to shine the light of scripture into as many darkened places as we could, exposing the multitudes of falsehoods, heresies, occult incursions, dangerous teachings, erroneous doctrines, and just plain weird stuff that has been metastasizing in our churches, our government, our country, our culture, and our world.
For a while, we could pretty well stay on top of things, but the closer the world moves towards the Tribulation Hour, the greater the deception and the darker the atmosphere around us has become.
So what do we as believers do in the waning hours of the last days? Do we keep shining the wide beam into every nook and cranny trying to identify every wicked, erroneous thing that is wrong and getting wronger (my word)?
I’ve been thinking about this very thing a lot lately, and here is what keeps coming back to my mind over and over again. The wide beam does no good anymore.
There’s just too much evil, too many divergent heresies (all springing from the same source, which is the Father of Lies), too many wrongs getting wronger by the hour, that our attention is just all over the place and we can’t seem to get a handle on much of anything anymore. All of the darkness pressing in on us from all sides is sucking the life and energy out of us. And frankly, I believe that this is by design. I have come to firmly believe that this is all part of Satan’s last days strategy – to keep us whirling about, trying to light up the whole darkened world at once.
When the flashlight is on wide beam, the light is scattered and less effective. But, if we narrow the focus of the beam, the INTENSITY of the light becomes much brighter, and the beam becomes more sharply defined. The focus illuminated by that single beam is intensified and becomes somewhat like a laser.
This is what keeps coming home to me more and more clearly every day that we are left here –that I need to refocus my beam to laser in on the REAL ESSENTIALS in these closing last hours.
We who belong to Christ could literally be called Home at ANY time! The world is almost at the ready for the Man of Sin to come to power. The infrastructure of his evil kingdom is very nearly finished. The only thing stopping him from bursting onto the scene right now is the hand of the Restrainer, who is none other than the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit sealed within each member of us who make up the body/bride of Christ.
Our time left here is VERY rapidly drawing to a close. The last 7 years of this evil age is even at the door, and Satan’s certain doom grows closer as well. That is why the level of evil in the world has exploded exponentially these past few years. Time is running out.
For the believer, we are in a holding pattern somewhat like the circling of a plane before landing at its final destination. We are in a kind of limbo, living (or trying to live) between two worlds – between the temporal and the eternal, between the fallen and the glorified. We long to go Home to a place we have never seen before. Our hearts and spirits YEARN for release from this vile world.
And we ARE going Home—very, very soon now. That home-going will happen “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” at the instant the Rapture occurs.
But until our blessed hope arrives – until that glorious appearing that our spirits groan for arrives, we still have work to do.
So, what should be our focus? What should we as individuals and as a group here have within our sites? I think it should be this:
I believe it’s time to narrow our beam to shut out all the clamoring, growing darkness and shine an intensified light on the old rugged cross and the empty tomb behind it – on the skies above a vacant hill where once, 2,000 years ago, the crucified, risen, and glorified Christ ascended back to the Father with the sure promise of a victorious return to catch us up to meet Him in the air, never to be parted from His presence again for all eternity!
In short, the narrowed, white-hot laser focus of our lights in these remaining days should be kept steady and unmovable on these few things:
That man is a sinner. That Jesus is the Savior. That Hell is eternal. That judgment is coming, and that time is short.
My brothers and sisters, until Jesus calls us Home, NOTHING ELSE MATTERS. Narrow your beams and shine on.
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