@Glenn Said 
The Gospel of Jesus Christ - The Good News of Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Old Testament of the coming Redeemer.
Jesus Christ is the Messiah.
Jesus Christ lived a perfect sinless life for us. He conquered sin for us.
Jesus Christ died for my sins, once and for all.
Jesus Christ rose from the dead. He conquered death that I might have eternal life.
Jesus Christ ascended to heaven where He is interceding for me. He tells me to stop sinning, yet if I do sin and repent, He is interceding his blood before the Father and will forgive me.
Jesus Christ is coming back to take His people home to heaven.
Picture a battle being fought. Your army is out there fighting a battle with the enemy. The enemy is trying to destroy your city and take you, your family and loved ones into bondage and take your goods. It's an all or none situation. You are anxiously waiting for news from the battle front along with many others.
Then you see a runner. He's fast approaching the city. He's carrying a message in an envelope. The city leader meets him at the gate. He tears open the envelope and removes its contents as the people mill around him. Excitedly, he holds up the paper for all to see. It says in big letters: Good News! The battle has been won!
We are caught in a battle between the forces of the good and evil. On the side of good is our Creator God (Yahweh or Jehovah), His Son Jesus Christ, and the angels that remained loyal to them. On the side of evil is Satan (formerly Lucifer) who instigated the rebellion in heaven, and the angels who support him. Humans have aligned themselves with one side or the other since Adam first sinned in the Garden of Eden, by disobeying one of God's direct commands.
It is Satan's avowed goal to bring as many people under his control as possible. He does this through deception, fraud, ignorance, fear, coercion, apathy, pride, busy-ness, etc.; whatever method he finds that works. His goal is to get as many people to deny God's sovereignty and right to be worshipped, and the right as our Creator to set guidelines for our happiness. He wants us to reject God's Lordship in some way, in order to lose our right to eternal life and immortality. And by doing so, to worship or honor him (Lucifer) instead.
And indeed, through temptations, environment, our sinful natures and our choices, we have all sinned. The Bible says, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," (Romans 3:23). "And there is none righteous. No! Not one." As sinners, we have lost the right to an eternal life of happiness, love and peace, and are doomed to be destroyed at the judgment when our sins bear witness against us. "For the wages of sin is death." (Romans 6:23)
But, God has a plan, a plan for our salvation, for our redemption from the consequences of our sins. He doesn't want any to perish at the judgment, yet He must make a distinction among humans; a distinction between those who are to receive eternal life, and those who continued in Satan's rebellion and must be destroyed at the time of the judgment. "Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment." (Hebrews 9:27)
God sent His Son, Jesus Christ to become a man, a human like you and I. To be born with all of the hereditary problems that you and I have, to be tempted in every way, just as we are. And yet to live without sin. He was to live in conformity to God's will, One who would obey God's commands. Jesus was to demonstrate to us that we can live a sinless life. Jesus Christ conquered sin, that we might be overcomers with Him. He came to save us from our sins, not in our sins.
God gave prophets most of the details about the coming of Jesus Christ, so that Jesus could be clearly identified when He arrived. In fact there were over 400 prophecies written in the Old Testament talking about the coming Messiah. Early on, God also set up a system of annual festivals as well as a sanctuary service in which by symbolic elements, the story of redemption could be told. The most important element in the temple was the Ark of the Covenant which housed the tablets of stone, an agreement or "covenant" containing the Ten Commandments. The first set of stone tablets had the commandments inscribed on them by the very finger of God. The Ten Commandments were Rules (not suggestions) to guide our relationship to God and to our fellow men. The Ark of the Covenant was of the utmost purity and holiness, and was God's throne here on the earth.
For thousands of years, people looked forward to the coming of the promised Messiah, the one who would rescue them from their sins and the consequences of those sins. Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of these prophecies! Jesus was the long looked for Messiah!
Satan attempted to destroy Jesus, this Messiah, to get Him to worship Satan and doubt God, but he was unsuccessful. So Satan incited the Jewish leaders of that day, and they held a mock trial and condemned Jesus to death. The Jewish leaders drew the Roman government into the scheme and the Romans crucified Jesus in a most painful way. Jesus died on a Friday, at the exact time of the day (3:00 p.m.), as the Passover lamb, a symbol representing Him, was to be sacrificed.
An earthquake accompanied Jesus' death cry, cracking open the ground at the foot of the cross. A Roman soldier pierced his side with a spear, causing his blood to run down the cross, into the crack and onto the mercy seat (atonement cover) of the Ark of the Covenant that had been hidden there in a underground chamber hundreds of years earlier during a Babylonian army invasion. Thus a portion of the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) service in which a male goat's blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat to make atonement for the sins of God's people, was also literally fulfilled (see Leviticus 16). (see the Surprising Discoveries section of this website for more information on this find)
The blood of Jesus Christ atoned for our sins, yours and mine. For "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness." (Hebrews 9:22) Jesus' blood was shed for the sins of all people that "come to the foot of the cross" and ask for forgiveness of their sins. "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5
Jesus became the atonement for our sins.
But Jesus did not stay in the tomb. After resting in the tomb over the Sabbath, He rose on the third day (Sunday), just as He had foretold. The stone that covered the tomb was enormous (13' 2" in diameter and nearly 2 feet thick) and was held in place by a iron chain attached to two ~2 inch diameter iron pins in the rock of the tomb. The tomb was guarded by a large number of soldiers. But it didn't matter. The angel sent to release Him, tossed aside the tomb stone shearing off the iron pins, and called to Jesus to come forth. The life inherent in Jesus as the Son of God, brought Him back to life. Jesus rose from the dead. He conquered death for us, for you and me, so that we also might have eternal life.
Jesus showed Himself many times over the next 40 days to His disciples and other followers. Over 500 people saw Him at one time (1 Corinthians 15:6). Then while all His disciples were looking on, He began to ascend to heaven. And a cloud took Him from their sight. Two angels gave them this marvelous promise,
"Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven." (Acts 1:11)
Jesus told his disciples,
"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. (John 14:1-3)
What a beautiful promise! Jesus has promised to come back to this earth and will take his people home with Him to heaven!
Many prophecies in the Bible (especially in the New Testament), give details of Jesus Second Coming.
Jesus followers began spreading the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. That through Him, we might have our sins atoned for and might receive the eternal life that that had been lost when Adam sinned. The good news that our sins can be forgiven, that they can be blotted out of the record books.
What a sinner has to do is to:
repent of (turn from) his sins, asking for God's forgiveness,
acknowledge Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah and accept Him as his personal savior,
be publicly baptized by immersion, symbolizing his death to sin and his resurrection with Christ into new life,
walk as Jesus would have him or her walk, in obedience to God's commands,
spread the good news of salvation to others, leading them to also be disciples (followers) for God.
Just before his ascension, Jesus gave his disciples this commission:
Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Matt. 28:18-20.
The Bible says,
"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 6:23) "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith --and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians. 2:8, 9)
Salvation is a gift freely given. It's not something we can work our way to. We can't achieve it by our own merits.
However, we are not to confuse works with obedience! Works to obtain salvation is impossible. We can never work our way to heaven. That is what all the pagan religions teach. Good deeds to try to assuage some angry god is not what our loving Father asks for.
What God does ask for is that, once He has forgiven us of our sins, is to stop sinning, i.e. to stop breaking His commands. (see John 5:14; 1 Corinthians 15:34; 2 Peter 2:14) To stop arguing with Him or rebelling against Him and be willing to submit our lives to His control, to His guidelines for our own happiness.
1 John 2:4-6 says, "If any man says, "I know Him," but does not do what He commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did."
Jesus says in Revelation 21:8, that all liars (including those who claim to love God, but who disregard His commands) will be thrown into the lake of fire. Thus, following our acceptance of God's gift of forgiveness, obedience to God's commands as a lifestyle and a submission of our will to Him is imperative and a requirement for salvation.
God's commands are not difficult or burdensome to obey. The commands have always been fairly simple, so that none may claim that they are impossible to follow due to their shear difficulty. Adam's test was a simple one: "Don't eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil." Captain Naaman's test was a simple one, go "bathe in the Jordan river 7 times and your leprosy will be gone." Most of the Bible tests of loyalty were simple ones. Yet few people chose to obey.
Obedience has always been a question of the will. Will I chose to follow God? Will I chose to obey His commands? Will I put my trust in Him? Will I have faith in His words? God gives us the strength to obey Him by transforming us, and by giving us the Holy Spirit.
And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession --to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians. 1:13,14)
King David was called a man after God's own heart. Why would that be? Let's see what David says about God's laws, decrees, precepts, statutes, words (all meaning one and the same.). These are all drawn from Psalms 119, the longest chapter in the Bible.
Psalms 119:9 How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word.
10 I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands.
11 I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
14 I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches.
16 I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.
24 Your statutes are my delight; they are my counselors.
30 I have chosen the way of truth; I have set my heart on your laws.
33 Teach me, O LORD, to follow your decrees; then I will keep them to the end.
34 Give me understanding, and I will keep your law and obey it with all my heart.
64 The earth is filled with your love, O LORD; teach me your decrees.
73 Your hands made me and formed me; give me understanding to learn your commands.
89 Your word, O LORD, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens.
94 Save me, for I am yours; I have sought out your precepts.
96 To all perfection I see a limit; but your commands are boundless.
97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.
114 You are my refuge and my shield; I have put my hope in your word.
125 I am your servant; give me discernment that I may understand your statutes.
129 Your statutes are wonderful; therefore I obey them.
131 I open my mouth and pant, longing for your commands.
146 I call out to you; save me and I will keep your statutes.
152 Long ago I learned from your statutes that you established them to last forever.
167 I obey your statutes, for I love them greatly.
172 May my tongue sing of your word, for all your commands are righteous.
174 I long for your salvation, O LORD, and your law is my delight.
Can you sense the passion and love for God that David felt? God's laws, His commands were David's fervent desires! Those same kinds of desires will also be found in the rest of God's people as they mature (grow) in the knowlege and grace of God and their Lord Jesus Christ.
So what are God's laws, precepts, statutes, etc.?
Jesus was once asked,
"Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."
(Mark 12:28-31)
Nov 05, 2012 @ 05:56:32
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