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Saturday, November 22, 2014

 

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About Leaflets


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Facing The Facts: ABOUT OURSELVES
No. 2 of 4


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The simpliest facts about ourselves are those we least like to face. To see life whole and see it clearly is given to very few. We find it so much more pleasant to ignore unpalatable truths; yet when facts catch up with us and a time of testing comes, it is the people who know themselves who can face the future with most confidence.

Two great facts of human nature govern the lives of us all: we die, and we are sinners.

All nature speaks with one voice: the question is not IF but WHEN death will come, and man is no exception. There is not one shred of evidence in nature, or one text in the Bible, to prove that men can survive death any more than sheep. If we are to live again, it can only be by an act of God raising the dead, and changing dying bodies to undying.

In one way men differ from animals: in plain old fashioned language, animals cannot sin; men can. Men are able to judge their acts. And men DO sin. We all know in our hearts that deep down in human nature there is a flaw that warps our best intentions and continually prevents us living up to our ideals. The history of the twentieth century has borne terrible witness to the fact of sin in human nature.

Men cannot release themselves either from death or from sin. The change from sin to goodness and from death to life can only come through God's action and men's response.

The Bible teaches that:

God made human beings as living creatures: "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being." (Genesis 2:7 RSV)
He sentenced them to return to the dust from whence they came: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (Gen. 3:19, KJV).
He provides a way of deliverance from sin and death: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin." (Romans 7:24-25, KJV).
This comes through the death of His Son: "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8, KJV)
Christ, who rose from the dead, will give life to those who come to God through Him: "And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." (John 10:28, KJV).
This he will do by raising them from death: "... I will raise him up at the last day." (John 6:54, KJV).

 

No. 3. Facing The Facts -- ABOUT JESUS


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