Here I Stand,
Alone
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“To the
reproaches of his enemies, who
taunted him with the weakness of
his cause Luther answered:
“Who knows if God has not
chosen and called me to perform
this needed work, and if these
babblers ought not to fear that
by despising me, they despise God
Himself? They say I am alone;
no, for Jehovah is with me.
In their sense, Moses was alone
at the departure from Egypt;
Elijah was alone in the reign of
King Ahab; Isaiah was alone in
Jerusalem; Ezekiel was alone in
Babylon.
“Hear this, O
Rome, God never selected as a
prophet either the high priest or
any great personage; but rather,
He chose low and despised men,
once even the shepherd Amos. In
every age the saints have been
compelled to rebuke kings,
princes, recreant priests, and
wise men at the peril of their
lives.” “I do not say
that I also am a prophet; but I
do say that they ought to fear
precisely because I am alone,
while on the side of the
oppressor are numbers, caste,
wealth, and mocking letters. Yes,
I am alone; but I stand serene,
because side by side with me is
the Word of God; and with all
their boasted numbers, this, the
greatest of powers, is not with
them.’” GC88, 142.
You do not want to
go into the final battle with the
beast and his image with a
weakened, compromised, subverted,
or helpless conscience. Every
time you fail to stand on
conscience, you weaken your
ability to stand. Every time you
stand on conscience by faith in
the strength of God, you mightily
strengthen your conscience. Go
into the final battle with a powerful
conscience, skilled, trained for
battle, and battle-hardened.
Battle-Hardened
I had a friend, a
good friend, and a faithful
friend in college. He had just
returned from Vietnam, a veteran
with several purple hearts from
being wounded in battle. (I
forgot how many.) He showed them
to me one time. He was a small
man, but fast and extremely
tough-physically, mentally,
psychologically, and spiritually.
Men twice his size would not
think of tangling with him. I
watched them back down. He
abounded in courage, and acted as
a man who knew that he could
master whatever situation he was
in. He knew how to handle
himself. He knew what he was
capable of. He was tested, tried,
and fit. He was a “man”
of might, a [man] of war fit for
battle. 1 Chronicles 12:8. Of the
Gadites it is written, “And
the Gadites there separated
themselves unto David into the
hold to the wilderness men of
might, and men of war fit for the
battle, that could handle shield
and buckler, whose faces were
like the faces of lions, and were
as swift as the roes upon the
mountains.” 1 Chronicles
12:8. Therefore, it must be with
us spiritually.
Making
Steel in the Forests of Germany
in the Time of Christ How God
makes a Weapon of Finest Steel
Out of Ore
“The
blacksmith puts the iron and
steel into the fire that he may
know what manner of metal they
are. The Lord allows His chosen
ones to be placed in the furnace
of affliction, to prove what
temper they are of, and whether
they can be fashioned for His
work.” MH 471. The believer
today is cast into the furnace of
the testing of dialectical
praxis, which is everywhere, to
see what temper the character is.
Germans
Produced Weapons of Steel in the
Time of Christ in Their Villages
At the time of
Christ most villages in Germany
produced their own iron and
steel, out of which they formed
steel weapons which to do battle
with the Roman legions. At the
battle of Teutoberg Forest in
A.D. 9, the Germans annihilated
three of the finest legions of
Rome, 20,000 of Rome’s
finest, one-quarter of Roman
troops north of the Alps, with
weapons made in their remote
villages. Rome never recovered
from the blow.
From Ore
to Bloom
“Most of the
furnaces used for smelting in
this period consisted of holes in
the ground, about fifteen inches
in diameter and twenty inches
deep, with a circular ceramic
chimney about a yard tall on top.
At ground level, one or more
holes in this chimney admitted
air, supplied either by natural
wind or by hand driven bellows.
Iron smelters loaded the furnace
with alternating layers of
charcoal, usually made from oak,
and hematite or limonite ore,
then set the charcoal on fire.
After anywhere from five to
twenty hours, depending upon the
supply of oxygen, the quality of
the charcoal, and the character
of the ore, the smelters removed
the bloom-a lump of impure iron
mixed with slag, about the size
of a basketball-from the pit.
Making
Steel From Bloom
“The next
step was to reheat the bloom in
another furnace to a red-hot
temperature, then pound it with a
hammer to drive out the
impurities. The result was a
chuck of wrought iron that could
be hammered into weapons, tools,
and ornaments. Well before this
period, skilled smiths had
already learned how to make
steel. To create a steel blade on
a sword or spearhead, the smith
placed the weapon in a hot fire
and surrounded it with charcoal.
Carbon from the charcoal entered
the structure of the wrought iron
to produce the alloy steel. Steel
had the advantage over wrought
iron that it was much harder and
that it could be worked to a much
sharper blade or point.”
–Peter S. Wells, The Battle
That Stopped Rome: Emperor
Augustus, Arminius, and Slaughter
of the Legions in the Teutoberg
Forest. New York: W.W. Norton
& Company, 2003, pp. 168,
169.
You and I are that
hematite or limonite ore,
originally just a lump of earth,
but out of which the Divine
Smelter forges a weapon of finest
steel. To become that sword, we
must undergo the fire, the
hammer, and the red-hot
temperature, the pounding by God
Himself in the furnace of
affliction.
What
Matters Is Loyalty to Christ
The provisions of
discipleship guarantee the
disciple freedom from satanic
power. The true disciple has left
the world, its associations, its
yokes, and is now a member of the
kingdom of God. Whatever happens
to him in the course of his
freedom of conscience and
discipleship, he is in God’s
hands. Man may support or turn
against him. That matters not.
What matters is loyalty,
devotion, and surrender to
Christ, answering to the
claims of His discipleship,
obeying Him, following Him The
disciple will find the fortunes
of earth and earthly friendship
variable and unreliable, unless
they are garrisoned by continual
surrender to Christ by faith in
the Spirit
In Luke 14:26,
Jesus lays out the conditions and
therefore, the freedom of
discipleship: ”If any man
come to Me, and hate not his
father, and mother, and wife, and
children, and brethren, and
sisters, [you could add pastor
and teacher and counselor and
group] yea, and his own life
also, he cannot be My disciple.
And whosoever doth not bear his
cross [the cross of shame,
rejection and reproach because of
conviction in following Christ],
and come after Mw, cannot be My
disciple.” Luke 14:26.
The Love
of Freedom
“Now the Lord
is that Spirit, and where the
Spirit of the Lord is, there is
Liberty.” 2 Corinthians
3:17.
We must live
continually in the atmosphere,
the environment of freedom from
the Holy Spirit, in the soul
environment of freedom from sin
in our hearts, for
“Whosoever committeth sin is
the servant of sin…[but] if
the Son therefore shall make you
free, ye shall be free
indeed.” John 8:36. We must
be born into freedom when we are
born again.
The Holy
Spirit
Where does the
love of freedom come from? It
comes directly, freshly, and
mightily, from the omnipotent
Third Person of the Godhead-from
the Holy Spirit. “Now the
Lord is that Spirit: and where
the Spirit of the Lord is, there
is liberty.” 2 Corinthians
3:17.
“Uphold me
with thy free Spirit.”
Psalms 51:12. “The wind
bloweth where it listeth, and
thou hearest the sound thereof,
but canst not tell whence it
cometh, and whither it goeth: so
is every one that is born of the
spirit.” John 3:8. Ah, yes,
God loves freedom. The wind, the
fire, the Spirit, all bear mighty
testimony that God loves freedom.
Christ
Sets Us Free
Where does the
love of freedom come from? It
comes directly, wonderfully, and
mightily, from Christ, from
continuing in His Word, being His
disciples, knowing His truth, and
surrendering to His Person, the
Author of Freedom: “If ye
continue in My Word, then are ye
My disciples indeed; And ye shall
know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free…If the
Son therefore shall make you
free, ye shall be free
indeed.” John 8:31, 32, 36.
“Stand fast
therefore in the liberty
wherewith Christ hath made us
free, and be not entangled again
with the yoke of
bondage…for, brethren, ye
have been called unto
liberty.” Galatians 5: 1,13.
The Law of
Liberty
Where does the
love of freedom come” It
comes from the fear of the Lord:
“I will walk at liberty: for
I seek they precepts.”
Psalms 119:45. “Proclaim
liberty throughout all the land
unto all the inhabitants
thereof.” Leviticus 25:10.
“The creature itself also
shall be delivered from the
bondage of corruption into the
glorious liberty of the children
of God.” Romans 8:21.
Where does the
love of freedom come from? It
comes from obedience to the Law
of Liberty: “But whoso
looketh into the perfect law of
liberty, and continueth therein,
he being not a forgetful hearer,
but a doer of the work, this man
shall be blessed in his
deed…So peak ye, and so do,
as they shall be judged by the
law of liberty.” James 1:25,
2:12.
The Work
of the Holy Spirit in Creating
Liberty in the Soul
Jesus described
for us the work of the Holy
Spirit, the Comforter, in
bringing about this freedom:
“When He is come, He will
reprove, convince the world of
sin, and of righteousness, and of
judgment.
“Of sin
because they believe not on Me.
“Of
righteousness, because I go to My
Father, and ye see me no more;
“Of judgment,
because the prince if this world
is judged.” John 16: 8-11.
Sin is the
Environment of Bondage
The forces of evil
know that the fastest way to lead
a nation into slavery and ruin is
to lead them into the bondage of
sin. This is the lesson of the
Babylonians captivity of Judah in
the Old Testament. God said to
Jeremiah that if he could find one
person in Jerusalem that
executed judgment, that sought
the truth, He would pardon
it: “Run to and fro
through the streets of Jerusalem,
and see now, and know, and seek
in the broad places thereof, if
ye can find a man, if there be
any that executeth judgment, that
seeketh the truth: and I will
pardon it.” Jeremiah 5:1.
Though the people
said, “The Lord liveth;
surely they swear falsely.”
Jeremiah 5:2. Jeremiah went to
the poor, but they had refused to
receive correction, they made
their faces harder than a rock,
and refused to return. (Jeremiah
5:3) Jeremiah went to the great
men but “these have
altogether broken the yoke, and
burst the bonds.” Jeremiah
5:5. Therefore, Judah went into
captivity.
Breaking
Union With the Transcendent God
In the early
twentieth century, the Italian
communist theorist, Antonio
Gramsci, said that if you would
ever conquer the West, you must
break their faith in a
transcendent God. The Jesuits,
avid students of Marxism and
pantheism, accomplished this with
their introduction of Marxist
Liberation Theology, the Social
Gospel, the “love and
unity’ message, in the
pantheistic revolution they
launched in America in the last
half of the 1960s. Today, hardly
a soul of the oncoming generation
truly believes in a transcendent
God. The nation is ripe for
enslavement and ruin.
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