Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
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Let me make sure I've got this right. One night in December - in the middle of the rainy season - Joseph returns home from work and announces to his wife, Mary (a young lass of thireteen or fourteen in her ninth month of pregnancy) that they must immediately depart for Bethlehem in order to fulfill some vague scriptural prophecy. It's a journey of over one hundred and thirty kilometers that passes through some of the most treacherous and hostile territory in all of Jerusalem. However, Mary, despite being jerked and jostled on the back of a jackass and struggling on foot through thick muck and mire, manages to complete this arduous trek without hemorrhaging, breaking her water, or using harsh language. No doubt this has to be another one of those take it on 'faith' stories, right?
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Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and thought I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing. Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil: rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endueth all things. Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. Now abideth faith, hope and love. These three; but the greatest of these is love.(I Corinthians 13)
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Experience is the only prophecy of wise men.
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Why Paul God already had called twelve apostles of the kingdom Although Judas had fallen in transgression, the seat of his apostolic office was filled by Matthias preceding the day of Pentecost. Insofar as Paul was unconverted at the time, he could not have possibly fulfilled the qualificatios set down by the Holy Spirit to be numbered with the twelve (Acts 121-26). Of course, there are many dispensationalists who would agree with this interpretation, but teach that God ordained Paul to be the thirteenth apostle of the kingdom. Perhaps you have heard the saying, 'They jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.' In other words, we have gone from bad to worse, which is certainly the case with this view. the number twelve is stamped throughout the pages of prophecy, thus eliminating the possibility of a thirteenth apostolic office (Matt. 1928 cf. Rev. 12-21). What logical explanation then can we give for Paul's apostleship Before the foundation of the world, God foreordained that He would raise up a new apostle to reveal His eternal purpose for the parenthetical age of Grace in which we now live. Hence, Paul says 'But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the heathen Gentiles...' (Gal. 115.16). When God temporarily rolled up the building plans of prophecy and placed them aside, He made known a secret set of plans. With this program came a completely new set of blueprints. According to the counsel of His will, He had predetermined to call Paul as the masterbuilder of the project. So then, the instructions for our building program are found in Paul's epistles. Little wonder the apostles says 'I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.' (1 Cor. 310). It is essential to use Pauline constructio materials (grace doctrines), simply because someday soon the Building Inspector will examine our workmanship to determine if we followed His codes.
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The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
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Predictions of the future are never anything but projections of present automatic processes and procedures, that is, of occurrences that are likely to come to pass if men do not act and if nothing unexpected happens; every action, for better or worse, and every accident necessarily destroys the whole pattern in whose frame the prediction moves and where it finds its evidence.
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Daniel 9:24:
'Seventy 'sevens' are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place.'
(NIV)
Seventy weeks [of years, or 490 years] are decreed upon your people and upon your holy city [Jerusalem], to finish and put an end to transgression, to seal up and make full the measure of sin, to purge away and make expiation and reconciliation for sin, to bring in everlasting righteousness (permanent moral and spiritual rectitude in every area and relation) to seal up vision and prophecy and prophet, and to anoint a Holy of Holies.
(AMP)
Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.
(KJV)
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Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.
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He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner intimation of coming events that is a thousand times more exact than anything they may say. He is impelled by inertia, rather than curiosity, and nothing is more unlike the submissive apathy with which he hears his fate revealed than the alert dexterity with which the man of courage lays hands on the future.
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The difference between heresy and prophecy is often one of sequence. Heresy often turns out to have been prophecy -- when properly aged.
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As we study the Word of God rightly divided we are to understand that God has arranged His dealings with mankind into two programs. We have His prophesied purpose and His secret purpose. Prophecy has to do with the earth and Christ's reign upon it during the millennial kingdom, while the Mystery concerns our exaltation with Christ in the heavenlies.
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Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science?
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The people who were honored in the Bible were the false prophets. It was the ones we call the prophets who were jailed and driven into the desert, and so on.
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No vision and you perish; No Ideal, and you're lost; Your heart must ever cherish Some faith at any cost. Some hope, some dream to cling to, Some rainbow in the sky, Some melody to sing to, Some service that is high.
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When God temporarily rolled up the building plans of prophecy and placed them aside, He made known a secret set of plans. With this program came a completely new set of blueprints. According to the counsel of His will, He had predetermined to call Paul as the masterbuilder of the project. So then, the instructions for our building program are found in Paul's epistles. Little wonder the apostles says 'I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon' (1 Cor. 310). It is essential to use Pauline construction materials (grace doctrines), simply because someday soon the Building Inspector will examine our workmanship to determine if we followed His codes.
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Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so you shall become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.
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Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.
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Dream lofty dreams, as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you one day shall be: your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.
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Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year and yet far too little for the next 10.
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Objects close to the eye shut out much larger objects on the horizon; and splendors born only of the earth eclipse the stars. So it is with people who sometimes cover up the entire disc of eternity with a dollar, and so quench transcendent glories with a little shining dust.
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Faith is the confidence, the assurance, the enforcing truth, the knowing...
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I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land.
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America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description.
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Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so you shall become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.
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It's easy to say no! when there's a deeper yes! burning inside.
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We do not need more intellectual power, we need more spiritual power. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen.
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Perhaps our eyes are merely a blank film which is taken from us after our deaths to be developed elsewhere and screened as our life story in some infernal cinema or dispatched as microfilm into the sidereal void.
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Three people were at work on a construction site. All were doing the same job, but when each was asked what the job was, the answers varied. Breaking rocks, the first replied. Earning my living, the second said. Helping to build a cathedral, said the third.
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Prophecy today is hardly the romantic business that it used to be. The old tools of the trade, like the sword, the hair shirt, and the long fast in the wilderness, have given way to more contemporary, mundane instruments of doom --the book, the picket and the petition, the sit-in at City Hall.
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