I started this blog in 2007, the year my mother went to be with the Lord. I thought it might be interesting to go through those early posts and repost some of them. Here’s one from June 2007…
Why was Betty so fearless? Learn about Salvation… here.
This morning I asked Billy if the lengthy video documentary he was working on would be ready to post today. He said… God willing, it would. I responded by saying… I hope He’s willing! We both knew why I said that. I was fondly remembering Delores, a woman we met when my father, Giuseppe, was in the nursing home. It was the first time that I heard anyone say that, and it was a phrase we always associated with Delores. I loved it!
One day, as we were conversing with someone in the nursing home lounge, Delores walked in. In true New York style, she joined the conversation as if we all knew each other. I liked her immediately, and to my delight learned that she was a Christian! Family members of the residents often bonded, because we all had loved ones living at the nursing home. Delores’ beloved husband, Hilton, was a resident there, and she was constantly by his side. I remember one day sharing the lyrics of God on the Mountain with her, a song we were learning for the Sunday services…
“And the God of the good times
Is still God in the bad times
The God of the day
Is still God in the night”
Billy and I often wonder about the many people we met at the nursing home all those years ago. We did services there on many a Sunday and met some wonderful people. So, this morning when Delores came to mind I wondered if she was still alive. When I googled her name, I found her obituary. Delores went home to be with the Lord just a few weeks ago, on September 18, 2022. Although we’ve lost touch over the years, and I’m feeling sad learning of her recent death, I know we’ll see Delores again in glory!
Psalm 116:15 Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.
Photos of Delores, her husband Hilton, and my dad Giuseppe
From MOAB IS MY WASHPOT by C. H. Spurgeon
“IN REFERENCE TO THE WORLD TO COME, the terrible doom of the ungodly is a most solemn warning to us. My heart fails me to speak concerning the destiny of the ungodly in another world. Dying without hope, without a Savior, they go before the throne uncleansed, unforgiven, to hear that awful sentence, “Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”
Pursue them for a moment in your thoughts, down to the deeps of wrath, whither God’s judgment shall pursue them. My Lord, I pray thee of thy grace, save me from the sin which brings such a result at the end of it. If the wages of sin be such a death as this, Lord save me from so accursed a service. Will not the sight of their destruction drive us to watchfulness, and cause us to make our calling and election sure? Will it not make us anxious lest we also come into this place of torment? O the wrath to come! The wrath to come whereof this Book speaks in so many terrible tones and dreadful images!
Remember Lot’s wife “I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not.
And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.”
In this way Moab becomes our washpot, by showing us what sin grows to when it has developed itself. This consideration will surely cause us more heartily to love the Savior, who can deliver us from it.
Dear friends, if you are not in Christ, much of what I have said bears upon you. Bethink yourself, and pray to escape from the wrath to come. I would not have you be made a mere washpot to be used and broken as a potter’s vessel. Neither should you wish to be a vessel without honor, a thing of no esteem; but may you have faith in Jesus—life in him, and then you shall be a royal diadem, a crown of glory in the hand of our God. May you have a heritage among those who fear the Lord, and are reconciled to him by faith in the total sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
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Know your Bible well and pray often. Stay close to Jesus and the Holy Ghost will keep you from being deceived by false teachers or being entangled in the pleasures of this present sinful world.
DAYS OF DECEPTION
I know, just like Peter,
Oh dear Lord, I could be,
Saying others may leave,
That will never be me!
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They came to take Jesus,
It was His time to die,
We know it was Peter,
That His Lord, he denied.
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My spirit is willing,
Though my flesh is quite weak,
A very good reason,
My Lord daily to seek.
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Oh! days of deception,
Tangled webs of deceit,
Lord don’t let me be caught,
May your truth be my meat.
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The multitude blinded.
To the truth about hell,
While the church is asleep,
Or too busy to tell.
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Old Noah, believed God,
And by faith built an ark,
Preparing his household
Knowing soon they’d embark.
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But the fathers rebelled,
During Moses’ delay,
They sat down to eat, drink,
And they rose up to play.
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The world and it’s pleasures,
Beckon like a soft bell,
A death knell, don’t hearken,
Or be charmed by it’s spell!
Cathy White 2008
1 John 2:15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
Albert Barnes Bible Commentary:
They are new creatures. No matter what they have been before, whether moral or immoral; whether infidels or speculative believers; whether amiable, or debased, sensual and polluted, yet if they become Christians they all experience such a change as to make it proper to say they are a new creation.
Ephesians 4:24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
It means, evidently, that there is a change produced in the renewed heart of man that is equivalent to the act of creation, and that bears a strong resemblance to it – a change, so to speak, as if the man was made over again, and had become new.
The phrase implies evidently the following things:
(1) That there is an exertion of divine power in the conversion of the sinner as really as in the act of creating the world out of nothing, and that this is as indispensable in the one case as in the other.
(2) That a change is produced so great as to make it proper to say that he is a new man. He has new views, new motives, new principles, new objects and plans of life. He seeks new purposes, and he lives for new ends.
If a drunkard becomes reformed, there is no impropriety in saying that he is a new man.
If a man who was licentious becomes pure, there is no impropriety in saying that he is not the same man that he was before.
There is a change so deep, so clear, so entire, and so abiding, that it is proper to say, here is a new creation of God – a work of the divine power as decided and as glorious as when God created all things out of nothing.
There is no other moral change that takes place on earth so deep, and radical, and thorough as the change at conversion.
They now renounced that independence, relied on the merits of the Saviour, their attachment to idols, their love of sin and degradation, their dependence on their own works, had passed away, and they had renounced all these things.
In regard to all, it is also true that old things pass away.
Their former prejudices, opinions, habits, attachments pass away.
Their supreme love of self passes away.
Their love of sins passes away.
Their love of the world passes away.
Their supreme attachment to their earthly friends rather than God passes away.
Their love of sin, their sensuality, pride, vanity, levity, ambition, passes away.
There is a deep and radical change on all these subjects – a change which commences at the new birth;
Behold, all things are become new – that is, all things in view of the mind. The purposes of life, the feelings of the heart, the principles of action, all become new. The understanding is consecrated to new objects, the body is employed in new service, the heart forms new attachments. Nothing can be more strikingly. descriptive of the facts in conversion than this; nothing more entirely accords with the feelings of the newborn soul. All is new.
There are new views of God, and of Jesus Christ; new views of this world and of the world to come; new views of truth and of duty; and everything is seen in a new aspect and with new feelings.
LEARN HOW YOU CAN BE BORN AGAIN AND BECOME A NEW CREATURE IN CHRIST JESUS.
PEACEMAKERS 