Here I Stand, Alone
“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.
