Month: April 2016

Joshua f’it de battle of Jericho…
And de walls came a-tumblin’ down.

This black American spiritual [song] was inspired by an exciting, miraculous and spectacular event in the history of the children of Israel on their way to their “Promised Land.”  The story is found in Chapters 5 and 6 of the Book of Joshua in the Old Testament of the Holy Bible.  For an oppressed slave people as the black Americans in the South of the U.S.A. were, back in the 1700s and 1800s, this Bible story gave them hope of sure victory over the obstacles confronting them on their way to freedom, their “Promised Land.”  While great progress has been made toward that freedom (or “emancipation”), pockets of oppression can, sadly, still be found in places, waiting to be broken down.

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Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.  (Hebrews 3:12-13, NKJV.)

What is it about sin that makes it deceitful?  Satan the devil, who got our first parents to sin against God by disobeying His command not to eat the fruit of the tree He forbade them to, has since deceived the whole world! (Revelation 12:9.)   Not just a tiny minority but the entirety of mankind! As 1 John 5:19 echoes:  “…the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one [Satan].”

As the apostle Paul put it:  “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).  Paul said further:  “Therefore, just as through one man [Adam] sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12), for “the wages [consequence] of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).

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