Pedro Melendez

It seems evident that there is, in almost every person, a sense of “Something” or “Someone” that’s beyond what our five natural senses can comprehend. [See: A Law-abiding Universe — But Man!]  And this sense of “mystery” has driven mankind to worship that “great unknown” — whether some impersonal “Force” or some “Person” somewhere out there in the unseen world or universe.  That worship has taken many forms, has engendered many often conflicting ideas or concepts, many different rituals and rubrics.  Thus we have today’s major “world religions” — Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism — not to mention the smaller but often aggressive religions.

In the midst of all this bewildering religious smorgasbord, one is left with the question: which of these religions is true?  And which one offers and practices true worship?

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The prophet Malachi declares some amazing prophecies about our end times, just before Jesus Christ returns in victory to rule this dying world.

One such prophecy — which many Bible students have failed to appreciate or have chosen to misunderstand or ignore — is found in Malachi 4.

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Many sincere Christians — clerics and laymen alike — look at our world with its hordes of “unsaved” or “unchurched” people numbering in the multiple millions.  And, with great urgency and compassion, these Christians long with all their hearts to reach out to these people with the gospel of salvation in Christ.

Indeed, as Jesus Himself said, He came “to seek and save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).  Jesus was referring here to the Jewish tax collector Zacchaeus and other human beings like him (including you and me!) who are all sinners and are “lost” on their way to salvation and eternal life.  “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one, to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6).

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Exercising what they consider their “freedom in Christ,” many — if not most — who profess faith in Christ eat flesh of all animals, regardless of some animals being labeled by the Old Testament as “unclean”  (Leviticus 11; Deuteronomy 14; etc.).  There are even some who go as far an extreme as to say that “Pork is Christian food!”

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Even much, much earlier than the word “science” was coined, humans must have wondered about the world in which they lived, and have observed that certain things, certain events happened regularly and predictably.

Since dim antiquity, we humans have known that sunsets would be followed by nights, and then sunrise and daylight.  We have known that (for those living in areas with four seasons) spring comes after winter, and summer before fall.  We have known when to plant and when to harvest.  We have known that when we sow corn seed, we will harvest corn and not rice or barley or wheat.  We have known how long it takes for a woman to conceive and bear a child.  We have known enough about how things work to be able to build houses, make clothes, make boats, carts, cars, trains, planes and other means to take us to places — and many, many other things to make our lives easier and more comfortable (or more complicated?!).

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“He surely has gone to heaven; he was such a good man!”  We hear such talk at funeral wakes.  We hear it as people pay tribute to a loved one who had done a lot of good and is now lying cold in a casket.  “He must be looking from up there over us his surviving loved ones, pleased with the honor we are giving him right now.”

Does a dead person still somehow see and hear and feel or otherwise sense what’s going on in the world he has left behind at death?  What about stories about the “ghost” of a dead person visiting the living who survive him?  Are these stories for real?  When a “bad” man dies, does he — or his soul — go down at once to some fiery place called “hell?”

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For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height — to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with the fullness of God.  (Ephesians 3:14-19, NKJV.)

Almost everywhere we hear people talking and preaching about “the love of Jesus.”  Mass media preachers and door-to-door evangelists assure their audiences or “prospects” for “salvation” that “Jesus loves you.”  Invariably they would break out into a spiel about how Jesus died for sinners, how His shed blood cleanses us from our guilty past and evil consciences — about how God’s grace and mercy through Christ covers all our sins, and we are freed from the consequence of sin: death in the “lake of fire.”  We are assured of everlasting life.

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The Lion Handbook’s The History of Christianity (Oxford, England, etc.: Lion Publishing, first edition, 1977, reprinted 1994, page 672), in the section titled “The Next Chapter of History,” begins:

The crucible of history in the last decade of the twentieth century [now the 21st century] takes on a new dimension. For beyond the history of nations and their citizens, it will now have to embrace a history of the created order itself. Have destructive processes been set in train which means that its fate is already sealed? Is there time left for vital change? Can a new sense of responsibility for nature save not only threatened species, and threatened landscapes, but life itself? And where lies the salvation of individual men and women in all this? [Emphasis mine.]

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There are many who believe and preach that Christians should only love God and not fear Him.  To prove their point, they would refer to 1 John 4:18, where it says, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment.  But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.”

There, they say, it is clear that if we love God, we wouldn’t fear Him, because if we fear Him, our love for Him is not perfect.

How do we explain this particular scripture, which seems to contradict other scriptures that, clearly, exhort us to fear God?

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