Come Quickly Lord Jesus
To Tell the Truth was an American television show. Four celebrities were presented with three contestants. The announcer would describe one of the contestant’s unusual occupations. By asking each contestant a number of questions, the celebrities would write down their choice. Then the announcer would ask the real person with the occupation to stand up.
In the age of AI (Artificial Intelligence) we are beginning to think in terms of technology as reality, even within religion. In Kathy Morales blog, she tells of a priest named Mindar in Kyoto, Japan, who stands in a Buddhist temple and delivers a sermon. Mindar is a robot.
Technology has developed SanTO (Sanctified Theomorphic Operator)Morales tells us. It is a religious figurine to assist those who are elderly, homebound, or disabled with their devotional life at home–such as requests for prayer and scripture.
Technologies, as Morales writes, can endlessly assist us in our horizontal relationships lived out with family, friends, and other Christians. But our vertical relationship to the one true God is made possible by the incarnate God, God becoming flesh in Jesus Christ.
I am comforted by the fact that in my years as apsychotherapist, every man, woman or child who entered by office, was offered eternal life through God’s Son. Their lives were twisted as all lives are to one degree or another. Robots they were not. Some were abused, others abused to a degree that is unimaginable to the naïve. Sinners they were in the category that I see myself as a sinner. Unglued sinners, some, as in the oft misquoted dictum of Martin Luther Pecca fortiter—“Sin bravely.” They saw it as a license to sin. But immediately after saying that, Luther said “sed forties fide et gaude in Christo, qui victor est peccati, mortis et mundi” “but believe and rejoice in Christ more boldly still, for he is victor over sin, death, and the world.”
In the popular culture of our times, a come to Jesus moment will not suffice. Come to Jesus is a language of conversion, a modern slang that applies to any significant decision whether Jesus has anything to do with it or not.
The victory of which Martin Luther speaks is not of one’s own decision. The all-encompassing love and grace of the incarnate God takes claim of every life at the moment they call upon the name of Lord Jesus Christ. From there on, the Christian never lives his/her life outside of Christ but lives by the Spirit of faith. One’s life is lived according the promises of God: faith remembers the promises of baptism, the promises given to them when they eat Christ’s body and drink His blood.
God will always be near and as Wade Johnston writes in his blog, “At times God may seem lost in the commotion. But the incarnate God who conquered death will not be undone by any human’s doubt. ” If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything 1 John 3:20
Adam Farncisco comforts the sinner, great or small, by recalling the life of John Warwick Montgomery.He refers to Montgomery as an apologist in the caliber of C.S. Lewis. The world sets aside the Words God spoke to us through His Son Jesus Christ as merely “God talk,” as in the case of a Jesus moment. Montgomery lived his life believing that the Word of God can be proven to be true. Through his nine-two years of life, Montgomery confidently confessed that the incarnate God became flesh and that whoever believes in the Son of God will be saved.
Regardless of how broken our lives have become, the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 1 John 4:4
It must have been a glorious moment there on the Mount of Olives when His disciples stood gazing up and Jesus disappeared into the clouds when two men in white robes promised that This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.” Acts 1:11 Jesus will come again to take His own to be with Him in heaven.
He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
Revelation 22:20
