Praise the Lord for the unshakable Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is His Kingdom. The Lord is eternal and everlasting. We can stake our lives in Him, we can take refuge in Him, we can anchor our lives in Him. His love never fails. His mercy endures for ever. One of my favorite passages says, "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this."
Another
of my favorites states, "And the seventh angel sounded; and there were
great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the
kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and
ever." Revelation 11:15
In my college days I studied the British romantic poets. Among my favorites was Shelley. In 1817 Percy Bysshe Shelley penned the classic poem Ozymandias to demonstrate the arrogance of those who believe their earthly empires will last forever:
" I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Let us pause and ponder the irony of a statue in the desert, surrounded by nothing but the drifting sands. When Ozymandias calls on the mighty to despair, he means that they should live in fear of his power, yet nothing remains of his vast empire but the scattered ruins of the stones that form a “colossal wreck” in the wilderness. Those who think they are invincible should indeed despair, but for another reason entirely. That is, the mightiest empires will one day be brought to the ground. Habakkuk 2:14 is, perhaps, the ultimate truth. “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” I am quickened with the fact of the Good News of Jesus our Lord spreading around the world like wild fire..
When the Communists came to power in China in 1949, they expelled all the foreign missionaries. Back then there were 700,000 Christians. For decades no one knew what was happening to the church or if it even survived, but by 1980 there were at least 10 million Christians in China. Today there may be as many as 100 million. It is happening as it is written in Habakkuk 2:14 with its vision of the knowledge of the Lord spreading across the earth as the waters cover the sea.” Nothing can stop it. There is no power, no policy, and there are no experts that can reverse what God is doing.” The ultimate fulfillment of this verse awaits the return of Christ to the earth to establish his kingdom. As we race headlong toward the final days of this age, we should not be surprised—indeed we should expect—that there will be an explosion of gospel preaching around the world with untold multitudes coming to Christ.
All of this is what the angel had in mind when he told Mary that “of his kingdom there will be no end.” Even in lands caught up in the religion of Islam, Jesus is reaching out to rescue the lost. There are millions and millions in the world today who are gripped with the thought that the kingdom of God is the greatest thing in the world, and that one thought has revolutionized their lives and reoriented their values. Kingdom issues are at stake. That’s the only possible explanation for the way they live.
In Christ,
Brown
https://youtu.be/76RrdwElnTU
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