"These words are true and faithful." What the angel told the Apostle John is true and faithful. God will never turn from His path. He has determined to make a new heaven and a new earth—and all will be filled with Jesus Christ and God in Him. There is no power in the heavens above, or on the earth, or in the realms of darkness under the earth that can in any manner alter the slightest aspect of what God has prepared for those who love Him.

The greatest mistake any human being can make is to grasp this present world, clinging to it with might and main, being unwilling to lose his or her own life in order to enter the Life of Jesus Christ. The present world is but the darkness of the uterus. We haven't even been fully formed as yet. We don't know what our eternal name will be. True life is ahead of us.

To cling to our animal life in the present cursed world is the depth of foolishness. The result of continuing to live in the appetites of the flesh will be corruption in the day of resurrection.

Let us not be fools. Let us lay aside our attempts to create our own heaven and earth and place our trust in Christ. Christ is to be trusted. He will work with us until we are prepared to enjoy and hold the paradise we are given. Outside of Him there is only vanity and frustration.

Brother George Gillies used to say, "If you go through life without Christ you've missed it all." How very, very true this is. Life without Christ is really death. The person without Christ is dead before his or her body is assigned to the grave.

But in Christ we have life and a hope for the future not based on an unfounded optimism but on the promise of Him who alone is true and faithful.

We are not going to receive the kind of future and destiny we are hoping for unless we do something about it now. Every time we deny ourselves and make a decision for Christ we add luster to our resurrection. Every time we cling to our own way and deny the will of Christ we diminish our resurrection, our future, our destiny.

Grace and mercy never, never, never alter the Kingdom law of sowing and reaping. We can be forgiven and cleansed, but either in this life or the next, in one way or another, we will receive what we have done. God forgave King David and he died in glory. But in his lifetime he paid bitterly for his adventure with Bathsheba.

Let us turn from our self-centered ways and seek the Lord. There still is time to be forgiven and to plant seed that will give us a fine harvest in the Day of the Lord.