Romans 10:16 However, they did not all heed the good news; for Isaiah says, “LORD, WHO HAS BELIEVED OUR REPORT?”

God’s Word even when it is backed up by miracles and even when it is from God Himself is more often than not disbelieved.

Romans 10:17 So faith [comes] from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. (NASB2020)

We are not permitted to add to Gods word, and thus we should not. But it is a requirement from God that we believe what He says. Isaiah says here in this verse that Paul has quoted: “who has believed our report?”

Faith, we are told and we experience, is a seed that grows. Faith does not begin as a tree.

Perhaps the greatest enemy of faith and of its growth is seeing with physical sight. You have heard it said: “seeing is believing”, but is it? Faith in God requires us to believe for what we do not yet see, and for what we do not yet possess. It’s called pie in the sky by nonbelievers, it is even seen that way by believers whose faith is not yet matured, and we have all experienced such doubt, but we can receive nothing from God if we live continuously in that place of doubt.

Doubt is life without spiritual sight. It dwells largely in physical sight where deception can destroy faith, and thus it even finds reason to have it do its work. Yes, even when the Word of God produces a miracle.

Now, the reason I’m taking you in this direction is this: we know from God’s word the signs that God in His Word has shown us, which are to be present at a time just before He will send His Son back to be ever present with us. We know that some of those signs are in play already today, we have discussed them in other posts here. And we have seen the teachings from God’s word telling us of a deception accompanying these days of the completion of those signs. So these recorded days are days of testing. Days in which we are to rely on God’s Word more than we are to rely even on physical sight. We then need more than anything else God’s wisdom and His discernment imparted unto us. Our total reliance on His Holy Spirit’s leading us in what we need to understand first from His word and only then from what we are actually seeing. This is the only way to have wisdom giving us the truth in the midst of deception.

If seeing is not really believing; then we must test the Spirit/spirits behind everything that we see in order to know if it be of God. He will not deceive us.

Example: We cannot blindly proceed thinking Trump to be a Savior of freedom, when God has made clear that the world is Satan’s, and that we ourselves are not of the world. At the same time we cannot allow Satan’s world to destroy the faith of our children, and that task involves our being serious in our prayers and actions, so that God blesses us with Leaders (is Trump such a leader?), who will not trounce on the freedoms from God to have our children educated in an environment free of deceptive worldly influence. (The article attached here needs consideration).

God will allow this world to continue only so long as souls can be saved out of it. He because He knows when this will be; will then decide when He is finished. He knows due to His foreknowledge of what each of the billions of people on this earth at any given time will do with Him, and with His offer to be involved in their life.

In Romans 11, Paul reveals to us that He will be done only when the very last Gentile and then the remaining Jews of Israel will be saved. We will only know when that time is near, because we have believed and have observed the signs that He has given us for those days.

In those days the ruler of this world will seek to stomp out all semblance of God and of faith in Him. His word reveals that to us in Revelation. Preceding that end is the deception aimed at robbing us of all faith. You must especially during those days to come: earnestly contend for the faith. Jude 1:4 For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ. 5 I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. (KJV)

Lasciviousness, within what is seen with the physical sight today as being God’s church is now present. This translates into a sign for us of a dying faith attacking those believers. Its progression in the last days leads to what Jesus called out in Matthew 24:10 “At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another. (NASB1995)

If we are seeing the things that God records for us in His word; then we have confirmation from two witnesses: From God’s Word and from what we see aligning itself with it. When these are out of alignment you do not have confirmation. We are to be discerning of their alignment.

I’m adding this history for our information: we need to know such things in order to be capable of discerning. I will explore this further in my next post.

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