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Hold Fast, Just Hold Fast - W.E. Smith
Oh Lord, though the times be perilous and fearful, let us not be anxious or afraid. Though there is abounding confusion and perplexity, let us not be confounded, for You told us what would happen before it happens. Lord, though there is growing distress and unrest all around, though all earthly things are unraveling at great speed, let us be at peace in Thee oh Lord, just as You have promised. Though the nations rage against Thee oh Lord, and the kings of the earth take counsel with the fallen ones on high, let us hold fast to our God. And even though You bruise us, may we trust You forever, and know that You can do no wrong; that Your counsels remain steadfast and perfect! Brethren, the world as we have known it, the world in which we have grown up, is over. All that remains is for it to run its God-ordained course to destruction. If you are still holding on to this world, or the things of this world, then my word for you is to be prepared to be sorely and grievously disappointed; to suffer supreme loss. There is no future for this present world system and if you have any lingering expectations in it then these will be dashed to pieces in the days to come. If you love things and money and worldly security, your little plastic house, or just the easy life that we have come to know in the West, then be prepared to be shaken along with everything else. Our future is in the Lord Jesus Christ and His Kingdom, not in this world of confusion and enmity against the Maker of All Things! We are aware that many in the body are suffering great loss at the moment, and a time of tremendous testing is upon the people of God. The Lord must know what is in our hearts; whether we love Him more than everything else, including our own lives. He must have a Bride worthy of His love and glory! We will need Him more than ever dear saints, and we will increasingly need each other, as the darkness advances, and we begin to see the foundations collapsing – in the governments of this world, and the economies, and the food supply, and the climate; and as war erupts once again on this planet, spanning all continents and peoples! There is a violent convergence of calamities threatening all aspects of life in this world, like nothing ever seen, and all of the pundits and experts and scientists don’t have a clue what it actually happening, let alone solutions to advance. Rest assured, there is nothing cyclical or fixable in this present crisis – the stage is being set for the false one to arrive on the world scene, and to initiate all of the events that we know will bring about the end of this present age of gentile dominion over the earth. My friends, I dare say that the USA, by all evidences and accounts, is nearly finished! Although the recipient of such grace and blessing by the Lord, she has aligned herself with devils, and made herself an enemy of the Most High! This has long been true of other so-called “Christians” nations, and we see in the Second Psalm the Lord’s point of view regarding this present hour -
There is only one place to hide in this present time of tumult and trouble brethren; there is only place of refuge – “How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!” So I ask each of you, as you look out there at the gathering storm, the dark clouds rising, the echos of war on the wind, the imminent collapse of what used to be considered in-volatile systems and institutions, the very ideas and presumptions upon which the modern world is founded. It is a babel of humanism my brothers, nothing more or less, and its destruction has already been decreed from the highest heaven by He who scoffs at the sophisticated ideas of puny little men! He has been silent for a long time, yet soon, very soon He will speak to them in His anger and wrath. The ashes and smoke of Sodom will rise once more, as the Father’s Son stands up to receive His rightful inheritance as His possession! Yet before that there will be a shaking of all that which can be shaken -
All this being so, the question that remains for each one of us is what part do we have in it – Will we be as Lot’s wife, or Demas, or Ananias and Sapphira, clinging to our little earthly treasures like they were precious to us? Or are we already letting them fly from our hearts, such that we can grip ever tighter the only One who can bring us through the gathering storm? My heartfelt exhortation in the spirit for all of you brethren is that you would Hold fast to the Lord! Hold Fast Until He comes! Hold fast to Him even though all the evidence of sight and sound and touch and smell screams otherwise! Remain steadfast though the world and its hob-kneed god relentlessly urges us to return to it, and to seek its fill, to seek the easy way of men and devils. Be content in this life with what He chooses to give you, sometimes plenty and sometimes much less. Remember that He will provide; and that He has so many ways at His disposal to do so. Assume nothing. Let the wisdom of the world and its ways melt away, for you are a servant in the King’s House, and He has His own way of doing things. Ask for eyes (wide open in the Spirit) to see the deep things in all that is happening in and around you; ask then wait and believe! You will see. You will see that the work He is working in your heart is an eternal one, wrought from the ages past, when He first conceived of His plans for men, and the dominion of His Kingdom. Having or not having; these are unimportant in the larger scheme of things; for we have access to the King, and He is our friend and advocate! His blood now flows in our veins, and we are one with Him! I too am learning to take one day at a time; to pray over every little detail. The phone rings and I ask Him what I should do. Every significant expense too, for we have only so much and it is all His anyway. They are His books and He is keeping them. I have made and will continue to make many missteps, but my Lord is gracious and kind; He knows that I am but a hobbled child learning to walk with these new legs of faith and trust. Oh that one day I would run, and leap over a hedge. But for now I walk and stumble, for this way is all new, and strange, and my sense of faith is largely untried and untested. I have so much to learn and discover and hear and see. So many questions always, and so often silence. Or so it seems. Perhaps the answer is there yet I don’t yet perceive it in the spirit as I ought. I often wonder this as I read how our Lord seemed to live on another plain of existence from His disciples as He walked among them. A religious sense perhaps? Nay, but an entirely different metaphysics or reality which the Father and the Son have shared for eternity. He wants to draw us out of our realm and into theirs, so be conscious of this as you begin to feel estranged from all around you. This is the world, the consciousness and divine fellowship our Lord enjoyed as He walked on those dusty roads 2000 years ago. This world still weighs heavy under the curse, yet the Kingdom of God is all blessing and light. Soon, very soon, the former will be subsumed in the latter. In this we hope and His word will not fail! Indeed it cannot fail! Hold on my brethren and hold fast to Him and to one another in the Spirit. We are one. I thank all of you for your prayers and thoughts. I am, at the moment, very much out of my element in terms of the world and making a living and taking care of myself and my family. Although I am being reduced in so many ways, he is augmenting me in other ways. I just want to see Jesus Christ in all His glory and power and wonder. This is all I live for now, and though this is so I have so much of the world and the flesh in me that prevents Him from more fully revealing Himself to me. In order to have more of Him there has has to be less of me. It must go that is all there is to it. I want His joy in me to be made full! I want the peace that passes all understanding! I want to be a faithful and profitable steward that He can rely on come what may to serve Him at the end of this age. I want to be faithfully watching for the return of the King and to hear what He is saying to us now! I want to be where He is, and where the Father is, with eyes wide open in the Spirit! I want to share in the joy they have and always have had together! I want to be a source of blessing and edification to all those whom he puts on my heart! I want to confound the devil at every turn, and reject the urge to seek a place in this world, appeasing the lust of the flesh, and the eye and the pride of life! I want to see truly and deeply what the Scriptures are saying to us in this hour! Oh you can have your religion and church and worldly christianity – I want nothing less than the Lord Himself, in all is His fullness and life! Hang in there my brethren. Actually I will use a better word from the Bible – ‘ “HOLD FAST”! Hold on to your Lord in other words, and don’t let Him go, regardless of whatever does or does not happen, regardless of whether you have direction or relief at the moment or do not. The picture I have is that of Jacob gripping tightly to the Lord until he blessed him (Gen 32:26). True faith is clinging to God long after we have given up on ourselves and everybody and everything else. Seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, and the direction will come. I too am learning this very slowly and very painfully to be sure. He will not disappoint because He cannot disappoint! His love is most perfect and cannot return to Him empty. Your life in the world and in this body of death, such as it is or is not, means only as much as it gets you ready for the Appearing of the King! He is preparing to judge this world of which we have all grown up in – ALL of it – All the of the governments, the nations, the wisdom of it – even the fallen hosts who rule over it presently! It is a finished thing! So it avails little to worry too much about our place in it or our future in it – even that of our children – for the Lord will have to save them each personally out of it just as He did for us! They will have to make a choice, and as much as we all want our loved ones to choose life, the fact is that only a remnant will be saved; only a few will be willing to choose the narrow gate; only a select number will love the Lord more than themselves and all that the world has to offer. The price is high and only a few will remain (John 6:67) Stay with him dear ones, for where else have you to go? Chase hard after your God for He wants to know how much you want Him and how precious He is to you. He will test this always, to be sure your love is the love of a bride for her groom; where He alone is most precious and worthy! Fix your eyes and your heart on Him alone, so that all else dims out of focus! Grab hold and don’t let him go, like the woman who attached herself to Jesus in the crowd, and caught His attention though there was a swarm of people around Him. Be as Simeon and Anna who devoted their lives to the appearing of their blessed Messiah, and never let go until that day when they held the babe in their arms, and looked down into the face of God. Use the time that remains to make yourself ready, to redeem the time you have, to be always prepared should He call you into active service. But do not despise the day of small things, as did the Jews when they beheld the second temple, for the Lord works mightily in the smallest of things, in a word or message, in a single touch, in an insignificant gesture. The big things belong to the world and to self-willed servants who are intent on running out ahead of the Lord in their own wisdom and power. The Lord, as with Elijah, is not (at this moment; this will change soon) in the BIG things, but in the still small voice. This is the time of the bride making herself ready (in the bridal chamber out of sight), and she is not all of the body, but only a small part taken out of it. Hear what these types are saying my brethren; please, please don’t hear me but hear what the Spirit is saying in this hour! Then all will be well I assure you. Select Scriptures Luk 8:15 “But the {seed} in the good soil, these are the ones who have heard the word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast, and bear fruit with perseverance. 1 Cor 15:2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. 1 Thess 5:21 But examine everything {carefully;} hold fast to that which is good; Heb 3:6 but Christ {was faithful} as a Son over His house–whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end. Heb 3:14 For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, Heb 4:14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. Heb 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; Rev 2:13 ‘I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is; and you hold fast My name, and did not deny My faith even in the days of Antipas, My witness, My faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells. Rev 2:25 ‘Nevertheless what you have, hold fast until I come. Rev 3:11 ‘I am coming quickly; hold fast what you have, so that no one will take your crown. "Hold Fast" - From the Greek – “da-bak”
Be blessed by these words my fellow saints and bond-slaves, in Jesus Great Power and Name. Oh Mighty Father, that you might in Your Grace send forth these words with great power into the hearts of your beloved children that they might be made ready in this hour. Amen.
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Oh
dear saints, what dark times are upon us, what dark, foreboding
times indeed! And yet so many asleep; so many blind and distracted
by other things. Staggering really! And no, I am not referring to
those who have not the Spirit to see, but those who do. Oh Lord help
us in this hour, help us to truly hear what You are saying through
your Spirit, and to see what You are doing by Your Spirit, and to
enter into Your eternal plans and purposes for this world – for
Israel, the Church and the Nations! Oh Lord, you promised long ago
that the Comforter would teach us all things, and abide with us
forever. Oh Lord let it be so that we might thereby be made ready
and remain watchful. For our only Hope is Your coming into Your
Presence for us. Our only Hope is You Lord! Only You! Please come
Lord Jesus, come! 