Applying the Law of the Harvest (by Walt Henrichsen)

“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Galatians 6:7 This principle is found throughout the Bible. We call it the Law of the Harvest. For the most part, this law only applies in the eternal, and when seen in the temporal, you usually cannot make the connection between sowing and reaping. In extreme cases, like a person jumping from a tall building or having sex with one who has a venereal disease, you can probably say he is reaping what he sowed. Most of the time, however, God does not allow you to make the connection. You cannot say that financial loss in a business resulted from a failure to ascertain and do the will of God, any more than you can say that financial success indicates God’s pleasure. God does not want people, Christian and non- Christian alike, to make the connection in the temporal.  For this reason sociologists cannot agree that violence on TV produces yiolence in society; such connections are difficult to prove. I suggest that God does not want them proven. He wants us walking by faith, knowing from our conscience rather than experience that our sense of what is just demands the existence of the Law of the Harvest.    ...

Fourth Warning from Hebrews: A Terrifying Thing…

The author further ratchets up the severity of the language surrounding this fourth warning in the series. The text is found in Hebrews 10:26-31. As is often used in the New Testament, there is an argument from the lesser to the greater to emphasize the severity of the warning. Under the Mosaic Law, multiple eyewitness testimony was required to convict of a capital crime and a resulting merciless sentence which involved the physical and the temporal (v.28).  But for the sin referenced in this passage, the author poses  more severe consequences, expanding to the spiritual and eternal. There is a terrifying expectation of judgement and a consuming fire (v.27), with the summary that it is terrifying to fall into the hands of the living God (v. 31). The word “terrifying” is the same used in 12:21 by Moses when present on Mt. Sinai in the presence of God, such that he trembled or “quaked” with fear. We who have the revelations of the finished work of Christ and the Word of God have greater responsibility as well as accountability.  Verse 26 is another of the verses that makes us squirm and seek for alternatives to the plain reading. Let us again be reminded that loss of salvation for the elect (possessors) is impossible but those who only profess faith in Christ, i.e. non-elect, are in peril. Also, while certainty of one’s status (professor vs possessor) is impossible before death, assurance of salvation is not only possible but encouraged. What does the author mean by “go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth” (NASB)? The author is...