Matthew 22:37-40

“Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Mark 12: 30-31

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

As Jesus reached the end of His earthly ministry, the disciples asked Him, as they sat together on the Mount of Olives, what would be the sign of the end times? Look at Matthew 24:4, “And Jesus answered and said unto them, take heed that no man deceives you.” Two other times in this discourse, Jesus will warn the apostles about being deceived as we get closer and closer to the end of the age. Just a few days ago, I saw a man pose a question and ask why more Christians did not affirm the gay, lesbian, and trans lifestyle as a part of ‘love your neighbor’ that Jesus called us to do. The man stated that this was the most important command to Christians, that we should love others.

Sadly, this kind of deception has eaten into the fabric of many churches, and it has eroded our doctrinal stands from the inside out. Too many churches see that the most important job of the ‘local church’ is to love our fellow man. As such, we are doing exactly what Paul warns us about in Romans 1: 25, “Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” The most important command in the Bible, from the Old to New Testament, is to love the Lord our God with all of our hearts and being. We find these words spoken to Israel by Moses in Deuteronomy 6: 4-7,

4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.”

We are called to love God first and only first. It is only when we have our love for God in its proper place that we can then truly love our fellow man; all else is a false love. As such, when we love God first, when we cherish Him above all else and hold Him dear and superior in our hearts, then we can love our neighbor in true righteousness. But what we see in the ‘Christian’ world today is anything but love. When we condone sin (I am a sinner), when we don’t encourage the ones we claim to love to obey God, to repent and seek to do right, we are not loving them. When we call evil good and good evil, we are not loving our fellow neighbor. This is not to say that we are to berate them and shun them like the Amish. But if one is in sin, we are to lovingly and humbly help that person to see and choose what God says is right.

All too often, I have seen Pastors and church leaders who have decided that they were wrong about what the Bible says about same-sex relationships because one of their kids is gay or lesbian, and they don’t want to alienate them, so it is God who is wrong or the understanding of God’s word that is wrong, and they begin to ‘love’ their kid more than they love God. This is a delusion. Invariably, they lead the church they serve into heresy, and once one step is taken in that direction, other heresies will soon follow. The fact of the matter is that we are called to love God above all else. No spouse, no child, no grandchild, no friend, no church, and no amount of money is to be loved more than God. Anything we love more than God is an idol, and God hates idols.

Sometimes, loving God will be expensive. There will be loved ones who will not understand why you did not attend the same-sex wedding, or give a gift at the wedding shower, or send a congratulations card to the person getting married. There will be loved ones, even saved loved ones, who don’t understand why you did not let your daughter’s boyfriend sleep over and stay in her room or why you don’t let her sleep over, and on and on we can go.

There is a delusion sweeping into too many churches, and they really think that God is okay with them affirming what He clearly calls an abomination, something He simply hates. The Bible is called old fashioned; Paul is called a woman hater, God is a god of slavery and war, and on and on with the slamming. It does not take long to hear that these folks often hate God but love their neighbor. That is an impossibility. They think God is cool with the murder of babies in the womb because we are loving those women and helping them choose for their health. They really think God is okay if we murder millions of babies each year because we did it in love for our neighbor. The truth is that these actions are done in hate for God, and we use ‘love for our neighbor’ as a tool to hate God.

Notice in Deuteronomy 6:6-7 that part of loving God is to know and keep His words AND to teach them to our kids. The word ‘words’ refers to the Torah, God’s written law to the Jews. Loving God with all your heart is tied to obedience to the clearly written statutes in the law. While we are not under the Law, so to speak, we are still under the underlying principles – learn the Ten Commandments, and then learn the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus leaves us in John 14:15 with this simple command,

“If you love Me, keep My commandments.

This is the plain and simple truth. I pray that you and I will not be deceived and think that loving God can be done while we live in rebellion, affirming to be good what God has clearly called evil. Dear Lord Jesus, come quickly and rescue us from this place.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario

Matthew 24:6-7

“And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.”

I am reading in the Book of Joshua right now, and the Jews are at war constantly to conquer the Promised Land. Every chapter almost is filled with war, battles, skirmishes, and conquests. The death toll is astonishing; entire cities, entire armies, entire peoples are wiped out and gone forever. There is bloodshed and destruction as the Jews take possession of the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Most of us have lived in times of relative peace. I have not lived in a war. There are wars all around us; when I was born in little Barbados, the Vietnam War was going on thousands of miles away. I am now 58 and there has not been a time in my life when a war of some kind was not in the news.

The British fought the Falklands War and the wars in the Middle East, which involved many countries, Kosovo, Iraq, Kuwait, and on and on we can go. But most of these wars were far away; yes, they involved US and Canadian troops, but they were far away. We experienced them through the news and various other media outlets.

In a more modern situation, many people do not understand the NATO Alliance; it is a treaty that was agreed to end the kinds of wars that came in WW1 and WW2. Many will recall that the US did not enter WW2 until after the attack on Pearl Harbor, but the war had been raging in Europe for some time. The NATO alliance is based on the idea that an attack on one member is an attack on all, with the US providing the heavy lifting in the event of an attack.

This is why the US has to keep Ukraine out of NATO; if they joined, then the US would be obligated to protect them and put US soldiers on the ground. This puts the US in direct line to be at war with Russia and perhaps China. The current administration does not want this to happen and put the US on a war path with the other two superpowers.

Sadly, Jesus told us that there are going to be wars and rumors of wars until He returns, and there is nothing we can do to stop that. It seems that men will always find a reason for war. Even in the current war in Ukraine, there have been so many deaths, so many innocent lives taken as collateral damage, and yet there is a thirst for war. God never intended this kind of carnage to take place, but man’s sin and the quest for power lead to wars.

The whole world thought that WW2 and the carnage from that would stop man’s appetite for war, but it seemed to whet it even further. In WW1, the world experienced more than 1,000,000 deaths in a conflict for the first time, and it was not even 35 years later that WW2 saw somewhere between 50-85 million deaths, depending on who is counting. WOW! It took just over 1,900 years since Jesus to get to 1,000,000 deaths in a war, and then we jumped to more than 50,000,000 in one war in less than a generation. We love war. Sinful man loves war.

There are even more wars to come. The anti-Christ will kill millions in wars; he will lead wars and attacks against various opponents and eventually attack Jerusalem itself, ending in the death of 5/6th of the people that come up with him. It is estimated by many that about 25% of the world’s population will die in the Tribulation. Now, we expect a massive loss of population in the Rapture, but even so, if there are 6,000,000,000 people left, that is the death of 1.5 billion people in a short 7 years. The carnage will be unfathomable. Once the attack against Jerusalem is done and Jesus wins (see Revelation 19:11 and on), there will be a period of 7 months that it will take to cleanse the land of the dead bodies. See Ezekiel 39:11-13:

“And on that day I will give Gog a burial place in Israel, the Valley of the Travelers, east of the Sea. It will block those who travel through, because Gog and all his hordes will be buried there. So it will be called the Valley of Hamon-Gog. 12 For seven months the house of Israel will be burying them in order to cleanse the land. 13 All the people of the land will bury them, and it will bring them renown on the day I display My glory, declares the Lord GOD.”

As you can see, even today, there are constant attacks on Jerusalem and Israel, and they will get worse and worse. Then, one day, a man will get them to agree to a 7-year peace treaty and gain fame for himself. But even that will be short-lived, and he himself will lead a war against Israel once they realize that he is not their savior and they begin to look for the real Messiah. In Revelation 13: 5-8:

“And he was given a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, and he was given authority to continue for forty-two months. 6 Then he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name, His tabernacle, and those who dwell in heaven. 7 It was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation. 8 All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”

The Jews realize too late that this messiah is not The Messiah but a complete fake and forgery. They rebel, and another war takes place against the Jews. Sadly, mankind has not yet had its fill of war. There are more and more wars to come, and millions more will die. Sin is expensive; the wages of sin is death, lots of death. One day soon, not too far from now, Jesus will make an end of wars for 1,000 years, and we will know what peace on earth really is. Take a look at Isaiah 2:4:

“He shall judge between the nations, and rebuke many people; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

Imagine a world where no one needs to learn war any longer. No need for soldiers and no guns; what a day that will be. But for now, until Jesus comes, there will be wars and rumors of wars. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.