John 14:22-23

“Judas (not Iscariot) asked Him, ‘Lord, why are You going to reveal Yourself to us and not to the world?’ Jesus replied, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”

I hope that all is well with you all. It has been a few weeks since I last wrote, and the break was much needed. Please pray for us as my wife’s father recently passed away, and we are dealing with the stuff that comes after and the inevitable emotions that come into play. He was 81 years old, and as I sat with him and the family as he passed, it came to my mind that 23 years is not a long time. That is how far I am from 81. By then, my kids and grandkids would all be grown adults with kids themselves. Then I begin to wonder, well, what if Jesus comes back? Then I wonder if I will get to be raptured alive, or will I go the way of most people, into the grave.

Lately, there have been a lot of negativities online about the Lord and those of us who hold to Him. We have been called fools, misled, and just stupid. There continue to be serious attacks on Jesus and whether He was a real person. There are those who claim that the Gospel writers wrote much, much later and simply shaped the narrative to make it look like Jesus fulfilled prophecies. Many deny the very crucifixion, and of course, without that, there is no need for a resurrection.

These are the same arguments that have gone on forever and ever from various persons. There is a hatred for Christians, for the Word of God, and surely, we are simply fooled by dogma and fail to recognize the data. These are not the first to question the Bible, Jesus and God himself, and if time persists, they will not be the last. But with each generation, the Bible simply stays, and they die.

The Wall Street Journal reports that in 2023, there were 14,000,000 Bibles sold, and by October of 2024, Bible sales surged 22% compared to the same period last year. The naysayers are NOT winning. Their propaganda is not slowing the sales of the Bible one bit.

In our verse, Jesus gives us a promise that God himself will come and make a home with those of us who ‘keep His word’ – those of us who trust that Jesus is God, that He is God in the flesh, the Creator, and the one who came to give His life as a sacrifice for our sins, then arose from the dead three days later and is coming again to judge the world. We who have put our trust in Him only as the full payment of our sin debt to God are promised that God the Father will make His home with us. This is about a relationship, and it has never been about religion. This is what our atheist and agnostic friends miss.

As I had mentioned earlier, my father-in-law died a couple of days ago. My wife and I were out running errands the Friday before he passed. She knew he had not been feeling well and had this urge to go and sit with him. She did; she helped him eat dinner, and within a few hours of her coming home, we got a phone call that he was found unresponsive. And less than 48 hours later, he was dead.

Back in September of 2023, I got a call from a dear friend who is also my Mortgage broker. My mortgage was not due for another year. But he called and told me I needed to jump on this opportunity, and we did. We got all of our debts paid and have just the mortgage to pay. And not even a month later, my wife lost her job. We are in a position where, if she wants, she does not have to go back to work, but she can take care of our younger daughter and the grandkids. God did that. He knew what was coming, and, in both cases, He got ahead of the problem or the situation and handled it. Why? Because He is our friend. He lives with us.

When we try to explain this to unbelievers, they scoff and can’t seem to comprehend it. There is no way to explain it; one has to live it and see God’s hand do things that you know you could not have done or even would not have done had it not been for His prompting. God, all too often, is seen as this distant deity that is aloof and unapproachable, even detached from our suffering, and, as such, offers no hope or help.

But that is not the truth; our God is the very opposite of that. By coming in limited flesh like we are, He understands the frailty we face each day, He understands temptation (though He never failed), and He understands what it is like to be hated for helping. He understands what it is like to be misunderstood and hated by your own family. God knows has become God experienced.

Unless these folks humble themselves and repent, they will never know what it is to have deep chats with God like Abraham did about justice in Genesis 18, or to have long drawn-out talks about the injustice of the world like Job. They will never ever know what it is like to throw your drained and empty self at God’s feet like Elijah, and to have him care for you. They will never know what it is like to hear God tell you to talk to someone about Him or to see Him move someone that you had given up on, but God!!

The same God that wanted to fellowship with Adam and Eve will make His home with you and me. I pray that on a daily basis you see the hand of God in your life, that you have long and intimate conversations with Him. Not just monologues; anyone can do that, but conversations where God, via the Holy Spirit and the Scripture, is answering you.

Sadly, all too many will never get there. They will deny Jesus, the Bible, and the truths therein. They will die and enter an eternal Hell they were sure did not exist, and the Bible they decried will go on selling more and more until Jesus comes.

So, do you have a relationship with Jesus? Has God come to make His home with you? Or are you simply doing religious rituals to try and earn His favor? Maybe you are reading this and you deny that Jesus is God, deny that the Bible is God’s inspired book. The Bible says that those who seek the Lord with a sincere heart will find Him.

Jeremiah 29:12-13, “Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.

I challenge you to ask God to show Himself, and sincerely seek Him. He has been found by all who want to find Him. I heard a fellow say one time that atheists can’t find God for the same reason a thief can’t find a police officer; they don’t want to. Well, I beg you to want to for a little while and let God introduce Himself to you. Then you will see what we have been talking about and why it is hard for us not to talk about Him.

God bless you,

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

Revelation 12:1-4

“And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered. And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.”

Matthew 1:18-21

“Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins.”

Very soon, we will be celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus. Many of us will read from the passage in Matthew 1 and the one in Luke 3 as well. We will see manger scenes all around our churches and some towns; we will see commercials that still allow the manger scene, and it will be peaceful, lowly animals and humble humans watching over the little Baby in a manger. All too often, the scenes still have the Magi, the Wise men there, even though it is clear that they came about 2 years later after his birth.

Many of us will not ever or have not ever read Revelation 12 in relation to the Christmas story. But just about a week ago, one of my preacher brethren highlighted this passage, and as I was reading through the New Testament over the last 4 days, I was reading Revelation. Here we see this account, and because it is a part of the Revelation, we do not tend to place it with the birth of Christ story.

In the passage, we can see that there is a woman; she has a crown of 12 stars. This is a picture of Israel. We see that she is in travail, or as we call it, labor pains, and she is about to have her baby. This is the very night of the birth of our Savior, and as He is being born – as Mary is crying out in pain, as Joseph is doing whatever men did back then – there is a danger lurking in Bethlehem for this baby. Maybe this mother and father have no idea that Satan himself, the Dragon, the one who hates this little child the most, is at hand hoping to kill this helpless, innocent child. Maybe, just maybe, if he can kill the Son, then he can be god as he wants to be. The truth is that Satan knows he can never be god, ever.

I had someone ask a question that I have never considered: if Satan truly believed that eating the fruit in the Garden of Eden would make someone like God, why didn’t he eat it? He wants to be god; he wants to take God’s place; why, then, did he not eat the fruit himself and actually prohibit man from eating so that man could never be God? You see, unlike the people who deny God’s existence, Satan knows that God is real and powerful and that He has the power to destroy Satan. But maybe, just maybe, he, Satan, could kill a little, helpless child. But, that night, he did not. God protected His Son; God preserved His Son, and Jesus fulfilled all that He came to do.

Jesus would die, but not that night. He would not die as a helpless baby; rather, He died as the living God in the flesh who CHOSE to stay on the cross and CHOSE to suffer and CHOSE to lay down His life for us, and then He resurrected.

The same war is being fought today. The same characters are in play: Jesus, the true ruler of the world, and Satan, the fake ruler of the world. These two are headed to a climax in the not-too-distant future. A head-to-head battle, Jesus and Lucifer, one heading the armies of Heaven and the other heading earthly armies, maybe with a few supernatural players involved as well. Read Revelation 19 and see how that goes. The battle is swift and decisive, and it begins the end of Satan. Millions die that day, enough to feed the birds of the air for months and enough to keep the people of Israel busy burying the dead for seven months. See the prophecy in Ezekiel 39:12-17:

“For seven months the Israelites will be burying them in order to cleanse the land. All the people of the land will bury them, and the day I display my glory will be a memorable day for them, declares the Sovereign LORD. People will be continually employed in cleansing the land. They will spread out across the land and, along with others, they will bury any bodies that are lying on the ground. After the seven months they will carry out a more detailed search. As they go through the land, anyone who sees a human bone will leave a marker beside it until the gravediggers bury it in the Valley of Hamon Gog, near a town called Hamonah. And so they will cleanse the land.’

“Son of man, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: Call out to every kind of bird and all the wild animals: ‘Assemble and come together from all around to the sacrifice I am preparing for you, the great sacrifice on the mountains of Israel. There you will eat flesh and drink blood.'”

Jesus was born in a place for sacrificial lambs; He was wrapped in swaddling cloths and fed by his mother’s breast. He was warm and safe inside the place where He was born, but outside, the Dragon wanted to kill him and stop our redemption before it began, BUT GOD…

You and I are born going to Hell, BUT GOD… We have no hope to save ourselves, BUT GOD… We had no hope for eternal life, BUT GOD… We could go on and on, but you get the point. Satan is defeated, the grave is defeated, death is defeated, and salvation is ours in Jesus. You and I, once we are born into the family of God, switch sides in the eternal universal war; we switch to the winning side. Yes, you and I were born losers, BUT GOD…

Merry Christmas.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church

How To Connect With Us

In-person: every Sunday (10:30 am) at Bethany Baptist Church 70 Victoria Street, Elora, ON

Online: https://mmbchurch.ca/

Email: seangooding@mmbchurch.ca

Join us on Zoom every Sunday (10:30 am) for Sunday Service AND every Tuesday at 8:00 pm for Bible Study: Meeting ID: 700 794 460 Passcode: 032661; https://us02web.zoom.us/j/700794460?pwd=M3NFRG91ZW5Sa2Z3amVyWkFnYXd6QT09