WHITE PAGES IN A BLACK BOOK

Liberia: It is less than a month before my departure. My passport and visa application are in Washington DC at the Liberian Embassy and I hope they will be coming home this week. Flights will be booked this week. I want to encourage you to continue to pray for the Pastors who will be attending training and for the teaching team. Thank you for your prayers, encouraging words, and support.

I recently read that the Bible has 1,189 chapters, only four of which do not involve a fallen world. Two of these chapters are found at the beginning of the Bible and two are found at the end of the Bible when a new heaven and earth are created. The Bible is like a book of black pages introduced by two white pages and ending with two white pages. What are written on those white pages?
On the first two pages we find man and woman created in the image of God, commissioned to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth and to subdue it. Mankind was to reproduce physically and to make known the image of God in and over all creation. This was to be done through the enabling given by God and in fellowship with God. Man was a natural, naive, untested, unproven, innocent, creation without precedent or history. This man choose to disobey God, failing his commission, resulting in a fallen world.

 On the last two pages of the victorious end of God's story we have resurrected man who is spiritual, wise, tested and proven, glorified, understanding man's failure in sin and God's purpose of redemption, worshiping God, ready and able to rule the world in God's name, in God's kingdom. God's original plan is now fulfilled, never to be disrupted. Glory to God.
What makes these last two white pages possible is what is found at the very center of the story - the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the sin of mankind, and the gracious work of God who joins us to Christ and justifies us in Christ. We shall indeed glory in the grace of God for all eternity.
For now we find ourselves in the middle of God's story, in this age of black pages, looking toward to new age of white pages to come. As believers we already have one foot in the eternal kingdom of God and we are called to pull the other foot into that kingdom by the renewing of our mind in line with the theology and worldview of the Bible, and by disciplining our bodies to serve the Spirit in all its compellings. We are to prepare our minds and hearts now for white page living and tell others about the possibility of white page living while we still live in this present evil world. What a Gospel, What a Christ, What a God, What a Grace, What a Story.