Address—Doug Buchanan
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Perhaps we could begin our meeting with him. Number one 291.
Oh, Savior, whom absent we love, whom not having seen, we adore.
Whose name is exalted above all glory, dominion and Power, 1291.
Glory, Lord, Joy.
Thyroid has Bluetooth to come around, that's all.
The Lord Grindel temptations and walls.
Where it's like and it's probably not taken together.
And swallowing problems.
We have to bring them through.
We're getting into that breaks those suddenly shall pray and the heavens of the name of the brain what you want to apply for.
We looked at Lord in prayer.
Blessed God our Father, we thank Thee for sharing Thy Son the Lord Jesus Christ with us here on earth, for sending Him down in our likeness, sin apart, to show out Thy heart of love to us, to bring us into favor.
To make us intelligent as to Thy purposes and desires of blessing, and to capacitate us to be with Thee in glory in that coming day.
Our God, this is a plan that exceeds.
Our ability to comprehend, let alone explain and take in. We thank Thee for giving us these meetings here and for what Thou has brought before us. We cast ourselves on Thee now for this hour and the purpose before us and ask for help and strength.
And ability to.
To say it and to take it in. We are thankful for the Spirit of God, for the Word of God.
Plainly written for us. And so, Lord, we commend ourselves into thy hands with Thanksgiving in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Before I introduce my subject.
I want to say how thoroughly I have enjoyed these meetings.
I felt like in our last remembrance, in the last meeting.
We were up in heaven and.
Enjoying our Savior and worshiping and remembering Him. And I hesitate to come back down to earth again.
And to take up another meeting. We might we could have just stopped right there, couldn't we?
00:05:06
The subject I have is the patience of Christ.
Mm-hmm. There's a verse in Second Thessalonians chapter 3 that perhaps will describe it to us.
2nd Thessalonians chapter 3 and verse 5.
And the Lord, direct your hearts into the love of God.
And into the patient, waiting for Christ.
There's another verse that John the Apostle wrote in the Book of Revelation, Speaking of himself as the companion in the Tribulation and patience.
In the Kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.
Those two verses would speak, then, of his patience.
And our patients.
I believe everybody in this room is looking forward to the coming of the Lord Jesus.
I trust so if you're not in that group.
You probably don't know him as your Savior and Lord.
But I believe and I trust that what we're going to say here this afternoon, well.
Bring before us a little bit of this situation that we are in right now.
I believe we're very close to the Lord's coming.
And the burden of my heart is to talk about that and how we need to be patient too.
How he is patience patient.
And I want to bring before us some scriptures that would deal with this issue.
You know.
When it rains on Saturday.
The golfers complain.
The farmers praise the Lord.
So it's wonderful that God didn't put in India into any of our hands the weather.
Probably none of us would have planned Hurricane Harvey.
And been able to, out of such a terrible disaster, bring good and blessing in some way or other.
I believe it's happening.
Though I don't understand necessarily, it got a text from Caleb this morning.
Explaining in one paragraph.
How busy they've been, how many opportunities they've had.
God is opening up through a disaster.
Opportunities.
For souls.
I'm going to ask a question.
I'm gonna ask somebody here.
Supposing the Lord put in your hand and came and said.
Who here will pick the day when the Lord Jesus would come?
Do we have any volunteers to tell me?
Down in South America, I usually get three or four right real fast. That's the difference between North America and South America. When you want to take a picture down there, you get a whole group all the time. You want to take a picture here, all of a sudden everybody goes like that.
God loves different personalities.
Usually somebody will say today.
Would you agree with that, Robert?
Yeah, well, and my heart says that too.
Now, I'm not going to try to pick apart your answer.
It's a good answer. It's a desire to have that. I'll ask you a second question.
What about the people that are still not saved?
That the Lord has his eyes on, if the Lord came today.
They would have missed the boat.
It would be too late. So you're going to qualify your answer now, aren't you, Robert?
00:10:06
You're, you're, you're hitting right on with us. We're batting 100% here.
It's the Lord has perfect timing. I think a brother said that in our meeting, he blurted out.
How perfect the timing, the ways of God.
It's wonderful. Only God is wise enough to.
Decide these issues, these are great issues before us because we well know if the Lord comes today.
It's the close of the day of Grace and God is going to introduce a new way of dealing with mankind.
It's a wonderful thing to live in today. My dad used to tell me this is the most privileged time to live on the earth since creation.
There's many ways of looking at that, but we can be blessed God for the privileges He gives us now in this day of grace.
It's been wonderful to go over the purposes and counsels of God and to fill our souls.
Reminding us of the beauty and the grandeur and the perfectness of it and how it all focuses in Jesus Christ and how God accomplishes it through Him and all our blessings are in Him, and so on.
And I believe when the Father says to the Lord Jesus.
The hour has come. You can claim your bride now.
I believe that's going to happen when the last soul is saved.
To fail God's house in heaven. That's what it says in Luke 16.
In the story of the marriage of the nobleman's son, that my house may be full.
It's a wonderful thing to go to a place where every chair is filled. Doesn't happen very often.
Uh, sometimes at weddings it does happen.
Usually none of us are good enough at estimating things to make it all come out perfect, like at our supper table. One of my wife's concern is will I have enough food and it's embarrassing to come out short.
God never comes out short.
His timing is never off. His coming will be.
At the right day.
But.
He has.
And we're going to look at some scriptures about this.
It's wonderful that God has used in the past.
People on Earth.
To determine some of his actions.
One of them was, and we're gonna look at it in a little while.
When whether it was time to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah or not, and we're gonna look at that, and God used a servant here on earth to find that out.
But I wanted to go first of all to the Book of two Peter chapter 3.
And read some verses there that touch on what we're Speaking of.
So if we turn to second Peter chapter 3.
I'd like to read here a few verses.
Verse one.
This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you in both which I stir you up, stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance, that ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of His of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior, knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers.
Walking after their own lusts.
And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
00:15:04
For this they willingly are ignorant of that by the word of God, the heavens who are of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water.
Whereby the world that then was being overflowed with water perished, but the heavens and the earth, which are now by the same word, are kept in store, reserved unto fire, against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as 1000 years, and 1000 years as one day.
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness.
But is long-suffering to us word not willing that any should perish, that all should come to repentance?
These verses here explain to me the desire of my soul this afternoon in this meeting.
Why the Lord waits?
And when will be the right time to come back?
When will the Day of grace close and the judgment begins?
To prepare this earth for his Kingdom, because we've been noticing in our readings the two spheres a blessing.
The Lord Jesus is gonna be the head of heaven and earth, and we understand that the next event that we expect has nothing to do really with prophecy. It has to do totally with the relationship of our Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven and His Bride.
Nothing else is going to affect when that moment is.
His love for that brought you.
And there are are not gonna, we are not gonna be, we ought not to be looking around to the world for signs about that.
No rational young man that's waiting for these marriage days is looking out there to the events around the world to decide what day he's going to go and get claim his bride.
It's totally has to do with his relationship with her.
That's as to the rapture. But we know that there are two parts to the Lord's coming, His coming.
For his bride and his coming with his people.
When he will introduce his judgments now I'm not sure. Maybe some of my brethren can tell me, but I'm not sure whether Peter was well taught as to that the difference between those two or not, because Apostle Paul was the one to whom God revealed the truth about the rapture. But certainly in these verses that we're reading.
Peter understood about the Lord's coming and the judgements.
And he gives a word of warning to them because I believe those Christians in those early days were already feeling the rejection and the persecution and the scoffing and the those last days already started at that point. And certainly we see it out there today. Our brother was mentioning last night in the gospel about.
The public acknowledgement of the Lord and if any in any way the Lord Jesus is brought in, that is totally set aside by our the popular opinion of the world.
Around us there are scoffers. It's all around us.
And that is not going to change God's plan and decision as to when He comes. Yes, God looks down at that wickedness and He sees it.
Just as he did then, he reminds the Hebrews to whom he was writing about that concerning Noah and how God there came a day when God said enough is enough and he saw the wickedness and it was time to destroy.
The whole world, with the exception of Noah and his family and those with him in the ark.
So we have witness to these things.
00:20:01
We're then he tells us that the next judgment is not gonna be with a flood, it's gonna be with fire. And so we believe this is true.
And, uh, that time is approaching these things. Yes, we can see.
Events around us that indicate it the immorality #1.
Around us.
The Lord told that it would be that way in the days of the Son of Man.
That's the title the Lord uses when he comes in judgment because it says, man, he's going to judge.
He's not going to judge as they were off at a distance, unrelated. He's going to judge as one who walked this earth and went through every experience that we as human beings feel. And because of His perfection in doing it, God has turned over that totally to him. He has every right to it, and He's going to take it.
At that appointed time.
Now it says here.
This most interesting verse.
That we often quote one day. Be not ignorant of this one thing.
That one day is with the Lord as 1000 years.
Have you ever had the feeling that the 24 hours in a day is not enough time to get done what you want to do?
I have. It happens all the time. I wish their days were longer. In fact, I like summer better than winter because you got a lot longer days and the days are getting shorter. Yeah, you can work at night too, but it's it's better to work in the day.
We are limited by time and distance.
God is not hindered by these things.
With God, one day is 1000 years as 1000 years. God can do in one day what it would take us 1000 years to do. He is not limited. It's a wonderful thing that the one who is in control and who is going to decide when these when the moment of his coming is and when the world is right for judgment.
He's not constrained by this time element.
That we are.
Then on the opposite end of the time spectrum, it says 1000 years is as one day.
Now I'm up in my 70s and when you get to be that old, you start looking. Wow.
Past retirement, my grandpa was already with the Lord at this age, Brother so and so is already gone. How much longer do I have to serve the Lord?
There are time constraints. There are things out there that I have to close in my focus and I can't be planning for another 100 years or another 50 or so years.
God is not constrained by that. It's interesting to me that this dispensation of the day of grace is already the longest of all of them.
That tells you something about GLOT.
What is it that he wants made known? What is the greatness of this day that we're living in? We're not under law. We're not under just authority or government like it was after the time of Noah and so on. And we're not as the other dispensation. God had his dealings with man. We are living in the time when after Jesus Christ has opened up the floodgates of.
That so that God can bless all unconditionally because of Jesus Christ, the perfect man who died for the God's glory, and he died to save us. And God in his abundant grace can open up and bless all unconditionally. And that's what he wants to do.
That's why we need to be preaching the gospel.
Those who don't understand we have this briefly brought before us in the readings about the difference between the the coming the Kingdom to introduce Christ and his reigning and judgment as they used to think.
00:25:04
A few 100 years ago, that the Church was going to prepare the world for his Kingdom, so that the Lord could come down here and bless it and introduce his Son, and then he would reign in peace.
That didn't happen, and it won't happen.
Man has always failed in every dispensation.
God's purpose now is to gather a people for himself to.
Rain or to be with Jesus in heaven. Then he's going to come back with them in his judgments. It was wonderful to me.
In our the breaking of red, this thought came to me.
Of how?
Those of us who have some measure of understanding of this whole plan of God from a past eternity to a future eternity, how we could embrace all those actions back, starting with Abraham and Isaac going up there and the beautiful picture that is of God the Father and God the Son and.
Their communion together in Jesus Christ, coming down here to be the sacrificial lamb, the Lamb of God.
And how it touches our hearts. And in some measure we enter into the feelings that there were between God the Father and God the Son as Jesus came into this world with that. And we praise and worship him. And we went on to future days when the Lord was going to be on the throne in Revelation. And we embrace that and we praise God. It hasn't happened yet, brethren, but our souls have embraced it.
And we worship and adore God. That's what happens when we are understanding the purposes and plan blessings of the counsels of God. We don't have to wait till a future day to already embrace and enjoy those wonderful things. We can already worship the God, the Lord.
Even though it hasn't happened yet.
Wonderful, that's what.
Understanding the counsels of God helps you.
In joining together with our our our Lord Jesus Christ and our Father, the Spirit helps us to understand these things, being born again, having that nature that's capable and so we can live our lives now intelligently.
Along with what God is doing.
Now let's let's go over to.
Make sure I finished up here all I wanted to say here.
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some, but His long-suffering to us were not willing that any should perish.
And so we understand why the Lord is waiting in patience. He's not slack. He's waiting because all have not been saved that He has His eye on. The elect are not all called in yet. They haven't believed.
There will come that moment.
Now I want to go back and briefly notice in Genesis.
The case of Noah, and there's mainly just one point there that I want to call attention to in Genesis chapter 6 concerning Noah.
We're going to notice some cases here of judgments that came and how God decided and how God did this. My purpose in this subject is that because we are living right now so close to that day.
We need to be aware of what God is doing, and I believe in the measure that we are aware.
And understand the times that we're living in. It will order our conduct and what we are occupying. If you know a ship is sinking, you don't go out and start painting it, for example.
Genesis 6 and verse 7.
00:30:04
And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and the creeping thing and the fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
Now that last expression is what I want to call attention to but Noah.
Found grace in the eyes of the Lord. There was one man and one family.
That please God.
And God wanted to save.
You see?
Looking at it realistically, it would not have been right and God couldn't have in a sense made all the creation.
And then allow men to come and destroy it through violence and corruption.
And then God have to say I made a mistake. It didn't work.
That never happens with God.
Noah is the witness to this.
He found grace in the eyes of the Lord. The Lord looked down to one family and said, I want to bless that family. I am going to use that family to repopulate the earth. I am going to save that family.
God never makes mistakes.
And so Noah is a witness to that. Would you like to be a witness to the grace of God in your life? You can, you may.
How wonderful that is to accept the grace of God that comes to us through Jesus Christ, His favor, on the terms that He has made them good to us, known to us.
And so it is a wonderful opportunity.
To be an object of the grace of God.
I sometimes wonder why it is that we don't like grace.
Is that a true statement?
I believe as a natural man.
Our hearts.
Repel grace.
How many little children have you heard say I want to do it by myself?
I can do it by myself.
You see, grace is favored from somebody else that doesn't necessarily deserve it.
It's a wonderful subject. So Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Now let's go over to the next portion I want to look at, and that is Abraham in Genesis.
18.
Genesis 18.
And that verse 17.
And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that which I do?
That thing which I do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations either shall be blessed in him. For I know him that he will command his children in this household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him. And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, I will go down now.
And see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it which has come up unto me.
And if not, I will know and then drop down to verse 32.
We have after that those words that we read.
Abraham interceding and he says to the Lord Jehovah, if there's fifty people there, will you destroy the whole city for the 50, including the 50 And the Lord said no. And then Abraham continues to intercede until verse 32 and he said.
Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet, but this once per adventure 10 shall be there.
00:35:05
And he said I will not destroy it for the 10's sake.
Isn't this beautiful here? What Abraham was doing, interceding compassion for that wicked city?
And so Abraham interceded.
Down until 10 people.
I believe if we had gone lower, the Lord would not have destroyed it.
But he stopped at 10.
I wonder sometimes if the Lord may do that again in the coming day.
He may use someone here on earth as a.
Person to help him to be the spokesman who would decide whether the patience of God should go on or stop.
Now, brethren, we're living in a world where there's a lot of wickedness and crime out there. You know, it's easy to get turned off by these things and to hate them or to not love them.
We need to be compassionate for our fellow men.
We need to be like a neighbor an intercede.
When Abraham stopped interceding, then the Lord went on his way and we know the rest of the story.
This is the time that we're living in right now here on Earth. We're so close.
And we see the exact conditions around us that were prevalent both at Noah's time and in.
Lots and Abraham's time, and we're going to notice a little bit about Lot 2.
It's a privilege to walk with God like Abraham did.
He was.
In that land.
But near them? Any help to people around them?
And they did act so kindness, but he wasn't taken up with the preservation of that existing thing. And he dwelt on the mountaintop with God, and he worshipped and communed with God. He was a person who was intelligent to some measure with God, and therefore God said he wouldn't hide from them.
He made known his will, his plan to Abraham because.
Abraham would be faithful with the knowledge that was given.
M and Abraham responded by interceding.
We brethren have understanding of the signs and times that we are living in. We need to be those that act intelligently in our time. It's not for us to be going out and fighting carnal warfares against enemies of Christianity. It's for us to be seeking the salvation of their souls.
How many Christians don't even understand this?
Abraham was a person that God could confide in.
In the next chapter, we know the story, we'll just notice in, uh, in verse umm, 12 and 13, chapter 19 of Genesis.
The men of Sodom is noteworthy that the Lord didn't go along.
The Lord communed with Abraham. He did not commune in Sodom with Lot, but the angels went and they were there to investigate. Was the condition as reported.
It's a pretty gruesome chapter to read.
But it's obvious.
That Sodom was ready for the judgment of God.
The patience of God.
Have been exceeded, and so it says in verse 12. And the men said unto lot, Hast thou any hear, hear any beside sons and laws, and thy sons, and thy daughters, And whatsoever thou hast in this city, bring them out of this place. For I will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxing great before the face of the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.
00:40:23
And the next verse is a rather sad verse.
We see the lack of moral power that there was with law to save very many.
He only saved 2 plus his wife. I don't know where she falls in this.
I'll ask Robert afterwards.
Our power to be a testimony to God at this moment in time that we're living is through walking with God. There's a tendency to think that in order to reach those around us, we need to get down to where they do the things that they do, walk along with them with the things they are and, and be able to reach. Now there is a there is a.
Principle of in the world and not of the world and we don't have time to get into that. But John, I suggest to you that John 17 is the secret gives us the remedy of how to be in the world and have the power to be a testimony without compromising your own position as a believer.
Lot here is a witness to it and all he can do is flee with his family. So this is.
A case of the timing of God's judgment and how God determined it, and then how the the Lord acted in judgment.
No doubt it will be very similar to that in the coming age or down the road here tomorrow, next year, when God sees.
The condition of this world as ready for judgment. You remember that earlier, much earlier, well, maybe not much earlier, but earlier in the life of Abraham. God had promised Abraham that He was going to give him and his children that land. And He said then he told them, but He couldn't give it to them yet because the iniquity of the MRI was not full.
You see, all has to fit together perfectly, and God is the one who knows when the iniquity is right for judgment, when it's time to bring in His judgments in the world.
The patience.
Of God.
Now we'll go on to Jonah.
Jonah chapter one, verse one, verse two, one and two.
Jonah 11 Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of.
Amid the I saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it for their wickedness is come up before me. Now turn over to the third chapter verse one.
And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time.
Now you, we, we'll all remember what happened in between these two times. A hard lesson that Jonah had to learn.
He didn't want to preach to Nineveh. Why did not? Why did Jonah not want to preach to the people of Nineveh?
I think even secular history tells us that the Assyrians at that time were one of the most horrible wicked of all the nations.
Notoriously cruel.
They had carried the 10 tribes away.
Some of us have been struck three years ago when ISIS.
Began taking control of Mosul, Syria.
Iraq.
By the way, that is the very town that we're talking about here, or at least it's right beside it, as I understand.
00:45:10
These last three years have been an eye opener.
Or something that I must say I never expected to see what had happened over there in these last three years.
I read a book about two young men.
Some of you may have read this book.
That were there in.
Mosul, which is located right beside Nineveh, which was the capital of the Syrian empire at that time.
And these two young men were waiting because they had heard that the prophet of ISIS.
Was about to appear, and sure enough, he did.
And they witnessed.
There were two of them.
They were Muslims and they were both of them enthused.
That their profit was about to come and give them a Kingdom.
Their hopes were high.
I wish I could remember the head of his name.
Umm. Their prophet did appear.
I think he's dead now.
But anyway, he appeared and he gave a speech.
It had a different effect with the two men.
One of them was totally embracing it and praising Allah for this moment that they had long expected the other one.
Began to realize with horror what was about to take place in bloodshed.
Began to doubt his faith in Allah.
Very interesting story.
He ends up getting saved eventually.
That was three years ago, this past, uh, Ramadan, and now the whole thing is basically almost.
Destroyed.
Jonah.
Knew about this evil empire. He knew of the treatment.
That the Assyrians had done to the 10 tribes.
It affected his soul.
He did not want grace to be shown and mercy shown to that nation.
And God had to deal with him.
To bring him down.
And I'm not sure he really learned it, except that he did write the book. And so maybe by that means we.
Understand that he accepted.
The principle of grace.
We are living in a time when right before the world is so bad that God is going to judge it. Maybe our affections are a mercy and grace are affected by it.
Maybe we can withdraw within ourselves and say, oh, I don't wanna show mercy and kindness to that man, He's too bad.
It's not right for us to close the door to grace before God does.
God will close the door while the door is open. We need to continue on with the ministry of the preaching, of the gospel, of the grace of God to all, everywhere.
This may be a hard thing to do at times when you see it is so bad.
Souls are being saved over there in those Muslim countries through these last three years.
The little that I've read about it makes me think that probably more souls have been saved in these last three years through faithful Christians bearing witness to the gospel in spite of the threats of death.
00:50:18
Maybe this is the last wave of ingathering of souls.
From that those countries. And so May God give us the grace to go on faithful. Maybe we're not to be sent over there, but faithful here. But this is a demonstration to me of what we're reading about here in Jonah.
And in a sense, we're looking at it that way. I can understand why Jonah would say I don't want to preach to those people in Nineveh.
But, brethren, Grace.
Is a wonderful subject.
And we who are lost, were lost and guilty and did not deserve, cannot rightly withhold grace to anyone else. It wouldn't be right. Well, Jonah, then here he, he go, he, he goes to the city and then and.
And verse two I rise, Go to Novena, that's that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. Verse five. So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them, even to the least of them. Verse 10 And God saw their wickedness, that they turned from their evil way, And God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do, and he did it not.
Chapter 4.
Verse 10.
Then said the Lord, thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored.
Neither made stick grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. And should I?
And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons, that cannot discern between their right hand and their left, and also much cattle?
Very interesting last four words.
God even takes into consideration the lower creation.
In his judgments and he mentions here, he mentions the six score thousand or people that can't discern their right hand from their left as those who are not fully responsible and God would be merciful to them. May the Lord then give us.
This sense of his love and mercy.
The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance. We need to use these last few years or days.
Uh, before the Lord comes to make great the mercy and grace of the Lord, it's an opportunity given to us to show what God is like and of his patience in waiting till the right time.
Let's pray.
Blessed God our Father, we marvel at Thy goodness and mercy.
In these cases of judgment.
We marvel at the seriousness of those that thou just take, take away.
And we thank thee for giving us the Lord Jesus Christ, and that for the grace of God that has reached out and picked us up vessels of mercy, and made us intelligent as to these things.
Lord, we are the salt of the earth. We are the light of the world. Help us to shine. Help us to give character to Thee.
And representing the as Thou is desire help us not to be like Jonah.
We're thankful for the Apostle Paul who is so faithful in his ministry.
And preaching of grace. We're thankful for this conference and for the time together. And Lord, we give thee thanks for all these things in the name and for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.