Universal Language
"Speak a
to me Lord Jesus
Me need to hear from you
If you don’t speak Lord Jesus
Me don’t know what to do
The volcano"
-Hymn: Speak To Me
The volcano is quiet and silent for years. No fires and lava pour forth from its crater. Meanwhile, people venture up its slopes, and lay out their gardens, and build their villas, and plant their vineyards. And flowers bloom, and fruits hang in purple clusters, and beauty covers the once fire-swept, lava-furrowed mountain slopes. But has the volcano really been tamed? Have its fires been put out? Is all permanently peaceful in the volcano's heart?
Just so is the heart of a man, who has merely trained himself into good moral and ethical habits. What the best mere self-culture can do for a life--is no more than the planting of flowers and vineyards on the volcano's sides--while all its fires still burn within, ready to break forth again any day in all their old fury! Good manners are not saving religion. The heart must be changed. The heart of stone, must be made a heart of flesh. The heart that hates God, and holiness and purity--must become a heart that loves God, His holy ways, and His holy Word.
"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances." Ezekiel 36:26-27
(Grace Gems)-Hymn: Speak To Me
The volcano is quiet and silent for years. No fires and lava pour forth from its crater. Meanwhile, people venture up its slopes, and lay out their gardens, and build their villas, and plant their vineyards. And flowers bloom, and fruits hang in purple clusters, and beauty covers the once fire-swept, lava-furrowed mountain slopes. But has the volcano really been tamed? Have its fires been put out? Is all permanently peaceful in the volcano's heart?
Just so is the heart of a man, who has merely trained himself into good moral and ethical habits. What the best mere self-culture can do for a life--is no more than the planting of flowers and vineyards on the volcano's sides--while all its fires still burn within, ready to break forth again any day in all their old fury! Good manners are not saving religion. The heart must be changed. The heart of stone, must be made a heart of flesh. The heart that hates God, and holiness and purity--must become a heart that loves God, His holy ways, and His holy Word.
"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances." Ezekiel 36:26-27
The most fascinating thing for this world traveler was the language of people. Lucky for me, most of the world's population speaks English. Often when I was trying to speak their language, doing my best to compliment them, one would say "Speak English please." They understood English better than my attempt to speak their language.
Often, when I hear someone use God's name in vein, when I hear someone disparage Christianity, I so wish God would do a little miracle in their presence. From my inner soul, I writhe in the wish that God had so scared, gutless Pilot and the on looking religious leaders, as they maligned our blessed Lord in the judgment hall perhaps temporarily making a leper of Pilot's 15-year-old wife, just something to awaken these despots to the fact that God speaks in a language that anyone can understand, that he is aware of what's going on. But, God does speak with earthquakes, floods, swarms of locusts, we just insist on not hearing.
On the island of Sicily, the Etna volcano. I remember walking up its flank, so quiet, people growing crops on its sides, how terrible the destruction, after I was there, 2001 and even more so in 2009. Etna's ability to destroy was there all the time, just waiting its TURN.
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, a volcano 50 miles across....always rumbling...just waiting its TURN. Would we believe that God is talking to America with a Yellowstone eruption, covering the sky with darkness and ash, prohibiting the growing of crops or anything, shutting down America?
The Pharisees of Jesus' day, religious Jews in the temple (money making in the temple, a building five football fields large, profiting from the selling of lambs-doves), ALL descendants of the Jews which God had led out of bondage in Egypt. He had chosen them, chose to lead them through the Red Sea on dry land, chose to feed and water them for 40 years as they stumbled around in the wilderness, slow learners-stiff necked, not listening. But, strange that they worshipped-kept law in the wilderness, forgot everything, became prosperous in the promise land. Over and over God spoke to them with curses and blessings (Deuteronomy 11:27-28).
There is a defiant spirit, a gesture of Holiness-presence, which the most humble and the most egotistical will understand. Jesus showed this in the judgment hall...saying nothing. He was above and beyond their pitiful weakness to destroy perfect power. The most effecting words, many times, are never spoken. For God to be God, he does not need anything. He does not need our efforts of defense. Jesus knew that all power was his. Later in the few words from the cross, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34).
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