DCLM Daily Manna 12 January 2024

TOPIC: We Shall Be Changed

TEXT: 1 THESSALONIANS 4:13-18 
¹³ But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.

¹⁴ For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

¹⁵ For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

¹⁶ For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

¹⁷ Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

¹⁸ Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

KEY VERSE
“For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him”
(1 Thessalonians 4:14).

DCLM Daily Manna 12 Jan 2024 MESSAGE

Alchemists of the medieval ages had a three-fold goal: to find the stone of knowledge, to discover eternal youth and health (life without death), and to effect the transmutation of base metals to precious ones. They searched for a concoction, the elixir of life (or immortality), a potion that could grant the drinker life without end. They also claimed their discovery could cure all diseases. As with every man-inspired mission undertaken outside of the word of God, the alchemists’ work crashed into the rubble of history, the same way they were reduced to a by word.

READ Daily Manna Thursday 11 January 2024 – Go Not Down Into Egypt

There is yet another set of people who have spoken of the reality of eternal life, of the mortal becoming immortal and of the rising of the dead to live forever. They present a more believable proposition because they are the messengers of God, the Author of life, on whose word they stand. Apostle Paul declared authoritatively, “…if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep (die) in Jesus will God bring with him…and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

Man’s struggles to live long and be in dynamic health or to outwit death cannot succeed if he resorts to earth-bound wisdom or science. The ageing process followed by death is the Lord’s answer to the sin brought into our lives through the Fall. It would have been eternal death for us all; but He had mercy on us by sending Jesus Christ to bear the penalty of our sin on the cross. Faith in God settles the matter of the quest for longevity and immortality, not the unhelpful prescriptions of the alchemists. Neither is it of the doctrines of theologians and philosophers who operate independent of the unimpeachable word of God.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Christ’s promised change is translation from death to eternal life.

THE BIBLE IN ONE YEAR: MATTHEW 26