Get... Up!

 

A Call to Immediate Action! 

Written by Brother Abel, at the S. A. L. T. , Monday, April 18, 2022

Get up!

You can’t win lying down. Get up!

Jesus is risen. Did Jesus raise you from the dead? Then what are you doing back there, back down there in the tomb. In the box! In the coffin. In the world.

I think you are still in your graveclothes because you are confused. You wander about, saved and… yet insecure. Alive but still… limping in blindness, in the night of the walking dead. Given the power of a resurrected life, and yet tricked to click the lid of the coffin over your head every night, as you lay there upon the putrefied rotting filth of the world.

Rise up… Christian!

“Wherefore he saith, ‘Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” (Ephesians 5:14)

God shouts to you from Heaven, “Awake! Arise! And then “Christ shall give thee light.”

I. Awake! “Awake thou that sleepest!”

Christian, you are not “dead in trespasses and sins.” As it is written, “And you hath he quickened, who WERE dead in trespasses and sins.” (Ephesians 2:1) You were, but… you are no longer.

“And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses.” (Colossians 2:13)

You have been quickened. You are alive, and yet there you lay: entombed in the world.

• Their head is buried in the sand, their eyes are fixed upon their hand... Just like yours? Just like yours.
• “Ye are the light of the world” but the lamp of your light is buried beneath your sleeping soul.

Wake up! Wake up, and at last let the Lord’s parable speak of you where it says, “Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.” (Matthew 25:7)

II. Arise! “Arise from the dead!”

A. Are you a member of a congregation; of a church? Then do what Jesus told you to do.

“And the lord said unto the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.” (Luke 14:23)

“Go… out… into… [the streets, the malls, the campuses, your job, your family, your friend], and compel them to come in [to Jesus! to Jesus!].” Evangelize! Evangelize! What is your thing?? What are you “into?” Are you a Christian? Then be into Jesus: be into bringing people to Jesus. Not in word only, but in deed, and in truth.

B. Are you a Christian home, a family in Christ. Then like the Christian home of Aquila and Priscilla, live a full complete happy powerful Christian life.

“And the lord said unto the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.” (Hebrews 13:2)

House a missionary in your home for one year, or every year. Open your heart! Open your home. No wonder your family is falling apart. William and Catherine Booth won all eight of their children to active service for the Lord Jesus Christ. How? They opened their home. Their children saw them living a consecrated life for Jesus, with missionaries staying with them all the time.

Light it up! Light up your home, and turn it into the missionary station, the entrance to Heaven that it was meant to be.

C. Are you a soul winner, a true leader in your church before the eyes of God (and not just man)? Then be a Barnabas, and be a guide, a friend, a partner to a missionary, to a Paul. As it is written (listen intently to this quick paragraph from the 11th chapter of Acts),

“He was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith: and much people was added unto the Lord. Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for to seek Saul: and when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.” (Acts 11:24-26)

Be filled with “the Holy Ghost and of faith”, find a missionary, bring “him unto [your] Antioch”, to your city. Spend “a whole year”, or better yet a lifetime involving yourself in the God-blessed work of bringing people to your church in a partnership, in a joint venture of true love in Christ. Yes, of real Christianity!

D. Are you a pastor, bishop, leader of a church? Then let it be written of you as it is recorded of the church in Jerusalem:

“And when we were come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly.” (Acts 21:17)

• Host an inner city outreach program in your church, and if a missionary comes along,
• let him share the fire of evangelism with your people.

What have you got to lose? As Gamaliel said to the established religious leaders of his day, in regards to those visiting missionaries, the apostles:

“Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God.” (Acts 5: 38-39)

Pastor, deacon, preacher, partner with missionaries and evangelists, and do not “be found even to fight against God.” Oh, I pity the so-called shepherd who hoards the flock for wool and mutton, for what he can get from God’s people in the world’s system, instead of what he can help give to the kingdom of God.

E. Oh but wait, one more. Are you a missionary organization, enjoying the life of sending your people overseas to other lands? Then we say to you, emphatically,

“Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?’ The watchman said, ‘The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will enquire, enquire ye: return, come.” (Isaiah 21:11-12)

“If ye will enquire, enquire ye: return, come.” In the major cities of our nation, children are born everyday: raised without the love of Jesus, released into the world without the love of Jesus, and (many of them, too many) rioting in the street, of course, without the love of Jesus. And yet where are the best of us? Where are the most likely to reach them, and teach them, and baptize them, and send them into the world here in the cities that overseas missionaries leave behind?

Do I dare to say such a thing? Do you dare ask such a question; and did you dare to change the order given in the very last commission commanded by our Lord? Note his steps, his chronology, his order of going into the world.

“But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both

1. in Jerusalem, and
2. in all Judaea, and
3. in Samaria, and
4. unto the uttermost part of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

“Unreached people groups.”

They like to coin a phrase (of course, not found on the pages of Scripture). “Unreached people groups.”

We began our work here in Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States. 4 million precious (oh so very precious) souls in the city, and 10 million in the county of Los Angeles, with almost every one of them falling into Hell every 6 seconds.

Watch the clock!

Wait for it. Another, and... Another. Another fallen into Hell.

We thank God that Jesus never wrote us off, that in his Word we are commanded (more than once) to go “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” Yes, “to the Jew first”: to the people (both heathen and religious-but-lost) first, and then “to the Gentile”: to the people of other lands (see Romans 1:16 & 20).

Oh, as they say here in America, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” To stand apart from Scripture, to not remain within the vein of where our Lord left us at, and where he commanded us to ever be; to oh so slightly self-modify the Word of God, as once did our mother Eve, is “neither safe nor sound.” As declared by Martin Luther, while standing alone (and yet with God) before the great religious leaders of the world, “My conscience is captive to the Word of God.”

Of course, the warning at the end of the Bible is even stronger.

“For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.” (Revelation 22:18-19)

Missionary leader and missionaries; pastors - bishops - priests - and all those who are to be the under-shepherds of our Lord’s flock; soulwinners, Christian families, and all ye who dwell in the pews of Churches and/or in house churches all across this great nation of the United States of America, we leave you were we found you, with these words, with this shout given to help accomplish what God said and wrote to wake you, to shake you, to get you up:

"Wherefore he saith, 

“Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” (Ephesians 5:14)