Readings for today: Matthew 12:22-50, Mark 3:22-35, Luke 8:19-21, 11:14-54
Another guest blog…this time from the late, great Dr. Gardner Taylor…
“We war not against flesh and blood, but there is some great struggle going on in the universe. Put it how you want: the struggle between light and darkness, between life and death, goes on in your body and mine right now, between health and sickness, between good and bad, between right and wrong, between God and Satan. There’s a battle, a mighty battle, raging through the universe, and evil in that battle is not weak. I hear my Lord on the night of his arrest saying to those who came to arrest him, “This is your hour and the power of darkness.” And is it not recorded in the Scriptures somewhere that scarcely shall the righteous be saved? It’s not an easy fight. There’s a mighty war going on. How will it come out? Who is going to win? When Friday morning began, we got a sign of what’s going to happen. The most powerful coalition of evil ever assembled on the face of this earth came together at Calvary, and they threw up all of their battlements and all of their armory against the Son of God. It was a mighty battle, an awful tussle; the earth watching it grew sick at how evil could challenge the very throne of God. The world shivered on its axis and trembled on its foundation.The heavens looked down at it and grew dark because they mourned at seeing evil standing up in God’s face. So the curtains of darkness were pulled across the face of the sunlight because the heavens could not watch it. Angels that sing around God’s throne grew suddenly silent and somebody wrote that there was silence in heaven for about the space of a half hour. It looked for a while as if God had lost. I hear that awful cry trembling up from that hill underneath a darkened sky - midnight at midday. I hear that awful cry, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” It looked like God had lost, but when the light came back on and the earth righted itself, God’s grip held and hell’s grip loosened. Jesus cried out, “It is finished.” The old account is settled. It has all been straightened out, fixed, the disease has been cured. I know how it’s going to come out. I don’t know when but somewhere in God’s own time, evil is going to bow down once and for all before the Lord. So where and somehow, all that is wrong will be made right. Somewhere and somehow in God’s own time, every valley will be lifted up, every mountain will be brought down, every crooked way will be made straight, every rough way will be made plain in God’s own time. Sickness and sorrow, pain and death, we will fear no more.”