By Elizabeth Prata
SYNOPSIS
Balaam’s talking donkey reveals his spiritual blindness and greed, contrasting Moses’ reverent response to God at the burning bush, illustrating how false prophets miss divine presence while pursuing personal gain. Balaam ridiculously argued with his donkey!
Continue reading “The Donkey Had More Discernment Than the Prophet”By Elizabeth Prata
SYNOPSIS
A closed coffee shop prompts my reflection on the importance of “third places”—informal public spaces where community forms and conversations flourish. Such places often provide unexpected opportunities to speak about Jesus, influence listeners, and even lead souls toward salvation through ordinary, unplanned encounters and faithful Christian conversation.
Continue reading “The Quiet Ministry of Third Places”By Elizabeth Prata
The thread of Christianity depends on a unity from one generation to the next of mutual understanding of our important words. Hence the Word of the Week.
By Elizabeth Prata
Before I was saved, the whole Jesus thing was pretty mystifying to me. It seemed so complicated, and weird, too. I mean, the blood and everything. [shudder]. And I definitely did not agree with the doctrine of sin, that notion that I was a bad person from birth and that I did or said or thought wrong things? Come ONNNN, man. I’m a nice person, not one sin in me. Not like that person over there. Or there. Or there…
The thing I thought was most weird was Jesus. I used to wonder, God must be pretty lame to keep trying things that don’t work. Humanity was created and then right away, fell into depravity. They got so bad that He sent the flood. Then He tried the temple and the Law and that didn’t work. So finally He sent Jesus, hoping that would stick. I’m not kidding. Before I was saved, and the scales fell from my eyes, that is what I thought.
I never knew that Jesus was not first born 2000 years ago.
Therefore it is of particular joy to me that I revel in verses that illustrate that Jesus was from the beginning. He wasn’t born on that cold night in Bethlehem when the angels proclaimed His arrival to the shepherds. He was with God from the beginning.
He is self-existent, One God in Three Persons. This is known as ‘aseity’, God being infinite, eternal, existing by Himself and self-sufficient. My scripture pictures this week will be of the verses that speak of His aseity. With Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday coming up I’ll focus on this attribute of His to hopefully help anyone else like I was before salvation that declare the aseity of God and His eternal existence. Jesus didn’t come into being when He was born of Mary, He always existed. It was always planned that He would die and be resurrected for our sins.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” (John 1:1)
How lovely to reflect the same language God used in Genesis 1: “In the beginning…”
“I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began.” (Proverbs 8:23) As Matthew Henry says, “The Son of God declares himself to have been engaged in the creation of the world. How able, how fit is the Son of God to be the Saviour of the world, who was the Creator of it! The Son of God was ordained, before the world, to that great work. Does he delight in saving wretched sinners, and shall not we delight in his salvation?” How wonderful that Jesus was anointed from the beginning to do the great and monumental work of saving humanity.
“And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” (Colossians 1:17) Other versions say “in Him all things hold together.” He is not only before all things in honor and grandeur, but He is before all things in existence. Before the sun, before the earth, before the stars were made…He was, and is and is to come!
He is our timeless Jesus, who was before Abraham, before John the Baptist (His forerunner), who was part of God’s plan since the beginning to redeem humanity to His bosom. Far from being a series of stumbling lurches toward the end of time, God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are progressing in an orderly plan that is unfolding with humanity as its central work. His justice prepared this plan. His love has sustained this plan. His grace permeates this plan. His longsuffering has kept this plan. And in the end, His wrath will execute this plan.
THIS is the God I deeply love, submitting to His attributes and His incomprehensible foreknowing. He knew I would. He knew that in 2003, I would become His. It was His plan all along.
He was since the beginning. You may be coming late to the party, but you still have time until you draw your last breath to become a knowing participant in His plan and to be saved from your sins by reenting of them. His love never fails.
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:12-13)
By Elizabeth Prata
Some years ago, Tim Challies posted an article titled The Most Terrifying Thing God Can Do. It’s a terrifying article. It impacted me when I read it and apparently it did for many others as well. I saw this article referred to and re-posted numerous times.
The most terrifying thing God can do is to turn an unsaved person over to his sin as they slide to perdition. Before that moment, He may release His restraint upon a sinner and lets him or her have the flavor of sin they want. Because, you see, we are all born wanting sin and rejecting holy God. But we are not all as depraved as we could be. We really have no day-to-day idea of how deep our sin could go. But it goes deep.
Here is a sample of the scriptural truths the article contains, here’s Challies-
We speak often of hell and eternal consequences for sin, but perhaps we give too little attention to God’s action against sin in this world and this life. God’s punishment for sin is sin. His punishment is allowing people to experience the life-stealing, soul-rotting consequences of their sin. He expresses his wrath by allowing them the very thing they want. He does this because when they get the thing they want, it only deepens their destruction.
In this way, sin is its own punishment. And in all the world I see nothing more terrifying than this: the prospect of God allowing people to experience the full impact and weight of their sinfulness. Nothing is more terrifying than God determining that he will no longer restrain the evil within them.
This is a terrifying thought.
This would be a terrifying event.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10:31)
Before the cross and repentance came, I’d lived for 43 years as a sinner, but I had a sin that consumed me. After some years, the Lord sunk me deeper into it and released restraint. I was choking on my sin, and by virtue of contrast, I think, thirsting for His purity and holiness. After a few mercifully short years of His loosening restraint on it, I cried to the God that I would finally acknowledge and the sin that I would finally admit.
I remember that day when I realized that the sin wasn’t so fun anymore. I realized that my sin had me, I didn’t have it. Like a rabbit in a snare, I tried to shake loose of it, and could not. This perplexed me, because I had always been able to do anything I’d set my mind to. This was different. I was trapped. (Romans 7:14).
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved… (Ephesians 2:1-5)
Sinking into one’s sin is terrifying. That feeling of guilt and desperation made a deep impression. Sin is a terrible thing. Thankfully God gives believers the grace of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling to resist sin. Obey the Lord. Be grateful for His grace. He saved us from a ghastly fate.
Elizabeth Prata
SYNOPSIS: A lawyer tested Jesus about the greatest commandment, unknowingly standing before the only One who perfectly kept the Law. Christ’s humble answer reveals His majesty and calls us to deeper love.
Let’s think about this verse today:
And when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they themselves gathered together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested Him with a question: “Teacher, which commandment is the greatest in the Law?” (Matthew 22:34-36).
This lawyer was an expert in religious law. By that time of Jesus’ incarnation, there had been added to the original ten, another 603 laws. The Jews were laboring under a heavy yoke of an expectation to keep 613 laws.
Here is a website with which I’m not familiar, but lists a simple version of all 613 laws with their scripture-
Continue reading “The Lawyer and the Lawgiver”By Elizabeth Prata
SYNOPSIS
A quirky Victorian fad—women collecting seaweed because botany was considered too risqué—reveals how dramatically cultural norms can swing. Such shifts remind Christians that culture cannot define biblical roles. God’s design for men and women transcends trends, offering a stable standard amid constantly changing social expectations.
Continue reading “The Cultural Pendulum: From Victorian Seaweed Collecting to God’s Unchanging Design”By Elizabeth Prata
I am on a rotation for being a helper in children’s Sunday School once per month. It’s consistently edifying to see how the children respond to the truths presented in the lesson. It’s always gratifying to see that their growth is added to the foundation their parents are laying at home.
The lesson this week was about the people who mocked Jesus at the cross and the ones who did not. As the Bible was read sentence by sentence in the passage, the children were asked ‘Did this person or group honor Jesus, or dishonor Him?’ The children responded by taping a printed picture under a happy face or a sad face on one side of the board or the other.
As we neared the end of the lesson, one tyke noticed something about the way the pictures had been arranged. He said there was nobody in the middle. Which is perceptive.
Those who mocked Him were the Jewish crowds, the chief priests, scribes, & elders, Roman soldiers, and the two thieves crucified alongside him.
Those who honored Him were the centurion, eventually the repentant thief, the women who stood off from the crowd, Joseph of Arimathea.
There is no middle ground when it comes to Jesus. In our daily lives we ‘hedge our bets’ all the time on a score of things. We don’t utter an opinion, we sit on the fence, we take no chances, and stay on the safe side. This might be to keep the extended family peace, to keep the calm at work, and so on.
With Jesus there is only His safe side with Him, or against Him and destruction. You have to pick a side. Or as one little Sunday School student said about the centurion, “He was on God’s team.”
The one who is not with Me is against Me; and the one who does not gather with Me scatters. (Matthew 12:30).
Mark phrases it like this: For the one who is not against us is for us. (Mark 9:40).
Many of today’s people do not like to talk about destruction, wrath, or hell. But it is the default destination of all flesh if they reject Jesus’ offer of salvation.
On Judgment Day, each person will be judged one by one by Jesus. It will not matter if you were hiding in a crowd. It will not matter if you were refraining from speaking of Jesus at Thanksgiving ‘to keep the peace’. It will not matter of you desired a workspace unruffled by religious feathers. Not when it comes to the topic of the Gospel and Jesus. Each and every soul will be examined to see if you were with Him or against Him.
By Elizabeth Prata
SYNOPSIS: This essay warns against Christian books that prescribe one “correct” lifestyle—whether radical missions, fasting trends, or wellness movements—while neglecting the gospel. Such approaches risk legalism, implying moral superiority through programs rather than justification, grace, and the New Testament’s broader principles of faithful Christian living.
Continue reading “Are Christian Wellness Trends Becoming a New Gospel?”By Elizabeth Prata
Do you ever feel like such a terrible sinner that the very words of repentance and sorrow pouring from your lips in prayer to heaven is a blot on the name of Jesus?
But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ (Luke 18:13)
I can relate to Isaiah (the lips part, not actually seeing the LORD!)
Then I said, “Woe to me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of armies.”” (Isaiah 6:5).
But then in His Day He will purify our lips and when we praise Him we will be clean! Imagine praising Him from pure lips!
“For then I will restore to the peoples pure lips, So that all of them may call on the name of the LORD, To serve Him shoulder to shoulder.” (Zephaniah 3:9)
the-end-time.org 