PASTOR'S CORNER

  John 11:45-57   What man plans for the purposes of evil, God determines and plans for the purposes of good.   The gospel of John has rightly been called the “gospel of belief”  This is what troubled Jesus in His heart, as He loved this family and saw the lost state of mankind as they witnessed Him, but many didn’t believe.  Something that is unexplainable became a reality as they removed the bandages and Lazurus who was once dead for four days, was once again, healthy waking among the people.  (v4) came to be a reality, and one would think this one act would draw everyone to turn to Christ and accept Him for who is, finally.  Its here we see two different responses to the raising of Lazurus.  Two responses that have different outcomes, that have eternal consequences. The first group “The Many” (v45)   This portion refers to “Many” but only Mary is mentioned, why only Mary is mentioned and not Martha is not clear. Perhaps...

  John 11:17-44   The great quest of man has been how to prepare for and deal with death.   As I was researching this issue, I came across the most common ways people deal with death.   There are those who deny that existence of the human soul, and so they deal with death as simply the cessation of the chemical activity that makes up life. For them, there is no essential difference between the death of a human and the death of the fish they had for dinner. They try to deal with death by removing its eternal ramifications. This is a common idea among atheists .   Some religions treat death as part of the normal sequence of repeating events. Death is the door which releases your soul from its current body to return in the future in another body of some type. This is the teaching of Hinduism and other Eastern mystical religions . Their quest is to find a way to break the repeating cycle and its pain to reach the state of Nirvana – nothingness ....