Last night Mike and I watched the true story movie: JUST MERCY. Synopsis written by Gregg Brilliant:

A powerful and thought-provoking true-story, “Just Mercy” follows young lawyer Bryan Stevenson (Jordan) and his history-making battle for justice. After graduating from Harvard, Bryan might have had his pick of lucrative jobs. Instead, he heads to Alabama to defend those wrongly condemned, with the support of local advocate Eva Ansley (Larson.) One of his first, and most incendiary, cases is that of Walter McMillian (Foxx,) who, in 1987, was sentenced to die for the notorious murder of an 18-year-old girl, despite a preponderance of evidence proving his innocence and the fact that the only testimony against him came from a criminal with a motive to lie. In the years that follow, Bryan becomes embroiled in a labyrinth of legal and political maneuverings and overt and unabashed racism as he fights for Walter, and others like him, with the odds-and the system-stacked against them.

After watching this heart-moving thought-provoking true story I went out on my patio and thanked God for Bryan Stevenson (a God-fearing man of great integrity and love for his brothers), who freed Walter McMillian from death row, as well as many others after, as the end of the movie documents for you.

I believe in “Capitol Punishment” a.k.a “The Death Penalty.”

“Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is a government-sanctioned practice whereby a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for a crime. The sentence ordering that someone be punished in such a manner is referred to as a death sentence, whereas the act of carrying out such a sentence is known as an execution. A prisoner who has been sentenced to death and is awaiting execution is referred to as condemned, and is said to be on death row. Crimes that are punishable by death are known as capital crimes, capital offences or capital felonies, and vary depending on the jurisdiction, but commonly include serious offences such as murder, mass murder, aggravated cases of rape, child rape, child sexual abuse, terrorism, treason, espionage, sedition, piracy, aircraft hijacking, drug trafficking and drug dealing, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, and in some cases, the most serious acts of recidivism, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping.”

While most prison inmates deserve to be there, and even sent to their death for what they’ve done – deserving of the death penalty, there are always a few innocent ones in prison that have not received a FAIR TRIAL, for whatever reasons: lack of funds, racism, greed, defense incompetence, rigged jury, conspiracy to cover up truth, etc.

Yet, I know without a doubt that when you invite the LORD GOD into your life – you will get a fair trial whether on this side of death or the other. I’m reminded of Jesus on the Cross, an innocent man, although He died in our place (guilty sinners) was ETERNALLY FREED on the other side of physical death to live the LIFE that is TRULY LIFE, and in His case, to REIGN SUPREME as the One True God over ALL Creation.

Sadly, innocent people who are arrested, jailed and imprisoned continue to reject their only hope and Savior Jesus Christ; they have no ‘higher court’ ruling in their favor in this life nor in the LIFE to come.

“The wicked are too proud to seek God.
They seem to think that God is dead.
Yet they seem to succeed in everything they do.
They do not see God’s punishment awaiting them.
The wicked think, “God isn’t watching us!
He has closed his eyes and won’t even see what we do!”

“The LORD is KING (DEFENDER AND JUDGE) forever and ever! The godless nations will vanish from the earth.
LORD, you know the hopes of the helpless.
Surely you will hear their cries and comfort them.
You will bring justice to the orphans and to the oppressed and the wrongly accused – so mere people can no longer terrify them.” Psalm 10

Thank You Father for the TRUTH, the WAY and the LIFE in Christ Jesus! Oh what a SAVIOR! Oh what a DEFENDER! Oh what a RIGHTEOUS AND JUST RULER He is, and will be at His second coming!

This morning reading God’s Word, I came to 8 words said by Jesus to a woman. Simon, a religious leader, had invited Jesus to have dinner with him and some other guests. A woman who led a sinful life came to see Jesus there. She brought an alabaster jar of perfume to pour on the Lord’s feet. As she got near Jesus she began to weep at His feet, wiping His feet with her tears. What made her weep? Do you think she wept because she KNEW she was a sinful woman in the presence of God? What did she believe about Jesus?

After Jesus heard Simon’s ‘thoughts’ about the woman, Jesus openly spoke to him in front of everyone using a parable to help Simon and the others in attendance that were just as self-righteous as Simon, understand their ‘own’ sinfulness.

“Two people owed money to a moneylender. One owed far more than the other. Neither of them could pay the lender back, so the lender forgave their debts. Now which of them loved the lender more?”  The answer was obvious, and Jesus responded to Simon as to how he had NOT done anything for Jesus that was at least the ‘customary’ things to do: washing His feet off and greeting Him with a kiss. And He summed it all up with:

“Therefore, I tell you Simon, her many sins have been forgiven – as her great love for Me has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.” Then Jesus turned to the woman and said these 8 life-changing words: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Often, we Christians, as we like to think of ourselves, attack someone else (in our thoughts) for what we see them doing or saying that is clearly sinful. But we don’t know their heart like Jesus does. According to the Lord, we don’t even know the depth of evil and deception in our ‘own’ heart.  (Jeremiah 17:9)

“I, the Lord, search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.” Jeremiah 17:10

As Christians we often become outraged when we think someone is lying or doing something we would never do, at least not in public. We will even publicly spout off about what someone else says or does. Yes, we are to “hate evil as God hates evil,” but at the same time He calls us (all sinners saved by grace) to humility and prayer. In my opinion, the Church in America has been very weak in humility and prayer, and is why our nation is in the trouble it is.

False humility is self-deception, and self-centered prayer is not at all acceptable to God. In fact, the Holy Spirit does nothing with our prayers that are self-centered instead of Christ-centered rooted in grace and truth.

You can grow up in a Christian home, know the Bible, believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior, be involved in an organized church, etc. and yet NOT be in “fellowship” with the Lord Jesus Christ; NOT be ‘in love’ with the Lord as the Lord brought out with His parable here, knowing what was in each of their hearts about Him.

As Jeremiah (God’s prophet) confessed: “Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for YOU are the one I praise….What passes my lips is OPEN BEFORE YOU….keep me from shame….do not be a terror to me, but keep me from terror.” (Jeremiah 17:14-18)

“Blessed is the one who fully trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in Him. They will be a strong healthy tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It (he/she) does not fear anything. It (he/she) has no worries in times of hardship. It (he/she) NEVER FAILS TO BEAR FRUIT.”  Jeremiah 17:8-9

As John the Baptist commanded the “religious” in his day, we “the religious” of our day, need to remember both the Lord’s teaching to Simon, and John’s message: Therefore, produce fruit worthy of repentance.” Luke 3:8

The sinful woman in Simon’s house loved the Lord more than Simon did because Simon didn’t see his own sinfulness as the woman saw her own sinfulness.

Humility is necessary in being forgiven and saved by the Lord. Simon’s sin was ‘worse’ than the woman’s. In thought, Simon expected the Lord to separate Himself from this sinful woman. Have you ever rejected a person that repulsed you? Have you ever looked at someone and criticized their behavior or how they looked? I have. Let’s be honest.

Hidden sin can be far worse than open sin. Jesus, who is the Holy Spirit, goes right to our hearts and is why we should constantly judge our ‘own’ hearts, and especially judge our own thoughts to guard our own words before they openly “pass our lips.”

With all that we are going through right now in our nation ‘politically,’ ‘socially,’ and ‘financially’ because of yet another plague, God is seriously purifying His own people. He’s working to unite us in Himself, showing us our responsibility as prayer warriors and as His humble servants doing His will only, in whatever way He calls us. God is also preparing us for far worse coming around the corner – that we be ready and prepared for Him. (Luke 1:17) If we are caught up in the disgust, frustration and anger ‘of our fear’ – we will miss the Lord’s open doors of opportunities and not understand what is ours to do in this time, or any time as His Day approaches.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Matthew 5:8

One of the Lord’s watchmen/prophets recently said, “It’s time to prepare the Bride of Christ.” What does THAT mean? I asked Mike his opinion and he began to relate to the weddings our daughters had. The soon to be bride gets herself in shape for her gown. She sends out invitations to loved ones. She plans the food and drink. She keeps focused on the day, longing to be joined with her groom.

What comes to me is that both ‘spiritual and physical’ are necessary. The Cross is both vertical and horizontal. To me, it shows how the spirit and flesh are connected in that one effects the other, one needs the other to accomplish the will of the Father. The Father needed flesh and blood to prepare people spiritually, for life after death.

“Just as we are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many (those who believe in Him); and He will appear a SECOND time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are WAITING FOR HIM.”  Hebrews 9:28

Those who are “waiting for Him,” both alive and sleeping in their graves, are of His Kingdom waiting to be “with Him” as He promised His disciples; that we’d be with Him wherever He is.

The “second coming” of our Lord is after His rapture (taking off the earth) of the Spirit-filled church (bride) when we rise to meet Him in the clouds (1 Corinthians 15:51-54, 1 Thessalonians 4:15-18 and Daniel 12:7) in order to “escape the worse time on the earth” (Revelation 3:10-13 and Revelation 10:7) with the third “woe” of God’s wrath man’s wicked rebellion, (Revelation 11:14) with His “Two Witnesses” doing their assignment on earth.

This “rapture” of Christ’s Faithful Church relates to how the Lord spared His people in Egypt from His last 2 plagues on Egypt’s wicked rebellion (darkness and death – Exodus 10:21-12:13), the 9^th being complete darkness over the land so that no one could see their hand in front of their face, but in the homes of God’s people there was LIGHT. If you’re paying attention to what’s happening in our world, it’s evident that complete darkness is ‘about’ to take over – with Christ’s prophecy being fulfilled of the coming of the anti-Christ and his “one-world government” and “mark of the beast.”  (Daniel 8:19-10:14, Matthew 24 and Revelation 13:11-18)

The 10^th plague of death that killed all Egypt’s firstborn, even animals, was not felt by God’s people because they had obeyed the Word of the Lord through Moses, and applied the lamb’s blood over their doors and windows and eating the prepared lamb together in full obedience, thus the angel of death PASSedOVER the homes (families) of God’s people. (Exodus 12:13)

Oh, how I love this time of year that is called PASSOVER because the blood of Jesus that He shed on the cross is over people with HIS faith. We don’t fear ‘physical death’ knowing we’ve been forgiven by God through His Son, and as Jesus was the “first-fruits of Resurrection” from physical death to eternal life with the Father, Jesus Christ opened the WAY for us to join Him, those who love and obey Him!

Prepare, oh bride of Christ! How do we prepare? We finish what is ours to do before the Lord calls us up to meet Him in the clouds. Each generation has a unique ‘physical and spiritual’ purpose. We testify of what Christ has done on the Cross, and has personally done for each of us, so that others might be saved. AND, we prepare provision (practical/physical survival) for those going through the worse time on earth who will call on the Lord to save them. Some will die a martyr’s death, but many will live through it – without taking the “mark of the beast” as the Lord warned. They will not be able to buy and sell without the mark of Satan. The Lord says to trust God in those days. God works through His people to prepare for His people later. We see this throughout the Bible in both Old and New Testaments.

The Holy Spirit’s work, Christ’s work through His Church, is to “make ready a people prepared for the Lord; turning the hearts of the parents to their children and turning the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous.” Luke 1:17

Wisdom knows what to do with what you ‘know’ from the Lord, and with what you’ve been ‘given’ of the Lord. This is how “the Bride makes herself ready.” Her righteous acts are her bright white bridal gown. Revelation 19:5-8

Christ’s one-thousand-year reign on the earth (His second coming) I see as the day between the Groom’s dinner (rapture of the Church at the 7^th Trumpet Rev.10:7) and the Groom’s Wedding Day at the end of His 1K reign on earth.  (Revelation 21) God says that a day with Him in heaven – is as a thousand years on the earth.

After the earth is prepared with our KING of kings “making all things new on the earth and in the heavens,” having done all He said would do in His 1K reign – His New Jerusalem, the Bride comes down for the Wedding Day! Is His Bride making herself ready?

As I consider this week and how people in America celebrate this time of year, and can’t now in the ways they have, I’m wondering what God has in mind.

Easter as the world celebrates it, is a ‘pagan holiday,’ and is why I choose to call this time of the year “The Passover of my LORD.” What is Passover? In a nutshell: It is the time of the year that God said is to be the first of our calendar year (Hebrew Calendar) because it’s when God saved His people in Egypt when He brought them out of slavery into a free new life with Him, teaching them to obey everything He says, so it would go well with them.

In the wilderness as they journeyed to the Promised Land, they learned who God is, how faithful and true, holy and just – He is. They learned how powerful He is over all nature and all world leaders who think THEY are the ones who should be feared and obeyed.

The Hebrews in the wilderness learned so much ‘from God’ about how to protect themselves and provide for themselves by obeying His laws and principles. And we have all this truth and wisdom from God in His written Word, the Holy Bible.

When the One True God is ignored, and His laws and principles are rejected, as they have been in America’s progressive evolution, He allows us to feel, so very personally, the ‘results and consequences’ of ignoring Him and rejecting His laws and ways. His laws and ways are for overcoming all that threatens the good life we are meant to live on this earth.

Repentance that God is after, is that we repent of what, or who, we have been trusting in that is an enemy of God and His Word. “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes and makes himself to be a friend of the world, makes himself an enemy of God.”  James 4:4

In America now, people worship various gods, unlike our founding fathers who worshipped the One True God, and therefore when we are attacked in some way, God leaves us to our opposing ideas, solutions, confusion and chaos – so we can see where it gets us.

Whenever a people live under a man or a government that rejects God and His Word, the people will naturally become slaves in that land. America’s founders knew this and is why they fled from ‘religious slavery’ where the King of Great Britain enforced his rules and regulations for worship upon all the people.

When America no longer upholds our “freedom of religion,” and all the other amendments protecting our God-given rights, we have become SLAVES.

The Hebrews in Egypt were slaves for 400 hundred years. In the beginning they didn’t see it coming, as it NEVER happens overnight, but by a slow progression away from God.

Jacob’s 11^th son, Joseph, was removed from Jacob as a young boy (without going into the details of how and what he suffered), to end up in Egypt and eventually becoming Pharaoh’s right hand of governing all Egypt’s wealth and resources. As we read in the Bible, this happened to Joseph so that God could later deliver Joseph’s family (Jacob, his father, and his 11 brothers and their families) from the land they lived in when great famine hit, to ‘temporarily’ migrate to Egypt where they could live and have plenty living under Pharaoh’s favor of Joseph.

But, generations later, still in Egypt long after the famine had left the land they lived in, the government (Pharaohs later) turned on God’s people and they were forced into slavery, working 12-16 hours a day suffering ‘hard-labor’ to prosper the Egyptian way of life. Why? They didn’t have to become slaves. Are you beginning to see what the threat is in America?

THEN, as God’s people continually cried out to Him over their suffering, the Lord sent them a man to show them the way out, and not just any man, but one that God chose from birth to do God’s will. And you should know the rest of how God used Moses to deliver the Hebrew slaves with 10 plagues against Egypt, yet protecting the Hebrews where they all lived from the last 3 plagues.  The first 7 plagues taught God’s people to return to Him and listen to Him, via Moses.

Passover starts, because of what God told the Hebrews to do before the last plague of the angel of death coming to kill all first-borns. They were to put the blood of the sacrificed lamb over their doors and windows so that the last plague would PASS them by. We have the blood of Jesus Christ shed once and for all who believe.

The Lord told His people on their way out of Egypt, taking great plunder, this DAY should now be the FIRST day of the year for you; for it’s the day you are never to forget and teach your children generation after generation. It’s the day when GOD BROUGHT HIS PEOPLE OUT OF SLAVERY AND INTO FREEDOM UNDER HIS LOVE, PROTECTION AND PROVISION to live as free men with their families; FREE as long as they obeyed His Word and did all that He said they should do for their good future. God would then show Himself to the world through His relationship with His chosen people.

Similarly, this is how America started, God leading His own people out of religious slavery, but just as it went generations later for God’s people in Egypt slowly taking on Egypt’s ‘pagan gods,’ we have as well in America instead of remaining true and faithful to the Lord. Some Americans are clearly seeing how their lives are being controlled by the teaching, instructions, laws and current policies of ungodly leaders.

Like David cried out (David of the Bible, well-known and chosen by God for being a man after God’s own heart), “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?”

What does the Bible (God) say in answer to that question?  Well, I’d suggest you read the Lord’s letters to His people (the churches) in Revelation 2 and 3, as a start of what the Lord’s own people need to repent of, and what we will lose if we don’t repent and turn from our own wicked ways. Because only then God says (promises),

“If I close the sky so there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send a plague among My people, and My people who are called by My Name humble themselves and pray and seek My Face, and turn from their wicked ways (of following other foreign gods), then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land. Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place.” 2 Chronicles 7:13-15