https://youtu.be/CfTyKTcrMKk
2Tim 3:12-13; Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.13 and evil men and demagogues will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
Jer 50:6-7; "My people have become lost sheep. Their shepherds have led them astray. They have wandered around in the mountains. They have roamed from one mountain and hill to another. They have forgotten their resting place.
7 All who encountered them devoured them. Their enemies who did this said, 'We are not liable for punishment! For those people have sinned against the Lord, their true pasture. They have sinned against the Lord in whom their ancestors trusted.'
We've noted how evil people and demagogue imposters are working to turn God's client nation into a totalitarian state and they call anyone who opposes them insurrectionists and traitors.
But God is using the wrath of man to praise Him Psa 78:10 because the truth cannot be denied 2Cor 13:10; and working the entire mess together for the benefit of those who love Him. Rom 8:28; those who wait patiently for Him Isa 40:31; to turn what evil people mean for evil into good. Gen 50:20;
Because Jesus came to save what was lost and destroy the works of the devil. Matt 18:11; 1John 3:8c; who deceives the entire world Rev 12:9;
Psa 34:19; Many are the afflictions of the righteous, But the Lord delivers him out of them all.
2Pet 2:6-14; and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter;
7 and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men
8 (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds),
9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment,
10 and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority. Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties,
11 whereas angels who are greater in might and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord.
12 But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed,
13 suffering wrong as the wages of doing wrong. They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as they carouse with you,
14 having eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, accursed children;
15 forsaking the right way, they have gone astray,
2Cor 4:17-18; For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, 18 while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
In our study on the judgment seat of Christ based on Rev 2:11; we took up a study of the doctrine of death where we noted last time that many believers struggle and scrounge, often for naught, to find some kind of security in the devil's world but if they would put themselves where the Lord wants them to be they would find out that they couldn't be more secure.
Believers without doctrine are insecure because they are out of position in God's plan and that results in divine discipline. James 4:6-10;
The way to be secure is to stay under the aegis of God's power, because when you remove yourself from it you have rejected God's plan along with the wall of fire that God creates because you are unaware of the security God has provided so while you are still secure you come under His discipline. Heb 12:5-7;
In Revelation chapter 2 we see that our life is not dependent on people or social interaction, the function of government, or the function of satan who wants to kill believers because they mess up the function of his evil cosmic administration.
Believers are perfectly secure because of God's protection and nothing else. 1Pet 1:3-5; but without doctrine they cannot understand, recognize and wait for it. 1Cor 2:14; Heb 11:1; Isa 40:31; so they are constantly involved with the mental attitude sins of worry and anxiety. Phil 4:6-7;
Our passage in Rev 2:11; is addressed to people who have failed as well as to people who have succeeded but they are all winners in the sense of security because God's security is irrevocable John 10:26-30;
Physical death is a part of the security package. The security package starts at the moment a person believes in Jesus Christ includes dying grace and the Lord is in complete control of the time, manner and place of our death so why do we worry about it.
It also indicates that whether we fail or succeed in our advance in God's plan we are going to be in heaven at physical death even after our worst failure because at physical death every believer receives an interim body and a great interlude of happiness in heaven while waiting for the exit resurrection to occur.
We have a perfect security package so there is no reason for fear. In fact we have seen that God warns us not to fear. Rev 2:10a;
There is no reason to fear but believers who choose to reject God's Word of truth after salvation with the result that they are living in satan's cosmic system will inevitably be frightened because they are not aware of and do not trust in God and His security package and the fact that it applies to all believers.
Physical death is defined as the separation of the soul and the spirit from the physical body so that the person involved no longer lives in the devil's world on planet earth. The fact that we have a soul means that we will live forever in heaven with God or in the lake of fire.
In Rom 8:38-39; God's Word tells us that physical death cannot separate the believer from God. Death does not mean separation from God, on the contrary it means coming home to be face to face with God in an interim body. 2Cor 5:8 GNT
God's Word of truth refers to physical death as a promotion. Phil 1:21;
Physical death is a matter of God's sovereign decision, and God knows better than we do when, where and how it should happen. We make all of the decisions up to the moment of our dying but the Lord makes that last choice and He knows what is best for each one of us at the best possible time.
2Cor 5:6-8; Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord- 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight- 8 we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home face to face with the Lord.
Believers who reject God's Word and refuse to respond to His discipline may suffer what is called the "sin leading death" 1John 5; 16; 1Cor 11:30; This refers to a sin that leads to the physical death of the believer at which point the believer is absent from the body and face to face with the Lord.