In Him I live and move and have my being.
Pagans had no sustained sense of God’s constant concern. Only Israel enjoyed that. In Israel, God sent the prophets to assure them of His faithfulness. He was their Shepherd, and they were the sheep of His pasture. This was far beyond heathen thought.
Even the greatest of the heathen, such as Socrates and Aristotle, had no such divine awareness. The Israelites were the people of God. But, for example, while the Ephesians gloried in Diana of the Ephesians (or Artemis, as in the Greek), they were not the people of Diana; they just patronized her.
In the New Testament, the trust communicated by the prophets of old continues; but it expands beyond a physical covenant, taking in more than even the prophets themselves understood.
What Christ introduced embraced life here, and in the hereafter. Jesus showed us that physical dangers are not that all-important and neither is our material prosperity.
The state of our real self, our soul, is the all-important and only issue. The body will die, but far worse is for the soul to perish:
"And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:28).
Ezekiel wrote: “The soul who sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4);
but Jesus said that the soul that sins is dead already. He comes as the Resurrection and the Life!
Taken from Daily Fire Devotional: 365 Days in God’s Word by Reinhard Bonnke. Copyright © 2016 by Reinhard Bonnke. Use by permission of Whitaker House. www.whitakerhouse.com
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