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WHISPERS
FROM HEAVEN
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“A JEWISH PARABLE” (unknown author) Once upon a time
there was a king who was strong, brave and possessed all other good qualities.
He ruled his country justly, loved his people and was loved by them. Because
of this there was no crime in his kingdom--until one day it was discovered
that a thief was loose in the land. Knowing that
wrongful behavior would multiply unless he took a strong stand against it,
the king decreed that when caught, the thief would receive twenty lashes. But
the thefts continued. He raised the punishment to forty lashes in the hope of
deterring further crime, but to no avail. Finally, he announces that the
criminal would be punished with sixty lashes, knowing that no one in the
country could survive sixty lashes except himself. At last the thief was
caught, and it turned out to be –the king’s mother. The king was faced
with another dilemma. He loved his mother more than anyone in the world, but
justice demanded that the punishment be carried out. Moreover, were his
subjects to see that it was possible to commit a crime and not be punished
for it; social order would eventually be completely undermined. At the same
time, he knew that if he were to subject his own mother to a punishment that
would kill her, the people’s love would turn to revulsion and hate toward a
man so lacking in compassion and ordinary affection, and he would be unable
to govern at all. The whole nation wondered what he would do. The day arrived for
administering the prescribed punishment. The king mounted a platform in the
capital’s central square, and the royal flogger took his place. Then the
king’s elderly mother was brought forward, fragile and trembling. On seeing
her son the king, she burst into tears. “I’m….so sorry….for what I did!” she
wailed, between sobs. Then, recovering, the bent, white-haired figure made
her way toward the flogging harness. The people gasped as the flogger raised
his muscled arm with the leather whip. Just as it was
about to crack down on the exposed back of the woman who had given him birth,
the king cried, “STOP!” The arm poised in mid-air, the whip fell limp. The
king rose from his seat, removed his robe, walked to the harness, embraced
his mother, and, with his broad frame covering his mother and his bared back
exposed to the flogger, commanded, “EXECUTE THE SENTENCE!” The sixty stripes
fell on the back of the king. ISAIAH 53:5-6 (Jewish
Bible) “HE WAS WOUNDED FOR OUR TRANSGRESSIONS, BRUISED FOR OUR
INIQUITES; HIS SUFFERING WAS FOR OUR WELL-BEING, AND BY HIS STRIPES WE ARE
HEALED. WE ALL, LIKE SHEEP, HAVE GONE ASTRAY; WE HAVE TURNED, EACH ONE TO HIS
OWN WAY; AND ADONAI (GOD) HAS LAID ON HIM THE INIQUITY OF US ALL. The symbol in the Bible for “WOMAN” is the ‘CHURCH”. It is the CHURCH which Christ took the
stripes. HE took OUR punishment for robbing God’s kingdom of HIS glory, and
sinning from the beginning. God created us to serve and worship HIM. And who,
through the sin of Adam, did we end up serving? OURSELVES! So God, HAD to
send His Son to take our punishment of sin….to take the stripes of the
whip….because WE as mere humans, could NOT FIND THE WAY to get back into
God’s pure love and favor. God provided the PERFECT way, the PERFECT time,
the PERFECT place. And where was God during all this time, when we were not
HUMANLY CAPABLE, as mere humans, to get into God’s grace and presence? HE WAS
WAITING! For from the beginning, HE LOVED US! And so He waited for the
PERFECT time, the PERFECT place, and had planned the PERFECT way….JESUS! We
humans need LOTS of time to learn things….it took TIME for us to learn how
much we NEEDED God’s love, grace, provision, compassion, and mercy! IT TOOK
US 2,000 YEARS! And GOD WAITED! When we acknowledge
what Jesus did, because of HIS LOVE FOR US, we are back into what God created
us to be….THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE! And to think this is all FREE! We just accept
and believe that Jesus did this FOR THE LOVE OF US! What a DADDY! HE
LOVED ME FIRST….so that I could love HIM back! |
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