Truth #5 has a different insight than normal for me this morning. I was called out of my bed at 4:30 - a member of my mine had a stroke and hemorage. And so I spent 5 full hours today at the bedside of a dying parishoner next to sons and daughter-in-laws who were distressed, spent 5 hours talking to grandchildren and great grandchildren. And what was the course of my actions? Same thing it has been for Pastors to do for ages. I prayed the Psalms and other passages of scripture. We prayed addiotnal prayers. We prayed the Lord's Prayer. We confessed the Creed. The same things Christians have use against Satan and death for Millenia.
I really am coming at this backwards of how I planned it, but it works. Sometimes get can get so caught up in the trials of the day. It's the same old thing. Satan still hounds people with sin and death. Satan still hounds the church with heresies. It used to be Arians, today it is Jehovah's Witnesses. It used to be Nestorians, today it is protestants. It used to be Greeks denying that God created from nothing, today it is our "thinkers" who deny this. It used to be Gnostic cultish offshoots, now it's bored scholars trying out the same Gnostic offshoots.
Satan recycles. Satan throws the same tricks at the Church - and there is no trial which we would face today, no false doctrine or heresy which the Church hasn't seen before. And this is a great comfort. No matter what trial Satan throws at us, we flee to the Word of God. It always is about God and what He has done, and Satan can't change that. We know Satan's ways - they ought neither surprise or shock us - and we know that He is indeed judged, and that one little word can fell him. So we flee always and in all times to that Word. Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy. Amen.
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