WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO THE BEREANS?

I am so grateful to God for keeping me alive so that I can share my faith with the whole world over the internet!  I have written nearly 3000 posts on since I began, and truly enjoy doing Bible studies and sharing them.  The doctors had told me if I did not allow them to admit me, I wouldn't make it through the night.  The x-rays of my lungs revealed dozens of blood clots caused by congestive heart failure and the associated circulation problems that resulted.  Reluctantly, I allowed it, but, I have been hoping for years that Jesus would either remove born again believers via the Rapture, or that I would go to meet Him face-to-face (1 Jn. 3:2)!  "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8)!

During my first day following being admitted, two Pastors came to pray for me; one I did not know, and the other was my own Pastor.  I told them both the same thing:  if you pray that God would keep me alive, then make it conditional on my finding some kind of ministry to share Jesus.  They both agreed and obviously, I lived.  It was not long after before I received a phone call from my Pastor, who said that he suddenly remembered his prayer and the idea of me writing a blog came to him.  After a few minutes explaining what a blog is, he was guiding me through the process of starting one. After selecting the title, we needed a background page on which to write.  I couldn't see one of them because it was the smallest, so, because I didn't want anything under the print, I picked it.  It turned out to be a lighthouse!  God is gooooood!

Now, after nearly ten years, I have discovered (I have always been a little slow) that the vast majority of people who look at my blog, only read the title; I discovered this when about 100 people sent me "nasty-grams" over one, that had they read the title accurately, and read the post, they would have agreed with it.  But NO!  They not only failed to read it all, most even misread the title!  The title read:  WILL THE CHURCH GO THROUGH THE TRIBULATION?  YES AND NO!"  Most either said "yes," or they said "no," with a sprinkling of "some of it" or "half of it."

I tried to explain two or three times, but apparently they wouldn't even read my explanation!  SO, I will once again try to make my point clear: 

There are two entities which are called the church; there is the professing church which consists of over two billion folks who call themselves Christians, and there is the Body of Christ, comprised of only born again believers.  I like to call them "possessors."  The first group is depicted in Revelation 3:14-22 as the corporate church "doing business" without Christ's leadership (note that He is outside knocking but no one will let Him in v.20).  The other group, the "possessors," are recognized by Jesus as being His, and are promised that they would escape "...from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth" (v. 10)! One is populated by "tares," and the other, the Body of Christ, is the wheat (see Mt. 13).

Paul had great respect for the Bereans because they "...were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the Word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so."  They listened to ALL that he had to say, and then verified his teaching against the Scriptures.  It would be so nice if everyone who comments on the content of blogs, were "Bereans!"

THE MORAL OF THE STORY:  PLEASE READ, VERIFY, AND THEN COMMENT!