H.M.S. Richards

Voice Of Prophecy

Our Heavenly Father

Lift up the trumpet and loud let it ring, Jesus is coming again.

Cheer up ye pilgrims, be joyful and sing, Jesus is coming again.

From Los Angeles, California, we present the program of The Voice of Prophecy, a voice crying in the wilderness of these latter days, prepare ye the way of the Lord.

And now let us seek the light of heaven, as the King's heralds bring to us his light in song.

Let The light from the lighthouse shine on me.

O sailor Drifting with the tide, and tossed by wind and wave.

O look to Jesus Christ for life, and He'll completely save.

Let the light from the lighthouse shine on me.

Almighty and everlasting Father, we ask Thee to intervene in world affairs to hasten the day of peace with freedom.

O Thou that dwellest between the cherubim, show Thyself to our longing hearts, that we may know that like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.

For He knoweth our frame, He remembereth that we are dust, Our Father in heaven, we pray that thou wilt so pour out thy blessing, That in this broadcast thou wilt reveal thyself to the millions who hear it.

These precious gifts we ask through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

There is a place of quiet rest near to the heart of God, A place where sin cannot molest, near to the heart of God.

O Jesus, blessed Redeemer, sent from the heart of God, Hold us who wait before thee, near to the heart of God.

Greetings to our friends everywhere, yes, millions of them in many lands, especially our new listeners.

Surely this war-torn world needs the Bible message of the Prince of Peace more today than ever before.

And the voice of prophecy is dedicated to the preaching of Christ to the millions of every land.

To our hundreds of thousands of listeners in South America the message goes from a great transmitter at Lorenco Mark, a station so powerful that its broadcasts are picked up even here in California.

In a special letter to us a world traveler writes that in South America, in practically every home, the people are listening to the broadcasts.

Even the payans or the day laborers are listening.

New voice of prophecy outlets have been added during the last 6 months in Fairbanks, Alaska, in the Canal Zone at Panama City, while large and small cities in America and Canada are carrying the message of redemption through faith in Christ.

Oh, friends, here is a world mission for Christ worthy of your prayers.

Here is a partial fulfillment of that prophecy of Jesus.

This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world as a witness unto all nations.

Won't you help to enlarge our circle of listeners?

Won't you tell a friend to tune in until this witness shall go to the ends of the earth and men everywhere will come to love and serve the God of our fathers.

God of our fathers, whose almighty hand Leads forth in beauty all those starry bands of the starry bounds, of shining worlds in splendor through the skies, o'er faithful songs before thy throne arise.

Refresh the people on their toilsome way.

Fill all our lives with love and grace divine, and glory Lord, and praise be ever thine.

Thank you, King's Heralds, for that majestic song.

And now, the voice of prophecy with a Bible message for today, our Heavenly Father.

Hundreds of millions of Christians know the words of the Lord's Prayer and often repeat, Our Father which art in heaven, thy kingdom come.

But I wonder whether many of us appreciate as we should the blessing of knowing God as our Father.

Many believe in Him as the Creator of the world, as the Lord of the universe, as the Judge of man.

But to know God as Father, our Heavenly Father, that is entirely and wonderfully different.

It is true that the fatherhood of God was revealed through the prophets in Old Testament times, but it was not until Jesus came that the children of earth caught a full vision of the loving Father heart of God.

Over and over again our Saviour speaks of God as his Father.

Especially is this true in the Gospel of John.

Christ is called the Son of God, and his sinless life, his teachings, miracles, crucifixion, his resurrection from the dead, in all these things he revealed the character of his Father.

So if you want to know what God is like, just look at Jesus, study his life, for God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.

When 1 of his disciples said to him, Lord, show us the Father, Jesus replied, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?

He that hath known me, or seen me, hath seen the Father." John 14.8.

Centuries before his birth, the prophet declared that his name should be called Immanuel, God with us.

And The Apostle Paul says, "...at the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, it is seen in the face of Jesus Christ." 2 Corinthians 2, 4, 6.

For he is the image of God, or, as it is phrased in Hebrews 1.3, the express image of his person.

He was the word of God, God's thought made audible.

While he was the incarnate God, as someone has beautifully written, His glory was veiled, his greatness and majesty were hidden, that he might draw near to sorrowful tents of men.

His divinity was veiled with humanity, the invisible glory in the visible human form.

So Christ set up his tabernacle in the midst of our human tent.

He pitched his tent by the side of the tents of men, that he might dwell among us, and make us familiar with his divine character and life.

The word became flesh, and tabernacled among us.

And God who revealed himself in his Son Jesus Christ is the God of love and mercy and compassion.

He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is blessed forevermore.

God is the center of authority in religion.

When men deny God a place in his own universe by outright atheism, or by anti-scriptural philosophies deny his authority, his providence, and his love, there's always trouble ahead.

It's such teaching and the life that goes with it which afflicts our world today.

1 of the most popular philosophers of our day boasts that he shatters creeds and demolishes idols.

His idea is that God or the life force is as yet unconscious of his own existence, for that he is trying to become aware of himself.

How could such a God as this help anyone else or answer their prayers when he does not even know that he himself exists?

1 religious teacher today says that God is simply the spirit of humanity.

A certain professor of a great university declares that man is the best expression of deity, that he bows at this shrine.

How could he go farther from the heavenly Father revealed in the Bible?

Where God is politely bowed out or openly denied, their religion has no authority.

The 10 Commandments, no moral sanction and judgment, no reality.

When God is gone, there's no promise of a future.

And life itself is just a dark and narrow veil between the ice-clad peaks of 2 bleak eternities.

Their Christ, by taking this position, they rejoice that they had disinfected religion from superstition, only to discover that men cannot live on disinfectants.

They have also discovered that a thin trickle of sociology is a poor substitute for God.

A godless religion has no answer to the questions of the broken heart.

A Christless gospel, no comfort for mothers and fathers bereaved by a world at war.

Millions today, like the cultured pagans of Paul's day, are having no hope and without God in the world.

If God exists and if he is good, it is reasonable to believe that he would reveal himself to men.

This he has done in his works and in his words, or as someone has put it, in God's 2 books, Nature and the Bible.

The universe reveals the Creator, Psalm 19, 1, the heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament showeth his handiwork.

It's unscientific and unreasonable to hold that the infinite complexity and harmony of the universe exists without a creator, the thought without a thinker, the effect without a cause.

The fact that we cannot comprehend the nature and power of God is no reason why we should deny his existence as creator.

It's harder to accept the mighty universe without God than with God.

Francis Bacon, 1 of the greatest thinkers who ever lived, said that he had rather believe all the fables and the legends and the Talmud and the Al-Quran than that this universal frame is without a mind.

And God's book of Holy Scripture agrees with his book of nature.

The Bible reveals God, too, as a personal being, not only using the personal pronoun in reference to him, but constantly ascribing to him the attributes of personality.

Shawn Boonstra

Deathbed Reading

What do you think your life would be like if death just wasn't part of the equation?

If you knew that you had unlimited time and resources, how would that change things?

How would your life change if you just weren't afraid of death?

Today, on The Voice of Prophecy, I'll introduce you to a man who had this all figured out.

Even the knowledge that he was going to die soon didn't change his daily routine 1 little bit.

I'm your host, Sean Boonstra, and today we're going to look at 2 different biblical passages that describe the final moments of a man's life.

1 of them was written by an outside observer, and the other written by the man himself as he finds himself coming up against life's finish line.

And I think you're going to find this really important because at some point, the same thing will happen to you.

You're going to arrive at this moment you've always known was coming.

Figuratively speaking, you will round third base and head for home plate.

Unless of course you happen to be the 1 person in the last 2, 000 years who doesn't.

The man I'm talking about, the guy I'm going to examine, is the man who wrote most of the New Testament, a notable and unlikely convert to the Christian religion.

And of course, that was later changed to Paul, and you know him as the Apostle Paul, easily 1 of the most recognizable names in Christian history.

What I'm going to do today is look at the closing chapters of his life from 2 different perspectives.

1 of those was written by Luke, who describes the very moment Paul gets the news that he's going to die soon.

The other 1 was written by Paul himself, as he describes his own attitude towards death in a moving letter addressed to his young apprentice.

Now both of these accounts come from the days, weeks, months leading up to the final moment when Paul is taken out of the city of Rome to a place now known as the Abbey of the 3 Fountains and they cut off his head.

Just like some of these brave and virtually anonymous Christians who have been slaughtered in the Middle East right now by ISIS.

Now personally, I have always suspected that the Romans probably wished they could crucify Paul if they could.

I don't have historical data for it, I just suspect it, because Paul had created a little civil unrest in a few places where he went, like the riot in Ephesus.

And the Romans were always a little sensitive about people who had the potential to launch a groundswell movement against the empire.

Anybody who threatened the peace of the Roman Empire, the Pax Romana.

Those kinds of people were often treated to a few days dying slowly on a cross.

So I've always suspected they might have wanted to crucify Paul, but they couldn't because he was a Roman citizen.

They had to cut off his head and that happened just outside the city of Rome, in a place you can still visit today, the Abbey of the 3 Fountains.

Now there's a church building there today, and it's been there for centuries.

And inside they've got this gruesome mural that shows Paul's head getting chopped off.

And in the floor of the church there are 3 holes.

And above each hole is a picture of Paul's severed head.

And they've designed it so it looks like Paul's head is still rolling downhill towards the front of the church.

Now those holes are there because there's this ancient legend that Paul's head, when they cut it off, bounced down the hillside.

And it bounced 3 times, and every time it touched the ground, a spring of water miraculously came up from the dirt.

And in the holes you can still see the 3 springs, or the 3 fountains.

Now, historically speaking, it probably is the place where Paul met his final end, where the great persecutor of Christians is ultimately martyred for his own Christian faith.

Now here's what I find fascinating about this whole story.

It's the fact that Paul knew for sure that he was going to die.

He knew that if he went to the city of Jerusalem, if he went there to preach, they would arrest him.

And I guess it's his sheer determination to stick with his God-given mission that inspires me.

I mean, he's stuck with it no matter what.

And Paul's martyrdom gives us 1 of the most eloquent, 1 of the most moving passages in the New Testament.

The book of Acts records a prophet by the name of Agabus who shows up at a meeting where Paul is speaking and he warns Paul, nothing good will come of your trip to Jerusalem.

Let me read it to you from this passage in the book of Acts because I think this is easily as magnificent as anything Shakespeare wrote about his fictitious characters.

It's easily as inspiring as anything Plato wrote about the death of Socrates.

You find it in Acts chapter 21, And I'll start reading in verse 10.

And as we stayed many days, a certain prophet named Agabus came down from Judea.

Now Agabus's name actually means locust, which seems really appropriate for a guy who's coming to deliver some bad news.

It says, a certain prophet named Agabus came down from Judea.

And when he had come to us, he took Paul's belt, bound his own hands and feet, and said, thus says the Holy Spirit, so shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles." I love the drama that a biblical prophet brings to a story.

Here's this guy who walks into the room and he takes Paul's belt.

Now I don't know if the belt was laying at the side of the room with the coats or if somehow he had to talk Paul into giving it to him, but he takes Paul's belt and he ties up his own hands and he says In front of all the believers, the man who owns this belt is going to be arrested and given to the Romans if he goes to Jerusalem.

Now if this had happened here in 21st century North America, I'd probably be tempted to take the prophecy with a grain of salt, Because over the years I've met all sorts of wingnuts and crackerjacks who say they have a message from God.

But what usually ends up happening with modern-day prophets is that their so-called message from God is usually used to justify some kind of unbiblical practice.

So they might say something like, the spirit told me to leave my wife, or the spirit told me I don't have to live in harmony with God's moral law.

Most of the time in the modern age you can write off the words of a man or woman who says, the spirit told me this or that, because they're usually just making it up.

But you still can't get around the fact that in the New Testament there is this description of an authentic gift of prophecy that's still with us until Jesus returns.

You'll find that gift in every single list of spiritual gifts.

So if you believe the Bible, you have to concede that the real gift of prophecy is at least possible.

And back in the first century, they didn't blink an eye.

They listened to Agabus because he was already well-known, probably.

He was probably known to be the real deal, someone with the authentic gift.

And they assumed that the Holy Spirit was real and working through this man.

Now, what I want you to listen to carefully is Paul's reaction to the prophetic message.

But just before that, I have to take a quick break, and then I'll come right back and I'll pick up where we left off in Acts chapter 21.

So don't you go away, I'll be right back.

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And welcome back to the Voice of prophecy.

I'm your host, Sean Boonstra, and just before the break we were looking at a dire prediction made by an ancient prophet to the apostle Paul, just before Paul goes to Jerusalem.

If you go, he says, they're going to arrest you and give you to the Romans.

And we were partway into the story as you find it in Acts chapter 21, so I want to pick up in verse 12 now, because it's really 1 of the most poetic passages anywhere in the Bible.

Now, when we heard these things, both we and those from that place pleaded with him, that's Paul, not to go up to Jerusalem.

Verse 13, then Paul answered, What do you mean by weeping and breaking my heart?

For I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus." Now I want you to let that sink in for a minute.

Paul realizes he's going to die, or at least that it's a real possibility.

But he is so laser-focused on his mission that even the threat of death doesn't slow him down.

Life To It's Fullest

Chris Holland

It Is Written Canada

The Right Adoption

God's book, the Bible, still relevant in today's complex world.

It is written sharing messages of hope around the world.

The past weeks we have been studying how God desires that each of us would experience life to its fullest.

And we have seen that God has given us a guide in his holy book, but the Bible speaks of salvation.

The word salvation means the act of saving.

What is it that we need to be saved from?

You know, the Bible records that God's people spent 400 years of bondage in Egypt.

Then they experienced a terrible time of disobedience as they wandered in the wilderness.

And afterwards, God's people were in a kingdom that was divided after the reign of Solomon.

They experienced constant attacks from their neighbors, the Philistines, the Amorites, the Ammonites, the Jebusites, just to name a few.

And then they were persecuted under the Babylonians and persecuted under the Medo-Persians and the Greeks and then the Romans.

To many it would seem that all hope was lost and they weren't living life to its fullest and there was no possibility to do so.

In fact, many of the Israelite people wondered, would deliverance ever come in their lifetime?

Where was the promised Messiah of Israel?

Where was the 1 who would retake the throne of David?

In the classic book on the life of Christ, The Desire of Ages, it says these words, The Savior's coming was foretold in Eden.

When Adam and Eve first heard the promise, they looked for its speedy fulfillment.

They joyfully welcomed their firstborn son, hoping that he might be the deliverer.

But The fulfillment of the promise tarried.

Those who first received it died without the sight.

From the days of Enoch, the promise was repeated through patriarchs and prophets, keeping alive the hope of his appearing.

And yet, he came not." And it is at this point in history and this piece of history that Paul utilizes as the background for the passage we will study today.

So let's open our Bibles to Galatians, the fourth chapter, beginning in verse 1 and reading through verse 7.

Now I say that The heir, as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is master of all, but is under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by the father.

Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world.

But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law that we might receive the adoption as sons.

And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, Abba, Father.

Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son, And if a son, then an heir of God through Christ." Paul is writing to a group of believers in the region of Galatia.

It would seem that this letter was not intended for 1 church, but rather a group of churches there in the region.

Somehow apostasy had slipped into the church.

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All Teachings

Our Heavenly Father

29m

Deathbed Reading

30m

The Right Adoption

27m

To Him That Overcomes

32m

History Test

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3- From Mohaven to TOSC; How We Got Here

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2- The Impact of Spiritualism on Feminism and Gender Issues Today

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1- Are You Sure? Issues and Answers

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Episode 10- Oklahoma Academy

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Episode 9- Amazon Lifesavers Ministry

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Episode 8- Oak Haven & Eden Valley Foster Care Mission

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It’s About Time!

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