Devotional Guide For the week of February 10, 2008
WHEN THE END COMES
About tem****al freedom
To read the Bible in one year, today read 1 Chronicles 4-6
To Know:
³Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are
called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has
occurred which redeems them from the transgressions under the first
covenant.² (Heb. 9:15)
On Tuesday July 2, 1776, it was steamy hot in Philadelphia. Excitement ran
through the city because of the decision being debated at the State House.
Delegates from the thirteen colonies that stretched down the many thousand
miles of the eastern seaboard of North America were about to declare
themselves independent of the king of England. This was treason. The
signers
of the Declaration would hang if the war were lost. Ninety miles to the
north, four hundred war****ps loaded with British regulars and Hessian
mercenaries were sighted off New York. These crack troops were ready to
crush the untrained and poorly equipped colonials. The decision that the
men
inside the State House prepared to take would call for an act of
incredible
courage.
Caesar Rodney, the delegate from Delaware, was the crucial vote. At nine
o¹clock at night, he galloped up as the door of the meeting room was
closing. Rodney covered eighty miles at night changing steeds several
times.
The Pennsylvania delegation opposed independence but decided to absent
itself rather than vote no. At ten o¹clock, as if to symbolize the storm
that these men were about to unleash upon the country, a rainstorm poured
down on Philadelphia. New York abstained and so by a vote of eleven to
zero
the united colonies became the United States. It was two more days before
the Declaration of Independence became official.
The New Covenant emerges by stages. In Genesis, the plan of salvation was
first revealed as a promise that a child would be born with the power of
God
to destroy evil. Two thousand years later, it was revealed that Jesus of
Nazareth was that child and would sacrifice his life to save his people
from
their sins. The freedoms won by the Declaration of Independence are
tem****al, but the freedom promised to those whose faith is in Jesus is
eternal.
02138$-02138
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