On Monday 27 October 2014 the UK’s campaign in Afghanistan ended. The Union flag was lowered at Camp Bastion and the troops were ready to leave. During the war 453 troops, who served their country with devotion and courage, made the ultimate sacrifice and lost their lives. Memorials to these valiant people also had to be dismantled because it was feared they would have been desecrated. In one national newspaper the front page heading was "Not a Trace Left Behind."
This brought to mind other instances where nothing was left behind. In the Biblical book of Exodus we read the story of God’s people, the nation of Israel, leaving Egypt. Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, did not want to lose these people as they were His slaves. God sent various plagues upon the Egyptians to make Pharaoh change his mind. Pharaoh vacillated by sometimes agreeing to let the people go and then going back on his word. Then he suggested that the people could go but not the flocks and the herds. This brought the following response from Moses, "Our cattle also shall go with us; there shall not an hoof be left behind" Exodus.10.26. God brought the people out on the famous Passover evening when all who had applied the blood of the Pascal lamb were sheltered. This is an illustration of how all who are in the slavery of sin and Satan can be liberated from such bondage through the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, the true Lamb of God. "Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold … But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot" 1Peter 1.18,19. Only by application of His blood by faith can a sinner be released from bondage.
It may be asked why is this exclusively the realm of the blood of Christ? The answer is that when He hung on the cross at Calvary, He accomplished the work of redemption fully and left nothing behind, nothing undone. We read concerning the Lord Jesus Christ "Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed" 1Peter 2.24. Before He died He cried, "It is finished" John 19.30, and all that God required, in order to redeem us on a righteous basis, was fully done. This truth is clearly stated in Hebrews 10.12, "But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God".
This world is heading for another event that will mean no Christian believer will be left behind. The Lord Jesus promised that He would come again and take every redeemed soul to be forever with Him, John 14.1-6. This was repeated doctrinally by the apostle Paul in 1Thessalonians 4.16,17 "For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord."
Dear reader have you been redeemed by the blood of God’s Lamb and so will be raptured to the glory of heaven or will you be left behind for God’s dreadful and eternal judgment?
For more information www.seekthetruth.org.uk
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