Gone With The Wind!
In Deuteronomy 30:19, God gave his people two value options: life(blessing) or death(curse). Then He counseled them to choose life.
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live.
Thousands of years later, His Son elaborated on it.
What will be your profit if you acquire the whole World at the cost of your soul?
This was the question the Master asked his disciples in Mark chapter 8:34–37 as he presented them with two contrary value options into which they may invest their lives: Coming after Him versus going after the World.
And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
He offered the options of investing their lives in him and the Gospel of the Kingdom versus investing it in acquiring the portfolio or securities of the World or Babylon the Great as he describes her to his Apostle John at Patmos Islands.
This is a business counsel. And considering the stakes, no one could ever offer better or more crucial investment advice than that. Those questions are loaded. They highlight everything any business proposal could have.
1 — Capital or stakes
2 — Venture or portfolio
3 — Return on investment(ROI)
4 — Insurance or contingencies
The investment capital or stake, in this case, is your Life.
The venture or portfolio is He and the Gospel or the World and the things in her.
The ROI on your life, depending on how you choose, is either Eternal Life or Eternal bankruptcy and emptiness in your soul.
The insurance and contingencies in the event of failure or how you will salvage your soul when it becomes clear that Babylon was a failed project from day one is NONEXISTENT.
Vanity
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.
— Solomon, son of King David, king in Jerusalem
What did the preacher mean when he repeatedly used that profound phrase “vanity of vanities” and went on to add that “ALL is vanity”?
Just like it is the case with Christ in Mark chapter 8, the phrase “vanity of vanities” is a business expression. It is a profit and loss statement. He is describing the value of investing in the portfolio of the WORLD.
“Vanities,” the third word in that phrase, speaks of the entire portfolio of Babylon the Great — everything in the category of the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.
“Vanity,” the first word in that phrase, speaks of the cumulative value of the entire portfolio — the return on investment(ROI) on Babylon the Great.
The last part of the verse, “All is vanity,” implies that the combined value of the portfolio of Babylon and all the investments have the same value — VANITY.
Now, what is vanity?
The quality of being worthless or futile.
Vanity is anything that amounts to nothing. Anything — items or endeavors that ultimately amount to nothing.
The Spirit of God, through the preacher, declares to us that all the WORLD and ALL the achievements of men under the sun, in it, together amount to nothing.
A city built on lies, with lies, for nothing!
The motions and dynamics of the World are constrained, controlled, and regulated in a framework or matrix of vanity, a system fundamentally composed of lies or things that are subject to change as its basic building block, such that every effort and value based on or invested in it will produce only one outcome regardless, death or vanity!
It means the owners and holders of these investments(efforts and values in time) will lose them ALL with nothing to salvage.
Christ EXPLICITLY declares that you are a loser if your treasures are based on the earth instead of heaven where He is seated at the right hand of the Father. You are a loser, not because God attacked your investment, but because the franchise, idea, venture, value, hope, and dream you bet on was already doomed before you were born. You are the guy who invested their entire life’s savings in a business already declared bankrupt with zero insurance policies to fall on. Your investment will naturally inherit bankruptcy.
Brothers and sisters, this world’s system, also called ‘Babylon the Great,’ and all that she promises, have been declared bankrupt before Adam was created, and there is no redemption for HER. There is no hope for her course. She is cursed and will be utterly destroyed without remedy. There is no insurance policy for her portfolio.
The Spirit of Christ revealed to us through the Apostle John in the book of Revelation that earthly-minded merchants, those who traded with her, all who invested the desires and hopes of their hearts and souls in one thing or the other in her portfolio of lies will wail in anguish as they watch it all decay, disintegrate, and vanish like vapors in the wind, with no hope of remedy, or redemption, all gone with the wind!
And according to the preacher of Ecclesiastics, all the hard work put into her in the hope of some future security amounts to “a chasing after the wind.” Kindly call me when you catch it.
The tale of two houses
The Lord tells the story of the two houses. He named one the House of the Fool and the other the House of the Wise.
The fool, he says, placed more value on other things than on Him(Christ) and his Words of Eternal Life.
The wise, on the contrary, treasured the Person of Christ and his Words more than every other thing in existence.
The Lord said that the fool’s house — their life — was built on loose sand. But that of the wise was established on the Eternal ROCK of ages that can never be moved.
Both houses were subject to the ferocious and relentless attack of the storm and the mighty power of the rushing waves.
The fool was blown away without a trace left to remember, utterly washed away with the raging waves.
The wise remained unfazed and unchanged after the storm and the waves, with the glory that only shone brighter in the rising sun and through the settling dust.
That unfazed house, guys, is the real deal, the wise, the one who does the Will of God, who made Christ and his Words of Eternal life their treasure. It was built on THE ETERNAL ROCK.
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also
The Lord Jesus, on another occasion, tells us to place ALL our bets on the foundation of the wise man’s house by taking rapt heed to every word from His mouth and life.
“Lay up for yourself treasures in heaven, where moth or rot cannot destroy nor thieves break in and steal,” he cries, “for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
He went on: “Do not lay up your treasures, the values of your heart, in the earth, the temporal and transient, where moth and rot will destroy, and thieves break in and steal.”
In another place, when he spoke about the last days, he emphasized that people’s hearts will fail as they behold the things that will happen to the world and all her systems. You can see why Wisdom screams across the scriptures:
“Don’t lay your treasures in her!”
“Come out from her my people!”
“Remove your heart from her! Because where your treasure is there will your heart be also, and when she fails, your heart will fail with her, and there will be no recovery nor remedy!”
In the same place, he warned us to remember Lot’s wife, a woman whose heart failed with Sodom, the city of destruction, because she had her treasures invested in its vanity fair.
The Apostle John, in Revelation, was shown that merchants of Babylon also wailed, their hearts breaking into smithereens as they watched with soul-wrenching horror as the Great City, which catered to all the economy of vanity, in which they invested all their lives and dreams, burned to oblivion along with all their treasures, never to be seen nor remembered again.
Therefore, seeing that all that is not built on the ROCK of Christ and his Eternal words, but on the foundation of the temporal and transient, will be gone with the wind, and washed away with the waves…
…what kind of people should we be?
To this, the Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles left the same word:
Look Up!
- Seek first the Kingdom of God and all his Righteousness.
- Deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow the Lamb wherever he goes.
- Lay up for yourself, invest in the pearl of heaven — Eternal Life in the Son of God.
- Do not love the world nor the things that are in the world.
- Instead, love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.
- Love the family of God as Christ Loved you.
- As citizens of the Eternal Kingdom of God, whose origins are rooted in the Eternal and Living God, set your affections on the things above, NOT the things on the earth.
- Earnestly desire for and hasten unto the coming of our Lord Jesus.
- Eagerly look forward to a New heaven and a new earth under the rule and government of the King of Righteousness.
- Be diligent to be found of the Lord in peace, a spotless and blameless bride.
May the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
Amen.
