The Things Concerning Me Have An End

The things concerning Christ have an end. His death, burial and resurrection tells us that eternity is real for both the child of God and the unbeliever. Eternity beckons for us all - there are no exceptions to that statement. There is an END to what we know as life. Whether we spend eternity with God or in eternal torment is really up to us. We need to repent and believe the gospel in these last days. It's getting late neighbor, it's getting late.

By Chris McDonald

TEXT: Luke 22:37- For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end.

        Everything in this life has beginning AND an end. The very fact we are able to breathe today tells us that we are on a journey called life that will one day come to an end. Even the physical life of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ HAD AN END. He stated it Himself – that the “things concerning ‘ME’ have an END.”

        As I write this short journal today, I have just returned from the funeral of my dear Aunt Florence. My Aunt Florence, my mother’s sister was one of the godliest women in this entire world I think I have ever known. At her funeral her sister Hazel spoke of the long journey she had made in this life with the Lord for nearly 70 years. I started out on my journey with her during the infancy years of my life. My Aunt Florence kept me, along with my first cousin Karen, and another young child in the community named Curtis. When my younger brother Todd came along, she kept him as well.

        From the very early years of my life, I was aware of the kind of woman my Aunt Florence was. Was she perfect? Oh, absolutely not and she would be the first to tell you that. A Godly saint, full of the Holy Ghost? You better most definitely believe it.

        I remember the days when we were just small children, laying in the upstairs room of her house in Atlanta, Ga. and hearing her on her knees every afternoon during her intimate time with God. We as children would listen to her pray in a regular language, calling our names before the Lord. On many occasion, this intercession would last for hours at a time. We would all look at one another and wonder what was going on as we listened to our Aunt Florence begin to pray so earnestly that she would literally groan and moan in the Holy Ghost (Romans 8:26-27). And while we didn’t understand it totally then as children, what we did know beyond a shadow of a doubt was that heaven had touched our Aunt Florence and she had touched heaven.

    She had been saved since she was a child and baptized in the Holy Ghost in the mid-1960s. She went to First Assembly of God in Atlanta under the pastoral care of Jimmy Mayo – a man who was responsible for a great deal of the move of the Holy Spirit that came to the Atlanta, Ga. area during those years. I too went there to the private school the church operated and we worshipped there on Sunday with my Aunt Florence’s family together up until the time I was about 8.

        Aunt Flo (as she was affectionately known as) would pray in tongues often never being ashamed to tell anyone who asked her about her experience with God that she spoke in tongues as the Spirit of God gave the utterance. To her it was not about being Pentecostal, it was the fact the Word of God said that those who believed “would speak with new tongues.”

        As the years went by the physical distance grew between my family and hers but the spiritual bond between the two of us grew.

        I remember being in services with her when I was a young man not understanding the baptism in the Holy Ghost but watching her get so happy in the Spirit that she would dance before the Lord so hard that even David would have blushed. I heard her many times begin to pray for people only to have that praying turn into utterances that were not of this world but of heaven. On more than one occasion I remember feeling the hair on my arms stand up because of the electricity I felt in the room whenever she prayed. She was that close to God and God was that close to her. One night in particular she was on the phone line for Pat Robertson’s 700 Club program which in those days was being broadcast from a television studio in Atlanta.

        Believe me when I say that whoever called and got a hold of my Aunt Flo was never the same again. She would sit there and rebuke the devil over the phone over people and proclaim deliverance to them in the name of Jesus. People would be saved, delivered and filled with the Holy Ghost nightly.

        By the time I turned a teen-ager we had moved away to Southern Georgia, my dad had left the Assemblies of God and became an ordained minister with the Southern Baptist. Our bond remained close but I have to be honest and tell you that visiting her and my aunt Hazel’s churches was about like the Pope visiting a Martin Luther Memorial service. My attitude towards speaking in tongues, the Pentecostal way, the gifts of the Spirit, had been molded into one of cynicism and negativity. I had been raised to think that those things were not of God and in fact of Satan. I had been taught to believe that most people who spoke in tongues were just ignorant people who didn’t really know much about the scriptures but were more emotional than smart.

        Then came one of the most pivotal years of my life that began in the late fall of 1986. I had become a young man in my early 20s and began to get hungry for more of God. To be quite frank with you I had walked on this earth most of my days thinking I was saved and born again without ever really having had a true-blue born again experience with the Master. I shudder to think where I would have gone had I died during those years. I lived in a preacher’s home but yet did not know God. LET THAT SINK IN. I knew “about” God. I knew “about” Jesus. I knew “about” being saved. But my personal experience with God through the Son was NILL.

        It was during this time of my life that I had started watching a well-known evangelist on television each Sunday morning early before anyone else got up in my dad’s house. I would sit there and hear him talk about this glorious experience of the baptism in the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking with other tongues.  While my search went on privately, the LAST thing I was going to do is tell my father I was seeking the Holy Spirit. That would have been bad.

        The Lord though always has a way of putting us in a corner to where we obey Him! My girlfriend at the time, who would later become my wife, went to a local Pentecostal church when I met her. I knew to be with her on Sundays that one of us would have to change. At that time she was still in high school so her parents were not going to let her come to church with me on Sunday because they felt she was just too young. So being the tower of integrity I was at the time (NOT!) I figured “hey what’s there to lose. I’ll just start going to church where she goes on Sunday.” I mean I had been exposed to the Pentecostal denomination through my mom’s family and even though at times it scared me to death the things that went on there, I figured the worst thing that could happen to me was that the services would be longer and a little louder than normal. I knew that no one could force me to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit. But I had forgotten one very important thing – GOD!

        I remember the first Sunday I attended the church thinking, “this isn’t so bad here. No one spoke in tongues today and no one started running up and down the isles shouting like a bunch of orangutans. Boy, this should be a breeze.” (NOT!)

        What I didn’t realize was that the Lord would promptly proceed to send person after person, evangelist after evangelist to the church who would do nothing for the next several weeks but preach on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. One night a lady by the name of Benji Clark came to Cairo and started prophesying over my girl friend which totally freaked me out. I had never seen anything like that before. She bypassed me that night thank God but the experience left me so shaken up that I immediately went home and started asking questions again to my father about this experience called the baptism in the Holy Spirit. He didn’t offer a whole lot more encouragement then than he had done for the entire 20 years of my life here on earth. That is nothing personal against my father, he just didn’t accept this experience as others in my mom’s family had.

        To make a long story short I grew hungrier and hungrier for more of God and when it came down to cases in the winter of 1987, I knew there was only one woman in this universe that had the answers I was looking for – my Aunt Florence.

        On a stormy, rainy night in February 1987 I drove to Atlanta, Ga. with my mother for the sole purpose of getting my Aunt Florence to pray for me to receive the baptism in the Holy Ghost. I remember getting to her house about 6 or so on a Saturday night sitting at her table listening to her teach me about the mighty infilling of the Spirit. I remember her showing me in the word of God how this experience was for today. She methodically told me that many in the Body of Christ had rejected this experience because of unbelief and religion but that anyone with any desire to have an intercessory relationship with the Father needed to receive this endowment of power. She never told me I had to receive it to be saved, but she DID say that to make it through this life here on Earth, one needed an intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus. The way we have that type communion is through the mighty Holy Ghost.

        I remember her laying hands on me that night as the power of Almighty God put us both on the floor weeping, moaning, groaning in the Spirit. I remember hearing my self begin to speak in other tongues for the very first time and when I say “speak” I probably would be more accurate to say “FLOW!” The words literally flowed out of my mouth like a “river.” Jesus said that out of the innermost being would come “RIVERS” of living water and that is exactly what it felt like. In addition to this grand infilling, I was set free that night of several roots of unforgiveness and bitterness I had hidden in my heart towards certain loved ones. That was revealed through the prophetic words spoken by my Aunt Florence. It was through that same prophetic word that she simply said to me “ I don’t know what you are doing now, but one day you will be preaching the gospel.”

        Satan has fought that call many times in my heart and life. I can tell you today without blinking that I am ashamed at the wasted years that I spent not fulfilling that call. This frustration climaxed in the summer of 1996 after my second divorce when I went into a deep oblivion of sin, forsook the call of God on my life totally that I did not care if I ever preached behind a pulpit again and preach to others things I myself could not live up to. Through this entire ordeal my Aunt Florence always encouraged me only like Aunt Florence could. When Aunt Florence talked to you, you would have been wise to wear an asbestos suit because when she spoke, you knew that she wasn’t speaking to pet your flesh. No, she usually spoke with one finger in your face and the other finger thumbing through the Word of God to show you where you were in disobedience.

            Many times it sounded harsh and biting and to be quite frank with you there were times when I left angry at her vowing never to have anything to do with her again. But despite the harshness and sharpness of her comments, there was this ever-present feeling deep within my heart that the words being spoken to me were not from her – but from God Himself. And neighbor, the pounding voice of the Holy Ghost is hard to ignore and that my friend will be what will follow us all to eternity if we reject that word!!!! He will follow you to hell and back to keep you on the right path with God. David said “if I make my bed in heaven – YOU ARE THERE. If I make my bed in ‘hell’ YOU ARE THERE.”

        The worry of offending people never stopped my Aunt Florence from being Aunt Florence. If the Holy Ghost told her something to say to you brother, she was going to say it – whether you liked it or not. She didn’t take glee or pleasure out of offending people. She cried many tears over the things she said to others. Yes, she regretted some – she was human and I’m sure if she had been able to do some things over again – she would have done them differently.

        She was a Turnage. Because of that, she loved too hard at times like our entire family does to a fault. She put her feelings and heart on the line many times for people only to experience frustration and disappointment with those who went back on God and lost their way after she had warned them not to do something. I remember a specific fall day in 1996 when she grabbed my hand and told me not to move to Kentucky. She started crying and said “Son, I fear what will happen to you if you go.” I spurned her words that day and became angry at her and to be quite frank our relationship was never the same again after that day in October. But without getting into the gory details of what happened to me, I can tell you this without blinking -  what she had warned me would happen to me personally and what concerned the issues at hand that took me to Kentucky happened to the letter.

        The next six years she spent suffering physically. Many days she would lie in bed hanging on to her life by a thread, the Lord always remaining faithful to her and healing her body enough to give her strength to carry on. Even when she didn’t have enough breath to hardly sit up, she would use her last words to continue to warn, preach, teach, exhort, encourage, and serve those around her. One of her grandsons told me yesterday after the funeral that three hours before her death, she had called the grandkids into the room and with no room for mistaking what she was saying she looked at each one and said, “If you have unconfessed sin in your life, you are not going to heaven, but you are going to hell.” It was hard for her to even utter those words physically, but she spent her last hours warning those she loved the most to prepare themselves for eternity. That was my Aunt Florence.

        I remember so many people who crossed her path who were never the same again. I remember the woman bound by a demon spirit who came over the Aunt Flo’s house one afternoon, sit down in a chair, and as my Aunt Flo looked at her just rebuked the spirit in her without touching her. The woman bent over in her chair and just started vomiting without stopping. My Aunt Flo walked over and hit the woman in the back and commanded the devil to come out of her. Ten minutes later the woman was sitting in the chair delivered from a spirit of fear. Then there was a young man who was a professed homosexual. Aunt Flo didn’t pander to the sin, but in the name of Jesus, rebuked that spirit over that young man several times. If he misses heaven, he will go into hell stumbling over the prayers and the intercession of my Aunt Florence.

        I remember the camp meetings of Bro. Swaggart we attended together in Baton Rouge. She witnessed my younger brother John receiving the Holy Spirit in 1989 there as well as seeing my ex-wife get healed of a life-long back ailment at Brother Shambauch’s meeting. That same night my ex-wife’s eyes were miraculously healed while watching worship on stage. I remember the last camp meeting we attended sitting in a hotel room with her prior to the service and she laying her hands on me and praying for me to endure hardships. I was facing the prospects of leaving my church when I got back. It was a tough church and a place that had caused many heartaches. But the bond between me and Aunt Florence was one that when the trouble started and the heartaches came, there was only one person in this universe I wanted praying for me – and it was her.

        Many times she would have this uncanny ability to look at you and start speaking prophetically to you and your condition. She never minced words with you either. If you were looking for a “feel good” word from the Lord, you might have needed to go somewhere else. Aunt Florence believed that sin was the problem with man and that the only cure for the sin of man and the sinner himself was the blood of Jesus and the power of the Holy Ghost. She taught that we were to walk according to truth and that the only source of real truth was the Lord Jesus and the Word of God. Jesus was the Word and the word was Jesus. She didn’t mind if you called her at midnight crying and saying “Aunt Florence, I need prayer.” She didn’t care if it was 3-4 o’clock in the morning and you didn’t know what day it was spiritually and you needed an anchor in the midst of an ungodly storm of demonic attack in the wee hours of the morning that you called her and said “please pray for me I need help.” She’d get up and start praying for you.

        God only knows the people in this world today who were touched by her ministry. She was one of the unknown soldiers in the Kingdom of God that one day will without a doubt be rewarded greatly for a life of service and honor to her King.

        And with those words I come to the point and the message of this journal. About 2 weeks before her death I was told that she had started talking about her end. There were a few days where she was found talking in her sleep to my Aunt Dot who had died two years before, and her mother, Allie Mae Turnage, who had died in the late 1960s. Both are in heaven. I have no doubt that a few weeks prior to my Aunt Florence’s death that she may very well have been like the Apostle Paul – in between here and the world to come – not sure whether to stay or to go – but getting a glimpse of things that I can only imagine in my heart today were unspeakable in their splendor. I believe with all my heart that the Lord had come to her and given her a choice to stay or go. She was just that close to Him. She loved HIM with everything in HER. She worshipped HIM. She praised HIM. She danced before HIM. She did nothing without making sure what she was doing was pleasing to HIM. Oh Glory to God. Oh Glory to God. I feel the anointing of the Holy Spirit as I write these words to you right now.

        You see my Aunt Florence was told 15 years ago that there was really nothing modern medicine could do to keep her alive on this earth. Cancer had eaten away at her for years and as a result of the cancer other ailments came into her body as well. She developed several arthritic knots on her hands and her entire body that were very painful and hurtful. I wonder sometimes if the revelations that she was receiving from God were so powerful and deep that, just as the Lord had allowed Satan to buffet Paul, so had He allowed the enemy to do the same to my Aunt Florence. No one knows for sure – only eternity will bear that out I guess. But I know my Aunt Florence operated in a level of anointing that not too many people in this have been able to do and be able to keep their humility. It’s hard not to get puffed up. It’s hard NOT to become proud and arrogant when that type power is resting on you.

        I’ve been asked a thousand times “was this expected.” The answer is “it’s been expected for 15 years now.” She had fought to stay here on earth for that long for one simple reason – TO WARN OTHERS that eternity was coming and they needed to live a holy, consecrated life before God to inherit eternal life. She stayed here to warn others of hell and what happens to you when you live in disobedience to the Word of God. a

        So when new of her death reached me I just sat still for a few moments and pondered why now. What happened to make her want to go on home because even up to a week ago when I last saw her alive in a hospital in Newnan, Ga. she was still fighting to stay. She was still clawing the devil and rebuking his effort to kill her. I mean neighbor, some of us don’t go to church if we have a headache. My Aunt Florence had tubes coming out of her entire body and was talking to her daughter about her home bible study! So I know she had a desire to stay here to a degree.

        What I believe happened between that day I saw her in the hospital for the last time and the time of her death on Wednesday, October 2, 2002 at 10 AM was that somewhere in the discourses between her and her Heavenly Father that the Lord gave her a peek into the soonness of His coming and when she saw how close it was for Him to come and bring the curtain down on this part of eternity that she realized that it was ok now to go on home. She realized that things were winding down to the point that her work on earth was now complete and she wouldn’t have had long to work any way had she stayed.

        NEIGHBOR I WANT THAT TO SINK IN DEEP WITHIN YOUR HEART AND SOUL RIGHT NOW. I WANT THAT TO RIVET YOU INTO THE KNOWLEDGE THAT IT IS GETTING LATE.

        Our text states something that the death of my Aunt Florence testifies to= “THE THINGS CONERNING CHRIST have AN END!” We all have an END. We all have a date with eternity. We ALL are destined to come to the end of this journey called life and face our Creator in Judgment whether it is at the Judgment Seat of Christ or the Great White Throne Judgment. THE THINGS CONCERNING CHRIST HAVE AN END!

        It’s getting late neighbor, It’s getting late neighbor. It’s getting late neighbor. It’s getting late neighbor. We are witnesses the curtain coming down on the time of the Gentiles. The things concerning CHRIST will have an end!

Sin Will Have Its End One Day

Gen 6:13 - And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

(KJV)

          The end of all flesh came up before the nostrils of God one day in the ions of the past. He commanded an ark to be built to save those would listen and hearken unto Noah. But one day the END came and those who did not enter the ark PERISHED in the flood.

          Neighbor, Jesus Christ is the ARK of safety today. There is another ark that is preparing for those who will listen and obey. That ark is the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. The END OF ALL FLESH IS COMING AGAIN ONE DAY. The rainbow God put in the heavens testifies that the earth will never again be destroyed by water, but the second time by fire. The only hope of safety and security for the coming storm on planet Earth is the ARK OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. Oh neighbor, the THINGS CONCERNING CHRIST HAVE AN END.

The End Of All Things Is At Hand

1 Pet 4:7-10 - But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer.

8        And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.

9        Use hospitality one to another without grudging.

10      As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.

          The Apostle Peter warns us that the end of all things is near. As I said before I cannot help but believe that my Aunt Florence saw just how close the end was and said “if it’s that close then it’s time for me to come on home.” I will miss her more than words can say. I’m having a hard time even now typing these words through the tears I shed for her loss. She meant that much to me. But even if I had the power to bring her back to this awful place called Earth which I don’t – I WOULDN’T. I know she is in a place that is beyond description in earthly terms. I know she is around the throne of God rejoicing before Her Lord and King. She didn’t know ABOUT Jesus – SHE KNEW JESUS!!! BIG DIFFERENCE. She KNEW HIM. SHE worshipped HIM and neighbor as the end of all things is upon us – it would behoove us to KNOW HIM too! Because it’s getting late. And the things concerning Christ have an end.

What Shall The End Be Of Those Who Do Not Obey?

1 Pet 4:17-19 - For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?

18      And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?

19      Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.

The End Will Come, Then The Judgment.

Heb 9:26-28

26      For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

27      And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:

28      So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

Jer 8:20

20      The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.

(KJV)

1 Cor 15:24-25

24      Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.

25      For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.

    As we close this journal let me leave you with this somber thought. It's a familiar one I use each week on our Manna Radio programs- It's GETTING LATE! The two minute warning has sounded. We're in the ninth inning and two are out. We're in the fourth quarter of the basketball game and seconds remain on the clock. The hands on God's time clock show ten to midnight. We are that close neighbor.

    The cry of millions in eternity is "the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." If you don't know Yeshua today as YOUR LORD, that will be your cry as well in the regions of the damned. Neighbor, it doesn't have to be that way. You can KNOW God through Jesus Christ. You CAN KNOW for sure that even though we all have an END, that END for us will be glorious who know the Lord. For those who don't know him - the END WILL BE ETERNAL TORMENT and Hell. Hell is a real place. It's been negated down to nothing more than a curse word in most people's every day vocabulary but if we could get a glimpse of the reality of its horrors, I don't think any of us would use it in slang ever again. Noah built an ark to save his family from the great Flood. Jesus Christ is building an ark to save YOU and YOUR family from the Great Tribulation. It's time to make that decision friend. It's time to come back home to God before it is eternally too late.

    The things concerning CHRIST have an END. There is an END coming, then the judgment. Do you know Him? I pray you do in Jesus name! Amen.