The
Time of Life
Micah 7:1 “Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits, as the grapegleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat: my soul desired the firstripe fruit.”
1. The Bad Times
2. The Good Times
3. The First Fruit
1. The Bad Times
The time of life is passing us.
These are lean times that we all live in.
We are finding out that “there is no cluster” of grapes to eat from anymore.
We have just the crumbs to eat that are left on the table.
We sure have come a long way since the 1960’s in the United States of America, haven’t we?
Our nation is now morally, materially and spiritually bankrupt.
We have progressed to the very precipice of our total destruction. The time of life has passed. Woe is us! There is no cluster to eat.
All yardage [called progress] that we thought we had gained, when we threw the Bible out the schools, has actually been shown to be lost ground.
Getting rid of God [divorcing HIM] has destroyed us, as a people, and as a nation, as it did to Judah in Micah’s day.
The time of life has passed. Woe is us! There is no cluster to eat.
Men never learn from history.
Getting rid of prayer in the schools [1962], getting rid of the King James Bible in the schools [1963] and getting rid of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the land of America … has been to the hurt of us all.
We should have turned back to God … way back then, and we could have been healed!
Read Second Chronicles chapter seven, verse fourteen: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” [2 Chronicles 7:14]
The time of life has passed. The time when we could have turned back to God is now … gone. It is too late. Judgment is upon us.
Common sense has left us, and is now as rare as hen’s teeth in our land. Our national leaders have led us down the road … to our own destruction. Leanness has come to visit us. We have only the gleanings left. Woe is for us! There is no cluster to eat. Woe is for us! There are only the crumbs left to eat.
For those of us who are old enough to remember when we were a nation of vast power and of great strength [coming out of the Second World War], we cry.
We, so few in number, are no longer heard by the generations who have followed. We have forgotten God and our godly forefathers. The time of life has passed. Woe is us! There is no cluster to eat. We have left God, and God has left us. God has indeed, left us!!
You may ask, “How do we know this to be the very truth?”
Friend, we have this BOOK of God [the King James Bible], and it tells us when a person, or a people, or a nation leaves God, then that person, or people, or nation will “perish”, and “be utterly wasted”.
See this thing for yourselves in the Book of God, in Isaiah chapter sixty, verse twelve: “For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted.” [Isaiah 60:12]
It cannot be stated any clearer than that what the end result will be … for a nation that leaves God.
The United States was far better off serving God than serving this wicked agenda.
The time of life has passed us.
2. The Good Times
The time of life was when we believed the Bible as a nation. Our forefathers were a people who feared God. Our first President, George Washington, is attributed to having said: “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.” George Washington believed the Bible!
Do you need proof? Then, read the old history books of years ago. Do not waste your time reading the re-written cleansed histories of today.
Go to George Washington's tomb which is engraved with these words: “I am the Resurrection and the Life; sayeth the Lord. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.” [John 11:25-26]
We were blessed, as a nation, by God, because the Bible was the most read book in the land for nearly two hundred years. We had the Bible in the schools. We had prayer in the schools. As consequence, we were exalted as a nation because of what Spirit of God states in the book of Proverbs chapter fourteen, verse thirty-four: “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.” [Proverbs 14:34]
3. The First Fruit
Now, notice the last part of our verse: “my soul desired the firstripe fruit.”
The “firstripe fruit” is what is desired by the soul of a man. This “firstripe fruit” is otherwise known as the “firstfruits”. Nations are composed of souls, therefore, nations thrive on the “firstfruits”. Every nation that begins well begins well … if they fear God and keep HIS commands, which are revealed in the BOOK of the AGES … The Bible.
[Let me step into this a little closer.]
Our first President is a type of a firstfruit, and is representative of the “firstfruits” of the United States of America. We, as a people, ought to go back to the first fruit of the men and women who came before us to our beginnings. Now, it is the first fruit that satisfies the soul. Our satisfaction within our soul … depends on it! The first fruit will defines what satisfies the souls of a society in a government.
George Washington, himself, stated this, while he was alive on this earth this basic principle: “The aggregate happiness of society, which is best promoted by the practise of a virtuous policy, is, or ought to be, the end of all government.”
The “firstfruits” is where it is all at!
Now, isn’t that what we see in the BIBLE concerning the soul’s salvation in Jesus Christ? The Bible has all the answers! Amen!
We see the mystery of the “firstfruits” unfold in First Corinthians chapter fifteen, verses twenty through twenty-three, now look at this! “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.
For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming.” [1 Corinthians 15:20-23]
We [who are born again] are totally dependent on, and follow the “firstfruits”. It is “Christ” “the firstfruits” is what fulfills our soul’s very desire for the so great salvation from Hell’s fires just as a nation has its soul’s desire fulfilled in remembering its forefather’s declarations, and statements in the formulation of our government.
The “firstfruits” always points us back to this: “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.” [Proverbs 14:34]
In 1781, Thomas Jefferson made this statement in Query XVIII of his Notes on the State of Virginia. Excerpts of these statements are engraved on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.:
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; That a revolution of the wheel of fortune, a change of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by Supernatural influence! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in that event.”
Life is in the firstfruits.
Satisfaction to the soul is in the firstfruits.
The time of life ought to be passed in the total satisfaction that comes from the firstfruits … which is Jesus Christ.