Like others looking back, I can remember when gas was twenty cents; and bread was fifteen cents a loaf or less. You could ride the bus for six cents and go to the movie for thirty-five cents, and that included popcorn and a drink. I also remember Deanna’s dad telling me he had bought their house for only six hundred dollars.
We all have memories of how things used to be. I remember buying my first car, a 1950 Mercury. At the time the classified section of the newspaper was filled with hundreds of cars for sale for, you guessed it for $99.99. At the time the car was seven years old, and I paid the $99.99.
Now in 2006, I bought another Mercury, again seven years old, the difference was this time I paid $13,000. So why the big difference?
I think we both know the answer to this question. That’s right; things were different, wages were much LOWER, a lot lower. At the time when I bought the 1950 Mercury, I was earning seventy-five cents an hour. Of course, when I purchased the 1999 Mercury, my salary was quite a bit more, as you would imagine.
Yes, things have changed, but as others have said, “as wages go up, prices go up.” Then because prices have gone up, wages go up, and the cycle starts again.
But here is some good news in our relationship with God, nothing changes. As I have mentioned other times, before the foundation of the world God had a plan.
From Eph. 1:3. “Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.”
As you read through the Old Testament, you will find 355 Prophecies Fulfilled in Jesus Christ starting with Gen. 3:15 and ending with Mal. 4:6 You can check it out yourself online at:
www.accordingtothescriptures.org/prophecy/353prophecies.html
In the New Testament, of course, you will find the fulfillment of each of the 355 prophecies. Also, 101 Scientific Facts & Foreknowledge can be found online at
http://www.eternal-productions.org/101science.html
As you read and study His Word, it becomes increasingly more evident that God’s plan for our salvation included and was centered around the death of His Son.
It is God that paid the price of our forgiveness, and He had planned it from the beginning. I can’t imagine in God’s mind and heart the anguish and sorrow He suffered knowing that at the right time or fullness of time as expressed in Galatians 4:4, “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law.”
Again, God knew the price that would be paid for my forgiveness, for your forgiveness, for the world: and as we know Christ died. Nothing less would meet the need.
So, while all of us can look back and see the cost of many, many things have changed, even in our lifetime, the price of our forgiveness remained the same.
All that remains is for you to be a follower unto death, to receive the crown of life as Paul expressed it. Now you must be one added to the number of the saved to start. Note with me Acts 2:47, “And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.”
The question then becomes how we are saved? That, too, is very simple as we read Mark 16:16, “He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved, but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned.”
The Price Has Been Paid — But You Must Act. Have You?
Dick Brant