March 7, 2023: 2 Peter 1:16 - Eyewitnesses to the Majesty of Christ

“For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty.” - 2 Peter 1:16

Peter was one of twelve apostles chosen by Jesus Himself to learn from Him the message of the everlasting gospel: we can only be saved from all of our sins by believing in Him, the One sent by God from heaven, who would be crucified, spill His precious blood, die, be resurrected on the third day and walk the earth for 40 days, and then ascend to heaven to the right hand of God, where He is today. There is no other way to salvation; Jesus is the only way, and His word is truth and only He can give us everlasting life with Him and the Father.

“The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captive and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.” (Luke 4:18-19)

Peter was a simple fisherman, along with his brother Andrew, and they were fishing one day by the Sea of Galilee in Israel when Jesus approached them and said, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” (Matthew 4:18-19) They immediately followed Him. Soon after, Jesus saw two more brothers, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were also fishermen and were mending their nets. Jesus called out to them, and they immediately followed Him as well. What made these men, and later the other apostles, give up everything they had in an instant, their families, their homes, their livelihood as fishermen, and all that they had worked for to follow this Man? What was it about Him? How could He cause them to abandon all that they were and all they had to follow Him? They must have known there was something different about Him that would result in them following Him immediately, without hesitation. I would think that they had previously read in the Scriptures about His long foretold coming to earth, perhaps looking for their Savior, and that the Spirit of God had prepared their hearts for Him. Whatever it was, it was something so powerful that when Jesus was before them, before their very eyes, they left all they had and followed Him. Yes, there have been similar occurrences, even in recent history, when people gave up everything to follow people who claimed in some way to be the way to salvation, and many people died because they were not following the true Christ, the only way to salvation; instead, they were following deceivers and false christs who led them to destruction. Jesus even warned His disciples of this as a sign of the end times before His second coming. Peter also warned of these deceivers and their false doctrines in 2 Peter chapter 2. As we get closer to the return of Christ - His second coming - I believe we will see more and more of this.

How can you tell the difference between cunningly devised fables and the truth of God? The answer is prophecy. The Bible is the only book that has ever foretold events before they happen, hundreds and even thousands of years before they happen, that were later fulfilled. Shown below is a link to an article from gotquestions.org that lists some of the prophecies that were fulfilled by the first coming of Jesus Christ. It is estimated that a conservative number of prophecies of His first coming that were fulfilled is 300.

https://www.gotquestions.org/prophecies-of-Jesus.html

Today, we are seeing even more prophecies either being fulfilled or are close to being fulfilled. One of those is in the book of Revelation, chapter 13 when it is the time of the 7-year tribulation period and the antichrist will be in power. His false prophet, some type of one-world religion leader, will require that every single person alive in the world at that time take the mark or the name of the beast [antichrist] or the number of his name and worship his image in order to buy or sell or else they will be killed. We have never been at a time in history where this type of technology existed and could be used to restrict the buying and selling of every person in the world until now. Enter CDBC. What is CDBC? It stands for Central Bank Digital Currency. It provides the ability for every single purchase to be tracked digitally, and I believe ultimately controlled by a centralized bank that will be used by the antichrist during the 7-year tribulation period to prevent people from buying or selling unless they have his mark or the number of his name in their right hand or in their foreheads.

Per a November 14, 2022 article from crowdsourcing.com (see: https://crowdsourcingweek.com/blog/countries-with-cbdcs/):

“We are also very well aware that many people do not welcome CBDCs, and regard them as instruments of growing centralization, invasive government control and a threat to privacy. This has been covered in an article on our BOLD Awards platform, so we won’t re-run those opinions here.

“105 countries, representing over 95% of global GDP, are exploring a CBDC. 10 countries have fully launched a digital currency, with China’s pilot set to cover 23 cities.”

As I was writing this post today (March 7, 2023), I received a notification from endtimeheadlines.com that “Central banks of Israel, Norway, and Sweden are all preparing for digital currency payments.” (See: https://endtimeheadlines.org/2023/03/central-banks-of-israel-norway-and-sweden-are-all-preparing-for-digital-currency-payments/) I also think that the image of the beast that people will have to worship could be some sort of hologram that is displayed on their phone, and we do see holographic technology in our world today. And, the rate of people owning smartphones is increasing, with one estimate that in 2023, 89% of the world’s population will own smartphones (see: https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/how-many-people-have-smartphones). Perhaps when CDBCs are implemented worldwide, every single person must have a smartphone in order to conduct their banking.

The apostles of Jesus Christ witnessed His power through all of the miracles they saw Him perform with their own eyes, they heard Him preach the gospel of salvation through believing in Him as Messiah, and as I will discuss more in the next Scripture devotional, it was Peter, James, and John who were present at the moment when Jesus was transfigured right before their very eyes. They were eyewitnesses to His majesty. While we have not seen Jesus with our own eyes as they did, we can trust in the eyewitness accounts of all those who did see Him. We also have the evidence of the written word of God Himself, the Bible, of all the prophecies that were made and have already been fulfilled, the prophecies that are in the process of being fulfilled, and the knowledge and assurance that those not yet fulfilled will be fulfilled, in His perfect timing. You can choose to believe in Jesus as your Savior or not. You can choose to believe in His power and His second coming or not. If you reject Him, your choice does not change the truth; it only means you denied His majesty for a cunningly devised fable by the one who sought your destruction instead of your salvation - Satan. I pray that you don’t let Satan have your soul, but that you would turn to Jesus Christ and give it to Him, thus guaranteeing that one day you will see and experience His power and majesty for yourself, just as Peter the apostle did. ✝️