Q.19. What is the misery of man’s fallen condition?

A. By their fall all mankind lost fellowship with God and brought His anger and curse on themselves. They are therefore subject to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever.

God’s wrath is not a popular topic today. But Scripture is clear that because of His holiness and His hatred of sin, and as a result of the Fall and our Original Sin, everyone is born under God’s wrath.

It is more popular to discuss God’s love. It is because of God’s love that He created the plan of salvation. It is because of God’s love that He sent the Second Person of the Trinity to come as the Savour of His people.

But why do we need a Savour? From what do we need God to save us? It is from His wrath against our sin, both our Original Sin and all the actual sins that flow from Original Sin. As a result of the Fall, we are by nature all subject to His anger and curse.

Romans 1:18

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Ephesians 2:1-3

¹ And you were dead in the trespasses and sins ² in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience– ³ among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Revelation 6:15-17

¹⁵ Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, ¹⁶ calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, ¹⁷ for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”

This morning I got up, got out of bed. I did not drag a comb across my head. (There are witnesses to back me up on that one.) Instead, I went to have a bowl of cereal for breakfast.

It was a beautiful morning. Although I had finished a box of Grape Nuts the previous day, there was a new box just waiting for me to open. Like I said, it was a beautiful morning.

As I opened the new box, I noticed that Grape Nuts now has a plastic liner for the cereal. I guess they’ve done this for years, but I can remember back when they didn’t used have a sealed plastic liner. It used to come right in the box. I hadn’t thought about it before, but at point in time, that changed. I guess they added the plastic liner to preserve the freshness of the cereal.

Which got me thinking. This is Grape Nuts. How could you tell if it was stale? I suppose if you could tell the difference between a bowl of fresh gravel and bowl of gravel that has sat out for a couple years, then you could tell the difference between fresh and stale Grape Nuts. To do that you would need a much more discriminating palate than I have.

Then again, if I had a more discriminating palate, I probably wouldn’t be eating Grape Nuts in the first place. Call me a fool if you want, but I just love them. And I have a brand new box all to myself, since no one else in the family will eat them. It was a beautiful morning.

Did you know that you have to be careful not to eat too many carrots?

A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in England and the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences suggests that a natural pesticide called falcarinol produced by carrots to protect the root vegetable from fungal diseases may be a potent cancer fighter, reducing malignancies in rats by a third….

Falcarinol is toxic in large amounts, but a person would have to eat 400 kilograms of carrots — 882 pounds — at once to ingest a lethal dose.

From now on, to be on the safe side I’ll skip the peas and carrots when I know I’ll be having carrot cake for dessert.

Well, okay. I didn’t really go anywhere. But I haven’t posted in a while. To both my loyal readers, let me assure you there is nothing wrong. I’ve just been busy. Usually, I post anyway and just get less sleep. But for the last couple of weeks, I decided to sleep instead of post.

I can’t promise I won’t drop off again, but for tonight, I’m back.

Q.18. What is sinful about man’s sinful condition

A. The sinfulness of that fallen condition is twofold. First, in what is commonly called original sin, there is the guilt of Adam’s first sin with its lack of original righteousness and the corruption of his whole nature. Second are all the specific acts of disobedience that come from original sin.

In other words, we sin because we are sinners.

Are you looking forward to the weekend? Would you like a nice long weekend. I mean a really long weekend? Well then you can’t wait until March.

Check out this little known fact that comes out in the Robert Blake murder trial.

Hambleton was sentenced to 90 days in jail, which he is expected to serve on weekends in March.

You learn something every day. I thought there were only 31 total days in March.

Just implementing this in Hollywood and Washington D.C. alone should raise enough money to cover the current deficit, and then some.

Headline Washington Times: States consider taxing vanity