Good Day Dear Friend, “For men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute.” (Hebrews 6:16 NKJV)   Oh, how good it would be to have back the good of those good old days… a time of days long gone, when a person’s word actually stood for something… a time when a handshake was better than anything some word processor could spew out in verbosity. Today, instead of clarity, truth and continuity being foundational qualities of a person’s word, we’re often times looking for ways to get out from under something we’ve said… something we’ve promised. Some people are even getting paid big bucks for being proficient in “spinning” one’s words into different flavors for the day, a Baskin-Robbins of truth if you will, as the truth for many truly has become nothing more than that which looks best in the eye of the beholder, on any given day. But it wasn’t always this way, because as Scripture says, there was a time when a man’s oath was trusted enough that it would bring about an end to all dispute. Thank God, He’s not like us; His Word is still the Rock of Truth… the unchanging, enduring Word of God.       “And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the Angel of the Lord called to him from Heaven and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ So he said, ‘Here I am.’ And He said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me’…Then the Angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of Heaven, and said: ‘By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son— Blessing I will Bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the Heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies.” (Genesis 22:10-12 & 15-17 NKJV)   Up to this point, the Lord Almighty had made Promises to Abraham; Promises that had led the patriarch to uproot his family and leave behind his old life, which was a very blessed life already, but here God went even further. The Lord swore an oath over His Promise. (It’s interesting to note BTW that the NKJV translation shows this exchange to be between Jesus Christ and Abraham, i.e. the “Angel of the Lord”.) And according to Hebrews 6, these two immutable things are guaranteed by the one thing Almighty and Holy God cannot do… He cannot lie. Abraham possessed such confidence in God’s Word that he was ready to sacrifice his only son. We look at such confidence and shudder at the impossibility of it, but through God’s Promise and then His oath, we can have that very same confidence, for God’s Word has become no less reliable and no less miraculous in Its Power today.   “So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the Promise the unchangeable character of His Purpose, He guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the Hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast Anchor of the soul, a Hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a Forerunner on our behalf, having become a High Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 6:17-20 ESV)   For every one of us who has fled to Refuge from the wrath of God, we have a sure and steadfast Anchor for our souls. Jesus the Christ stretched out His Mighty arms, to take our sins upon His back and nail them to the Cross, but He was far from finished. For with His last breath, when He said, “It is finished” the veil was torn, and He reached beyond the veil, entering into the Holy of Holies, to secure for us our Lifeline to His Throne, an Eternal Anchor in Heaven.   “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the Promise.” (Galatians 3:29)   His Promise is ours! Blessed be the Name of our Saviour and Lord! AMEN Tom