P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

ALWAYS THE SAME GOLF COURSE

In the hills of Malaysia, not too far from the city of Kuala Lumpur, is a quiet mountain resort called Fraser's Hill. It's not a big place, but for a number of years it's been a summer vacation haven for Christian missionaries.

There are several large British-style inns where families can stay. All the food is kind of English: flaky apple pie, steam pudding. Porridge. Plenty of toast with marmalade. In the evening there's coffee and hot chocolate and a fire in the fireplace.

Of course, for hot, tired missionaries coming from the steaming tropical perspiration of Singapore and Bangkok and Indonesia, being in an atmosphere cool enough to WANT a fire in the fireplace was probably the greatest blessing of all. Every year those two weeks at Fraser's Hill were a veritable heaven on earth.

But there's one more thing at Fraser's Hill that drew the interest of these missionary families. Nestled up in the hills is a nine-hole golf course.

Now, I've never been to this particular spot — which is almost a surprise considering how much overseas travel I've ended up doing the past few years. But I've heard about that little nine-hole golf course.

It wasn't a very big course, from what the returning missionaries tell me. Hole number one is kind of long and hugs the right-hand side of the mountain valley. Then a short little par-three Hole Number Two going across the middle. Hole three along the left is long again, a par five. Then on four you drive from up on the mountain top, trying to hit across a creek for a par four. Five is short, and then six goes across the course diagonally again, a long par three. Seven and eight and nine are all little par three's that take you back to the clubhouse.

As golf courses go, a pretty simple little layout. Not very long; some of the fellows would play 36 holes a day, every day for two weeks except for on Sabbath. And every summer, year after year, they'd drive up the tiny, twisting mountain road to Fraser's Hill and play that same golf course. The SAMENESS of it was what they LIKED. It was comforting to know the layout, to be able to expect those nine holes to be there just as you remembered. No matter how many spiritual battles you'd had during the past eleven-and-a-half months, no matter how difficult the Christian work was down in the valley, that quiet little UNCHANGING golf course was exactly what the doctor ordered.

Friend, all this week here on the Voice of Prophecy we're talking about the BEAUTY of God's unchanging nature. He's always the same, the Bible tells us. We read those verses yesterday. He's the same right now as He ever was, and He's the same right now as He's ever going to be. No matter how many times you drive up the hill to meet with Him, it's going to be the same God.

What are the implications of that? One of the most beautiful discoveries we can make is that God's eternal plan of salvation IS JUST AS HE IS . . . UNCHANGING. It reads now as it has always read.

A few years ago a college professor caused quite a bit of consternation speaking at the school's graduation program. He told the students that HALF of what he had taught them during the past four years was already obsolete. Well, a kind of half-laughter, half-groan swept through the group.

"But it's worse than that," he told them. "I don't even know which half!"

Let me tell you something right now. John 3:16 says the very same thing TODAY, August 8, 1995, that it's said ever since it was written down by the disciple John. Nothing's changed! It still reads just like you remember it:

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

That's it! The gospel message hasn't changed because GOD hasn't changed.

I got a beautiful letter the other day from a woman named Bonnie. She was a former believer who had found her way back to the Lord.

She thanked us for sharing the gospel message of salvation and GRACE here on the Voice of Prophecy, but then added this: "Is the old hidden agenda coming later?" She had certain expectations about what we might be leading up to.

And I want to say to her right here, "No, Bonnie. No glory to Pastor Lonnie or our staff . . . but the gospel is always the gospel. Salvation is a free gift; it's always BEEN a free gift; it always WILL be a free gift." Perhaps we who are messengers have garbled the message, but God's pronouncements about salvation have always been consistent.

You know, it's sometimes suggested that the Bible preaches two different gospels. That we find GRACE in the New Testament . . . but a system of works and legalism in the Old. I want to tell you very frankly, friend, I don't find that in the pages of God's Word. In fact, the message of John 3:16 goes right back into the earliest pages of the Old Testament.

We can read clear back to chapter three of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Genesis 3:15 is where we find the first promise of a Redeemer. And then move over to chapter 15 of Genesis; maybe your version even has a chapter subhead reading "God's Covenant With Abram." In verse five the Lord takes Abram outside:

"Look up at the heavens and count the stars — if indeed you can count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be."

God promised, in His own divine power, to make Abram into a great nation. Would this be done by anything Abram could accomplish himself? No, it was GOD who would do this. In fact, the very next verse says this:

Abram BELIEVED THE LORD, and He credited it to him as righteousness."

What do we have here, friend? Abram trusting in God, having faith in God. And God crediting that faith to Abram as righteousness. Righteousness given as a gift — that's the gospel message of grace . . . and we're still in Genesis.

Move over in chapter 22, when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. What an agonizing moment! What a test! But when Isaac said to his dad, "Where's the lamb?", you remember Abraham's answer.

"God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering."

And those words turned out to be prophetically true. God DID provide the lamb. Thousands of years later He provided the Lamb again, didn't He? The gospel message runs through the whole Bible. From Genesis to Revelation, Jesus Christ is the Lamb. On the very last page of the Bible, Revelation 22, Jesus is still the Lamb. The Lamb "chosen before the creation of the world," it says in First Peter. Friend, God's gospel never changes.

One of the great classic book ever written on the life of Christ is entitled THE DESIRE OF AGES. In the very first chapter I find this marvelous paragraph:

"The plan for our redemption was not an afterthought, a plan formulated after the fall of Adam. It was a revelation of `the mystery which hath been kept in silence through times eternal.' That's Romans 16:25. It was an unfolding of the principles that from eternal ages have been the foundation of God's throne. From the beginning, God and Christ knew of the apostasy of Satan, and of the fall of man through the deceptive power of the apostate. God did not ordain that sin should exist, but he saw its existence, and made provision to meet the terrible emergency. So great was His love for the world, that He covenanted to give His only-begotten Son . . ."

And then we go right into John 3:16. Friend, John 3:16 spans the whole of human history. John 3:16 was ready to go before the birth of this planet. Before God said "Let there be light," John 3:16 was blueprinted and already in place.

Maybe some of our expressions of the gospel and ways of describing and understanding it have changed over the years. The Voice of Prophecy began in the year 1930, and I'm sure Pastor H. M. S. Richards Senior wrote down sermons longhand with a pencil. Today we use a Hewlett Packard pentium 4 computer with a built-in CD-ROM drive and a Hewlett Packard LaserJet 6 printer to run out our scripts for the daily program. Richards had stories about FDR and the invention of the victrola; today our illustrations have to do with the O. J. Simpson trial and Newt Gingrich and Nine Inch Nails and the Houston Rockets winning the NBA championship and last month's killer heat wave. But the gospel message is still the gospel message; God's truth is as unchanging as He is.

But remember, we're talking this week about a God who never changes — and yet still surprises. A God who's predictable . . . but stuns us with unexpected miracles. Your friend who couldn't get pregnant miraculously does. The wayward child you were sure would NEVER come home — walks through the front door. The friend you were praying for to be saved . . . out of the blue, they commit their life to Christ. Our unchanging God is filled with surprises.

And really, isn't salvation — Calvary — the greatest SURPRISE of all? Who would have expected such a thing? God coming down to die for His lost children? As C. S. Lewis puts it:

"Christianity is a religion you could not have guessed."

The important thing is this: God's gift of grace is a surprise that we can count on.

Friend, do you need a place to go right now? Do you need your own Fraser's Hill where you can hide away, where you know you can rest and have a seat by the fireplace in the evening? A place that never changes? A salvation plan that never changes? God promises that to you right now. The map's still the same; the route's unchanged. You can make the trip there today.