LIONS AND LEOPARDS

LIONS AND LEOPARDS

The divine Shepherd finally exhorts you to depart from the lions’ dens and from the mountains of the leopards (Song of Songs 4:8). Dear bride, you may be in the lions’ den of persecution for His name’s sake. You might have been threatened with social boycott or banishment from the family or death for having accepted Jesus as your Saviour. You may feel despair and despondent in the lions’ den, having lost all your hopes. In the lion’s den, you do not find anyone to comfort you and are shut up from all sides, hearing only the roar of the lions – the dreadful voices of those who are opposed to you. You don’t feel like praying to God in the midst of these taunting and condemning voices of the human beings. Or you may be on the mountains of the leopards. Spiritually speaking, the leopards are the unseen spiritual rulers of darkness of this world who are of the Devil (Eph.6: 11). The beast seen by John in the visions of the Revelation resembled a leopard (Rev.13: 2). The leopards’ mountain may be your mission field or place of business or office. There the devilish forces influence your superiors or business partners or colleagues just to keep you off from the paths of justice and righteousness. They also influence the members of the militant religious organizations opposed to the gospel of Christ so that they attack the missionaries of God, demolish or burn the church-buildings, etc.

Today as you read this book, the divine Shepherd entreats you to depart from the lions’ den and from the mountains of leopards and to enter such a spiritual place where you find Him as the omnipotent and omnipresent God. Today by faith you should enter this place where the roaring of the lions would be subdued by a great voice like the calling of a war trumpet saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last” (Rev.1: 11), and where the forces of darkness would be overcome by His Spirit. “Not by might, nor by power but by My Spirit” saith the Lord of Hosts (Zech.4: 6). He Who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. This place is the “secret place of the most High” where you can appropriate all the promises made by God in Psalm 91 because here you will abide under the shadow of the Almighty. You shall not be afraid of the terror by night or of the arrow that flies by day, nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness nor of the destruction that wastes at noonday. Surely, He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the noisome pestilence. A thousand shall fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand but it shall not come nigh you. Only with your eyes shall you behold and see the reward of the wicked. No evil shall befall you neither shall any plague come near your dwelling.

We should not be like the children who merely memorize this Psalm without understanding the significance of each verse. We should believe His Word. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos.4: 6).

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