Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

In 1918, a young woman by the name of Helen Lemmel felt strangely moved to pen a poem. She wrote:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in His wonderful face;

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim

In the light of His glory and grace.

Four years later, in 1922, she put music to her poem, and a hymn was born. In the years since then, her lyrics and music have encouraged and blessed millions of believers.

To turn your eyes upon Jesus and look full in His wonderful face is always appropriate for the child of God. But perhaps those challenging words of admonition were never more critically important than at the present hour of history.

Our country is coming unzipped before our very eyes. The foundations of biblical principles and moral standards that characterized our nation throughout its history are not cracking, they are crumbling in massive pieces. Those of us over 60 years of age are beholding things we never envi-sioned would come to pass in our country or in the Church.

Certainly, we should be deeply saddened at what is happening, but we must not be fearful. Sadness and fear are two distinct emotions. The one can be proper; the other clearly is not, and yet many Christians are fearful because of what is happening.

Satan, his minion of demons, and ungodly humanity are behind what is taking place. But their final rebellion will not last long; the Son of God will smite them at His coming.

Fear is not a comely characteristic of one who has been saved by grace. We must turn our eyes upon Jesus. We must focus on Him. We must worship Him. We must serve Him. We must be valiant for the faith – in the midst of this present evil that is going to get worse before it gets better – always, however, with the calm assurance that greater is He who is in us than He who is in the world!

Marv Rosenthal, founder and President of Zion's Hope, has been an acclaimed international Bible teacher for more than five decades.