Bonnie Jacobs Mastro

Jesus is Coming!

Born and raised in Georgia. Traveled and lived in many places. Found and cared for by Jesus the Christ, the Living Son of God

In my life, I encouraged and participated in the ‘drug culture’, which influenced my generation heavily. So many fine minds not only destroyed, but deceived, left to flounder in hellish realms to suffer unspeakable pain, thinking that it was freedom. Many were deluded into thinking that sex, drugs and rock and roll are/were the best things in life and the next few decades of movies and other remnants of this era reflect that belief. We lived life "to the fullest", seeking pleasures from life and each other, demanding that the culture change to accept our new values. Yet there was always something very old about what we did. History repeated itself but we paid no attention. We were new. We were bold. We were stupid.

Because of the emphasis on fulfillment of self, taught to us by our own generation of self-absorbed, self-taught leaders who, through the use of mostly illegal substances, spawned an entire philosophy that now includes every idolatrous practice imaginable, my generation, including myself, my friends and relatives, have been trapped in unrelenting circles of pleasure-seeking which never quite leads to the glory that is God, our Creator. If you are one of these old friends or family visiting my site, please invite Jesus into your heart and beg for His forgiveness. Trust that you are at this site because I have diligently brought you into the Lord’s presence through prayers to Our Father in heaven, Our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit who dwells among us and through intercessions to Our Blessed Mother and all the Saints for your soul.

You are precious in my eyes and in the eyes of your Creator, who has brought you here to fulfill a particular destiny, only able to be done by you. Yet in order for you to accomplish your destiny, you must follow Jesus to His cross, nail your sins there with Him and seek forgiveness everyday, as it takes time to prepare your mind and soul for your task. It takes His love shining upon you through time in daily prayer to cleanse you of bad habits and wrongful thinking, the worst being self concerned contemplation. This is not an easy life. You will be tempted at every turn to fall back and be lazy in old cloying ways that lead to great dissatisfaction and misery at some point.

The closer you move towards God, it appears that the worst of evil will attack you in such a way that it seems tailor-made to blind only you. Do you seek fame? Suddenly, there will be a way to do it. Only-it doesn’t lead you down holy paths. Do you need money? The way to God will appear poverty stricken while there will appear the most perfect plan for you to obtain wealth. Only-it will compromise your new found morals. The battle tactics differ with each one of us but the results, if we do not know our scripture and their meaning, is a decrease of faith and the fruit that we produce is poisoned or irrelevant. Do you even know what God means by “Follow me?” The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) seem easy enough, but it is inevitable that you will reason that this one rule or another is no longer relevant in our society or that, on a particular occasion, it seems to be in conflict with that other commandment “Love one another...”.which is a saying badly abused from lack of true definition (see Matthew 22:34-40). Believe me when I tell you that you are not alone at times when this type of reasoning occurs. The things that are being whispered into your ear are not always from that beautiful new gleaming soul that God has finally been able to create in you in the Holy Spirit because you allowed Him into your heart, but from temptation and Satan. Satan is the father of lies and he knows how to apply the most subtle nudges at just the right time to cause us to fall.

Satan. He will try to intimidate and scare you. He will apply discouragement, illusion, delusion, lust, and every tool that he uses will overwhelm you and you will feel as though you are the worst of sinners, unworthy to be saved. Take comfort. At this point, you are just where you need to be! You have no power over evil but Jesus is the Ultimate Lord and is our Savior and, if we ask Him and trust Him, He will deliver us from all bondage and all temptation. The rewards of obedience, even temporally, are beyond comprehension with the finite mind. The safety, security and confidence that spending time with God in prayer and worship obtains, eventually, dissuades even the most powerful of demons and wrong thinking.

God uses Satan to bring us to the end of our ropes. Satan's defeat has already happened. He thought he was killing God when he organized the Crucifixion of Jesus. In his delusion of grandeur, he thought he had finally conquered his Creator. He was going to be God. He had killed the Son! Yet when Jesus died, the effects were immediate and Satan, quaking in his own sweat, with the smell of his own fear upon him, knew that he had fallen right into the plan that God had outlined from the beginning of time, just in case any of His creation decided to go down the path that it did eventually choose (1st Corinthians:15:20-27). He had lost it all, yet, in these final days, continues to deny His Lord and seeks to hurt Him by attacking Him at His weakest points. Satan has no more power over the Body of Christ! Don't be one of those weak points that cause others to look at Jesus with contempt. Simply ask for Jesus' help and be humble enough to accept it when it arrives.

How can you be sure that you are in the “Body of Christ?” If you are sincerely trying to seek God, then be baptized “by water and by the Holy Spirit”, as the apostles preached from the beginning of their ministries, through the ordination by Jesus. Seek out the company of Christians, no matter how uncomfortable you are at first with them and be humble. Remember that all of us are still sinners in the church and capable of the worst if we are not staying our minds on God. No matter how hard we try, we remain fallible and cannot on our own steam ever become worthy to stand in the presence of God. Yet, through His Perfect Son, Jesus, we have been given this great Gift of Eternal Life. He conquered all stages of sin, including its outcome: death. Cessation of life occurs in these physical bodies. We are buried and the bodies decay and vanish. Yet our souls live on, some secured by the blood of the Lamb, Jesus, who shed His blood that we may “have life abundantly”. We have only started to come into that Eternity where there is fullness of a life we can only imagine. The small taste of deep peace and the knowledge of God’s mercy and love that I experience here and now gives me the confidence to follow Jesus everyday. Matthew 5-7 is the sermon on the mount. Study this to know what Jesus wants from you. Do not be tempted to think you would not "enjoy" heaven and would prefer to be in hell. You are created to be with God. There is no comfort apart from Him. Here, there are temporary distractions. After death, there is a revelation of yourself that will become pure Hell for you if you do not continue to become that which God intended.

I am now a member of the Catholic Church, having found my way there in a very circuitous manner. I kept running into the teachings of the Catholic faith when I began to explore the history associated around the beginnings of Christianity. In time, I could no longer deny that to belong to any other faith for me was wrong. The change in me has been miraculous. My focus is no longer on the people in the church and arguing over scriptural interpretation but, because the Catechism is so clear in explaining to me what those scriptures mean, I can now focus on God and His mercy and love for me. This acceptance of the teachings of the Church established by Jesus Himself through Peter and the apostolic succession, has released me from a terrible burden. Now I don't try to prove the authenticity of each statement and its interpretation. Now I accept humbly what other, wiser previous souls have already revealed for the brethren they sincerely love (d). Now, I look at the lives of saints and at the life of Jesus’ Mother and see with confidence that living this life is possible, even for me. Each day, I have the opportunity to attend Mass and take in the actual flesh and blood of my Savior. As He told us in the Gospel of John, chapter 6:22-66, this is the Mystery of the Manna of Life which nourishes that spiritual part of us through this physical act. Attending Mass and seeing Jesus’ body and blood on the altar is seeing again Jesus on the Cross and the sacrifice that He gave for us. Each time I sin, I nail in those nails a little harder. Each time I seek forgiveness, those risen Hands with their hard won imprints lift me up to let me gaze in wonder at the majesty of the Risen Savior. Yet Jesus Himself tells us that, at the last day of Judgment (where no excuses will stand up, no brilliant story will hold true, all the carefully placed lies that you don’t even realize that you tell yourself will burn up in the brilliance of His glory), after He has prepared His people, He will present us to God the Father, and we will be finally back where we belong, all reflecting that true glory of the Risen Son, Jesus Christ the Messiah who is the Life, perfected in, through and by Jesus Himself. Yet we must humbly accept this fact and surrender now to God's will for us. This cannot occur unless there is a dialogue established with your Creator through prayer.

Right now, a humble heart must ask for forgiveness and protection. Right now, this world needs you to take up your cross and follow Him, as He has told us must happen. “ No one comes to the Father EXCEPT through Me.” (John 6:65) This is not a statement of braggadocio but one of simple truth. You will not be able to withstand the force of His Perfection and Glory without completely burning up if you do not begin to prepare now. Any conflict or suffering that occurs from you attempting to reach towards God through Jesus will be far less now than after death. It is possible to be so trapped in the lies that you have created inside yourself that you can no longer reach toward God. This hardness of heart will cause you to not even see God when He is right in front of you. This is what will separate you from the One you were created to be with for an eternity. And God has told us through the scriptures that, at a certain point, all that is not His will be consumed by fire in order to perfect all( Matthew 13:36-43). Jesus is to present us to God the Father after purification after the Day of Judgment You can try to stare at God in defiance with all your might but it will not change the natural order of things. Just as nature must complete its cycles in order for survival, our souls must complete their journeys into the very heart of God through His son, Jesus the Christ, in order to survive what is coming. We all like to imagine that we know what this world is all about. Yet not one of us does! Jesus, through the Bible and through the teachings of His Church, guides us into the Truth. The terrible, yet real, fact is that it is the most simple of truths. So simple that we miss it to be destroyed by the “hungry lion” that lies in wait for those who falter.

I beg God that you may be with me in heaven. I ask everyday for a sign that you have been saved. The hundreds of people that I knew in my life flash before me and I am in despair that I presented this message so poorly to you in person. Indulging in my own tastes and desires, seeking my own way, ignoring and scoffing at those who seemed so mired down in “religion”, assured that I knew the truth, I ended up in some terrible states. And this is from someone who found Jesus at an
early age with a tremendous conversion experience, who was raised with the knowledge of salvation! Even attempting to live the Christian life, I fail someone everyday. I cannot save you even though I continue, in old habits, to try! Only God through His perfect plan, can pick you up, as He does me, and bring us all to our final perfected destinies.

The power of darkness is in its final phase and is very strong. As 1st John 2: 15-29 discusses, even many of the faithful will be deceived and lulled into a false sense of security. None of us are “safe” until Jesus returns and with His very Presence will reveal our true selves to us. The only way that we will be able to bear this information will be if it is coated in His Love. How will we recognize that Love if we don’t start to be with Him now? Every minute of every day, we
choose to be with Him or be in ourselves. It is the hardest habit to overcome, looking within ourselves instead of looking to Jesus. Yet He has told us, “I am the Way,.the Truth and the Life. NO ONE comes to the Father except through Me . John 14:6” This is a constant fact of life, one that does not change, nor will it be different because you reason it to be so. There is no picking your truths. There are no exceptions. Truth is Truth.

“I can never spend that much time with God! I want to go be with my friends, drink and be
merry, have a little life, watch some TV, etc, etc,”
“I don’t need a church! I have my own special relationship with God. I go into the woods and
talk to Him.”
“F*** the establishment! I don’t want to grow up!”
“Well, I am too busy. I have to work! I don’t have time to go to church. Someday, when I am not
struggling so hard to make ends meet...”
“ I just can’t stop. I try and try but I give up. I can’t quit smoking, using drugs, drinking, having
illicit sex, looking at porn...etc., etc.”
“Well, this certainly isn’t the way that we should do this in this church! I think we should be
doing it this way! It’s so and so that is the problem!”
“Well, I want to do it my way and I am not going to cooperate with you, God. Forget it!”

All of these things are part of the lies that we tell ourselves. God is stronger than us. He is bigger than us. And HE wants to BE with US. He is stronger than the most powerful evil habit that exists. He is bigger than any of His creations, including Satan. He LOVES us with a love that we don’t even begin to comprehend its meaning because we are too small and finite to do so. All of the above statements I have lived out and acted on. All ended up in a circle of suffering. Jesus’ way is a straight shot to True Joy, True Peace, and True Happiness. This God is the God who “makes the uneven paths even” for His children that He loves dearly. He loves us so much that He actually wants to hear from us! And sadly, all of those quotes have been said back to me by the people that I have loved in my life. I have not seen any of you recover yet from believing these lies. I wait in anticipation for that veil to be removed from your eyes and pray that it will be in time for you to reap the benefits of living a whole and pure life with Christ. Since I myself have used everyone of those quotes, I know there is hope!

“Oh, I am too sinful to talk to God! Look at my life.”

Ask God for forgiveness for that life, turn away from it, rely on God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit to change you AND help you to turn away from it. Seek and receive Absolution for your sins and then FORGET ABOUT IT. There are some sins that will mark you for life and you will bear the scars but your life will be saved. There is nothing, not one thing that any of us can do to save ourselves except humble ourselves before God and ask for His mercy. Trust Him. He will
answer that prayer.

Take another look. More of the statements of the Bible have eventually been revealed by science as truth rather than primitive blind belief. There is a trust factor here that is the basis of faith. Some things will not be completely revealed until Jesus comes and teaches us about them. Other things are so far beyond us that we will never get it. We are not God. We are not meant to understand all (There is a great deal of comfort to me in that statement!). Some facts have been and will be found by scientific efforts. Also, many of the "facts" that are now being touted, if one actually studies what the scientists have done, have not been subjected to proper or thorough studies but are still being investigated. Yet the media has jumped in with both feet and it has become truth to us rather than the theories yet to be proven.

I think that I saw a former friend of mine from the streets of Atlanta on EWTN (Catholic TV station) recently. When I knew him, he was a wild haired hippie who laughed deeply and loved smoking a big doobie with the rest of us. I only knew him briefly but, like many of you who I met along the way, he has remained in my memories and in my prayers. Imagine my surprise to hear his story coming out of the mouth of a Catholic priest! Apparently this crazy Jewish kid accepted Christ as His Savior and dedicated his entire life in the Catholic faith in 1976! This would have been during the time that I was in a state of self-delusion, thinking that I was a Christian but not willing to live by His laws and commandments ( Consequently, God could have no fellowship with me due to the burden of unconfessed sin that I was not only carrying but wallowing around in). I have to admit that for a moment, I was jealous that, here, all these years, I had been praying for him, and this guy had gotten ahead of me and probably had been praying for me! I quietly asked forgiveness for that moment of jealousy and have been so happy that there will be someone like me, who (he even went to Woodstock!), has found the Way Home.

I am not God. I cannot save you. I hope and pray that the nearest Catholic Church is one that will welcome you with the loving arms of Christ, extend the smile of fellowship and will provide you with a lifetime of healing and productivity in the Kingdom of Heaven. I can, however, pray for you whenever I think of you and ask God to let me help in some way to bring you Home. I hope that this has helped you. Please re-visit and reread even if you never contact me personally. And if I don’t know you, if this brings you to Christ, I will meet you in the City of Light and Love that is Eternal through our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ, and will rejoice with you there.

In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Our Father, please bless each soul who meditates upon this page with your life-changing Love. Amen.