Remember the old saying, “You are the company you keep”? They say children, from an early age, go through a search for identity and, if their parents don’t provide effective mentoring and aren’t desired role models, kids with readily take their cues from their peers. They simply revert to wanting to fit in and be accepted by the group because they don’t have any strong intuitive sense that their parents really love them or care about how they develop.
Another thing is that children, starting as babies, are deeply affected by what they observe in their parents’ relationships to one another as husband and wife.
In a really old sermon I have on the subject of marriage, given by my pastor, Richard Jordan, he says, “Marriage is designed to confront selfishness. When you have a problem in marriage, the main problem is living for yourself rather than for your mate.”
Boy, doesn’t that just succinctly sum up the kind of dysfunctional couples issues you hear hashed out all the time anymore on daytime talk shows like Dr. Phil and Oprah?!
“You know what a wife needs more than anything, fellows?” says Jordan. “She doesn’t need diamonds and cars. She needs your love. Her basic fundamental need centers around a need for security. It comes from your love; the confidence that comes to her because of your love. She needs that security and commitment. She needs affection; a cherished place in your life.
“A wife needs to feel that she’s in partnership with you. That’s she’s got a unique position and that you’re a team together. She wants to have an intimate place in your life and that has to do with exclusivity.
“Now, for you ladies, you are to ‘reverence your husband,’ as Paul tells us. Inside that guy you’re married to is a little boy who needs to be somebody’s hero. He needs somebody to tell him he’s valuable, even warts and all, and that you’re going to love him, respect him, value him, need him. . . There’s that little boy inside of him that just thrives on being somebody’s hero.”
*****
Despite what all the gays would have us choke down about marriage, it is the divine institution God established from the very outset of creation.
“Marriage came off the drawing board of heaven,” says Jordan. “God instituted marriage at creation. He created Eve with the purpose of creating a wife for Adam. Marriage is not a church institution. Marriage is not a civil, governmental institution. The church didn’t create marriage and the government didn’t create marriage; God created it. And He created it as an institution for the basic fundamental functioning of humanity on the planet. It’s God’s way of bringing about the population increase. Children are not designed to be brought into this world outside of the marriage bond.”
As Jordan explains, “Eve was created to cure the only deficit that a perfect Adam had—
he was alone. God wanted Adam to experience in his life the divine principle of life.”
From the Bible, we know God is a trinity and all three distinct, identifiable persons in the Godhead—the Father, Son and Holy Spirit—are equal in essence and being, eternally co-existing and functioning as one.
“God wants to share with us the way He lives,” says Jordan. “He doesn’t live as a solitary being; He lives in a fellowship. So, He created Adam so that he couldn’t live as a solitary being either.
“You are created to be dependant upon others. You were created by God to be a dependant person. To be a creature means you are dependant upon the Creator. Did you make the air you breathe? No, somebody else did. Gen. 2:7 says God ‘formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.’
“You need to learn to live for the benefit and good of others. That’s how God lives. The Father never lives for himself; He lives for the honor of His Son. The Son lives for the honor of the Father. The Spirit lives for the honor of the Son. They all live for one another.
“God creates Adam, and takes out of Adam the wife. And the reason He did it that way, by the way, is if He had created Adam out of the dirt, and then created Eve out of the dirt,
He would have had two humans directly created by God. When they sinned, He would have then had to have two Redeemers. One for each one. He created Adam and took Eve out of Adam so there would only be one blood. One head of the human race. One source in which all humanity came. Therefore, there could be one Redeemer for all humanity.
“In your marriage relationship, you have this spouse for whom you now can live; live for them. For her to win is for me to win. For her to lose is for me to lose. You see we’re not playing singles here; we’re playing doubles. We’re not playing, ‘It’s me against her and her against me.’ We’ve left all that behind. We’ve become one, and now I’m going to serve the lord when I serve her.
Paul, under the direction of Jesus Christ’s ongoing revelations to him from heaven, writes in Eph. 5, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
[26] That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
[27] That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
[28] So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
[29] For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:
[30] For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
[31] For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
[32] This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
[33] Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.”
Jordan says, “Do you see how he says, ‘This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church’? Notice how he mingles those two things together? ‘This is a great mystery.’ In other words, there’s a spiritual issue in marriage. And you’re never really going to understand the issue of marriage and what it’s about until you understand the identity the Lord Jesus Christ has had with us.
“Jesus Christ became identified with humanity so much so that for 2,000 years people have been arguing, ‘Is He God or is He man?’ They’re so close together. Theologians have developed all these words—‘hypostatic union’; ‘the theantropic person’—but all that means is they don’t understand what they’re talking about because it’s too big for them!
“ ‘Is He God or is He man?’ Yes, He’s God, and yes, He’s man. They’re so close you can’t separate them. And that’s exactly the identity God has given you with your spouse! You’re one with Him just like He’s one with us! And the identity is so close together. That’s the picture of marriage. His union with us is the reality. And when you understand that, then you begin to understand your identity with your mate.
“It’s, ‘We’ve been so identified together it’s hard to even think of one of us without the other.’ It produces what verse 32 is talking about when it says, ‘Let him love his wife as himself.’ ”
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Blossom as the rose
Creation will one day walk in perfect harmony with itself and with God and the groaning will be over.
Here’s a passage about this future that is so uplifting and comforting to try and image. Isaiah chapter 35:
1] The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.
[2] It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the LORD, and the excellency of our God.
[3] Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees.
[4] Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompence; he will come and save you.
[5] Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.
[6] Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.
[7] And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.
[8] And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.
[9] No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there:
[10] And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
*****
In Romans 8:21, Paul’s saying, ‘Listen, you need to realize something. You live in a creation that’s decaying and dying and that’s waiting for that time over there.”
Jordan says, “One day we’re going to be manifested before the universe as joint heirs with the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s our privilege and our position. We have the position of Sonship. That Spirit of God that’s going to accomplish that in us dwells in us now and gives us the privilege of enjoying right now the honor of crying, ‘Abba Father.’
“We can now enjoy this prospect of future manifestation and adoption out there. We can live now as those that are alive from the dead. We can take that position now that we’ll have in the ages to come and live it right this minute as though it were a present-day reality because it is a reality positionally.
“We can experientially, day by day, live our lives in line with the position that God has given us in Christ. We have a hope just like creation does and we’re saved by that hope. That’s not talking about being saved from hell but being saved from despair over the infirmities of this present time. The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us out there.
“As you pray there’s that active ministry of God the Holy Spirit both to will and to do in your life; to be operative in your life. And to adjust your prayer life to make it match what God the Father is doing in your life.
“Philippians 4:6-7. People ask what is legitimate subject for prayer today? Folks, there’s not anything that’s on your heart that God doesn’t want you to come to Him with it. Because if it’s on your heart He already knows about it, and if it’s a problem to you and it’s bothering you, if you’re thinking about it, He wants you to talk to Him about it.
“What He’s after is the communion between you and Him; the openness, the intercourse back and forth. Because then when you, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God, that’s how you pray, folks.”
Here’s a passage about this future that is so uplifting and comforting to try and image. Isaiah chapter 35:
1] The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.
[2] It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the LORD, and the excellency of our God.
[3] Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees.
[4] Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompence; he will come and save you.
[5] Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.
[6] Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.
[7] And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.
[8] And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.
[9] No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there:
[10] And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
*****
In Romans 8:21, Paul’s saying, ‘Listen, you need to realize something. You live in a creation that’s decaying and dying and that’s waiting for that time over there.”
Jordan says, “One day we’re going to be manifested before the universe as joint heirs with the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s our privilege and our position. We have the position of Sonship. That Spirit of God that’s going to accomplish that in us dwells in us now and gives us the privilege of enjoying right now the honor of crying, ‘Abba Father.’
“We can now enjoy this prospect of future manifestation and adoption out there. We can live now as those that are alive from the dead. We can take that position now that we’ll have in the ages to come and live it right this minute as though it were a present-day reality because it is a reality positionally.
“We can experientially, day by day, live our lives in line with the position that God has given us in Christ. We have a hope just like creation does and we’re saved by that hope. That’s not talking about being saved from hell but being saved from despair over the infirmities of this present time. The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us out there.
“As you pray there’s that active ministry of God the Holy Spirit both to will and to do in your life; to be operative in your life. And to adjust your prayer life to make it match what God the Father is doing in your life.
“Philippians 4:6-7. People ask what is legitimate subject for prayer today? Folks, there’s not anything that’s on your heart that God doesn’t want you to come to Him with it. Because if it’s on your heart He already knows about it, and if it’s a problem to you and it’s bothering you, if you’re thinking about it, He wants you to talk to Him about it.
“What He’s after is the communion between you and Him; the openness, the intercourse back and forth. Because then when you, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God, that’s how you pray, folks.”
Friday, April 22, 2011
Eager anticipation
Hebrews 12:1 says, “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.”
Jordan comments, “When it talks about that ‘sin which doth so easily beset us,’ that’s the one that comes along so innocently, looking like it might be so easy. You can’t run with patience with that sin out there, you see. It messes you up. God isn’t mad at you; kick you out of the family. What you’re doing is you’re messing yourself up.
“In your ministry you don’t have to fear poverty, war, the deacon board, the congregation or denominational bosses. You don’t have to fear relatives and in-laws. You don’t have to fear but one thing and that’s sin. You don’t have to fear the government or some businessman getting you locked up on false complaint; somebody betraying you. The only thing you’ve got to fear is sin.
“How are we going to run with patience? Notice: ‘Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.’ If you want to endure the sufferings you do what Christ did. He kept some information in His mind at all times that allowed Him and helped Him and motivated Him and empowered Him to endure.
“Jesus Christ, for the joy of that inheritance, endured the Cross, despising the shame that Satan tried to cause Him there. He kept some information in His mind all the time that made Him endure. That’s exactly what Paul’s telling us.
“He’s saying, ‘You keep that information about your joint-heirship with Him, your participation in His program of total victory and hey, you won’t have any problems in doing down here. You can make it and you won’t be tossed to and fro when problems and difficulties come your way. You’ll just patiently wait them out as you go about serving the Lord Jesus Christ.’ That’s what he’s going to say: ‘We got something coming out there that makes it worth waiting and motivates us to do it.’
*****
Romans 8:19-21 reads, “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.[20] For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,[21] Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. [22] For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.”
Jordan says, “First notice a technical note: you see how he uses that word creature and creation interchangeably? Creature, creature, creature, creation. In your Bible, the word creature, in this passage as in II Cor. 5:17, is a reference to creation. Not just to the little critters running around but to the creation around us.
“People sometimes carp at your Bible, saying it’s a bad translation, but there’s a passage that demonstrates the interchangeableness and the recognition of that interchangeableness on the part of the translators.
“The idea there in verse 19 is it’s like a kid with his head stuck out the window looking for his daddy to come home. He’s eagerly anticipating. The earnest expectation, the eager anticipation of the creature, waits for the manifestation for the Sons of God.
“In other words, creation out here is waiting for the time when we’re put in the heavenly positions up there and the Lord Jesus Christ comes back to earth, sets up the kingdom and then the whole shooting match is brought under the headship of Jesus Christ and is liberated.
“The globe out here, the whole universe, is waiting for the time when the Lord Jesus Christ comes back and takes up his inheritance.”
Jordan comments, “When it talks about that ‘sin which doth so easily beset us,’ that’s the one that comes along so innocently, looking like it might be so easy. You can’t run with patience with that sin out there, you see. It messes you up. God isn’t mad at you; kick you out of the family. What you’re doing is you’re messing yourself up.
“In your ministry you don’t have to fear poverty, war, the deacon board, the congregation or denominational bosses. You don’t have to fear relatives and in-laws. You don’t have to fear but one thing and that’s sin. You don’t have to fear the government or some businessman getting you locked up on false complaint; somebody betraying you. The only thing you’ve got to fear is sin.
“How are we going to run with patience? Notice: ‘Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.’ If you want to endure the sufferings you do what Christ did. He kept some information in His mind at all times that allowed Him and helped Him and motivated Him and empowered Him to endure.
“Jesus Christ, for the joy of that inheritance, endured the Cross, despising the shame that Satan tried to cause Him there. He kept some information in His mind all the time that made Him endure. That’s exactly what Paul’s telling us.
“He’s saying, ‘You keep that information about your joint-heirship with Him, your participation in His program of total victory and hey, you won’t have any problems in doing down here. You can make it and you won’t be tossed to and fro when problems and difficulties come your way. You’ll just patiently wait them out as you go about serving the Lord Jesus Christ.’ That’s what he’s going to say: ‘We got something coming out there that makes it worth waiting and motivates us to do it.’
*****
Romans 8:19-21 reads, “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.[20] For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,[21] Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. [22] For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.”
Jordan says, “First notice a technical note: you see how he uses that word creature and creation interchangeably? Creature, creature, creature, creation. In your Bible, the word creature, in this passage as in II Cor. 5:17, is a reference to creation. Not just to the little critters running around but to the creation around us.
“People sometimes carp at your Bible, saying it’s a bad translation, but there’s a passage that demonstrates the interchangeableness and the recognition of that interchangeableness on the part of the translators.
“The idea there in verse 19 is it’s like a kid with his head stuck out the window looking for his daddy to come home. He’s eagerly anticipating. The earnest expectation, the eager anticipation of the creature, waits for the manifestation for the Sons of God.
“In other words, creation out here is waiting for the time when we’re put in the heavenly positions up there and the Lord Jesus Christ comes back to earth, sets up the kingdom and then the whole shooting match is brought under the headship of Jesus Christ and is liberated.
“The globe out here, the whole universe, is waiting for the time when the Lord Jesus Christ comes back and takes up his inheritance.”
Thursday, April 21, 2011
I reckon
Jordan says in old tape: "Walk consistent with your position in Christ. We have this wonderful position of adoption. Guidance is the mark of sons. Adoption is the privileges, the rights, the position of sons.
"You have witness of the spirit. That’s the spirit’s acknowledgement of us as sons. We are joint-heirs with Christ. That’s the inheritance of sons. These are spiritual blessings in Christ; Paul says these things are ours in order to motivate us to a
worthy walk. We should live consistent with our position and with our privileges.
"Paul says, ‘I reckon that the sufferings of this present time aren’t worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.’
"Paul is saying the knowledge that we have of our inheritance and the glories of our inheritance is a motivation to cause us to endure the pressure of this present time and that the sufferings of this present time—the trouble, the pressure that comes upon us—in this world isn’t worthy to be compared. In other words, it isn’t even worthy of being considered. It isn’t even worthy of equal time with the glories that are ours in Christ. None of these sufferings ought to stop you.
"If you understand your Sonship position in Christ, and the fact that you’ve been made, verse 17 says, ‘an heir of God,’ but not just that, ‘a joint-heir with Christ.’ If you’ve been baptized into His body then you were baptized into His resurrection. Everything that belonged to Him belongs to you.
"We’re not just heirs of God; we’re also joint heirs with Christ. That means that we get everything He gets. We get an equal part to His. That’s what’s called ‘co-parsony’ in legal jargon. That is, it’s not simply joint tennis, it’s not just simply being an heir, it’s to have equal shares. It’s as much mine as it was His.
Everything that Jesus Christ inherited from God the Father we inherited. Now, ‘Wheee, doggy!’ that’s a real BIG inheritance!
*****
"Do you remember when we were studying Romans 4 how we went over there in Hebrews 1 and we saw the inheritance that God the Father gave to the Lord Jesus Christ? That just gives you some little idea and that’s an inheritance just in the prophetic program! It isn’t even clearly identified in that passage all the things that are involved in the mystery program! A wonderful array of categories of inheritance. Everything belongs to Him belongs to us.
"Listen, God Almighty expects you and me to live in light of who we are. And Paul says when you begin to realize just who you are, he said ‘I reckon,’ that’s a mental-attitude dynamic. He said, ‘Man, I understand some things about my inheritance. I understand some things about who God has made me in Christ.’
"Paul says endure hardness. Tough times, folks. He didn’t say it was all just going to be lace pants and sunshine. He said in order to get the job done that I put you there for in that body of Christ, be TOUGH! Endure hardness as a good soldier for Jesus Christ.
"We know how to endure. Why? ‘We sorrow but not as those that have no hope.’ We know that the worst thing that happened to us down here, in the end it’s just glory, brother. Talk is cheap, gentlemen. Talk’s cheap. Easy to say that; ain’t so easy to do it and live it and walk in it, unless you’re strong in the grace that’s in Christ Jesus."
"You have witness of the spirit. That’s the spirit’s acknowledgement of us as sons. We are joint-heirs with Christ. That’s the inheritance of sons. These are spiritual blessings in Christ; Paul says these things are ours in order to motivate us to a
worthy walk. We should live consistent with our position and with our privileges.
"Paul says, ‘I reckon that the sufferings of this present time aren’t worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.’
"Paul is saying the knowledge that we have of our inheritance and the glories of our inheritance is a motivation to cause us to endure the pressure of this present time and that the sufferings of this present time—the trouble, the pressure that comes upon us—in this world isn’t worthy to be compared. In other words, it isn’t even worthy of being considered. It isn’t even worthy of equal time with the glories that are ours in Christ. None of these sufferings ought to stop you.
"If you understand your Sonship position in Christ, and the fact that you’ve been made, verse 17 says, ‘an heir of God,’ but not just that, ‘a joint-heir with Christ.’ If you’ve been baptized into His body then you were baptized into His resurrection. Everything that belonged to Him belongs to you.
"We’re not just heirs of God; we’re also joint heirs with Christ. That means that we get everything He gets. We get an equal part to His. That’s what’s called ‘co-parsony’ in legal jargon. That is, it’s not simply joint tennis, it’s not just simply being an heir, it’s to have equal shares. It’s as much mine as it was His.
Everything that Jesus Christ inherited from God the Father we inherited. Now, ‘Wheee, doggy!’ that’s a real BIG inheritance!
*****
"Do you remember when we were studying Romans 4 how we went over there in Hebrews 1 and we saw the inheritance that God the Father gave to the Lord Jesus Christ? That just gives you some little idea and that’s an inheritance just in the prophetic program! It isn’t even clearly identified in that passage all the things that are involved in the mystery program! A wonderful array of categories of inheritance. Everything belongs to Him belongs to us.
"Listen, God Almighty expects you and me to live in light of who we are. And Paul says when you begin to realize just who you are, he said ‘I reckon,’ that’s a mental-attitude dynamic. He said, ‘Man, I understand some things about my inheritance. I understand some things about who God has made me in Christ.’
"Paul says endure hardness. Tough times, folks. He didn’t say it was all just going to be lace pants and sunshine. He said in order to get the job done that I put you there for in that body of Christ, be TOUGH! Endure hardness as a good soldier for Jesus Christ.
"We know how to endure. Why? ‘We sorrow but not as those that have no hope.’ We know that the worst thing that happened to us down here, in the end it’s just glory, brother. Talk is cheap, gentlemen. Talk’s cheap. Easy to say that; ain’t so easy to do it and live it and walk in it, unless you’re strong in the grace that’s in Christ Jesus."
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Going way back
Here is one of Jordan’s recent CliffsNotes versions of how the King James Bible came into being:
What was the first event that led to the discovery of America? In most old history books, the line goes, ‘In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue . . .’ But it was a whole century before that a book by Marco Polo was published, one that Columbus himself referenced as a travel guide.
Polo and his brothers had gone to China and spent two decades as an emissary of the pope. They returned from that journey with stories of wealth, intellectual knowledge, on and on. The Chinese had the most advanced civilization in the history of mankind at that time.
Indeed, there was a time in the 1400s that the Chinese ruled the earth. Of course, we’re never told that because the populace has spent the last five centuries in isolation.
In 1421, the largest fleet that had ever sailed the seas left from China, commissioned by the emperor Zhu Di to take Confucian harmony to the world. Over a hundred large vessels--beautiful vessels made of teak wood harvested from Vietnam--sailed out.
A little over two years later, when the last of these vessels finally returned home they had sailed over a 100,000 miles. They had mapped the North American coast, South American coast, Australia, New Zealand and Africa.
In the 1420s, there was a Venetian map that showed the island of the Caribbean in exactly the right position along with the coast of Florida. Columbus saw that map before he left. He even references it in his diaries.
Magellan, when he was going through the Straits of Magellan, talks about seeing a map of the passageway. Where did he get that? Well, in 1434, a Chinese fleet sailed into the Mediterranean to Italy and landed at Tuscany.
Pope Eugene IV met with Admiral Zheng He of the fleet at Florence and the Chinese admiral gave to the pope as a diplomatic gift (the Chinese always bring gifts and try to give more than they’re given so that the other always feels in their debt) great stores of knowledge.
They gave him information about geography. They gave him world maps that map the coast and the perimeters of all the continents. Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand, Greenland, north and South America, Africa.
The Chinese gave the pope information about navigation. They had developed the longitudinal navigation system. The markings on those ancient maps today turn out to be exactly precise in scientific calculation. They gave the pope information about astronomy, the stars, about math, art, printing.
At that time printing was a common everyday occurrence in China. They had information about architecture, about steel-manufacturing, about civil engineering, about military weaponry (a lot more than gunpowder), about surveying, genetics, etc., all given along with the silk and tea and all those other things Marco Polo brought back.
So when that fleet left Europe and went back home, what they found was China in mass disarray. The emperor had died, and if you know anything about the history, he had this humongous big palace that was struck by lightning and burned, and the people took that as a bad omen and that led to the fall of the emperor. His son took over and his idea was the reason the gods were mad at them was because they’d reached out to Europe and what they need to do was pull back and withdraw and that’s where their isolationism came from.
Well, we all know the Europeans are great marketers. While the Chinese were withdrawing, the Europeans loved it and embraced it and they went for it. They embraced the knowledge, the ideas, the discoveries, the inventions. And you have a period of a century or more of unparalleled advancement. It’s called the Renaissance.
When the Renaissance is blazing forth in Europe, at the same time there’s a spiritual awakening called the Reformation going on right parallel with it.
With the reformation they’re saying, ‘We don’t want to be here; we want to go over there.’ A guy by the name of Erasmus was a scholar of the (organized) Church. He had access over all these areas of places. He was a humanist in philosophy.
Now humanism at that the time wasn’t the secular humanism of our day. Humanism began with the idea of, ‘What we need to do is we need to get rid of the traditions and all of the trappings, and we need to go back to the original intent.’
So when you apply that to Scripture, what would you want to do? 'Let’s don’t go by traditions and all this baggage; let’s go back and find out what the original language said.'
And so he was very interested in reconstructing the Greek Bible. And he produced the first printed Greek text, having access to all the information; every variant that you and I hear about today: ‘The better manuscripts say it ought to read this way.’
Erasmus had access to that information; he just rejected it. Erasmus is said to have laid the egg that Luther hatched. Luther took that information, took it out of the realm of scholarship and translated Erasmus’ text. This text became known as the Textus Receptus. The ‘Critical Text’ is the text the scholars had developed.
Luther took that Greek text and translated it into 30 different European languages. The idea was, ‘We want everybody to have the Bible for themselves.’
Now, as the Reformation gets going, and Luther’s doing his thing—Luther, later on, got hooked up into politics; the Peasant Rebellion and all that stuff. It shouldn’t be called the Protestant Reformation; call it the Protestant Revolt because they really weren’t trying to reform.
They were revolting against, but when they got into politics it began to have some problems, and the spiritual life of the Reformation moved from the continent to England, but everything was moving toward England at the time.
You remember Ferdinand and Isabella? Spanish king and queen. You remember their Spanish armada? They’re going to go up and squash England. England had (Sir Francis) Drake and that was their chance, and after that battle’s over with, England ruled the sea because they destroyed the Spanish Armada and now England becomes the focus. Ferdinand and Isabella were rabid Roman Catholics.
In England, you have all this Protestant fervor and a guy by the name of William Tyndale. One hundred and fifty years before that it was a guy name Wycliffe. The first Bible translated into the English language, Wycliffe did, but the first New Testament translated out of the Greek language was by William Tyndale. About 75 to 80percent of your Bible right now is Tyndale’s translation. It was that powerful.
Tyndale was the guy who was in a debate with a papist and the papist said to him, ‘It would be better to be without God’s law than without the pope.’ Tyndale jumped up and said, ‘I defy the pope and all of his laws. Before long even the boy following the plow in the field we’ll no more of the Scripture than the pope in Rome.’ That’s why we call his Bible a ‘Ploughboy’s Bible.’
He spent his life trying to put the Bible into the English language. He lost his life because of it. He finally had to leave England; Henry VIII didn’t like him and charged him with sedition and he had to flee to the continent. Henry Phillips, one of his good buddies, was paid by the papist to betray him into their hands so they captured him and martyred him. He shed his life’s blood so you could have the Bible.
He didn’t make any money off of it.
In fact, there’s a bunch of funny things that happened. At one point he’d been revising and updating, and had a new edition to print, but didn’t have any money. What he did have was a set of a thousand of the old edition that he still had in the bookstore.
In England they had banned his translation and they were trying to get rid of them, so this merchant went to one of the bishops in London and said, ‘I know where there are all these Tyndale translations. We could buy them.’ So the guy gave the merchant the money and they burned them all and then the guy gave Tyndale the money and it was that money that financed the printing of the new edition!
After Tyndale died, there were a series of bibles. With your Bible, and the Protestant Reformation, when the Bible comes into English through the Protestant church, it starts out with Tyndale and there’s a series for almost a hundred years. There’s Tyndale’s, the Coverdale Bible, the Matthew Bible, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible and the Bishop’s Bible.
By the time the KJV is translated, not one of the translators lost his life. The climate had changed that much. In fact, you remember Bloody Mary was in there and she was a rabid Roman Catholic. After Henry VIII died, his son Edward took over and he was sort of a live-and-let-live guy, and after him was Bloody Mary. All the Protestants had to run to the continent. That’s when the Geneva Bible got done; it was done in Geneva where John Calvin, his son-in-law, helped head that up because they had to escape there to do it; it was an English Bible.
After she died, Queen Elizabeth came to the throne and she was as protestant as Mary was catholic. So now all the Catholics have to run from England. And she gave free reign, as it were, to the study of the Scripture and the Protestants. But all during this time you’ve got these people translating: ‘Let’s improve, let’s improve, let’s improve it.’ And the year before Mary died, she sent to parliament a bill and the title of it is three sentences long.
In essence, it called for one more English translation to be the standard. In other words, we’ve got all these translations; let’s do it one more time and get it finished. She died before that was passed, but after that James the VI of Scotland became James I of England, and when he came down to London to take over the throne, a thousand preachers sent him a petition and he met with them at Hampton Court and one of the things that was decided there was that what Elizabeth had wanted to do, they would do, and he commissioned them to produce another version. And the genesis of that became the translating effort of the Authorized Version.
The KJB was the process; it wasn’t just a bunch of guys sitting down just doing it out of nowhere. There’s a hundred-year refining process and they finally got it finished. And it’s the ripe fruit of the Protestant Reformation. It is in every sense a Protestant bible.
Now in that time Rome was silent. The pope woke up one day and realized in a third of a century two-thirds of Europe had become Protestant with the other third leaning that way. ‘What are we gonna do?!’ They called the Council of Trent in 1545 and denounced the Protestants, but it didn’t do much good. They kept going.
There was a fellow who was a soldier in Ferdinand Isabella’s army. A great warrior when they were trying to push the Muslims out of Spain. He was wounded and couldn’t be a soldier anymore so he turned to spiritual pursuits. His name was Ignatius Loyola.
Loyola went to the pope and said, ‘I know what we need to do to stop the Protestants. We need to establish an order whose function is to stop Protestantism.’ And Loyola founded the Jesuits. The stated charter of the Jesuits is to destroy Protestantism.
What was the first event that led to the discovery of America? In most old history books, the line goes, ‘In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue . . .’ But it was a whole century before that a book by Marco Polo was published, one that Columbus himself referenced as a travel guide.
Polo and his brothers had gone to China and spent two decades as an emissary of the pope. They returned from that journey with stories of wealth, intellectual knowledge, on and on. The Chinese had the most advanced civilization in the history of mankind at that time.
Indeed, there was a time in the 1400s that the Chinese ruled the earth. Of course, we’re never told that because the populace has spent the last five centuries in isolation.
In 1421, the largest fleet that had ever sailed the seas left from China, commissioned by the emperor Zhu Di to take Confucian harmony to the world. Over a hundred large vessels--beautiful vessels made of teak wood harvested from Vietnam--sailed out.
A little over two years later, when the last of these vessels finally returned home they had sailed over a 100,000 miles. They had mapped the North American coast, South American coast, Australia, New Zealand and Africa.
In the 1420s, there was a Venetian map that showed the island of the Caribbean in exactly the right position along with the coast of Florida. Columbus saw that map before he left. He even references it in his diaries.
Magellan, when he was going through the Straits of Magellan, talks about seeing a map of the passageway. Where did he get that? Well, in 1434, a Chinese fleet sailed into the Mediterranean to Italy and landed at Tuscany.
Pope Eugene IV met with Admiral Zheng He of the fleet at Florence and the Chinese admiral gave to the pope as a diplomatic gift (the Chinese always bring gifts and try to give more than they’re given so that the other always feels in their debt) great stores of knowledge.
They gave him information about geography. They gave him world maps that map the coast and the perimeters of all the continents. Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand, Greenland, north and South America, Africa.
The Chinese gave the pope information about navigation. They had developed the longitudinal navigation system. The markings on those ancient maps today turn out to be exactly precise in scientific calculation. They gave the pope information about astronomy, the stars, about math, art, printing.
At that time printing was a common everyday occurrence in China. They had information about architecture, about steel-manufacturing, about civil engineering, about military weaponry (a lot more than gunpowder), about surveying, genetics, etc., all given along with the silk and tea and all those other things Marco Polo brought back.
So when that fleet left Europe and went back home, what they found was China in mass disarray. The emperor had died, and if you know anything about the history, he had this humongous big palace that was struck by lightning and burned, and the people took that as a bad omen and that led to the fall of the emperor. His son took over and his idea was the reason the gods were mad at them was because they’d reached out to Europe and what they need to do was pull back and withdraw and that’s where their isolationism came from.
Well, we all know the Europeans are great marketers. While the Chinese were withdrawing, the Europeans loved it and embraced it and they went for it. They embraced the knowledge, the ideas, the discoveries, the inventions. And you have a period of a century or more of unparalleled advancement. It’s called the Renaissance.
When the Renaissance is blazing forth in Europe, at the same time there’s a spiritual awakening called the Reformation going on right parallel with it.
With the reformation they’re saying, ‘We don’t want to be here; we want to go over there.’ A guy by the name of Erasmus was a scholar of the (organized) Church. He had access over all these areas of places. He was a humanist in philosophy.
Now humanism at that the time wasn’t the secular humanism of our day. Humanism began with the idea of, ‘What we need to do is we need to get rid of the traditions and all of the trappings, and we need to go back to the original intent.’
So when you apply that to Scripture, what would you want to do? 'Let’s don’t go by traditions and all this baggage; let’s go back and find out what the original language said.'
And so he was very interested in reconstructing the Greek Bible. And he produced the first printed Greek text, having access to all the information; every variant that you and I hear about today: ‘The better manuscripts say it ought to read this way.’
Erasmus had access to that information; he just rejected it. Erasmus is said to have laid the egg that Luther hatched. Luther took that information, took it out of the realm of scholarship and translated Erasmus’ text. This text became known as the Textus Receptus. The ‘Critical Text’ is the text the scholars had developed.
Luther took that Greek text and translated it into 30 different European languages. The idea was, ‘We want everybody to have the Bible for themselves.’
Now, as the Reformation gets going, and Luther’s doing his thing—Luther, later on, got hooked up into politics; the Peasant Rebellion and all that stuff. It shouldn’t be called the Protestant Reformation; call it the Protestant Revolt because they really weren’t trying to reform.
They were revolting against, but when they got into politics it began to have some problems, and the spiritual life of the Reformation moved from the continent to England, but everything was moving toward England at the time.
You remember Ferdinand and Isabella? Spanish king and queen. You remember their Spanish armada? They’re going to go up and squash England. England had (Sir Francis) Drake and that was their chance, and after that battle’s over with, England ruled the sea because they destroyed the Spanish Armada and now England becomes the focus. Ferdinand and Isabella were rabid Roman Catholics.
In England, you have all this Protestant fervor and a guy by the name of William Tyndale. One hundred and fifty years before that it was a guy name Wycliffe. The first Bible translated into the English language, Wycliffe did, but the first New Testament translated out of the Greek language was by William Tyndale. About 75 to 80percent of your Bible right now is Tyndale’s translation. It was that powerful.
Tyndale was the guy who was in a debate with a papist and the papist said to him, ‘It would be better to be without God’s law than without the pope.’ Tyndale jumped up and said, ‘I defy the pope and all of his laws. Before long even the boy following the plow in the field we’ll no more of the Scripture than the pope in Rome.’ That’s why we call his Bible a ‘Ploughboy’s Bible.’
He spent his life trying to put the Bible into the English language. He lost his life because of it. He finally had to leave England; Henry VIII didn’t like him and charged him with sedition and he had to flee to the continent. Henry Phillips, one of his good buddies, was paid by the papist to betray him into their hands so they captured him and martyred him. He shed his life’s blood so you could have the Bible.
He didn’t make any money off of it.
In fact, there’s a bunch of funny things that happened. At one point he’d been revising and updating, and had a new edition to print, but didn’t have any money. What he did have was a set of a thousand of the old edition that he still had in the bookstore.
In England they had banned his translation and they were trying to get rid of them, so this merchant went to one of the bishops in London and said, ‘I know where there are all these Tyndale translations. We could buy them.’ So the guy gave the merchant the money and they burned them all and then the guy gave Tyndale the money and it was that money that financed the printing of the new edition!
After Tyndale died, there were a series of bibles. With your Bible, and the Protestant Reformation, when the Bible comes into English through the Protestant church, it starts out with Tyndale and there’s a series for almost a hundred years. There’s Tyndale’s, the Coverdale Bible, the Matthew Bible, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible and the Bishop’s Bible.
By the time the KJV is translated, not one of the translators lost his life. The climate had changed that much. In fact, you remember Bloody Mary was in there and she was a rabid Roman Catholic. After Henry VIII died, his son Edward took over and he was sort of a live-and-let-live guy, and after him was Bloody Mary. All the Protestants had to run to the continent. That’s when the Geneva Bible got done; it was done in Geneva where John Calvin, his son-in-law, helped head that up because they had to escape there to do it; it was an English Bible.
After she died, Queen Elizabeth came to the throne and she was as protestant as Mary was catholic. So now all the Catholics have to run from England. And she gave free reign, as it were, to the study of the Scripture and the Protestants. But all during this time you’ve got these people translating: ‘Let’s improve, let’s improve, let’s improve it.’ And the year before Mary died, she sent to parliament a bill and the title of it is three sentences long.
In essence, it called for one more English translation to be the standard. In other words, we’ve got all these translations; let’s do it one more time and get it finished. She died before that was passed, but after that James the VI of Scotland became James I of England, and when he came down to London to take over the throne, a thousand preachers sent him a petition and he met with them at Hampton Court and one of the things that was decided there was that what Elizabeth had wanted to do, they would do, and he commissioned them to produce another version. And the genesis of that became the translating effort of the Authorized Version.
The KJB was the process; it wasn’t just a bunch of guys sitting down just doing it out of nowhere. There’s a hundred-year refining process and they finally got it finished. And it’s the ripe fruit of the Protestant Reformation. It is in every sense a Protestant bible.
Now in that time Rome was silent. The pope woke up one day and realized in a third of a century two-thirds of Europe had become Protestant with the other third leaning that way. ‘What are we gonna do?!’ They called the Council of Trent in 1545 and denounced the Protestants, but it didn’t do much good. They kept going.
There was a fellow who was a soldier in Ferdinand Isabella’s army. A great warrior when they were trying to push the Muslims out of Spain. He was wounded and couldn’t be a soldier anymore so he turned to spiritual pursuits. His name was Ignatius Loyola.
Loyola went to the pope and said, ‘I know what we need to do to stop the Protestants. We need to establish an order whose function is to stop Protestantism.’ And Loyola founded the Jesuits. The stated charter of the Jesuits is to destroy Protestantism.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Got that one!
There are seven sayings from the Cross: three in Luke, one in Matthew and Mark and three in John.
“The first one in John is the one nobody ever understands,” says Jordan. “He looks at John. John is the only disciple who goes with Him all the way from the garden to the Cross. John’s with Him in Pilate’s judgment hall. John’s with Him at the Cross.
“There’s His mother and John says, ‘Son, behold your mother. Mother, behold your son.’ And He cares for His mom. It’s John who reminds us that Christ said, ‘I thirst!’ demonstrating the intensity of His suffering. It’s in John that you read the triumphant cry of the Lord, with His head held high, ‘It’s finished,' demonstrating the finality and the work and the will of the Father being done. And there’s nothing more to do than what He’s done.”
*****
The first three sayings deal with the dispensational setting of the Cross. The middle one demonstrates the depths of the suffering of Christ and, as Jordan says, “If there was any one of these messages that I’d tell you you’ve got to get, it’s that one!”
And then the last three demonstrate the sufficiency of what’s been accomplished at Calvary.
All seven statements are the direct fulfillment of Scripture. They establish the authority of Scripture and demonstrate the place the Word of God played in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.
“They reveal His heart,” says Jordan. “They reveal that the Scripture was on His mind as He hung on Calvary’s Cross. The thing that was on His mind was the Word of God and what God was doing. And He literally kicks off the verses; He’s literally thinking through the verses that apply to Him, and that He knows He’s fulfilling, and He’s literally going, ‘Got that one, got that one, got that one. Are there any more left? Oh, yes!’ Literally it’s that way in His mind!”
*****
Jordan continues, “So when Paul says in Philippians 2:5, ‘Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus,’ He’s talking about the mindset that Christ had toward the program of God that He lived under; the mindset that He had toward God’s Word that led Him to be obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.
“And that mindset that Christ had, that thinking pattern, focused on only one thing and that was God’s Word. The written Word of God was the source of His strength and determination; it was the place His faith and confidence wrested. Now, if there’s something that should encourage you and me today, it ought to be that!
“When Paul said, ‘Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,' he’s talking about, ‘Have in your thinking process the same kind of understanding that Christ had about where He stood in the program of God--that what He was doing was what God gave Him to do--and have that complete and total dependence upon on God’s program, and God’s word, and what God’s said, cause you to be obedient unto death: The absolute total denial of yourself so that the life and purpose of God might be what’s accomplished.'
*****
“What does it mean ‘to be filled with the Spirit’? Here’s the verse of an illustration of someone who is totally filled with the spirit. John 3:34. The Lord Jesus Christ is the only person who ever walked this planet who was absolutely, totally, unreservedly, without any measure, filled with the Spirit, and if you want to see someone who is filled with the Spirit you look at Him. Completely, totally, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 30 days a month, 12 months a year, 33 years of His life. And Paul says, ‘Let the mind of this completely, totally Spirit-filled person be yours.’
“Now what does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? Well, you know how to compare the verses. Ephesians 5:18, Col. 3:12. If you compare Ephesians 5 and 6 with Colossians 3:16 and following, you’ll see that exactly the same results come from being filled with the Spirit as come from having 'the Word of Christ dwell in you richly'!
“And, folks, if A equals B, and B equals C, then what does A equal? It also equals C. If being filled with the Spirit produces these results, and being filled with the Word of God produces these results, I know something about being filled with the Spirit. And I know something about having the Word of Christ dwell in me richly. They are synonymous terms! Two terms that describe in two different ways the SAME thing!
“We know that today, in the dispensation of grace, God the Holy Spirit works through the instrumentality of His Word and it is an objective reality. It is not an experiential wish, not some mystical idea. This thing about Christ living in you is not just some, ‘Well, I just feel like He’s here.’ It is an objective reality based upon words on a page in a book that you can hold in your hands. It’s that real.”
“The first one in John is the one nobody ever understands,” says Jordan. “He looks at John. John is the only disciple who goes with Him all the way from the garden to the Cross. John’s with Him in Pilate’s judgment hall. John’s with Him at the Cross.
“There’s His mother and John says, ‘Son, behold your mother. Mother, behold your son.’ And He cares for His mom. It’s John who reminds us that Christ said, ‘I thirst!’ demonstrating the intensity of His suffering. It’s in John that you read the triumphant cry of the Lord, with His head held high, ‘It’s finished,' demonstrating the finality and the work and the will of the Father being done. And there’s nothing more to do than what He’s done.”
*****
The first three sayings deal with the dispensational setting of the Cross. The middle one demonstrates the depths of the suffering of Christ and, as Jordan says, “If there was any one of these messages that I’d tell you you’ve got to get, it’s that one!”
And then the last three demonstrate the sufficiency of what’s been accomplished at Calvary.
All seven statements are the direct fulfillment of Scripture. They establish the authority of Scripture and demonstrate the place the Word of God played in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.
“They reveal His heart,” says Jordan. “They reveal that the Scripture was on His mind as He hung on Calvary’s Cross. The thing that was on His mind was the Word of God and what God was doing. And He literally kicks off the verses; He’s literally thinking through the verses that apply to Him, and that He knows He’s fulfilling, and He’s literally going, ‘Got that one, got that one, got that one. Are there any more left? Oh, yes!’ Literally it’s that way in His mind!”
*****
Jordan continues, “So when Paul says in Philippians 2:5, ‘Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus,’ He’s talking about the mindset that Christ had toward the program of God that He lived under; the mindset that He had toward God’s Word that led Him to be obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.
“And that mindset that Christ had, that thinking pattern, focused on only one thing and that was God’s Word. The written Word of God was the source of His strength and determination; it was the place His faith and confidence wrested. Now, if there’s something that should encourage you and me today, it ought to be that!
“When Paul said, ‘Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,' he’s talking about, ‘Have in your thinking process the same kind of understanding that Christ had about where He stood in the program of God--that what He was doing was what God gave Him to do--and have that complete and total dependence upon on God’s program, and God’s word, and what God’s said, cause you to be obedient unto death: The absolute total denial of yourself so that the life and purpose of God might be what’s accomplished.'
*****
“What does it mean ‘to be filled with the Spirit’? Here’s the verse of an illustration of someone who is totally filled with the spirit. John 3:34. The Lord Jesus Christ is the only person who ever walked this planet who was absolutely, totally, unreservedly, without any measure, filled with the Spirit, and if you want to see someone who is filled with the Spirit you look at Him. Completely, totally, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 30 days a month, 12 months a year, 33 years of His life. And Paul says, ‘Let the mind of this completely, totally Spirit-filled person be yours.’
“Now what does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? Well, you know how to compare the verses. Ephesians 5:18, Col. 3:12. If you compare Ephesians 5 and 6 with Colossians 3:16 and following, you’ll see that exactly the same results come from being filled with the Spirit as come from having 'the Word of Christ dwell in you richly'!
“And, folks, if A equals B, and B equals C, then what does A equal? It also equals C. If being filled with the Spirit produces these results, and being filled with the Word of God produces these results, I know something about being filled with the Spirit. And I know something about having the Word of Christ dwell in me richly. They are synonymous terms! Two terms that describe in two different ways the SAME thing!
“We know that today, in the dispensation of grace, God the Holy Spirit works through the instrumentality of His Word and it is an objective reality. It is not an experiential wish, not some mystical idea. This thing about Christ living in you is not just some, ‘Well, I just feel like He’s here.’ It is an objective reality based upon words on a page in a book that you can hold in your hands. It’s that real.”
Monday, April 4, 2011
Sanctified common sense
As Acts 20:30 reports, “Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.”
These apostates are going to arise from among the elders of the church and the way that’s going to happen is in warnings such as I Timothy 6, where Paul says, “Beware of science falsely so-called.” Paul says in Colossians, “Beware of philosophy and vain deceit after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world and not after Christ.” Clearly, there are things that are going to draw them away from Christ.
“The great enemy to the church was not paganism,” says Jordan. “Paul didn’t fear paganism for half a minute. The great enemy was the flood of heresy under the name of Christ; under the name of being ‘Bible-believers’.
“The pagans didn’t bother Paul; just go out and convert them--take the Word of God and preach the gospel to them and watch God save them. To depart from the faith, to be the real danger point, was the heresy that came in under the name and the banner of Christ.”
*****
II Cor. 2:17 says, “For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.”
Jordan explains, “This is not a little group of people; there’s a lot of people going to do this. There are people who are going to corrupt God’s Word. Come with me to II Thess. 2 and let me show you some of them: ‘Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,
[2] That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.’
“Notice there are people who are going to try to deceive, shake and trouble the Believers and one of the means is they’re going to counterfeit a letter as if it’s from Paul, corrupting the written Word of God and attacking it.
“Now if you go back to Genesis 3, the first time Satan spoke, what did he say? ‘Yeah, hath God said.’ Satan’s attack, from the first time he opened his mouth to talk to a human being, was on the Word of God. ‘My word against God’s Word.’ So it shouldn’t surprise you there’s going to be an attack on God’s Word.
“In Amos 8, Amos, looking toward the future, says that in the Last Days over there, there’s going to be a famine for the word of God in the land. They’re going to go around looking for God’s Word and go ‘here there’ and not be able to find it. Now that happened back in Josiah’s day. He said it’s going to happen in the Last Day.
“The two big issues in the Last Day in prophecy is one, where is the Word of God, and the other is, where is the promise of His coming. II Peter 3. So understanding there’s going to be this attack on God’s Word is important.
“Come with me to Acts 11:26. Let’s get a little history about how to think about this. That city of Antioch in your Bible is very important. Antioch is a center in Scripture. The reason they were first called Christians there has to do with the ministry of the Apostle Paul brought there.
“Verse 26 says, ‘And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.’
“Antioch turns out to be the center from which Paul’s ministry expands. Its first real apostolic center is Antioch and Antioch, throughout the Scripture and throughout the first centuries of Christendom, was a great Bible-teaching center. It’s up in Turkey, the Byzantine Empire, and it was a center for Bible-believing, Bible-teaching Christianity.
“The location was a critical location for Christianity all through the Scripture. There’s another city called Alexandria, down in Egypt. That’s the other city that you have to watch out for.
*****
Acts 18:24 says, “And a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus.
[25] This man was instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John.”
Alexandria is the competing location. “Notice what it says about this man; do you think he was up to date scripturally?” asks Jordan. “Was he up-to-date dispensationally? He wasn’t even up-to-date historically. He didn’t even know Christ had come and died. But he’s an ‘eloquent man and mighty in the scriptures.’
“There’s a center down here of scriptural interest but it isn’t dispensationally up to date; it isn’t even historically and doctrinally up to date, but there’s a center of bible interest. You see Apollos.
“Those two cities, in studying your Bible and the transmission of the Bible through history, it’s really a study in a sense of Antioch or Alexandria. In fact, when you study manuscript evidence, you’ll find that manuscripts are divided into four, with one being the Egyptian text, or the Alexandrian text, and another being the Byzantine text, which is the Greek text. “Sometimes you’ll hear the Textus Receptus called the Byzantine text. That’s because the Greek Empire—where would you think Greek text would mostly be read?
“Don’t think about history; just think about what you know about the Bible? What is Egypt a type of in the Bible? The world. Just what you know common-sense wise, which one would you think would be the better place to start looking for your Bible?
There’s some working things that you come to the table with and the ability to have sanctified common sense, as Mr. O’Hair called it, is really something that’s going to stand you in good stead because you’re going to see when you look at a verse and say, ‘Well, this verse is obviously right and that verse is obviously wrong,’ but all the scholars say, ‘This wrong one is the way it ought to be!’
“But you’re going to look at it and say, ‘No, that don’t make any sense.’
*****
“Let me just show you one of them. This is not a biggie, but when you read it instantly you know which one’s right and which one’s wrong. This is not about doctrine, justification, virgin birth. It’s just a simple little passage.
John 7:8 says, ‘Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast; for my time is not yet full come.’
“Jesus is talking to His brethren and He told His brothers, ‘You guys go; I’m not going up yet.’ What does that mean? That means, ‘I’m not going right now.’ They went on and then He went. The new bibles, the critical Greek text, in verse 8, it leaves that word ‘yet’ out and it has Him saying, ‘Go ye up to the feast; I’m go not up to this feast. I ain’t going!’
“Now the NAS translates it that way; the NIV leaves the ‘yet’ in but they put a footnote in that it ought not be there. If it ought not be there, why’d you put it there?! Well, the reason is the passage doesn’t make any sense if you take the ‘yet’
out.
“I mean if you leave it out and it says ‘I’m not going,’ and then Jesus actually goes, what did He just do?! He deceived them, didn’t He? They’re begging Him to go and He says, ‘Nah, I ain’t goin', and then He goes. Then He goes secretly like so they don’t find Him. I mean, what is He? Speaking with a double tongue?
“But if you leave it like it is, He said, ‘I’m not going now.’ He qualifies it. And the reason is in text, if you study it, He doesn’t want to be associated with His brethren. Verse 5 says they don’t believe on Him. He’s separating Himself away from the unbelieving people in Israel and He’s going to go separately because it isn’t time. He doesn’t go to the Feast of Tabernacles first; He goes to the Feast of Passover first.
“Tabernacles is the Second Coming. It’s not the time. Six months later He goes to Jerusalem at the Passover and openly manifests Himself as the Passover lamb. He knows the timing isn’t right for Him to go up and they want Him to go up and manifest Himself. Verse 4 says ‘show yourself to the world.’ So He separates Himself but then He goes.
“Why does He go? Deuteronomy 16:16 says three times a year every man in Israel is to go. If He said, ‘I’m not going,’ He’d be saying, ‘I’m not going to obey Deuteronomy 16:16; I’m just not going to do what God said.’ Now does that sound like Jesus? No.
“Now, does that text make any sense if you leave the ‘yet’ out? Doesn’t make any sense at all! You’re faced with two different readings and your common sense tells you which one to use! You don’t need to know anything about manuscript evidence. Common sense helps you!
“So there’s a sanctified common sense that God has put into the Body of Christ--not the institution, but in the real church which has some understanding. You see, if you have an understanding of who Jesus Christ is—He’s God in human flesh; He was sinless, He isn’t going to lie—that tempers how I look at that and tells me what I will and won’t accept.
“You say, ‘Well, why would the new bible people take that?’ Because the guys who
translated the NAS, for the most part, believed Jesus was God in human flesh who didn’t lie, but they weren’t letting that understanding be what determined how they looked at the manuscript evidence. They we’re just looking at it from a humanist point of view.”
These apostates are going to arise from among the elders of the church and the way that’s going to happen is in warnings such as I Timothy 6, where Paul says, “Beware of science falsely so-called.” Paul says in Colossians, “Beware of philosophy and vain deceit after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world and not after Christ.” Clearly, there are things that are going to draw them away from Christ.
“The great enemy to the church was not paganism,” says Jordan. “Paul didn’t fear paganism for half a minute. The great enemy was the flood of heresy under the name of Christ; under the name of being ‘Bible-believers’.
“The pagans didn’t bother Paul; just go out and convert them--take the Word of God and preach the gospel to them and watch God save them. To depart from the faith, to be the real danger point, was the heresy that came in under the name and the banner of Christ.”
*****
II Cor. 2:17 says, “For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.”
Jordan explains, “This is not a little group of people; there’s a lot of people going to do this. There are people who are going to corrupt God’s Word. Come with me to II Thess. 2 and let me show you some of them: ‘Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,
[2] That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.’
“Notice there are people who are going to try to deceive, shake and trouble the Believers and one of the means is they’re going to counterfeit a letter as if it’s from Paul, corrupting the written Word of God and attacking it.
“Now if you go back to Genesis 3, the first time Satan spoke, what did he say? ‘Yeah, hath God said.’ Satan’s attack, from the first time he opened his mouth to talk to a human being, was on the Word of God. ‘My word against God’s Word.’ So it shouldn’t surprise you there’s going to be an attack on God’s Word.
“In Amos 8, Amos, looking toward the future, says that in the Last Days over there, there’s going to be a famine for the word of God in the land. They’re going to go around looking for God’s Word and go ‘here there’ and not be able to find it. Now that happened back in Josiah’s day. He said it’s going to happen in the Last Day.
“The two big issues in the Last Day in prophecy is one, where is the Word of God, and the other is, where is the promise of His coming. II Peter 3. So understanding there’s going to be this attack on God’s Word is important.
“Come with me to Acts 11:26. Let’s get a little history about how to think about this. That city of Antioch in your Bible is very important. Antioch is a center in Scripture. The reason they were first called Christians there has to do with the ministry of the Apostle Paul brought there.
“Verse 26 says, ‘And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.’
“Antioch turns out to be the center from which Paul’s ministry expands. Its first real apostolic center is Antioch and Antioch, throughout the Scripture and throughout the first centuries of Christendom, was a great Bible-teaching center. It’s up in Turkey, the Byzantine Empire, and it was a center for Bible-believing, Bible-teaching Christianity.
“The location was a critical location for Christianity all through the Scripture. There’s another city called Alexandria, down in Egypt. That’s the other city that you have to watch out for.
*****
Acts 18:24 says, “And a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus.
[25] This man was instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John.”
Alexandria is the competing location. “Notice what it says about this man; do you think he was up to date scripturally?” asks Jordan. “Was he up-to-date dispensationally? He wasn’t even up-to-date historically. He didn’t even know Christ had come and died. But he’s an ‘eloquent man and mighty in the scriptures.’
“There’s a center down here of scriptural interest but it isn’t dispensationally up to date; it isn’t even historically and doctrinally up to date, but there’s a center of bible interest. You see Apollos.
“Those two cities, in studying your Bible and the transmission of the Bible through history, it’s really a study in a sense of Antioch or Alexandria. In fact, when you study manuscript evidence, you’ll find that manuscripts are divided into four, with one being the Egyptian text, or the Alexandrian text, and another being the Byzantine text, which is the Greek text. “Sometimes you’ll hear the Textus Receptus called the Byzantine text. That’s because the Greek Empire—where would you think Greek text would mostly be read?
“Don’t think about history; just think about what you know about the Bible? What is Egypt a type of in the Bible? The world. Just what you know common-sense wise, which one would you think would be the better place to start looking for your Bible?
There’s some working things that you come to the table with and the ability to have sanctified common sense, as Mr. O’Hair called it, is really something that’s going to stand you in good stead because you’re going to see when you look at a verse and say, ‘Well, this verse is obviously right and that verse is obviously wrong,’ but all the scholars say, ‘This wrong one is the way it ought to be!’
“But you’re going to look at it and say, ‘No, that don’t make any sense.’
*****
“Let me just show you one of them. This is not a biggie, but when you read it instantly you know which one’s right and which one’s wrong. This is not about doctrine, justification, virgin birth. It’s just a simple little passage.
John 7:8 says, ‘Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast; for my time is not yet full come.’
“Jesus is talking to His brethren and He told His brothers, ‘You guys go; I’m not going up yet.’ What does that mean? That means, ‘I’m not going right now.’ They went on and then He went. The new bibles, the critical Greek text, in verse 8, it leaves that word ‘yet’ out and it has Him saying, ‘Go ye up to the feast; I’m go not up to this feast. I ain’t going!’
“Now the NAS translates it that way; the NIV leaves the ‘yet’ in but they put a footnote in that it ought not be there. If it ought not be there, why’d you put it there?! Well, the reason is the passage doesn’t make any sense if you take the ‘yet’
out.
“I mean if you leave it out and it says ‘I’m not going,’ and then Jesus actually goes, what did He just do?! He deceived them, didn’t He? They’re begging Him to go and He says, ‘Nah, I ain’t goin', and then He goes. Then He goes secretly like so they don’t find Him. I mean, what is He? Speaking with a double tongue?
“But if you leave it like it is, He said, ‘I’m not going now.’ He qualifies it. And the reason is in text, if you study it, He doesn’t want to be associated with His brethren. Verse 5 says they don’t believe on Him. He’s separating Himself away from the unbelieving people in Israel and He’s going to go separately because it isn’t time. He doesn’t go to the Feast of Tabernacles first; He goes to the Feast of Passover first.
“Tabernacles is the Second Coming. It’s not the time. Six months later He goes to Jerusalem at the Passover and openly manifests Himself as the Passover lamb. He knows the timing isn’t right for Him to go up and they want Him to go up and manifest Himself. Verse 4 says ‘show yourself to the world.’ So He separates Himself but then He goes.
“Why does He go? Deuteronomy 16:16 says three times a year every man in Israel is to go. If He said, ‘I’m not going,’ He’d be saying, ‘I’m not going to obey Deuteronomy 16:16; I’m just not going to do what God said.’ Now does that sound like Jesus? No.
“Now, does that text make any sense if you leave the ‘yet’ out? Doesn’t make any sense at all! You’re faced with two different readings and your common sense tells you which one to use! You don’t need to know anything about manuscript evidence. Common sense helps you!
“So there’s a sanctified common sense that God has put into the Body of Christ--not the institution, but in the real church which has some understanding. You see, if you have an understanding of who Jesus Christ is—He’s God in human flesh; He was sinless, He isn’t going to lie—that tempers how I look at that and tells me what I will and won’t accept.
“You say, ‘Well, why would the new bible people take that?’ Because the guys who
translated the NAS, for the most part, believed Jesus was God in human flesh who didn’t lie, but they weren’t letting that understanding be what determined how they looked at the manuscript evidence. They we’re just looking at it from a humanist point of view.”
Saturday, April 2, 2011
We are Chinese if you please
What was the first event that led to the discovery of America? In most old history books, the line goes, “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue . . .” But it was a whole century before that a book by Marco Polo was published, one that Columbus himself referenced as his travel guide.
Polo and his brothers had gone to China and spent two decades as an emissary of the pope. They returned from that journey with stories of wealth, intellectual knowledge, on and on. The Chinese had the most advanced civilization in the history of mankind at that time.
Indeed, there was a time in the 1400s that the Chinese ruled the earth. Of course, we’re never told that because the populace has spent the last five centuries in isolation.
In 1421, the largest fleet that had ever sailed the seas left from China, commissioned by the emperor Zhu Di to take Confucian harmony to the world. Over a hundred large vessels--beautiful vessels made of teak wood harvested from Vietnam--sailed out.
A little over two years later, when the last of these vessels finally returned home they had sailed over a 100,000 miles. They had mapped North American coast, South American coast, Australia, New Zealand and Africa.
In the 1420s, there’s a Venetian map that shows the island of the Caribbean in exactly the right position and the coast of Florida. Columbus saw that map before he left. He even references it in his diaries.
Magellan, when he was going through the Straits of Magellan, talks about seeing a map of the passageway. Where did he get that? Well, in 1434, a Chinese fleet sailed into the Mediterranean to Italy and landed at Tuscany.
Pope Eugene IV met with Admiral Zheng He of the fleet at Florence and the Chinese admiral gave to the pope as a diplomatic gift (the Chinese always bring gifts and try to give more than they’re given so that the other always feels in their debt) great stores of knowledge.
They gave him information about geography. They gave him world maps that map the coast and the perimeters of all the continents. Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand, Greenland, north and South America, Africa.
The Chinese gave the pope information about navigation. They had developed the longitudinal navigation system. The markings on those ancient maps today turn out to be exactly precise in scientific calculation. They gave the pope information about astronomy, the stars, about math, art, printing.
At that time printing was a common everyday occurrence in China. They had information about architecture, about steel-manufacturing, about civil engineering, about military weaponry (a lot more than gunpowder), about surveying, genetics, etc., all given along with the silk and tea and all those other things Marco Polo brought back.
So when that fleet left Europe and went back home what they found was China in mass disarray. The emperor had died, and if you know anything about the history, he had this humongous big palace that was struck by lightning and burned, and the people took that as a bad omen and that led to the fall of the emperor.
His son took over and his idea was the reason the gods were mad at them was because they’d reached out to Europe and what they need to do was pull back and withdraw and that’s where their isolationism came from.
Polo and his brothers had gone to China and spent two decades as an emissary of the pope. They returned from that journey with stories of wealth, intellectual knowledge, on and on. The Chinese had the most advanced civilization in the history of mankind at that time.
Indeed, there was a time in the 1400s that the Chinese ruled the earth. Of course, we’re never told that because the populace has spent the last five centuries in isolation.
In 1421, the largest fleet that had ever sailed the seas left from China, commissioned by the emperor Zhu Di to take Confucian harmony to the world. Over a hundred large vessels--beautiful vessels made of teak wood harvested from Vietnam--sailed out.
A little over two years later, when the last of these vessels finally returned home they had sailed over a 100,000 miles. They had mapped North American coast, South American coast, Australia, New Zealand and Africa.
In the 1420s, there’s a Venetian map that shows the island of the Caribbean in exactly the right position and the coast of Florida. Columbus saw that map before he left. He even references it in his diaries.
Magellan, when he was going through the Straits of Magellan, talks about seeing a map of the passageway. Where did he get that? Well, in 1434, a Chinese fleet sailed into the Mediterranean to Italy and landed at Tuscany.
Pope Eugene IV met with Admiral Zheng He of the fleet at Florence and the Chinese admiral gave to the pope as a diplomatic gift (the Chinese always bring gifts and try to give more than they’re given so that the other always feels in their debt) great stores of knowledge.
They gave him information about geography. They gave him world maps that map the coast and the perimeters of all the continents. Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand, Greenland, north and South America, Africa.
The Chinese gave the pope information about navigation. They had developed the longitudinal navigation system. The markings on those ancient maps today turn out to be exactly precise in scientific calculation. They gave the pope information about astronomy, the stars, about math, art, printing.
At that time printing was a common everyday occurrence in China. They had information about architecture, about steel-manufacturing, about civil engineering, about military weaponry (a lot more than gunpowder), about surveying, genetics, etc., all given along with the silk and tea and all those other things Marco Polo brought back.
So when that fleet left Europe and went back home what they found was China in mass disarray. The emperor had died, and if you know anything about the history, he had this humongous big palace that was struck by lightning and burned, and the people took that as a bad omen and that led to the fall of the emperor.
His son took over and his idea was the reason the gods were mad at them was because they’d reached out to Europe and what they need to do was pull back and withdraw and that’s where their isolationism came from.
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