Here’s a good illustration of revelation subsequent to the fact. Paul writes in II Tim. 3:8, “Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.”
Jannes and Jambres is reference back to Exodus when Moses went before Pharaoh with his classic line, “Thus sayeth the Lord, let my people go!” He took his rod and cast it down and it became a snake.
Recalling the ever-famous account from the Old Testament, Jordan says, “I’ve thought about that a lot of times. If I’d have been Moses and had to go in and do that, you know, I’d be looking around and thinking, ‘Before I throw this down do I have the exit clear?!’
“Because if that rod had hit the ground and bounced up, I’d have grabbed it and been out the door! But it became a snake! Got Pharaoh’s attention, so he calls a couple of his religious leaders over and he says, ‘Okay you saw what he did, what can you do?’ And they said, ‘No problem!’ They threw their rods down and they became snakes.
"The point here is 'as Jannes and Jambres withstood the truth, so do these also resist the truth.’ You see the comparison? How did they do it? They counterfeited what Moses did and outdid him two to one.
“Did you ever feel like your ministry was being outdone? That everybody else seemed to succeed and you didn’t? That’s exactly how they resisted the truth: by counterfeiting. They looked like they were a success and Moses was a failure.
“Now you remember what happened. Moses’ rod hadn’t had lunch yet because it just became a snake and he ate up the other two guys’ snakes. And now they got none and he’s got one with two in his belly.
“What is it that’s going to give you the capacity to endure through that kind of resistance with the perils and the deception of the seasons around you and the dangers you face—the culture just fomenting all around you?
“The only thing that will get you through is preach that word. Stick with it. Don’t quit. In verses 10-12 of II Timothy 3, Paul continues, ‘But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience,
[11] Persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured: but out of them all the Lord delivered me.
[12] Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.’
“Paul said, ‘Timothy, you know something about my passion and devotion for what was committed to my trust. You know something about that relentless focus. You saw it in me!’
“Those three cities mentioned—Antioch, Iconium and Lystra—are ones Paul visited in Acts 13 on his FIRST apostolic journey. Timothy is written at the END of his life. Paul isn’t at the end of his life going back and licking wounds that have taken place 35 years before. He isn’t holding a grudge. There’s something very specific and important that happened in Acts 13 and acts 14 in those cities.
“In one of those cities Paul was stoned and left for dead. Something revolutionizing took place in that man’s life when that happened. You read through the Book of Acts, and the account of Paul in Acts 13 and 9, and you read about his ministry where he’d go into a city, they wouldn’t take him and he’d just shake the dust of his feet and go to the next one.
“But the text in Acts says when they left him for dead then he rose up. Now if you’re left for dead by people who think they wanted to kill you, you probably can assume he was dead. Then he rose up, well that’s sort of like he came back to life.
“You remember in II Corinthians 12 he talks about, ‘I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth.’
“How you figure he wouldn’t know? Paul’s caught up into the 3rd heaven. He saw these things it’s not lawful to speak. And then the Lord sends him back.
“Now I don’t know about you, but I read that text and I think that’s always fascinated me because at that point in Paul’s life in Acts 14; from then on he lives like a suicidal maniac. Because the text says that after he rose up, he went back into the city where they just tried to kill him! What if it did kill him?! And from then on he doesn’t just, ‘Okay, you don’t wanna. . . ’ He goes constantly right back into the mouth of the lion!
“And you say, ‘Well, what would make him hold onto life that loosely?’ I read II Corinthians 12 and he says he was caught up into the 3rd heaven and saw things that weren’t lawful to speak and, if you were there and got to come back, what would your first thought be? ‘Maybe it’d be okay to go back’?
“The thing that’s going on there that’s in this text, is when you start out the Book of Acts, who is Satan persecuting? He’s persecuting the ‘little flock.’ You go through Acts 3-7 and it’s the Jerusalem church and it’s the apostles and, as late as Acts 12, he actually murders one of the 12 apostles James and he takes Peter, the head of the 12, and is going to kill him!
“But when you come to Acts 13 and 14, the persecution shifts from the ‘little flock’ to Paul, and from there on out he’s the object of satanic hatred. He’s the one with ‘the messenger of Satan to buffet me.’
“Now listen, preachers might not know when the program got changed, but the devil knew and it’s real clear when you read through Acts that the thing shifts from Israel and the ‘little flock’ to the persecution of just Paul.
“And Paul says to Timothy, ‘You know how what happened and you know that, in the face of all that, my doctrine, my manner of life, my purpose, my faith, my longsuffering, my charity, my patience’—aren’t those wonderful characteristics? He says, ‘The passion I had, the commitment I had to the message that was committed to my trust.’ Where would that come from? How do you have that kind of stick-to-itiveness in the face of the onslaughts, the persecutions, the afflictions?
“In Verse 12 Paul says, ‘Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.’ You need to take that verse under consideration. It doesn’t say all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall be a great success. It doesn’t fit into the mold of modern contemporary Christianity where you’re to go out and make the world happy with you under that mold.”
Monday, October 31, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
It can be a person
A simile is a comparison that uses like or as. It’s a description of something that says, “If you understand this, well, this works just like that works. This is as that is.” If you have a comparison that does not use like or as, it’s a metaphor. A metaphor is where one object stands for another.
Psalm 102: 6-7 says, “I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert. I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top.”
Jordan asks, “What’s He saying? At the end of verse 7 He spells it out. The psalmist is describing his loneliness; his isolation. And if you know anything about a pelican, owl or sparrow, you know they are isolated kind of birds.
“A pelican is a coastal bird who holds regurgitated fish in his pouch in the hot sun, and one you probably don’t want to be around that much as a result. A pelican lives sort of an isolated life.”
*****
In Isaiah 28 is a prophecy about the “last days” and Israel’s connection with the Antichrist. Verse 15 says, “Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves.”
Jordan says, “There’s that covenant with the Antichrist and the covenant with death and hell. If you compare that with Revelation 6 you can know where you are because with that fourth rider, hell and death follow him.
“Verse 21 says, ‘For the LORD shall rise up as in mount Perazim, he shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his work, his strange work; and bring to pass.’ Here comes the Second Coming of Christ. He’s going to arise.
"Notice how he says when the Lord comes it’s going to be ‘as in mount Perazim.’ That’s II Samuel 5 when David heard the goings in the tops of the mulberry trees and Isaiah says the Second Advent is going to be like what happened back there with David. So in II Samuel you’re reading a prophetic fore view of what’s going to happen when Christ comes at the Second Advent.
“ ‘He shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon.’ Now that’s Joshua 10. All those things back there in Samuel and Joshua; they’re not just old dead history. The reason they’re in your Bible is because they are pictures, prototypes, prologues for some things in the future. That simile helps you
understand that and see that.
“You have types, parables and allegories and emblems and symbols and all these things and sometimes the kind of run together and it’s a little hard to decide what’s this and what’s that.
"In your mind, if you just remember the similes and the metaphors, and remember metaphors can be types. Now a type is something that happens in the past that is a prefigure or a picture, or a prologue, for something that’s going to happen in the future. It can be an event; it can be a person.
“In Genesis 22 is one of the greatest pictures of the crucifixion of Christ found anywhere in the Bible. Abraham is told to take his son and sacrifice him. Abraham knew that his son was the promised seed so even if he killed him God would raise him up and Hebrews 11 says that he received him as from the dead. It’s all a picture.
“By the way, when Abraham comes down off that mountain, Isaac, in the text of Scripture, doesn’t come down with him and you don’t see Isaac again in the Scripture for two more chapters. There’s some wonderful typology going on there.
“The history’s real, but what you find in the Scripture is that God will put things in that will prefigure; they’re prologues, or metatypes of things that are going to come. Woven into the fabric of Scripture are things back here that prefigure future events that nobody could have known about at the time they were written.
“There’s no way Moses, when he wrote that down, or Abraham when he was doing it, could have understood that the events they were being orchestrated there were picturing the Crosswork of Christ and the resurrection and His ascension into heaven.
“The writer of the Book of Hebrews wasn’t simply Moses; it was someone who had knowledge of the future that couldn’t have been known because some of the stuff he writes we look back at now and we say, ‘Well we understand what that is: ‘God shall provide himself a lamb.’ Don’t you love the way it says that?
“When you come to II Corinthians 5:21 and you read ‘For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.’ You say, ‘Wow! That’s just a real kind of a whoa! How did Genesis know how to say it that way so it would match II Corinthians and Galatians 3?!’
“That’s because God wrote all that and the Author of Scripture was outside of time, not bound by time, so typology is not just a great demonstration of the authority and validity of Scripture but a type is an object or event that is used to prefigure another event—something coming in the future and consequently what you have to have is an antitype. It’s the fulfillment.”
Psalm 102: 6-7 says, “I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert. I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top.”
Jordan asks, “What’s He saying? At the end of verse 7 He spells it out. The psalmist is describing his loneliness; his isolation. And if you know anything about a pelican, owl or sparrow, you know they are isolated kind of birds.
“A pelican is a coastal bird who holds regurgitated fish in his pouch in the hot sun, and one you probably don’t want to be around that much as a result. A pelican lives sort of an isolated life.”
*****
In Isaiah 28 is a prophecy about the “last days” and Israel’s connection with the Antichrist. Verse 15 says, “Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves.”
Jordan says, “There’s that covenant with the Antichrist and the covenant with death and hell. If you compare that with Revelation 6 you can know where you are because with that fourth rider, hell and death follow him.
“Verse 21 says, ‘For the LORD shall rise up as in mount Perazim, he shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his work, his strange work; and bring to pass.’ Here comes the Second Coming of Christ. He’s going to arise.
"Notice how he says when the Lord comes it’s going to be ‘as in mount Perazim.’ That’s II Samuel 5 when David heard the goings in the tops of the mulberry trees and Isaiah says the Second Advent is going to be like what happened back there with David. So in II Samuel you’re reading a prophetic fore view of what’s going to happen when Christ comes at the Second Advent.
“ ‘He shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon.’ Now that’s Joshua 10. All those things back there in Samuel and Joshua; they’re not just old dead history. The reason they’re in your Bible is because they are pictures, prototypes, prologues for some things in the future. That simile helps you
understand that and see that.
“You have types, parables and allegories and emblems and symbols and all these things and sometimes the kind of run together and it’s a little hard to decide what’s this and what’s that.
"In your mind, if you just remember the similes and the metaphors, and remember metaphors can be types. Now a type is something that happens in the past that is a prefigure or a picture, or a prologue, for something that’s going to happen in the future. It can be an event; it can be a person.
“In Genesis 22 is one of the greatest pictures of the crucifixion of Christ found anywhere in the Bible. Abraham is told to take his son and sacrifice him. Abraham knew that his son was the promised seed so even if he killed him God would raise him up and Hebrews 11 says that he received him as from the dead. It’s all a picture.
“By the way, when Abraham comes down off that mountain, Isaac, in the text of Scripture, doesn’t come down with him and you don’t see Isaac again in the Scripture for two more chapters. There’s some wonderful typology going on there.
“The history’s real, but what you find in the Scripture is that God will put things in that will prefigure; they’re prologues, or metatypes of things that are going to come. Woven into the fabric of Scripture are things back here that prefigure future events that nobody could have known about at the time they were written.
“There’s no way Moses, when he wrote that down, or Abraham when he was doing it, could have understood that the events they were being orchestrated there were picturing the Crosswork of Christ and the resurrection and His ascension into heaven.
“The writer of the Book of Hebrews wasn’t simply Moses; it was someone who had knowledge of the future that couldn’t have been known because some of the stuff he writes we look back at now and we say, ‘Well we understand what that is: ‘God shall provide himself a lamb.’ Don’t you love the way it says that?
“When you come to II Corinthians 5:21 and you read ‘For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.’ You say, ‘Wow! That’s just a real kind of a whoa! How did Genesis know how to say it that way so it would match II Corinthians and Galatians 3?!’
“That’s because God wrote all that and the Author of Scripture was outside of time, not bound by time, so typology is not just a great demonstration of the authority and validity of Scripture but a type is an object or event that is used to prefigure another event—something coming in the future and consequently what you have to have is an antitype. It’s the fulfillment.”
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Headed for the Rooney bin
I guess Andy Rooney, 92, might be on his death bed tonight after being hospitalized for “serious complications” following minor surgery.
I was raised on 60 Minutes. It was a must-see every Sunday night for my grandmother and my father. The thing I always looked forward to was Andy Rooney at the end. I admit he had an influence on me.
Last month was Rooney’s final appearance on the show. As part of his parting words, he said, “There aren’t too many original thoughts in the world. A writer’s job is to tell the truth. I believe that if all the truth were known about everything in the world it would be a better place to live.”
This comes from a well-known atheist responsible for making the following comments:
“Why am I an atheist? I ask you: Why is anybody not an atheist? Everyone starts out being an atheist. No one is born with belief in anything. Infants are atheists until they are indoctrinated. I resent anyone pushing their religion on me. I don’t push my atheism on anybody else. Live and let live. Not many people practice that when it comes to religion.” Marian Christy, “Conversations: We make our own destiny”, Boston Globe, 30 May 1982
“I am an atheist… I don’t understand religion at all. I’m sure I’ll offend a lot of people by saying this, but I think it’s all nonsense.” From a speech at Tufts University, Nov. 18, 2004.
“I don’t differentiate much, except in degree, between people who believe in religion from those who believe in astrology, magic or the supernatural.”
“We all ought to understand we’re on our own. Believing in Santa Claus doesn’t do kids any harm for a few years but it isn’t smart for them to continue waiting all their lives for him to come down the chimney with something wonderful. Santa Claus and God are cousins.”
“I just wish this social institution [religion] wasn’t based on what appears to me to be a monumental hoax built on an accumulation of customs and myths directed toward proving something that isn’t true.”
“Christians talk as though goodness was their idea but good behavior doesn’t have any religious origin. Our prisons are filled with the devout.”
“I’d be more willing to accept religion, even if I didn’t believe it, if I thought it made people nicer to each other but I don’t think it does.”
(Editor's note: Writing up some more truth. Should have my latest article up by Friday)
I was raised on 60 Minutes. It was a must-see every Sunday night for my grandmother and my father. The thing I always looked forward to was Andy Rooney at the end. I admit he had an influence on me.
Last month was Rooney’s final appearance on the show. As part of his parting words, he said, “There aren’t too many original thoughts in the world. A writer’s job is to tell the truth. I believe that if all the truth were known about everything in the world it would be a better place to live.”
This comes from a well-known atheist responsible for making the following comments:
“Why am I an atheist? I ask you: Why is anybody not an atheist? Everyone starts out being an atheist. No one is born with belief in anything. Infants are atheists until they are indoctrinated. I resent anyone pushing their religion on me. I don’t push my atheism on anybody else. Live and let live. Not many people practice that when it comes to religion.” Marian Christy, “Conversations: We make our own destiny”, Boston Globe, 30 May 1982
“I am an atheist… I don’t understand religion at all. I’m sure I’ll offend a lot of people by saying this, but I think it’s all nonsense.” From a speech at Tufts University, Nov. 18, 2004.
“I don’t differentiate much, except in degree, between people who believe in religion from those who believe in astrology, magic or the supernatural.”
“We all ought to understand we’re on our own. Believing in Santa Claus doesn’t do kids any harm for a few years but it isn’t smart for them to continue waiting all their lives for him to come down the chimney with something wonderful. Santa Claus and God are cousins.”
“I just wish this social institution [religion] wasn’t based on what appears to me to be a monumental hoax built on an accumulation of customs and myths directed toward proving something that isn’t true.”
“Christians talk as though goodness was their idea but good behavior doesn’t have any religious origin. Our prisons are filled with the devout.”
“I’d be more willing to accept religion, even if I didn’t believe it, if I thought it made people nicer to each other but I don’t think it does.”
(Editor's note: Writing up some more truth. Should have my latest article up by Friday)
Saturday, October 22, 2011
"All in" sinking in
The vast majority of Christians (so-called) have bought into the idea that the Bible isn’t God’s word; it contains God’s word. A story like Noah is an allegory. It’s like Aesop’s Fables. You don’t believe a tortoise and a hare had a race and talked to each other, do you? Why, because it’s a story. It’s a myth or fable that has a meaning to it. And they say that’s what the Bible is.
Jordan warned a crowd in the so-called “Bible Belt” of this overwhelming reality even in the back hills of Tennessee: “Students of ancient literature will go back and say, ‘You know, that’s how you understand . . . Adam and Eve didn’t really have to exist. It’s the story involved in it.’ As soon as you do that, Jesus Christ didn’t really have to be raised from the dead. It’s the story; the symbolism. Now nothing you believe is real. Think about that. If Jesus Christ didn’t literally come up from the dead, you’re still in your sins. It is that important.”
He continued, “You know what Bill O’Reilly won’t say? He believes that Mary ascended into heaven-- was immaculately conceived without sin and ascended into heaven after Acts 1. He believes that because he’s a Jesuit-trained Roman Catholic. He doesn’t believe Adam and Eve or Noah are real, but he believes that hogwash about Mary. Write him and ask him. I did. I got an email back that said, ‘Bill is a believing Roman Catholic.’ That’s all they would say. That means he believes that and you know why? Because the pope tells him if he don’t he can’t be a Catholic. Pope doesn’t say you got to believe Adam and Eve are real but you go to believe that. That stuff’s nuts, folks!’
*****
“Jesus believed that God preserved His word intact in a form that was still His Word. It’s always been that way. If you look at I Timothy 5:18, it says, ‘For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward.’ The first quote is from Deuteronomy 25:5 but notice the next quote, ‘And, The labourer is worthy of his reward.’ Where’s that a quote from? Luke 10:7.
“You see what Paul just did? He called the Book of Luke as much Scripture as the Book of Deuteronomy. That means Luke had already written the Book of Luke. It had been copied, circulated, and identified as Scripture by the time Paul wrote I Timothy 5 and everybody knew it was and he wrote it down; it was common knowledge.
“II Peter 3:15 says, ‘And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you;, Peter says about Paul’s epistles.’ He considers Paul’s epistles Scripture. By the way, you think Peter and those other circumcision believers had the original copies of Paul’s epistles? How did they know they were Scripture?
“The books were collated in the order God wanted them to have, using His spiritual design of doctrine, reproof and correction. In Matthew, Mark, Luke and John He’s the king, He’s the servant, He’s man, He’s God. The Book of Acts is a transition. That didn’t just happen. Normally you’d put the books together in the chronological order they’re written. God the Holy Spirit wrote his word, worked through those prophets to have it collated and copied and then distributed all over--so much so that circumcision believers up in northern Turkey had it! I read that and I say, ‘Whoa!’
*****
Acts 1:9-11 reads, [9] And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight.
[10] And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel;
[11] Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.
“Now where they are in Acts 1 is the Mount of Olives,” says Jordan. “So if you go to Zechariah 14, it says, [3] Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.
[4] And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.
“The day of battle is when He comes back to destroy His enemies and the exact place He left from, the same Jesus, in like manner (literally, visibly, personally) will return and eventually return to the exact spot.
“That event, when He comes back in flaming fire, actually takes Him about two-and-a-half days before He gets to the place where He gets off the vehicle He’s flying and puts His feet on the ground. That’s where He puts His feet on the ground!
“Verse 9 says, ‘And the LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one LORD, and his name one.’ We’re talking about the time He comes to set up His kingdom on the earth and He receives the believers unto Himself, having destroyed the unbelievers. And He is now going to be king. He’s returned with His kingdom.
“These apostles, and the little flock they lead, are going to serve and reign with Him, and if you’ve been faithful back here, He’ll give them authority over cities over there. In John 14 He’s talking specifically to the apostles, taking them through the whole scope of what’s before them.
“Now watch Thomas not get it. The passage says, [5] Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?
[6] Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
[7] If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.
[8] Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.
[9] Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?
[10] Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
[11] Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works' sake.
*****
“Did you ever have a really bad day where you look back at and you just wish you kept your mouth shut? Well, there’s two guys here fixing to do that. And I bet if Tom and Phil had the opportunity to go back and just zip it, right here would have been a time in their life they would have liked to!
“Now they had better days. Every day wasn’t a bad day for them, but this was not a good one. He’s been teaching them but it hadn’t sunk in very well. Thomas. do you know thy way? You see, he’s still thinking about geography. He’s missed the point all together. Jesus said unto him, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No man come unto the Father but by me.’ Plain enough.
“We’re talking about a way that’s not a physical way; we’re talking about truth and life. We’re talking about something that’s in Him. We’re talking about getting to the Father.
“Phil says, ‘Wait a minute! I got a problem with this! Show us the Father and it sufficeth us. Oh, Lord, if you can show us the Father, ahh, that’s it!’
“Jesus said unto him, ‘Have I been so long with you and yet thou hast not known my Philip?’ Verse 6 is a great verse. I wonder when I read that what kind of inflection Jesus said that with. Did He say it like, ‘You guys are just wearing me out. Don’t you get anything?’ or did He say, ‘Wait a minute! I am the way! I am the truth! I am the life!’
“I’m not sure. I vacillate between the two and I’m almost overwhelmed with the desire to say He went, ‘Phil, Tom, you guys aren’t getting this. I’M the way, I’M the truth, I’M the life.’ More of an appeal. You can decide for yourself.
“It stands as one of those clear statements that emphatically indicate who the Lord Jesus Christ is. First there’s that definite article, but when He says, ‘I am,’ this is one of those I Am statements. You remember in chapter 5:58 he said, ‘I am THE bread of life’? ‘The only place you can get the substance of life is from me.’ ‘I’m the light of the world’ (John 8). THE light; there’s NO light, NO understanding, NO truth; there’s nothing outside of what you get from me. In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, Paul says.
“Then He said, ‘I’m the door.’ It’s through me you get to God. Then He said, ‘I’m the good shepherd.’ (John 10). Then He said, ‘I’m the resurrection and the life.’ Then He said, ‘I’m the true vine.’ (John 15)
“Those Jehovah titles, seven of them in the Book of John, match the seven Jehovah titles that are connected with the seven Jehovah feasts of Israel back in Leviticus 23. Just as you have those seven compound names, they match. There’s no doubt about what He’s saying when He says this and He pulls out those three things: I’m the way, because I’m going away and I’m preparing a place for you.
*****
“That term The Way, by the way, became sort of the shorthand description of the followers of Christ. Acts 16:17 says, ‘The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.’ That little expression the way.
"In chapter 18 when Apollos shows up at Ephesus, verse 26 says, ‘And he began to speak boldly in the synagogue: whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly.’
“That term way has picked up sort of a personification to it. Acts 24:14, when Paul is giving his defense before Felix, says, ‘But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets.’
“The way, the doctrine Paul followed, they called heresy. What Christ is talking about when He says, ‘I am the way,’ is, ‘I am the way to the Father. I’m the way to God.’ And that’s the whole issue about the way of God. The whole issue is how do you get to God? You get to Him through Jesus Christ, no other way.
“Hebrews 10:19-20 says, ‘Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,
[20] By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.’
“He’s talking about the new covenant. The new and living way is in contrast to the old ministration of death in the Mosaic law. What the Messiah’s going to do is He’s really going to get them to God. He’s bringing the disciples to a place where He’s going to talk to them about the new covenant.
“He’s talking to them, ‘Here’s the whole scope of what ought to keep your heart from being troubled. That’s what we’re doing. I’m going to go away and I’m going to come back and you’re going to reap benefits over here because I am the way; I’m the one who’s going to provide this new and living way that’s going to accomplish that. I’m the truth. Thy word is truth. I’m the life.’
“By the way, without Him there is no life. He’s the Creator. Everything in life is about Him. He said, ‘The words I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life.’ The real issue in the life there is He’s the resurrection and the life. He’s already told them that in chapter 11. He’s the way because He’s the truth. He’s the truth because He’s the life.
"The great proof of the fact that He is the truth and the way is that He’s the life. It all hinges on His resurrection. His resurrection says sin has been put away by the sacrifice of Himself. And now He appears the second time without sin to accomplish His purpose.”
Jordan warned a crowd in the so-called “Bible Belt” of this overwhelming reality even in the back hills of Tennessee: “Students of ancient literature will go back and say, ‘You know, that’s how you understand . . . Adam and Eve didn’t really have to exist. It’s the story involved in it.’ As soon as you do that, Jesus Christ didn’t really have to be raised from the dead. It’s the story; the symbolism. Now nothing you believe is real. Think about that. If Jesus Christ didn’t literally come up from the dead, you’re still in your sins. It is that important.”
He continued, “You know what Bill O’Reilly won’t say? He believes that Mary ascended into heaven-- was immaculately conceived without sin and ascended into heaven after Acts 1. He believes that because he’s a Jesuit-trained Roman Catholic. He doesn’t believe Adam and Eve or Noah are real, but he believes that hogwash about Mary. Write him and ask him. I did. I got an email back that said, ‘Bill is a believing Roman Catholic.’ That’s all they would say. That means he believes that and you know why? Because the pope tells him if he don’t he can’t be a Catholic. Pope doesn’t say you got to believe Adam and Eve are real but you go to believe that. That stuff’s nuts, folks!’
*****
“Jesus believed that God preserved His word intact in a form that was still His Word. It’s always been that way. If you look at I Timothy 5:18, it says, ‘For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward.’ The first quote is from Deuteronomy 25:5 but notice the next quote, ‘And, The labourer is worthy of his reward.’ Where’s that a quote from? Luke 10:7.
“You see what Paul just did? He called the Book of Luke as much Scripture as the Book of Deuteronomy. That means Luke had already written the Book of Luke. It had been copied, circulated, and identified as Scripture by the time Paul wrote I Timothy 5 and everybody knew it was and he wrote it down; it was common knowledge.
“II Peter 3:15 says, ‘And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you;, Peter says about Paul’s epistles.’ He considers Paul’s epistles Scripture. By the way, you think Peter and those other circumcision believers had the original copies of Paul’s epistles? How did they know they were Scripture?
“The books were collated in the order God wanted them to have, using His spiritual design of doctrine, reproof and correction. In Matthew, Mark, Luke and John He’s the king, He’s the servant, He’s man, He’s God. The Book of Acts is a transition. That didn’t just happen. Normally you’d put the books together in the chronological order they’re written. God the Holy Spirit wrote his word, worked through those prophets to have it collated and copied and then distributed all over--so much so that circumcision believers up in northern Turkey had it! I read that and I say, ‘Whoa!’
*****
Acts 1:9-11 reads, [9] And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight.
[10] And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel;
[11] Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.
“Now where they are in Acts 1 is the Mount of Olives,” says Jordan. “So if you go to Zechariah 14, it says, [3] Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.
[4] And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.
“The day of battle is when He comes back to destroy His enemies and the exact place He left from, the same Jesus, in like manner (literally, visibly, personally) will return and eventually return to the exact spot.
“That event, when He comes back in flaming fire, actually takes Him about two-and-a-half days before He gets to the place where He gets off the vehicle He’s flying and puts His feet on the ground. That’s where He puts His feet on the ground!
“Verse 9 says, ‘And the LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one LORD, and his name one.’ We’re talking about the time He comes to set up His kingdom on the earth and He receives the believers unto Himself, having destroyed the unbelievers. And He is now going to be king. He’s returned with His kingdom.
“These apostles, and the little flock they lead, are going to serve and reign with Him, and if you’ve been faithful back here, He’ll give them authority over cities over there. In John 14 He’s talking specifically to the apostles, taking them through the whole scope of what’s before them.
“Now watch Thomas not get it. The passage says, [5] Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?
[6] Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
[7] If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.
[8] Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.
[9] Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?
[10] Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
[11] Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works' sake.
*****
“Did you ever have a really bad day where you look back at and you just wish you kept your mouth shut? Well, there’s two guys here fixing to do that. And I bet if Tom and Phil had the opportunity to go back and just zip it, right here would have been a time in their life they would have liked to!
“Now they had better days. Every day wasn’t a bad day for them, but this was not a good one. He’s been teaching them but it hadn’t sunk in very well. Thomas. do you know thy way? You see, he’s still thinking about geography. He’s missed the point all together. Jesus said unto him, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No man come unto the Father but by me.’ Plain enough.
“We’re talking about a way that’s not a physical way; we’re talking about truth and life. We’re talking about something that’s in Him. We’re talking about getting to the Father.
“Phil says, ‘Wait a minute! I got a problem with this! Show us the Father and it sufficeth us. Oh, Lord, if you can show us the Father, ahh, that’s it!’
“Jesus said unto him, ‘Have I been so long with you and yet thou hast not known my Philip?’ Verse 6 is a great verse. I wonder when I read that what kind of inflection Jesus said that with. Did He say it like, ‘You guys are just wearing me out. Don’t you get anything?’ or did He say, ‘Wait a minute! I am the way! I am the truth! I am the life!’
“I’m not sure. I vacillate between the two and I’m almost overwhelmed with the desire to say He went, ‘Phil, Tom, you guys aren’t getting this. I’M the way, I’M the truth, I’M the life.’ More of an appeal. You can decide for yourself.
“It stands as one of those clear statements that emphatically indicate who the Lord Jesus Christ is. First there’s that definite article, but when He says, ‘I am,’ this is one of those I Am statements. You remember in chapter 5:58 he said, ‘I am THE bread of life’? ‘The only place you can get the substance of life is from me.’ ‘I’m the light of the world’ (John 8). THE light; there’s NO light, NO understanding, NO truth; there’s nothing outside of what you get from me. In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, Paul says.
“Then He said, ‘I’m the door.’ It’s through me you get to God. Then He said, ‘I’m the good shepherd.’ (John 10). Then He said, ‘I’m the resurrection and the life.’ Then He said, ‘I’m the true vine.’ (John 15)
“Those Jehovah titles, seven of them in the Book of John, match the seven Jehovah titles that are connected with the seven Jehovah feasts of Israel back in Leviticus 23. Just as you have those seven compound names, they match. There’s no doubt about what He’s saying when He says this and He pulls out those three things: I’m the way, because I’m going away and I’m preparing a place for you.
*****
“That term The Way, by the way, became sort of the shorthand description of the followers of Christ. Acts 16:17 says, ‘The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.’ That little expression the way.
"In chapter 18 when Apollos shows up at Ephesus, verse 26 says, ‘And he began to speak boldly in the synagogue: whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly.’
“That term way has picked up sort of a personification to it. Acts 24:14, when Paul is giving his defense before Felix, says, ‘But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets.’
“The way, the doctrine Paul followed, they called heresy. What Christ is talking about when He says, ‘I am the way,’ is, ‘I am the way to the Father. I’m the way to God.’ And that’s the whole issue about the way of God. The whole issue is how do you get to God? You get to Him through Jesus Christ, no other way.
“Hebrews 10:19-20 says, ‘Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,
[20] By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.’
“He’s talking about the new covenant. The new and living way is in contrast to the old ministration of death in the Mosaic law. What the Messiah’s going to do is He’s really going to get them to God. He’s bringing the disciples to a place where He’s going to talk to them about the new covenant.
“He’s talking to them, ‘Here’s the whole scope of what ought to keep your heart from being troubled. That’s what we’re doing. I’m going to go away and I’m going to come back and you’re going to reap benefits over here because I am the way; I’m the one who’s going to provide this new and living way that’s going to accomplish that. I’m the truth. Thy word is truth. I’m the life.’
“By the way, without Him there is no life. He’s the Creator. Everything in life is about Him. He said, ‘The words I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life.’ The real issue in the life there is He’s the resurrection and the life. He’s already told them that in chapter 11. He’s the way because He’s the truth. He’s the truth because He’s the life.
"The great proof of the fact that He is the truth and the way is that He’s the life. It all hinges on His resurrection. His resurrection says sin has been put away by the sacrifice of Himself. And now He appears the second time without sin to accomplish His purpose.”
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Sealed and delivered
You have six seals in Revelation 6 and then you skip over to chapter 8 where the seventh seal opens up and seven trumpets come out.
The question is why didn’t they just put the seventh seal at the beginning of chapter 7?
The last verse in chapter 6 asks, “For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?”
Jordan says, “What you have in chapter 7 is a little parenthesis that answers that question. In Isaiah 33 is the question, ‘Who can survive the everlasting burning?’ Who’s gonna make it through the tribulation? Who in the world is going to be able to make it through this tremendous time which there’s never been another like in all the earth?!
“Well, here’s some people in Revelation 7 who are gonna make it through. The chapter starts out, [1] And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.
[2] And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God: and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea,
[3] Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.
[4] And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel.’
“So the first thing you know is the 144,000 are going to abide the day of His wrath. Verse 9 says, ‘After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;. Here’s the throne of god in heaven.’
“Verse 11 says, ‘And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God,’
"From chapter 4, we know that’s in the third heaven on the glassy sea.”
*****
Acts 2:5-6 reads, ‘5] And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven.
[6] Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.’
“Israel had been scattered among every nation under heaven. Go down to verse 39: ‘For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.’
“Daniel 9:7 uses that expression ‘them that are afar off’ to describe Israel in captivity. They’ve been carried out of the land and spread among every kindred tongue, tribe and nation. That’s why they have to speak in so many different tongues at Pentecost. They have all these Jews whose native tongue from their native lands but it’s talking about Israelis.
“You say, ‘Where did they come from?’ They were the fruit of the ministry of the 144,000. The 144,000 are sealed in the first half of the 70th week. In the middle of week, they’re caught up. It’s different and yet they’re still the sons of Abraham.
“So when I read this passage in Revelation 7, my impression is this is not talking about Gentiles, as is commonly taught.
“When you read the Book of Revelation, you have to be conscious of the fact that you’re not reading something that starts at the beginning of the tribulation and works all the way to the end. Every now and then you’ll come along and have to loop back and catch up something. Sometimes you’ll have a passage like chapter 7 that will talk about the first half of the week, and then talk about the second half of the week, in one chapter, right in the middle of talking about the 6th and 7th seal.
“You have to be careful when reading it to put it where it fits. John starts out chapter 14 with, “And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads.’
“The 144,000 at this point are not on the earth. They’re in the third heaven with the Father. Rev. 12:5 says, ‘And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.’ People say that’s Jesus but the problem with it being Jesus is the Book of the Revelation is prophesying about the future, and when John wrote it, the coming of Christ was past.
“What happens in the middle of the 70th week is that man child is caught up to God. That man child in Rev. 12 is the 144,000.
“Rev. 7:13 says, ‘And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’
“White linen is described later on in Revelation as the righteousness of the saints. This crowd here are delivered out of the Great Tribulation into the Kingdom. Chapter 7 says, ‘For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. (Editor’s note: This was my sister’s favorite single verse in the whole Bible)
“That’s a reference to resurrection. This is a crowd that comes out of the tribulation into the kingdom who are given a special status of ministering in that millennial temple and they literally dwell there in that temple with the Savior.
“When He talks about the mansions, what He’s talking about is they’re going to rule and reign with Him in that kingdom in a very special status. They’re going to be the temple servants in that millennial temple--the overcomers, that Little Flock that He’s talking to, and especially its leaders.”
The question is why didn’t they just put the seventh seal at the beginning of chapter 7?
The last verse in chapter 6 asks, “For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?”
Jordan says, “What you have in chapter 7 is a little parenthesis that answers that question. In Isaiah 33 is the question, ‘Who can survive the everlasting burning?’ Who’s gonna make it through the tribulation? Who in the world is going to be able to make it through this tremendous time which there’s never been another like in all the earth?!
“Well, here’s some people in Revelation 7 who are gonna make it through. The chapter starts out, [1] And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.
[2] And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God: and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea,
[3] Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.
[4] And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel.’
“So the first thing you know is the 144,000 are going to abide the day of His wrath. Verse 9 says, ‘After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;. Here’s the throne of god in heaven.’
“Verse 11 says, ‘And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God,’
"From chapter 4, we know that’s in the third heaven on the glassy sea.”
*****
Acts 2:5-6 reads, ‘5] And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven.
[6] Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.’
“Israel had been scattered among every nation under heaven. Go down to verse 39: ‘For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.’
“Daniel 9:7 uses that expression ‘them that are afar off’ to describe Israel in captivity. They’ve been carried out of the land and spread among every kindred tongue, tribe and nation. That’s why they have to speak in so many different tongues at Pentecost. They have all these Jews whose native tongue from their native lands but it’s talking about Israelis.
“You say, ‘Where did they come from?’ They were the fruit of the ministry of the 144,000. The 144,000 are sealed in the first half of the 70th week. In the middle of week, they’re caught up. It’s different and yet they’re still the sons of Abraham.
“So when I read this passage in Revelation 7, my impression is this is not talking about Gentiles, as is commonly taught.
“When you read the Book of Revelation, you have to be conscious of the fact that you’re not reading something that starts at the beginning of the tribulation and works all the way to the end. Every now and then you’ll come along and have to loop back and catch up something. Sometimes you’ll have a passage like chapter 7 that will talk about the first half of the week, and then talk about the second half of the week, in one chapter, right in the middle of talking about the 6th and 7th seal.
“You have to be careful when reading it to put it where it fits. John starts out chapter 14 with, “And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads.’
“The 144,000 at this point are not on the earth. They’re in the third heaven with the Father. Rev. 12:5 says, ‘And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.’ People say that’s Jesus but the problem with it being Jesus is the Book of the Revelation is prophesying about the future, and when John wrote it, the coming of Christ was past.
“What happens in the middle of the 70th week is that man child is caught up to God. That man child in Rev. 12 is the 144,000.
“Rev. 7:13 says, ‘And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’
“White linen is described later on in Revelation as the righteousness of the saints. This crowd here are delivered out of the Great Tribulation into the Kingdom. Chapter 7 says, ‘For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. (Editor’s note: This was my sister’s favorite single verse in the whole Bible)
“That’s a reference to resurrection. This is a crowd that comes out of the tribulation into the kingdom who are given a special status of ministering in that millennial temple and they literally dwell there in that temple with the Savior.
“When He talks about the mansions, what He’s talking about is they’re going to rule and reign with Him in that kingdom in a very special status. They’re going to be the temple servants in that millennial temple--the overcomers, that Little Flock that He’s talking to, and especially its leaders.”
Monday, October 17, 2011
The best is yet to come
When Jesus Christ says in John 14, “I will come again,” there’s the knowledge of where He’s headed the very next day. At the Cross, through the battle and conquest that takes place at Calvary, He’s going to win all authority in heaven and earth.
Jordan says, “He’s now got every right to assign every position of governmental authority; every position of spiritual acceptance—He’s going to win that right at the Cross.
“By the way, all of the parables that Jesus teaches have in view the delay of the kingdom. They have in view setting the disciples understanding that there’s the suffering of Christ and there’s the glory that follows.
“The kingdom doesn’t come until Jesus returns with it, by the way. We’re not in the kingdom today. People say, ‘Well, the kingdom of God is ruling today.’ Wouldn’t it be a strange thing if this is the best it gets?!
“The doctrine of Preterism is the basic covenant Calvinistic idea. Amillennialism. It says all the prophecies were filled in 70 AD. This is the Christian worldview:
‘You need to reclaim America, reestablish the kingdom out here in the world and if you just teach people to obey God’s laws you’ll have a society of perfection.’
“Problem with that is everybody that every tried to keep God’s laws did what? The same thing John Calvin did when he tried to turn Geneva into a spiritual city by enforcing the Decalogue and the laws of God in the city. He wound up killing a guy, burning him at the stake as a heretic for believing what I believe. He’d have burned me at the stake!”
Jordan says, “He’s now got every right to assign every position of governmental authority; every position of spiritual acceptance—He’s going to win that right at the Cross.
“By the way, all of the parables that Jesus teaches have in view the delay of the kingdom. They have in view setting the disciples understanding that there’s the suffering of Christ and there’s the glory that follows.
“The kingdom doesn’t come until Jesus returns with it, by the way. We’re not in the kingdom today. People say, ‘Well, the kingdom of God is ruling today.’ Wouldn’t it be a strange thing if this is the best it gets?!
“The doctrine of Preterism is the basic covenant Calvinistic idea. Amillennialism. It says all the prophecies were filled in 70 AD. This is the Christian worldview:
‘You need to reclaim America, reestablish the kingdom out here in the world and if you just teach people to obey God’s laws you’ll have a society of perfection.’
“Problem with that is everybody that every tried to keep God’s laws did what? The same thing John Calvin did when he tried to turn Geneva into a spiritual city by enforcing the Decalogue and the laws of God in the city. He wound up killing a guy, burning him at the stake as a heretic for believing what I believe. He’d have burned me at the stake!”
Sunday, October 16, 2011
In the house
Popular Christian author Gene Edwards once argued that “the worst thing that ever happened to the Body of Christ” was the order in which the books of the New Testament appear.
“He said they should have been in the chronological order in which they were written,” recalls Jordan. “The difficulty with that is you can’t figure out when some of them were written. It’s much better to understand that when God put His word together, He collated the books and put them as they are.
"He didn’t wait until the 3rd and 4th centuries for a bunch of mossy-backed, apostate, spiritually dead church fathers and a council to do it. He had it done for you before the 1st Century was over. Every book in the New Testament was written, collated together and put together in book form before 70 AD and I use that year because that’s a date everybody knows about.”
*****
The word ‘trinity’ is not a Bible term but it’s certainly a Bible doctrine. Jordan explains, “If you don’t have a god you don’t have the ability to make decisions with moral certainty. You have to have more than a god because those doctors and those people out in the world have a god—it’s their own intellect. You have to have a triune god. Being monotheistic is not enough. If you have a one god and you don’t have the trinity, without the trinity you have no way to validate the authority and the truthfulness of the god you’re trusting. You just have his word for it.
“When you have a trinity you have three persons in the godhead who have observed and watched each other for eternity and they can each vouch-safe for the other’s integrity. There’s something about the godhead and the trinity—that’s a truth in Scripture that’s important. Fundamental to who God is the fact He’s a triune God. He stamped His triune image over all of creation, including you. You’re a tri-partide person and all of Creation has that image. There’s integrity in the godhead in that.
"By the way, we’re not just theo-centric, we’re Christ-centric. It isn’t enough to say, ‘I believe in God,’ because the Muslims and all kind of other people believe in god. It’s that we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. We know the God of creation through Him.”
*****
There are certain Bible passages many people who don’t know much of anything else about the Bible are familiar with. Classic examples include, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” and “God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son.”
Another big one is from John 14: “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
[3] And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”
“The reason people know these ones is they go to funerals and hear them quoted,” says Jordan. “You hear Psalm 23 and John 14 and occasionally you’ll hear John 3:16.”
*****
Those four simple words, “I will come again,” is the major message of the Bible. Jordan says, “There’s more information in the Bible about the Second Coming of Christ than any other single theme in all of the Bible. The very last thing it says at the end of the whole Book in Revelation 22 is, ‘Even so, come, Lord Jesus.’
“That’s the reality of God’s intention to dwell in His creation. He didn’t create the universe just as a sandbox for us to play in, or a showplace to watch and see what we decide to do—He created the universe as place for Him to live; for Him to allow us to enjoy fellowship with Him. For Him to dwell among us. That’s what that word Immanuel means: ‘God with us.’
“The negative side of His coming is the flaming fire to do away with his enemies and evil and recompense those deserving of it, but in this passage in John 14 He’s talking about coming for His people, His saints.
“When Christ says He goes to prepare a place for you, He’s not saying, ‘I’m going to heaven to build a bunch of houses for you.’
“We sing that hillbilly song, ‘Just give me a cabin in the corner of glory land,’ and somebody says, ‘No, I want a mansion over the hilltop!’ which is from another hillbilly song. One of my favorite old gospel songs was, ‘And I shall go to dwell on Zion’s hill.’
“But there’s a lot of stuff in the hymn book that isn’t good doctrine. When He says, ‘I go to prepare a place for you,’ He’s not talking about going to heaven and working for 2,000 years on building you a house to live in, like another song goes. I know that’s sentimentalism but it’s unscriptural sentimentalism that turns into superstition.
“Think about how foolish that. The second person of the godhead could step out on the platform of nothing, speak a word and a universe is created. Why would He need two thousand years to create a home for you?! The sentimentalism is just kind of foolish. People argue, ‘Yeah but, He’s designing an intricate . . . ’
“How could He design anything more intricate than the creation you live in? Study the atom; study the science of our creation. The deeper scientists are able to dig into creation, or biologists into biology creation, the more complicated it becomes. It doesn’t get simpler. And there’s that creative complexity that’s designed in creation.
“When He says ‘in my father’s house are many mansions,’ He’s talking to His apostles about the temple that He’s going to build in the kingdom and the fact there’s a group of people who are going to dwell with Him in that temple—these people who come out of the Great Tribulation and go to this temple and serve there."
*****
If you go back to John 11 you see the word ‘place’ is not always used in a geographic sense. It can be used in a moral sense or, in this case, a spiritual sense.
John 11:47-48 says, “Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles.
[48] If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.”
Jordan explains, “They’re not talking about how they’re going to come down and kick us out of ‘our house.’ They’re talking about their position of rulership in the nation Israel. So when Christ is talking in John 14, He’s using that word place in that kind of idea of an idea: ‘I’m going to go create a position for you,’ and the fact He’s not talking about a physical location is demonstrated in the verses that follow.”
*****
The temple the apostles are seeing is called “my house” in Ezekiel 43-45.
“So He’s going to restore that temple in the kingdom,” says Jordan. “When it says ‘in my father’s house,’ He’s talking about the temple He’s going to bring down and set up on the earth in the kingdom. He says there are many mansions in that house. The reason he says that, if you look at Ezekiel 40, is because that’s exactly what’s in the house.
“Ezekiel 40:2-3 says, ‘In the visions of God brought he me into the land of Israel, and set me upon a very high mountain, by which was as the frame of a city on the south.
[3] And he brought me thither, and, behold, there was a man, whose appearance was like the appearance of brass, with a line of flax in his hand, and a measuring reed; and he stood in the gate.’
“The frame of the city is that thing Psalm 104 talks about; the beams of His chamber being laid. But at this point, after their Second Advent, those beams are now exposed. The city hasn’t come down yet but the foundation is laid out for them to get there.
“Ezekiel begins to measure the environs there and lay out the measuring line and the measurements. Verse 9 says, ‘Then measured he the porch of the gate, eight cubits; and the posts thereof, two cubits; and the porch of the gate was inward. And the little chambers of the gate eastward were three on this side, and three on that side; they three were of one measure: and the posts had one measure on this side and on that side.’
“Notice that concept about the little chamber? You go down through this passage and you find there’s all kind of little chambers being built in this house and these chambers are little cubicles built into the wall.
“You can see it in the tabernacle of Solomon in I Kings 6. The people who ministered in the temple had their living quarters there. I Kings 6:5 says, ‘And against the wall of the house he built chambers round about, against the walls of the house round about, both of the temple and of the oracle: and he made chambers round about.’
“You remember John the Baptist’s daddy, Zacharias, in Luke 1, he lived off in another town and had to go up to Jerusalem (when his course came) to serve in the temple for that week? David divided the priesthood up so every tribe of the two sons of Levi went twice a year to Jerusalem to work for a week in the temple. They’d come in on a Sabbath and leave the next Sabbath in the order of their course.
“Well, they didn’t have to go rent rooms at the Motel 6 or at the downtown Hilton while they were there. They had rooms provided for them in the temple—those little chambers. They were not chambers like over at the Motel 6. These things were decorated with cherubim and gold. They were mansions, gorgeous places befitting the temple of the God of all the earth; the God of Israel.
“When they rebuild that temple in the Millennium they’re going to have those chambers in there. They’re going to have all these dwelling places. . . A mansion is where a ruler lives. Well, the 12 apostles are going to be judging the 12 tribes of Israel.”
(Editor’s note: To be continued…”)
“He said they should have been in the chronological order in which they were written,” recalls Jordan. “The difficulty with that is you can’t figure out when some of them were written. It’s much better to understand that when God put His word together, He collated the books and put them as they are.
"He didn’t wait until the 3rd and 4th centuries for a bunch of mossy-backed, apostate, spiritually dead church fathers and a council to do it. He had it done for you before the 1st Century was over. Every book in the New Testament was written, collated together and put together in book form before 70 AD and I use that year because that’s a date everybody knows about.”
*****
The word ‘trinity’ is not a Bible term but it’s certainly a Bible doctrine. Jordan explains, “If you don’t have a god you don’t have the ability to make decisions with moral certainty. You have to have more than a god because those doctors and those people out in the world have a god—it’s their own intellect. You have to have a triune god. Being monotheistic is not enough. If you have a one god and you don’t have the trinity, without the trinity you have no way to validate the authority and the truthfulness of the god you’re trusting. You just have his word for it.
“When you have a trinity you have three persons in the godhead who have observed and watched each other for eternity and they can each vouch-safe for the other’s integrity. There’s something about the godhead and the trinity—that’s a truth in Scripture that’s important. Fundamental to who God is the fact He’s a triune God. He stamped His triune image over all of creation, including you. You’re a tri-partide person and all of Creation has that image. There’s integrity in the godhead in that.
"By the way, we’re not just theo-centric, we’re Christ-centric. It isn’t enough to say, ‘I believe in God,’ because the Muslims and all kind of other people believe in god. It’s that we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. We know the God of creation through Him.”
*****
There are certain Bible passages many people who don’t know much of anything else about the Bible are familiar with. Classic examples include, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” and “God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son.”
Another big one is from John 14: “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
[3] And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”
“The reason people know these ones is they go to funerals and hear them quoted,” says Jordan. “You hear Psalm 23 and John 14 and occasionally you’ll hear John 3:16.”
*****
Those four simple words, “I will come again,” is the major message of the Bible. Jordan says, “There’s more information in the Bible about the Second Coming of Christ than any other single theme in all of the Bible. The very last thing it says at the end of the whole Book in Revelation 22 is, ‘Even so, come, Lord Jesus.’
“That’s the reality of God’s intention to dwell in His creation. He didn’t create the universe just as a sandbox for us to play in, or a showplace to watch and see what we decide to do—He created the universe as place for Him to live; for Him to allow us to enjoy fellowship with Him. For Him to dwell among us. That’s what that word Immanuel means: ‘God with us.’
“The negative side of His coming is the flaming fire to do away with his enemies and evil and recompense those deserving of it, but in this passage in John 14 He’s talking about coming for His people, His saints.
“When Christ says He goes to prepare a place for you, He’s not saying, ‘I’m going to heaven to build a bunch of houses for you.’
“We sing that hillbilly song, ‘Just give me a cabin in the corner of glory land,’ and somebody says, ‘No, I want a mansion over the hilltop!’ which is from another hillbilly song. One of my favorite old gospel songs was, ‘And I shall go to dwell on Zion’s hill.’
“But there’s a lot of stuff in the hymn book that isn’t good doctrine. When He says, ‘I go to prepare a place for you,’ He’s not talking about going to heaven and working for 2,000 years on building you a house to live in, like another song goes. I know that’s sentimentalism but it’s unscriptural sentimentalism that turns into superstition.
“Think about how foolish that. The second person of the godhead could step out on the platform of nothing, speak a word and a universe is created. Why would He need two thousand years to create a home for you?! The sentimentalism is just kind of foolish. People argue, ‘Yeah but, He’s designing an intricate . . . ’
“How could He design anything more intricate than the creation you live in? Study the atom; study the science of our creation. The deeper scientists are able to dig into creation, or biologists into biology creation, the more complicated it becomes. It doesn’t get simpler. And there’s that creative complexity that’s designed in creation.
“When He says ‘in my father’s house are many mansions,’ He’s talking to His apostles about the temple that He’s going to build in the kingdom and the fact there’s a group of people who are going to dwell with Him in that temple—these people who come out of the Great Tribulation and go to this temple and serve there."
*****
If you go back to John 11 you see the word ‘place’ is not always used in a geographic sense. It can be used in a moral sense or, in this case, a spiritual sense.
John 11:47-48 says, “Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles.
[48] If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.”
Jordan explains, “They’re not talking about how they’re going to come down and kick us out of ‘our house.’ They’re talking about their position of rulership in the nation Israel. So when Christ is talking in John 14, He’s using that word place in that kind of idea of an idea: ‘I’m going to go create a position for you,’ and the fact He’s not talking about a physical location is demonstrated in the verses that follow.”
*****
The temple the apostles are seeing is called “my house” in Ezekiel 43-45.
“So He’s going to restore that temple in the kingdom,” says Jordan. “When it says ‘in my father’s house,’ He’s talking about the temple He’s going to bring down and set up on the earth in the kingdom. He says there are many mansions in that house. The reason he says that, if you look at Ezekiel 40, is because that’s exactly what’s in the house.
“Ezekiel 40:2-3 says, ‘In the visions of God brought he me into the land of Israel, and set me upon a very high mountain, by which was as the frame of a city on the south.
[3] And he brought me thither, and, behold, there was a man, whose appearance was like the appearance of brass, with a line of flax in his hand, and a measuring reed; and he stood in the gate.’
“The frame of the city is that thing Psalm 104 talks about; the beams of His chamber being laid. But at this point, after their Second Advent, those beams are now exposed. The city hasn’t come down yet but the foundation is laid out for them to get there.
“Ezekiel begins to measure the environs there and lay out the measuring line and the measurements. Verse 9 says, ‘Then measured he the porch of the gate, eight cubits; and the posts thereof, two cubits; and the porch of the gate was inward. And the little chambers of the gate eastward were three on this side, and three on that side; they three were of one measure: and the posts had one measure on this side and on that side.’
“Notice that concept about the little chamber? You go down through this passage and you find there’s all kind of little chambers being built in this house and these chambers are little cubicles built into the wall.
“You can see it in the tabernacle of Solomon in I Kings 6. The people who ministered in the temple had their living quarters there. I Kings 6:5 says, ‘And against the wall of the house he built chambers round about, against the walls of the house round about, both of the temple and of the oracle: and he made chambers round about.’
“You remember John the Baptist’s daddy, Zacharias, in Luke 1, he lived off in another town and had to go up to Jerusalem (when his course came) to serve in the temple for that week? David divided the priesthood up so every tribe of the two sons of Levi went twice a year to Jerusalem to work for a week in the temple. They’d come in on a Sabbath and leave the next Sabbath in the order of their course.
“Well, they didn’t have to go rent rooms at the Motel 6 or at the downtown Hilton while they were there. They had rooms provided for them in the temple—those little chambers. They were not chambers like over at the Motel 6. These things were decorated with cherubim and gold. They were mansions, gorgeous places befitting the temple of the God of all the earth; the God of Israel.
“When they rebuild that temple in the Millennium they’re going to have those chambers in there. They’re going to have all these dwelling places. . . A mansion is where a ruler lives. Well, the 12 apostles are going to be judging the 12 tribes of Israel.”
(Editor’s note: To be continued…”)
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Future takeovers
God asks Job, “Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?”
Jordan explains, “He said, ‘Job, you can’t even get a dumb old animal to plow for you unless you’re standing there with a whip. And then he don’t want to do it. You can’t trust him just to go do it.’
“If Job was to have dominion over the beast of the field shouldn’t he be able to do what those questions are asking him if he can do? You see, what God says is, ‘You’re supposed to be out here in Creation as The Man! Rule it! But you ain’t got any idea what’s going on; you can’t explain why the wind blows. You can’t even get a unicorn to plow for you. There’s something wrong, Job. There’s something wrong with you.’
“You see, there’s something wrong, not just in the heavens, but there’s something wrong with man’s part in it. And man isn’t out there doing his part in the restoration process.”
*****
Job 40 starts, “Moreover the LORD answered Job, and said,
[2] Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him? he that reproveth God, let him answer it."
Jordan explains, “God says, ‘You’re so smart, Job, you think you know better than I do what to do. You don’t think I know what I’m doing. All right, smarty boy, tell me what to do. Here’s Creation, I made it to dwell in it, then there’s a problem and I broke it up. You’re not doing your job but you’re running off at the mouth telling me you know better than I do. Speak up!’
“Job says, ‘Lord, I ain’t saying a word.’ Is that a good idea or not? God is then going to describe to Job what it’s going to take to deal with the enemy; what it’s going to take to deliver the earth and man from Satan.
“Here’s what it’s going to take: ‘Hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him?
[10] Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.
[11] Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.
[12] Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.
[13] Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.
[14] Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.’
‘When you can do those things, Job, come talk to me; then you can complain. Until then, hide and watch.’
“You see, Job is suffering because God’s got a plan to do something but it’s not there yet and they’re still here and, ‘Job, until you can do what I can do, you just hide and watch. And if you’re suffering then you’re suffering according to the will of God. You’re suffering because you’re at a time in my program when suffering’s gonna have to be there.’
“You see, that’s what suffering according to the will of God is. It isn’t that God just wants you to suffer. It’s that God’s doing something; He’s got this big plan going on and you just happened to be a time when this is what’s going on. So get on with what God’s doing and forget the rest! The patience of Job is to wait for the end.”
*****
Jesus prays to the father in John 17:12, “While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.”
The initials of the son of perdition is sop, points out Jordan, making the connection to John 13:26-27: “Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.
[27] And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly.”
Jordan says, “That’s a play on words in the English text. English is a fascinating language in some of those ways. Why did He choose Judas? ‘That the scripture might be fulfilled.’ Christ wasn’t deceived; Judas didn’t trick Him. Christ full well knew what He was doing and chose Him in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled ‘that my old familiar friend will lift up his heel against me.’
“He literally, in order to fulfill the Scripture, was willing to have one brought into His companionship; one who would sit right at His left hand at this Last Supper and be a familiar friend turned into a familiar fiend. The Lord was willing to embrace him and allow that kind of heartache; that kind of tragedy to take place in His life.
“Notice in II Thess. 2:8 this son of perdition has the title of Wicked with a capital W. It’s a proper name for him. The career of the Antichrist is literally in two sections. First, he’s the man of sin and then he becomes the son of perdition.”
*****
In Revelation 11, in the midst of the 70th week, the Antichrist suffers a deadly wound and is assassinated but then that deadly wound is healed.
“He’s resurrected, as it were,” explains Jordan. “In connection with that is Rev. 11:7: ‘And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.’
“Part of hell is a compartment called the bottomless pit and it’s part of the Underworld. Hell has a torment section. It had a paradise section that was moved up to the third heaven. The Greek word is tartares, which is the section where the angels are kept in chains of darkness reserved for the great white throne judgment. Then there are other spirit creatures that are in the bottomless pit.
“The Antichrist comes out of the bottomless pit. The beast, or the Antichrist, at some point becomes inhabited by—he has Satan enter into him in the person of a creature from the bottomless pit. The mechanics of how that takes place is that in the middle of the week, the man of sin (a human like you and me who is under the control of the satanic policy of evil) . . .
“Just like Jesus Christ is called ‘the Son of man’ and He’s the personification of what God intends humanity to be, the son of perdition becomes the personification of what Satan’s man is going to be.
“But in the midst of that 70th week, he becomes something more than just Satan’s man. He doesn’t become Satan incarnate but he becomes one of these evil spirits incarnate. And the process that that goes through is the guy, the son of man, dies. A lost man’s soul goes down to hell.
“His body is laid there and then an animating spirit out of the bottomless pit comes up, takes his body, reanimates it, and now he’s no longer the man of sin; he’s transformed into the son of perdition.
“Rev. 9:2-3 says, ‘And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.’
“All these demonic creatures come out and they have a king over them. They’re a hairy-looking bunch of dudes; they’re not insect locust because in Proverbs it says the locust, talking about the insect world, don’t have a king over them.
“The king over these unclean demonic spirits is the angel of the bottomless pit whose name, according to Rev. 9:11 says, ‘And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.’
“Those two names adds up to mean ‘the destroyer.’ He comes out and has these spirits follow him. The phenomenon is that in that 70th week, there are creatures from the Underworld, from the infernal world, who are going to be released upon the earth to torment men and lead in a deception of them.”
*****
Daniel 2:43 says, “And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.”
Jordan says, “That’s probably one of the two or three weirdest verses in the book of Daniel. That verse opens up a can of worms that, when you start going down the road with it, you have people thinking you been reading Mad Magazine and Wired magazine and having bad nightmares. Because there are some really strange things here, but the more you study them the more you think they aren’t quite so strange.
“Clay represents man. Got to the potter’s house in Jeremiah 18 and Israel is described as ‘the clay in the potter’s hands.’ Now notice in Genesis 6:4 there were giants before and AFTER the Flood. The verse says, ‘There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.’
“The phenomenon that produced them came before the Flood and then again after the Flood. The women didn’t voluntarily go; they’re abducted. And they’re abducted, not with mutual consent, but with experimental purposes. And these human women we’re abducted by these angelic creatures and there is a cross-breeding that goes on that results in them bearing children who became giants and men of enhanced intelligence.
“There’s a process of genetic engineering. The Frankenstein book was written as a parody on the mechanization of culture. In Arnold’s movie ‘The Terminator,’ machines are taking over. This thinking has always been in the back of people’s minds about the machine age coming, but in our day . . .
"There are actually symposiums taking place this year where they’re talking about taking and enhancing genetic structure and genetic engineering with Nano machinery that would go in and work at a molecular level and one of the ethical questions is, ‘Well, is it still human, and if it isn’t, what is it?’
“But these dudes back here had all that stuff figured out! When he talks about that in Gen. 6, look at Daniel 2:43 about what it said. If they mingle themselves WITH the seed of men, the implication is they are not men themselves. These creatures that are not man are going to mingle with man and seek to reproduce a creature that functions as man.
“Deut. 3:11 says, ‘For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man.’
“This is one of the last giants that hasn’t been killed; there are some that make it on all the way through to David and there’s six of them still alive at the time David kills Goliath.
“Notice Og’s bed is 12 feet long and six feet wide. He must have been 9-10 feet long and 4 feet wide to need that bed. It’s made of iron. You’ll find these giants; the one element they are consistently associated with in Scripture is iron.
“When you come back to Daniel 2 and you see it’s the iron that is mixed with clay, and it’s on a level with mingling their seed together, all of a sudden you begin to see some of the things we’re talking about. These creatures are going to be supernatural creatures functioning with a supernatural leader. All of that is associated with Rev. 17:14: ‘These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.’
“That war, that conflict, that battle that culminates over here, culminates literally in all the forces of hell being liberated against the Lord Jesus Christ and His purposes and plans, and you have at one moment finally a personification of that.”
Jordan explains, “He said, ‘Job, you can’t even get a dumb old animal to plow for you unless you’re standing there with a whip. And then he don’t want to do it. You can’t trust him just to go do it.’
“If Job was to have dominion over the beast of the field shouldn’t he be able to do what those questions are asking him if he can do? You see, what God says is, ‘You’re supposed to be out here in Creation as The Man! Rule it! But you ain’t got any idea what’s going on; you can’t explain why the wind blows. You can’t even get a unicorn to plow for you. There’s something wrong, Job. There’s something wrong with you.’
“You see, there’s something wrong, not just in the heavens, but there’s something wrong with man’s part in it. And man isn’t out there doing his part in the restoration process.”
*****
Job 40 starts, “Moreover the LORD answered Job, and said,
[2] Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him? he that reproveth God, let him answer it."
Jordan explains, “God says, ‘You’re so smart, Job, you think you know better than I do what to do. You don’t think I know what I’m doing. All right, smarty boy, tell me what to do. Here’s Creation, I made it to dwell in it, then there’s a problem and I broke it up. You’re not doing your job but you’re running off at the mouth telling me you know better than I do. Speak up!’
“Job says, ‘Lord, I ain’t saying a word.’ Is that a good idea or not? God is then going to describe to Job what it’s going to take to deal with the enemy; what it’s going to take to deliver the earth and man from Satan.
“Here’s what it’s going to take: ‘Hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him?
[10] Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.
[11] Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.
[12] Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.
[13] Hide them in the dust together; and bind their faces in secret.
[14] Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee.’
‘When you can do those things, Job, come talk to me; then you can complain. Until then, hide and watch.’
“You see, Job is suffering because God’s got a plan to do something but it’s not there yet and they’re still here and, ‘Job, until you can do what I can do, you just hide and watch. And if you’re suffering then you’re suffering according to the will of God. You’re suffering because you’re at a time in my program when suffering’s gonna have to be there.’
“You see, that’s what suffering according to the will of God is. It isn’t that God just wants you to suffer. It’s that God’s doing something; He’s got this big plan going on and you just happened to be a time when this is what’s going on. So get on with what God’s doing and forget the rest! The patience of Job is to wait for the end.”
*****
Jesus prays to the father in John 17:12, “While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.”
The initials of the son of perdition is sop, points out Jordan, making the connection to John 13:26-27: “Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.
[27] And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly.”
Jordan says, “That’s a play on words in the English text. English is a fascinating language in some of those ways. Why did He choose Judas? ‘That the scripture might be fulfilled.’ Christ wasn’t deceived; Judas didn’t trick Him. Christ full well knew what He was doing and chose Him in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled ‘that my old familiar friend will lift up his heel against me.’
“He literally, in order to fulfill the Scripture, was willing to have one brought into His companionship; one who would sit right at His left hand at this Last Supper and be a familiar friend turned into a familiar fiend. The Lord was willing to embrace him and allow that kind of heartache; that kind of tragedy to take place in His life.
“Notice in II Thess. 2:8 this son of perdition has the title of Wicked with a capital W. It’s a proper name for him. The career of the Antichrist is literally in two sections. First, he’s the man of sin and then he becomes the son of perdition.”
*****
In Revelation 11, in the midst of the 70th week, the Antichrist suffers a deadly wound and is assassinated but then that deadly wound is healed.
“He’s resurrected, as it were,” explains Jordan. “In connection with that is Rev. 11:7: ‘And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.’
“Part of hell is a compartment called the bottomless pit and it’s part of the Underworld. Hell has a torment section. It had a paradise section that was moved up to the third heaven. The Greek word is tartares, which is the section where the angels are kept in chains of darkness reserved for the great white throne judgment. Then there are other spirit creatures that are in the bottomless pit.
“The Antichrist comes out of the bottomless pit. The beast, or the Antichrist, at some point becomes inhabited by—he has Satan enter into him in the person of a creature from the bottomless pit. The mechanics of how that takes place is that in the middle of the week, the man of sin (a human like you and me who is under the control of the satanic policy of evil) . . .
“Just like Jesus Christ is called ‘the Son of man’ and He’s the personification of what God intends humanity to be, the son of perdition becomes the personification of what Satan’s man is going to be.
“But in the midst of that 70th week, he becomes something more than just Satan’s man. He doesn’t become Satan incarnate but he becomes one of these evil spirits incarnate. And the process that that goes through is the guy, the son of man, dies. A lost man’s soul goes down to hell.
“His body is laid there and then an animating spirit out of the bottomless pit comes up, takes his body, reanimates it, and now he’s no longer the man of sin; he’s transformed into the son of perdition.
“Rev. 9:2-3 says, ‘And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.’
“All these demonic creatures come out and they have a king over them. They’re a hairy-looking bunch of dudes; they’re not insect locust because in Proverbs it says the locust, talking about the insect world, don’t have a king over them.
“The king over these unclean demonic spirits is the angel of the bottomless pit whose name, according to Rev. 9:11 says, ‘And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.’
“Those two names adds up to mean ‘the destroyer.’ He comes out and has these spirits follow him. The phenomenon is that in that 70th week, there are creatures from the Underworld, from the infernal world, who are going to be released upon the earth to torment men and lead in a deception of them.”
*****
Daniel 2:43 says, “And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.”
Jordan says, “That’s probably one of the two or three weirdest verses in the book of Daniel. That verse opens up a can of worms that, when you start going down the road with it, you have people thinking you been reading Mad Magazine and Wired magazine and having bad nightmares. Because there are some really strange things here, but the more you study them the more you think they aren’t quite so strange.
“Clay represents man. Got to the potter’s house in Jeremiah 18 and Israel is described as ‘the clay in the potter’s hands.’ Now notice in Genesis 6:4 there were giants before and AFTER the Flood. The verse says, ‘There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.’
“The phenomenon that produced them came before the Flood and then again after the Flood. The women didn’t voluntarily go; they’re abducted. And they’re abducted, not with mutual consent, but with experimental purposes. And these human women we’re abducted by these angelic creatures and there is a cross-breeding that goes on that results in them bearing children who became giants and men of enhanced intelligence.
“There’s a process of genetic engineering. The Frankenstein book was written as a parody on the mechanization of culture. In Arnold’s movie ‘The Terminator,’ machines are taking over. This thinking has always been in the back of people’s minds about the machine age coming, but in our day . . .
"There are actually symposiums taking place this year where they’re talking about taking and enhancing genetic structure and genetic engineering with Nano machinery that would go in and work at a molecular level and one of the ethical questions is, ‘Well, is it still human, and if it isn’t, what is it?’
“But these dudes back here had all that stuff figured out! When he talks about that in Gen. 6, look at Daniel 2:43 about what it said. If they mingle themselves WITH the seed of men, the implication is they are not men themselves. These creatures that are not man are going to mingle with man and seek to reproduce a creature that functions as man.
“Deut. 3:11 says, ‘For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man.’
“This is one of the last giants that hasn’t been killed; there are some that make it on all the way through to David and there’s six of them still alive at the time David kills Goliath.
“Notice Og’s bed is 12 feet long and six feet wide. He must have been 9-10 feet long and 4 feet wide to need that bed. It’s made of iron. You’ll find these giants; the one element they are consistently associated with in Scripture is iron.
“When you come back to Daniel 2 and you see it’s the iron that is mixed with clay, and it’s on a level with mingling their seed together, all of a sudden you begin to see some of the things we’re talking about. These creatures are going to be supernatural creatures functioning with a supernatural leader. All of that is associated with Rev. 17:14: ‘These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.’
“That war, that conflict, that battle that culminates over here, culminates literally in all the forces of hell being liberated against the Lord Jesus Christ and His purposes and plans, and you have at one moment finally a personification of that.”
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
With the washing of water
In John 13:4-5, it says that Jesus Christ, when He rose from eating the Last Supper, “laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself.
[5] After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded.”
Jordan says, “Go to John 20 and you learn that when Peter and John came to the tomb they saw the ‘linen clothes lie, and the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.’
“What did He do in the resurrection? He didn’t need the wrappings that His dead body was in so He laid the grave clothes aside; that’s what you do in resurrection. You lay the old house aside and you have the new glorified body.
“Here He is on resurrection side of things and it says He took a towel, which is the insignia of a servant, and He girded himself. He wraps Himself in that. He’s ready to serve on behalf of His own. The whole point is that after the resurrection, He’s still going to be serving them. He’s going to go away but He’s not going to leave them helpless.
“It says that ‘he poureth water into a bason.’ Water is used to symbolize something in the Book of John. In John 2, when they didn’t have any wine at the wedding and He took water pots and poured water in and turned it into wine, we saw another object lesson. Wine is what cheers the heart of God and man the psalmist says. The nation had lost their joy. So what did the nation need to have their joy back in?
“That water pot—we are earthen vessels. Over and over, man is described as clay because that’s what we’re made out of. Just made out of dirt. Not even high class dirt.
“That poured water is a type of the Spirit of God. That’s what God’s going to do in the New Covenant –He’s going to put His Spirit in them and He talks about that in John 7 and describes His Spirit as the water flowing out. How does the Spirit of God do that?
“Water is the washing of water by the word. ‘Now you’re clean through the words that I speak unto you,’ He tells them in chapter 15. So the water represents the Spirit working through His word. So what does He do? He’s going to wash them with water.
“He began to wash the disciples’ feet. The symbol of washing is the symbol of complete servitude. The lowest of the servants. In Psalm 60 is a fascinating verse where David is describing some people who he’s conquered.
“You notice in the inscription to the song ‘to the chief Musician upon Shu-shan-eduth, Michtam of David, to teach.’ Michtam is a Hebrew word for a prayer of David.
“Those inscriptions are there to describe the circumstance in which the psalm was written. David smote the Edomites, killed 12,000 of them, completely wiped them out and subjugated them.
“I just want you to notice the way he describes that in verse 8: ‘Moab is my washpot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe: Philistia, triumph thou because of me.’
“Notice when he describes the victory, the subjugation of Moab in Edom, he uses that term ‘a wash pot.’ The disciples would understand that what Jesus Christ is doing is He’s taking the place of the lowest position of servitude there is.
“Here’s someone who is God Himself, comes from the Father, going to go back to the Father, and has all the authority of the Father and what’s He doing? He’s on His knees in a towel and He’s washing their feet. That’s humbling Himself right down to the bottom. That’s the illustration of Philippians 2.
“You remember in chapter 12, the lady there took the alabaster box and anointed His feet. His feet didn’t need washing. They needed worshipping. The disciples’ feet needed washing.
“Now, your feet represent what carry you through life; your walk. How do you go through life? You put one foot in front of the other. You progress through life. Their walk, He said, you don’t need anything but your feet washed because you’re already clean, but you need your walk to match your identity.
“That’s why in Matthew 3 John the Baptist said ‘bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance.’ Go bring forth some fruit in your life that matches the attitude of your heart and your profession.”
(Editor’s note: Just getting back in the swing of things after returning from Ohio last night. I am officially on a huge diet after my “last hurrah” of everything I love to eat, including lobster tail, rib eye steak (cooked rare on the grill by my brother), my mom’s famous broiled salmon, my famous avocado omelet and spinach pancakes, on and on.
Writing this up reminded me of the old hymn “Whiter than Snow,” In which the third verse goes, “Lord Jesus, for this I most humbly entreat;
I wait, blessed Lord, at Thy crucified feet.
By faith, for my cleansing I see Your blood flow
Now wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.”
[5] After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded.”
Jordan says, “Go to John 20 and you learn that when Peter and John came to the tomb they saw the ‘linen clothes lie, and the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.’
“What did He do in the resurrection? He didn’t need the wrappings that His dead body was in so He laid the grave clothes aside; that’s what you do in resurrection. You lay the old house aside and you have the new glorified body.
“Here He is on resurrection side of things and it says He took a towel, which is the insignia of a servant, and He girded himself. He wraps Himself in that. He’s ready to serve on behalf of His own. The whole point is that after the resurrection, He’s still going to be serving them. He’s going to go away but He’s not going to leave them helpless.
“It says that ‘he poureth water into a bason.’ Water is used to symbolize something in the Book of John. In John 2, when they didn’t have any wine at the wedding and He took water pots and poured water in and turned it into wine, we saw another object lesson. Wine is what cheers the heart of God and man the psalmist says. The nation had lost their joy. So what did the nation need to have their joy back in?
“That water pot—we are earthen vessels. Over and over, man is described as clay because that’s what we’re made out of. Just made out of dirt. Not even high class dirt.
“That poured water is a type of the Spirit of God. That’s what God’s going to do in the New Covenant –He’s going to put His Spirit in them and He talks about that in John 7 and describes His Spirit as the water flowing out. How does the Spirit of God do that?
“Water is the washing of water by the word. ‘Now you’re clean through the words that I speak unto you,’ He tells them in chapter 15. So the water represents the Spirit working through His word. So what does He do? He’s going to wash them with water.
“He began to wash the disciples’ feet. The symbol of washing is the symbol of complete servitude. The lowest of the servants. In Psalm 60 is a fascinating verse where David is describing some people who he’s conquered.
“You notice in the inscription to the song ‘to the chief Musician upon Shu-shan-eduth, Michtam of David, to teach.’ Michtam is a Hebrew word for a prayer of David.
“Those inscriptions are there to describe the circumstance in which the psalm was written. David smote the Edomites, killed 12,000 of them, completely wiped them out and subjugated them.
“I just want you to notice the way he describes that in verse 8: ‘Moab is my washpot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe: Philistia, triumph thou because of me.’
“Notice when he describes the victory, the subjugation of Moab in Edom, he uses that term ‘a wash pot.’ The disciples would understand that what Jesus Christ is doing is He’s taking the place of the lowest position of servitude there is.
“Here’s someone who is God Himself, comes from the Father, going to go back to the Father, and has all the authority of the Father and what’s He doing? He’s on His knees in a towel and He’s washing their feet. That’s humbling Himself right down to the bottom. That’s the illustration of Philippians 2.
“You remember in chapter 12, the lady there took the alabaster box and anointed His feet. His feet didn’t need washing. They needed worshipping. The disciples’ feet needed washing.
“Now, your feet represent what carry you through life; your walk. How do you go through life? You put one foot in front of the other. You progress through life. Their walk, He said, you don’t need anything but your feet washed because you’re already clean, but you need your walk to match your identity.
“That’s why in Matthew 3 John the Baptist said ‘bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance.’ Go bring forth some fruit in your life that matches the attitude of your heart and your profession.”
(Editor’s note: Just getting back in the swing of things after returning from Ohio last night. I am officially on a huge diet after my “last hurrah” of everything I love to eat, including lobster tail, rib eye steak (cooked rare on the grill by my brother), my mom’s famous broiled salmon, my famous avocado omelet and spinach pancakes, on and on.
Writing this up reminded me of the old hymn “Whiter than Snow,” In which the third verse goes, “Lord Jesus, for this I most humbly entreat;
I wait, blessed Lord, at Thy crucified feet.
By faith, for my cleansing I see Your blood flow
Now wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.”
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Quote of the week . . .
“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. There is no reason not to follow your heart."
--Steve Jobs, hell-bound sinner speaking at Stanford commencement ceremony in 2005
--Steve Jobs, hell-bound sinner speaking at Stanford commencement ceremony in 2005
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
'It's like this'
John 13 demonstrates the absolute necessity of the New Covenant ministry for the disciples. Verses 6-10 reads, [6] Then cometh he to Simon Peter: and Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet?
[7] Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.
[8] Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.
[9] Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.
[10] Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all.”
Jordan explains, “When Christ says, ‘If I wash you,’ He’s not saying, ‘You got to go do it yourself, Pete.’ He’s saying Jesus is going to provide; they can’t do it for themselves, but if they’re going to have a part and participate with Him and be used by Him to accomplish His will, be who He chose them to be, then He has to be the one who provides for them and He will and He does.
“Now Pete may have been dull of mind but he had a warm heart. He did have that ability to be of two extremes. You know when I read that verse, I just thank God He knows how to deal with Pete because I tend to be like Peter every now and then and I tend to deal with people like Pete.
“By the way, when Pete says ‘not only my feet but my head and my hands also,’ and then Jesus says, ‘If you’ve been washed all over you don’t need anything but your feet washed,’ in the Old Testament the priest, when he was ordained of the ministry, was washed all over. In Exodus 29 he’s cleansed all over. Then in Exodus 30 then they washed his ears, hands and feet.
“Then later on, the priest on a daily basis, when he goes into the tabernacle, there’s that laver out front and with that he washes his hands and feet. His walk and his work had to be cleaned and cleansed every day under the old covenant. You say, ‘Why did Jesus leave Peter’s hands out?’ Well in the New Covenant the Spirit of God is going to come in and cause them to walk in His statutes, and if He causes their walk to be righteous, then what’s the work going to be? It’s going to be right too.
“All of this is an object lesson demonstrating the need and the necessity for the New Testament ministry of the Holy Spirit in their lives and Christ’s love for them to humble Himself to provide that.”
*****
Jordan says, “This is an example of the wonderful uniqueness of your Savior. You don’t have God giving you a bunch of commandments and God telling you to do a bunch of stuff and you can’t figure out how to do it. I mean all He’s got to do is give you commandments and you’re never going to figure out how to do it.
"When I think about that I always think of Aaron’s two sons Nadab and Abihu. He had four boys. Moses said, ‘All right, Aaron, you’re going to be the chief priest and your boys are gonna be the priests and run the tabernacle. The top guys.
" ‘Now here’s the rules. You go to do this, this, this and this and one thing you can’t do--the fire that’s going to be on the altar has to be fire that’s lit by God Himself. You can’t do it.’
“So they go out there on the very first day and Leviticus says ‘they brought strange fire.’ They said, ‘Well we need a fire here. Let’s get out the Bic lighter and put the little coal burner and get their fire lit and you know what God did? He killed them right on the spot. Deader than door nails. I don’t know about you, but if I’d have been there, I would have been a little reluctant to send my next two boys into the fray: ‘Only got four. Two of them are gone.’
“Have you ever read that stuff back there in Leviticus; I mean really read it? One time I asked Bill Cash, a master carpenter with 50 years of work, to take the passages in the Book of Exodus where Moses talks about building a tabernacle and then draw what those things would look like. God said, ‘Here make it like it like this and do it exactly like this.’
“Bill came back to me several months later and said, ‘You know I can’t do this. I said, ‘Why not?’ He said, ‘Well, it says do this and do that and I’m not sure what this is. I‘m not sure what it looks like. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be.’ And I said, ‘Let’s go look up some of these words,’ and you know what? You couldn’t figure it out from the Scriptures. And I’m thinking, ‘Now, wait a minute. I got do this and I got to do it exactly right or God’s going to kill my kids or me and I can’t even figure out exactly what it is!’
“Now, how confident would you be doing that? Well I’m thinking I’d be looking for a little less prominent job in the tabernacle myself. I look at that and I see the possibility of perfection is that issue back there and you say, ‘How would God live in human flesh?’ Well He would do it perfectly, but if you want to see it, the place you look is at Jesus Christ. That’s the wonderful thing about Him.”
(Editor’s note: Will write again Friday—heading home after work tomorrow to see my mom, brother and our family’s Chocolate Lab Murray—I’m his sister)
[7] Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.
[8] Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.
[9] Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.
[10] Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all.”
Jordan explains, “When Christ says, ‘If I wash you,’ He’s not saying, ‘You got to go do it yourself, Pete.’ He’s saying Jesus is going to provide; they can’t do it for themselves, but if they’re going to have a part and participate with Him and be used by Him to accomplish His will, be who He chose them to be, then He has to be the one who provides for them and He will and He does.
“Now Pete may have been dull of mind but he had a warm heart. He did have that ability to be of two extremes. You know when I read that verse, I just thank God He knows how to deal with Pete because I tend to be like Peter every now and then and I tend to deal with people like Pete.
“By the way, when Pete says ‘not only my feet but my head and my hands also,’ and then Jesus says, ‘If you’ve been washed all over you don’t need anything but your feet washed,’ in the Old Testament the priest, when he was ordained of the ministry, was washed all over. In Exodus 29 he’s cleansed all over. Then in Exodus 30 then they washed his ears, hands and feet.
“Then later on, the priest on a daily basis, when he goes into the tabernacle, there’s that laver out front and with that he washes his hands and feet. His walk and his work had to be cleaned and cleansed every day under the old covenant. You say, ‘Why did Jesus leave Peter’s hands out?’ Well in the New Covenant the Spirit of God is going to come in and cause them to walk in His statutes, and if He causes their walk to be righteous, then what’s the work going to be? It’s going to be right too.
“All of this is an object lesson demonstrating the need and the necessity for the New Testament ministry of the Holy Spirit in their lives and Christ’s love for them to humble Himself to provide that.”
*****
Jordan says, “This is an example of the wonderful uniqueness of your Savior. You don’t have God giving you a bunch of commandments and God telling you to do a bunch of stuff and you can’t figure out how to do it. I mean all He’s got to do is give you commandments and you’re never going to figure out how to do it.
"When I think about that I always think of Aaron’s two sons Nadab and Abihu. He had four boys. Moses said, ‘All right, Aaron, you’re going to be the chief priest and your boys are gonna be the priests and run the tabernacle. The top guys.
" ‘Now here’s the rules. You go to do this, this, this and this and one thing you can’t do--the fire that’s going to be on the altar has to be fire that’s lit by God Himself. You can’t do it.’
“So they go out there on the very first day and Leviticus says ‘they brought strange fire.’ They said, ‘Well we need a fire here. Let’s get out the Bic lighter and put the little coal burner and get their fire lit and you know what God did? He killed them right on the spot. Deader than door nails. I don’t know about you, but if I’d have been there, I would have been a little reluctant to send my next two boys into the fray: ‘Only got four. Two of them are gone.’
“Have you ever read that stuff back there in Leviticus; I mean really read it? One time I asked Bill Cash, a master carpenter with 50 years of work, to take the passages in the Book of Exodus where Moses talks about building a tabernacle and then draw what those things would look like. God said, ‘Here make it like it like this and do it exactly like this.’
“Bill came back to me several months later and said, ‘You know I can’t do this. I said, ‘Why not?’ He said, ‘Well, it says do this and do that and I’m not sure what this is. I‘m not sure what it looks like. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be.’ And I said, ‘Let’s go look up some of these words,’ and you know what? You couldn’t figure it out from the Scriptures. And I’m thinking, ‘Now, wait a minute. I got do this and I got to do it exactly right or God’s going to kill my kids or me and I can’t even figure out exactly what it is!’
“Now, how confident would you be doing that? Well I’m thinking I’d be looking for a little less prominent job in the tabernacle myself. I look at that and I see the possibility of perfection is that issue back there and you say, ‘How would God live in human flesh?’ Well He would do it perfectly, but if you want to see it, the place you look is at Jesus Christ. That’s the wonderful thing about Him.”
(Editor’s note: Will write again Friday—heading home after work tomorrow to see my mom, brother and our family’s Chocolate Lab Murray—I’m his sister)
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Honey dew list
More sad news for me. Resident Tom, who leads our weekly “God Talk” meeting at the elderly house, will move out at the end of this month, going to a whole different part of town. As per the request of the director, the meeting will change to “Current Events” with the hope that another resident will step in to run it.
In driving Tom over to the meeting this past Thursday, we were thinking through what his new life (at a YMCA with no kitchen or fridge) would afford him to eat.
He mentioned that Subway sandwiches were both economical and healthy, to which I informed him that while there might be a real serving of vegetables if he were to ask that every condiment they have be piled on, the sodium and nitrites in the deli meat were very bad and the bread, if made from white flour, had no nutritional value and was actually considered another evil of the typical American diet.
His response was, “I thought bread was good for you. Isn’t that what the Bible says?”
As I told him, bread from the Old Testament and Jesus Christ’s days on earth was not overly processed like Subway’s bread and was made from whole grains such as barley, rye and stoneground wheat.
*****
Just the other day I read a food article about recipes for Rash Hashanah that said the honey so often made mention of in the Bible was never honey made from bees. It was the honey of pomegranates and figs.
*****
Here’s an article I wrote a while back on Bible food:
You can’t have a sense of humor and read the Bible and not see God, too, has a sense of humor. As a journalist who’s always preferred non-fiction, I find the best humor is oftentimes in the detailed accounts of all-too-real circumstances.
A passage that always cracks me up is in Numbers 11 when the children of Israel weep to Moses about the manna, rattling off for him a certain grocery list of foods they miss, namely fish, cucumbers, melon, leeks, onions and garlic.
They bitterly complain that their “soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes,” causing Moses to just completely lose it. He prays to God, in essence, “JUST KILL ME NOW!”
The classic chapter reads in part, “And when the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell upon it.
[10] Then Moses heard the people weep throughout their families, every man in the door of his tent: and the anger of the LORD was kindled greatly; Moses also was displeased.
[11] And Moses said unto the LORD, Wherefore hast thou afflicted thy servant? and wherefore have I not found favour in thy sight, that thou layest the burden of all this people upon me?
[12] Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers?
[13] Whence should I have flesh to give unto all this people? for they weep unto me, saying, Give us flesh, that we may eat.
[14] I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.
[15] And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favour in thy sight; and let me not see my wretchedness.”
*****
As Jordan explains the scene, “Moses parts the Red Sea and God delivers Israel from a violent, terrible death. What He did for them is He literally delivered them from satanic activity. The reason there were 10 plagues is there were 10 false Gods that Egypt worshipped that held the (people) in captivity.
“So when they complain, ‘We had all that wonderful diet back there and now our soul’s dried away from all the manna,’ you see how this is a heart issue?
“They say they’re bored with the stuff. Well, the passage tells us ‘manna was as coriander seed, and the colour thereof as the colour of bdellium.’ It says, ‘And the people went about, and gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar, and baked it in pans, and made cakes of it: and the taste of it was as the taste of fresh oil.’
“Bdellium is a white crystal that really is translucent. It’s sort of like mother-of-pearl color and every way you look at it you can see another depth or dimension to it like it’s three-dimensional. Now is that boring?!
“It says they ground it and beat it. You see why it’s a type of Christ? Exodus says it was sweet. Oil is a type of the Holy Spirit. This was not a monotonous type of food. You could make lots of different (entrees) from it. Go to Deuteronomy 32 and you see they were able to make lots of different recipes. This was a wonderful stuff to eat.
“It says the manna fell upon the dew. It was so precious that God wouldn’t make it land on the earth. He made it land on the dew.
“From Psalm 133 we know dew is a symbol. It’s like the precious ointment. Verse 3 says, ‘As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.’
“Dew represents that blessing that God gave to Israel for the world. And the manna rested on God’s plan and purpose for the nation Israel. That’s why He gave the manna TO Israel. It was so the life could be given to Israel as a nation and they could then go be in the earth God’s nation and take His blessings to the world through them.”
*****
While manna is mentioned in nine different books in the Bible, there are two Old Testament chapters—Exodus 16 and Numbers 11--where manna is set forth for its enduring “bread of life” message, serving as both a picture and type of the Lord Jesus Christ in His incarnation and the Word of God.
In John 6, for example, when the skeptical Jews ask Christ to give them a sign that they might believe, reasoning that “our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat,” Jesus responds, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven . . . I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.”
Jordan explains, “Just like they weren’t going to hunger back there (in Exodus) if they ate the manna, the message was whatever they needed, the provision was going to fulfill the need. Christ said, ‘I am the bread of life. He that believeth on me shall never hunger, never thirst.’ It won’t be the temporary provision the manna was—this is going to be the power for them to become the sons of God . . .
“You see, what God’s telling them (in the wilderness) is, ‘Whatever you need, I’m going to provide it for you. I got this thing planned out ahead of time; you just trust me and go where I take you, and when you go where I take you, and do what I tell you to do, you’ll find that the provision for Israel, for you, is already there.’
“Now, had they learned that they would have been far better off. You get to Exodus 19, though, and you learn they didn’t learn anything about it! But what God’s demonstrating is His grace to them.”
*****
Exodus 16: 1-2 reports, “And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt. And the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness:”
Jordan says, “Notice they took their journey and all the congregation ‘came unto the wilderness of Sin.’ Now how about that for a name?! Does that sound like that’s going to be a good place to be?! Well, a wilderness is a homeless place and it’s a wilderness of sin.
“So, the setting in which God’s going to give the manna is a rather dark background of man’s rebellion. When God brings them out of Egypt, He provides the healing for the water at Marah, takes them to Elim where there’s all kind of special provisions for them and then when God picks them up and moves them what do you think faith should have said?
“ ‘Wherever He leads me I’ll go; wherever He wants me to go I can trust Him!’ Because why? ‘Because He can take care of me!’ He just took care of the thirst issue, the water issue, the healing issue.
“But they didn’t learn that. They murmured, and they said, ‘You brought us out here to starve us to death! We remember being in Egypt. Where we had the flesh pots. And we could eat ’til we were full!’ (Exodus 16:3)
“Now, when they were in Egypt they were slaves. So they had a slave’s diet. Well, maybe that’s better than having nothing to eat at all. That is what they’re saying. Right then the Lord could have smote them, but watch what God does: ‘Then said the LORD unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or no.’ (Exodus 16:4)
“God’s saying, ‘Look what I’m going to do for you, Moses. I’m going to rain it down from heaven, but I’m not going to rain fire and brimstone and wrath and judgment.’ You remember Genesis 18 and 19? Sodom and Gomorrah? He rained fire and brimstone from heaven? He could do it—they knew He could do it—but he said, ‘I’m going to rain bread from heaven.’ He didn’t call it manna here.
“He said, ‘I’m going to send you some food that will satisfy your hunger that’s good for everybody, that anybody can eat, and you can go out and get it.’ When He says there that it’s food from heaven, that means it’s of divine origin: ‘God’s going to send this.’
“It’s not something man’s going to produce; God’s going to do it. And by the way, when He says it’s going to rain . . . When something rains, it rains on the just and the unjust alike. When something rains, it’s a visible thing and it’s abundant—everybody gets some of it.
“And boy, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen statistics but, in a good rain storm, there are literally millions of gallons of water that fall out of the sky. It’s staggering. There’s this abundance that’s going to be given Israel!
“You see in verse 5 where it says you can gather the manna at a certain rate? The rate you gather at is in verse 16: ‘According to the number of your persons . . .’
“In other words, they were to go out and whatever—one was how many ever people you had in your house and two was whatever your appetite was. Some people have big appetites; they need more. Some people have little appetites; they don’t need so much. No matter what your appetite was, or how many people you had, what you gathered was exactly what you needed to satisfy the appetite that you had. The rate was according to the eating.
“It says there was ‘an omer for every man’ and an omer is a tenth part of an ephod. The Scofield Reference Bible tells us an ephod is a bushel and three pints, and an omer is 6.7 pints.
“Now, the estimate here is there are about two million Israelis at this time. You get that because Numbers 1 says that when they numbered them, there were 600,000 men ready to go to war. So, if you’ve conservatively got 2 million people and they’re all going to pick up six pints, that’s 12 million pints, which would translate into 9 million pounds!
“Every day they went out and collected four and a half tons of this manna! Can you imagine how many box cars that is? How many 18-wheelers it would take to load that four and a half tons of stuff? I mean, this is a humongous supply and it showed up every day!
“And if they didn’t go out and get it, verse 20 says ‘it bred worms and stank.’ I mean, if you leave the stuff out and don’t pick it up, ‘P-U, what a mess!’ And, by the way, when it landed, wherever the people were they could just go outside of their house and there it was! They didn’t have to go to six blocks away to find it—it was there available for them immediately. The provision was there every morning.
“They went out in the morning to get it but it showed up at night. Again, they’re asleep; they’re not doing anything. God sends it. The end of verse 15 says, ‘This is the bread which the Lord hath given you.’ Manna was a gift from God. He rained it down from heaven. It’s everywhere and it was abundant. And it satisfied any of their needs.
“All they had to do was go out and gather it. By the way, they had to go out each person and gather it for themselves, but if it’s on the ground, what did they have to do to get it? You had to stoop over. You had to bow down. A stiff-necked person who wouldn’t bow down wound up hungry.”
(Editor’s Note: To be continued . . . )
In driving Tom over to the meeting this past Thursday, we were thinking through what his new life (at a YMCA with no kitchen or fridge) would afford him to eat.
He mentioned that Subway sandwiches were both economical and healthy, to which I informed him that while there might be a real serving of vegetables if he were to ask that every condiment they have be piled on, the sodium and nitrites in the deli meat were very bad and the bread, if made from white flour, had no nutritional value and was actually considered another evil of the typical American diet.
His response was, “I thought bread was good for you. Isn’t that what the Bible says?”
As I told him, bread from the Old Testament and Jesus Christ’s days on earth was not overly processed like Subway’s bread and was made from whole grains such as barley, rye and stoneground wheat.
*****
Just the other day I read a food article about recipes for Rash Hashanah that said the honey so often made mention of in the Bible was never honey made from bees. It was the honey of pomegranates and figs.
*****
Here’s an article I wrote a while back on Bible food:
You can’t have a sense of humor and read the Bible and not see God, too, has a sense of humor. As a journalist who’s always preferred non-fiction, I find the best humor is oftentimes in the detailed accounts of all-too-real circumstances.
A passage that always cracks me up is in Numbers 11 when the children of Israel weep to Moses about the manna, rattling off for him a certain grocery list of foods they miss, namely fish, cucumbers, melon, leeks, onions and garlic.
They bitterly complain that their “soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes,” causing Moses to just completely lose it. He prays to God, in essence, “JUST KILL ME NOW!”
The classic chapter reads in part, “And when the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell upon it.
[10] Then Moses heard the people weep throughout their families, every man in the door of his tent: and the anger of the LORD was kindled greatly; Moses also was displeased.
[11] And Moses said unto the LORD, Wherefore hast thou afflicted thy servant? and wherefore have I not found favour in thy sight, that thou layest the burden of all this people upon me?
[12] Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers?
[13] Whence should I have flesh to give unto all this people? for they weep unto me, saying, Give us flesh, that we may eat.
[14] I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.
[15] And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favour in thy sight; and let me not see my wretchedness.”
*****
As Jordan explains the scene, “Moses parts the Red Sea and God delivers Israel from a violent, terrible death. What He did for them is He literally delivered them from satanic activity. The reason there were 10 plagues is there were 10 false Gods that Egypt worshipped that held the (people) in captivity.
“So when they complain, ‘We had all that wonderful diet back there and now our soul’s dried away from all the manna,’ you see how this is a heart issue?
“They say they’re bored with the stuff. Well, the passage tells us ‘manna was as coriander seed, and the colour thereof as the colour of bdellium.’ It says, ‘And the people went about, and gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar, and baked it in pans, and made cakes of it: and the taste of it was as the taste of fresh oil.’
“Bdellium is a white crystal that really is translucent. It’s sort of like mother-of-pearl color and every way you look at it you can see another depth or dimension to it like it’s three-dimensional. Now is that boring?!
“It says they ground it and beat it. You see why it’s a type of Christ? Exodus says it was sweet. Oil is a type of the Holy Spirit. This was not a monotonous type of food. You could make lots of different (entrees) from it. Go to Deuteronomy 32 and you see they were able to make lots of different recipes. This was a wonderful stuff to eat.
“It says the manna fell upon the dew. It was so precious that God wouldn’t make it land on the earth. He made it land on the dew.
“From Psalm 133 we know dew is a symbol. It’s like the precious ointment. Verse 3 says, ‘As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.’
“Dew represents that blessing that God gave to Israel for the world. And the manna rested on God’s plan and purpose for the nation Israel. That’s why He gave the manna TO Israel. It was so the life could be given to Israel as a nation and they could then go be in the earth God’s nation and take His blessings to the world through them.”
*****
While manna is mentioned in nine different books in the Bible, there are two Old Testament chapters—Exodus 16 and Numbers 11--where manna is set forth for its enduring “bread of life” message, serving as both a picture and type of the Lord Jesus Christ in His incarnation and the Word of God.
In John 6, for example, when the skeptical Jews ask Christ to give them a sign that they might believe, reasoning that “our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat,” Jesus responds, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven . . . I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.”
Jordan explains, “Just like they weren’t going to hunger back there (in Exodus) if they ate the manna, the message was whatever they needed, the provision was going to fulfill the need. Christ said, ‘I am the bread of life. He that believeth on me shall never hunger, never thirst.’ It won’t be the temporary provision the manna was—this is going to be the power for them to become the sons of God . . .
“You see, what God’s telling them (in the wilderness) is, ‘Whatever you need, I’m going to provide it for you. I got this thing planned out ahead of time; you just trust me and go where I take you, and when you go where I take you, and do what I tell you to do, you’ll find that the provision for Israel, for you, is already there.’
“Now, had they learned that they would have been far better off. You get to Exodus 19, though, and you learn they didn’t learn anything about it! But what God’s demonstrating is His grace to them.”
*****
Exodus 16: 1-2 reports, “And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt. And the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness:”
Jordan says, “Notice they took their journey and all the congregation ‘came unto the wilderness of Sin.’ Now how about that for a name?! Does that sound like that’s going to be a good place to be?! Well, a wilderness is a homeless place and it’s a wilderness of sin.
“So, the setting in which God’s going to give the manna is a rather dark background of man’s rebellion. When God brings them out of Egypt, He provides the healing for the water at Marah, takes them to Elim where there’s all kind of special provisions for them and then when God picks them up and moves them what do you think faith should have said?
“ ‘Wherever He leads me I’ll go; wherever He wants me to go I can trust Him!’ Because why? ‘Because He can take care of me!’ He just took care of the thirst issue, the water issue, the healing issue.
“But they didn’t learn that. They murmured, and they said, ‘You brought us out here to starve us to death! We remember being in Egypt. Where we had the flesh pots. And we could eat ’til we were full!’ (Exodus 16:3)
“Now, when they were in Egypt they were slaves. So they had a slave’s diet. Well, maybe that’s better than having nothing to eat at all. That is what they’re saying. Right then the Lord could have smote them, but watch what God does: ‘Then said the LORD unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or no.’ (Exodus 16:4)
“God’s saying, ‘Look what I’m going to do for you, Moses. I’m going to rain it down from heaven, but I’m not going to rain fire and brimstone and wrath and judgment.’ You remember Genesis 18 and 19? Sodom and Gomorrah? He rained fire and brimstone from heaven? He could do it—they knew He could do it—but he said, ‘I’m going to rain bread from heaven.’ He didn’t call it manna here.
“He said, ‘I’m going to send you some food that will satisfy your hunger that’s good for everybody, that anybody can eat, and you can go out and get it.’ When He says there that it’s food from heaven, that means it’s of divine origin: ‘God’s going to send this.’
“It’s not something man’s going to produce; God’s going to do it. And by the way, when He says it’s going to rain . . . When something rains, it rains on the just and the unjust alike. When something rains, it’s a visible thing and it’s abundant—everybody gets some of it.
“And boy, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen statistics but, in a good rain storm, there are literally millions of gallons of water that fall out of the sky. It’s staggering. There’s this abundance that’s going to be given Israel!
“You see in verse 5 where it says you can gather the manna at a certain rate? The rate you gather at is in verse 16: ‘According to the number of your persons . . .’
“In other words, they were to go out and whatever—one was how many ever people you had in your house and two was whatever your appetite was. Some people have big appetites; they need more. Some people have little appetites; they don’t need so much. No matter what your appetite was, or how many people you had, what you gathered was exactly what you needed to satisfy the appetite that you had. The rate was according to the eating.
“It says there was ‘an omer for every man’ and an omer is a tenth part of an ephod. The Scofield Reference Bible tells us an ephod is a bushel and three pints, and an omer is 6.7 pints.
“Now, the estimate here is there are about two million Israelis at this time. You get that because Numbers 1 says that when they numbered them, there were 600,000 men ready to go to war. So, if you’ve conservatively got 2 million people and they’re all going to pick up six pints, that’s 12 million pints, which would translate into 9 million pounds!
“Every day they went out and collected four and a half tons of this manna! Can you imagine how many box cars that is? How many 18-wheelers it would take to load that four and a half tons of stuff? I mean, this is a humongous supply and it showed up every day!
“And if they didn’t go out and get it, verse 20 says ‘it bred worms and stank.’ I mean, if you leave the stuff out and don’t pick it up, ‘P-U, what a mess!’ And, by the way, when it landed, wherever the people were they could just go outside of their house and there it was! They didn’t have to go to six blocks away to find it—it was there available for them immediately. The provision was there every morning.
“They went out in the morning to get it but it showed up at night. Again, they’re asleep; they’re not doing anything. God sends it. The end of verse 15 says, ‘This is the bread which the Lord hath given you.’ Manna was a gift from God. He rained it down from heaven. It’s everywhere and it was abundant. And it satisfied any of their needs.
“All they had to do was go out and gather it. By the way, they had to go out each person and gather it for themselves, but if it’s on the ground, what did they have to do to get it? You had to stoop over. You had to bow down. A stiff-necked person who wouldn’t bow down wound up hungry.”
(Editor’s Note: To be continued . . . )
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)