Seeing is not believing

Zechariah 8:23 says, “Thus saith the LORD of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.”

Jordan reasons, “If 10 different language groups came wanting to talk to you, what you have to do? Would the ability to speak in tongues you don’t know come in handy? Can you understand why God gave them the ability to speak in languages they never studied?

“The purpose of the gift of tongues had nothing to do with letting people go puff themselves up and have some religious experience, running around crazed. It had to do with Israel being able to evangelize the nation.

“On the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, there were Jews from about 15 different language groups identified in the chapter. They all heard the Word of God in their native tongue.

“How do you think Peter and those guys talked to them in their native tongue? A bunch of fishermen from Galilee; they didn’t know 15 different languages. They spoke in tongues because the Spirit of God gave them the ability. Why? It had to do with being able to get out that message to those people so they knew it came from God.”

*****

In the Old Testament, speaking in tongues, or the sudden ability to speak in different languages a person’s never studied, was one of many “signs and wonders” shown Israel to serve as proof of a revelation from God. Moses was given by God the “signs” of healing and serpent-handling to prove he had been commissioned to deliver Israel from Egypt.

God today is not speaking by extra-biblical revelation, and for any man or woman to stand up in church and claim when they speak, it’s God speaking, is nothing short of blasphemy.

Upon first taking office, Paul performed miracles among Gentiles as well as Jews to provide proof to both peoples of his divine calling.

Other Believers at the time were given “sign gifts,” including speaking in tongues (Acts 2:4), to try and convince the unbelieving Jew that, as Paul had testified, God set aside Israel to focus on Gentiles.

 Indeed, in his letter to the early church at Corinth, Paul explains that because “Jews require a sign” (I Cor. 1:22), speaking in an “unknown tongue” was a way to testify to an unbelieving Jew: “Wherefore tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not…” (I Cor. 14:22)

Paul explains in I Cor. 13:8 that the sign-gift program was being phased out—“whether there be tongues, they shall cease”--as a result of his apostleship and the ability for people to listen to his message, given to him by Jesus Christ, for complete revelation.

*****

The amazing reality is that how both in the Old and New Testaments the overall impact of and natural reaction to miracles was to cause people NOT to believe.

“When people today say, ‘Have God stop all the evil and suffering in the world and I’ll believe in Him,’ what they’re really saying is, ‘Show us a miracle and we’ll believe in you,’ ” explains Jordan. “But listen to me, what happens in the Scriptures from beginning to end is when you see people exposed to miraculous events—to the suspending of the laws of nature, the supernatural laws—instead of it engendering and sparking faith, invariably it sparks unbelief. And even in the cases where it does spark faith, that faith is never sustained for a long period of time.”

*****

There are two systems at work biblically when it comes to faith in God: One system says, “If I don’t see it, I’m not going to believe it; seeing is believing.” The other says, “Believing is seeing.”

What the resurrected Jesus Christ said to Doubting Thomas, after He miraculously stood before him and invited him to touch His hands and side, was, “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

Similarly, I Peter 1 says, “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.”

*****

“Most people think that a miracle is the answer: ‘If God would just show a miracle, people would believe,’ ” says Jordan. “Well, why is that?

“Let me ask you, when you’re wrong about something, do you like somebody just to stick it in your face that you’re wrong? There’s that great line of Clint Eastwood’s: ‘Nag, nag, nag.’

“Do you want somebody to stick you with the truth and just keep pounding it? No. You know that when your old sin nature’s wrong it doesn’t want the truth stuck in its face over and over and over again.

“Well, Romans 1 says, ‘Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.’

“You can do all the mental gymnastics you want to but the fact is everybody knows there’s a God and that they’re going to face Him in judgment. They know His eternal power and His godhead. They’re without excuse.

“You see, your old sin nature says, ‘I want to be God.’ Now what does a miracle do to that? It sticks it in your face that God’s God! You aren’t God and you old sin nature doesn’t like that! That’s why miracles are not conducive to causing a person to believe—because they’re telling you about something that’s the OPPOSITE of what you want!

“Hebrews 11:6 says, ‘But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.’

*****

“Faith for Israel had two steps in it: The Jew had to believe ‘He’s God’ and that there’s a benefit for them in submitting to Him. What the miracle demonstrated was the benefit.

“The reason God gave Israel physical deliverances and healings and such was because that was part of Israel’s benefit. That was part of her blessing package. So the miracle demonstrates the benefit of believing. But first they had to believe that He is.

“You got to get this order. You believe, then the confirmation. But if you just have the confirmation, the miracle takes out the believing. It takes believing there’s a God out of the realm of faith and puts it in the, ‘He just stuck it in my face! . . . I can’t . . .’

“I mean, when you watch somebody feed 5,000 people, cleanse a leper and raise someone from the dead, you really can’t question whether that’s God or not.

“When they miss the purpose of the miracle, what did it demonstrate? It demonstrated that they didn’t believe. Psalm 27:13 is a verse King David wrote. He says, ‘I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.’

“There’s the two systems! ‘Seeing is believing’ and then there’s ‘believing to see.’ God says, ‘To please me it has to be faith. It has to be believing to see.’ ”

 

(Note: I've got an article on Billy Graham coming tomorrow)

Application to the nitnoids

“Have you noticed nobody can eat your lunch as good as you can?” says Jordan.

“You take the most boastful, prideful-appearing person, who seems to think they never make a mistake, and you sit and listen and read their mind as they lay their head on the pillow at night and you’ll find the person wracked with self-condemnation and self-questioning; fear that they’re not doing enough, running hard enough, pushing hard enough. You know how I know that? It’s true of all of us.

“The answer to that is peace with God. Being justified you have peace with God. Grace is all that God is free to do for you through the finished work of Jesus Christ.

“You need to appreciate the love of God. I John says, ‘We know and believe the love of God.’ Sometime we know it but we don’t believe it. Sometime we know God loves us but we don’t really apply it by faith to the nitnoids of our life.

“You want to know why Christian people live such lives of defeat, so far below the snake line? They don’t start right here. I tell you that because I’ve been pastoring over four decades, pastoring local churches, and as a pastor you sit with people with all kind of circumstances.

“The answer’s going to be in understanding and believing God’s grace. You got to get that and believe that. Don’t just know it, but understand the difference. I think Christian people need to preach the gospel to themselves every day because we forget it. We start thinking God treats us differently now that we’re saints than He did when we were sinners.

“When we were lost, He just said, ‘Come, trust me, I’ll forgive you all your sins,’ and now as a Believer you think He’s running around trying to whack you in the head every time you make a mistake?!

*****

“Romans 5:2 says, ‘By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.’

“Don’t you want to have access to what God’s done for you? How do you do it? By faith. You want to bring His power into your life? You do it by faith. You trust, you believe in what God’s done for you at Calvary.

“You say, ‘But I don’t see it, I don’t feel it.’ Who cares, it’s still real!

“By the time you get to the end of Romans 8, you have been thoroughly grounded, your sins are taken care of, and your failures, disappointments and all the rest--when they rise in your mind, you say, ‘No, the Cross is the answer for that.’

"And you say, ‘O, love of God, how rich and pure,’ and you believe in that and rest in that. You don’t puff yourself up and try to defend yourself. You say, ‘Yes, that’s why Jesus Christ died for me.’

“You’re no longer a slave; you’re free. You’re no longer condemned; you’re righteous. You’re no longer dead; you have the spirit of life in Christ Jesus that has made us free from the law of sin and death.

*****

“Romans 7:7 says, ‘What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.
[8] But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead.

“Paul loves questions. You know why he asks questions? To get answers. To make you think.

“ ‘Is the law sin?’ 'But by the law.' So, when I sin, what does the law do? It says, ‘Sinner! Sinner!’ and it condemns you. The law will condemn anybody, saved or lost. That’s why Paul says in Galatians 2, ‘If I build again that which I destroy, I make myself a transgressor.’ The law’s not made for a righteous man, I Timothy 1 says. It’s not the standard of God’s operating today. The standard for God’s operating today is grace.

*****

“Is Paul really carnal, sold under sin? No, he’s a new man in Christ Jesus. What’s happened to Paul is he has lost confidence of his identity in Christ. He’s living in error. When you live as a Believer in condemnation like that, you’re not living as who you are in Christ. You’re living over here in your resources and you come up short.

“You wind up saying, ‘I can’t do it. I’m carnal, sold under sin.’ What Paul’s doing in verse 14 (‘For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin’) is he’s thinking about himself like he’s still lost.

“The first thing that happens when you respond to sin on a performance-based system over here is it condemns you because you can’t do it! And you didn’t do it!

"When you look at the law and it says, ‘Thou shalt not,’ what does it do? It works death. So he says in verse 14, ‘I’m just worthless. I’m no good. I’m helpless. I have no value. I’m just a worthless, valueless failure.’

"Look down at verse 18: ‘For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.’

“He’s saying, ‘I’m just no good.’ If you wanted one even better, verse 24: ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’

“Does that sound like a happy, victorious Christian?! No, he’s conscious of his failure. And he says, ‘I’m wretched. I’m unloved. Nobody loves me. Look at the condition I’m in.’ That’s where thinking this way gets you. Is the law scriptural? Yes, but it’s not dispensational.

*****

“Before you got to the Book of Romans, you had to go through a whole lot of Scripture. Understand, if you don’t know who you are as a member of the church the Body of Christ; if you still think you’re Israel and your program’s in Israel’s scripture, you don’t understand there are 13 books in your Bible written specifically about you (Romans-Philemon), out of which service will come as a natural result of your understanding of what’s there and believing in it.

“Most people think if you just preach about Jesus, you’re preaching the gospel. That’s not the gospel. Romans 3:21. Notice He’s going to take you and justify you freely by His grace through the redemption that’s in Christ Jesus.

“Jesus Christ died at Calvary to pay for your sins, to redeem you; to buy you back from the hock shop of sin, the slave market of sin, and to redeem you by paying the price of your sin. The wages of sin is death and Jesus Christ died to pay for your sins.

“He died to pay for what’s wrong with you. All of those things that bring the guilt, shame, fear, rejection and all of the rest of the things. All of your failures, all of your shortcomings, all of the things people use to condemn you, all of the things you use to condemn yourself.

*****

“Before you met the Book of Romans, God’s people were called the nation Israel. If God has set Israel aside in order to accomplish this, what about Israel?

“The big question in Romans 9-11 you have to answer is ‘What happened to Israel?’ Because if you can’t answer that question you’re not going to be able to study the Bible at all!

“Because if you think God replaced Israel with the Body of Christ all the stuff in the Old Testament would belong to you! Have you ever tried to go back there, or in the Gospels, and try to do something you couldn’t do, and beat your head against the wall ’til you’re silly?!

“People say, ‘Well, we’re doing it because Jesus did it.’

“What?! He was perfect. You got a problem keeping up with Him! I mean, He couldn’t even see you in the dust that He made on an early morning stroll! If you’re going to do what He said, you couldn’t preach to anybody but the ‘lost sheep the house of Israel.’ ”

Purchased possession

“If the moment you got saved God gave you your resurrection body, where would you have to be?” Jordan reasons. “You’d have to be in heaven! Because II Corinthians 5 says you’re going to get a body eternal in the heavens. So when you get that body, you’re going to be up there.

“So if the moment you got saved He gave you that and you’re up there, what would happen to the ministry the Body of Christ down here? Well, you wouldn’t have gotten saved because the guy who gave you the gospel wouldn’t have been there to give you the gospel because he’d be in heaven!

“That’s why we suffer and travaileth in pain together with all of creation. Not because God doesn’t love us.

“You are His purchased possession, but He just hasn’t finished the work on you, so you’re in that little limbo period in there. That's why He says ‘as those alive from the dead.’ If you are a LIVING sacrifice, wouldn’t you be the walking dead?

“It’s an understanding of this identity God has given you and you ‘present your body’; you take the life that’s in you and say, ‘Lord, I’m going to use my body in the reality of who I really am. I’m a living sacrifice.’

*****

When Jesus was 12 years old and had just returned with His parents to Nazareth following His visit to the temple, Luke 2:52 says, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.”

 

Jordan observes, “If He increased in wisdom there must have been some wisdom He didn’t have before then. That’s kind of shocking. The answer is in Hebrews 5:8-9: ‘Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.’

 

“How was He perfected? Well, He learned in His experience what obedience was. You see that contrast? ‘Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience.’ He’s God but He’s also man and it’s His humanity that had to be educated, not His deity.”

 

*****

 

In Philippians 2, Paul tells us that while Christ “thought it not robbery to be equal with God,” He “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.”

 

Jordan says, “There’s no question about the deity of Christ, but there’s something in this passage that allows you and me to come in contact with deity in a way we couldn’t otherwise do.

 

“It says, ‘But he made himself of no reputation.’ I love that. The first way you think like God thinks is you don’t make yourself of any reputation.

 

“Jesus was right; He was never wrong. He never did anything to offend anyone but when people were offensive to Him He could have stood and said, ‘You got no right!’ but He never did that. He never defended Himself against evil accusations. It says, ‘As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.’

 

“He didn’t take His reputation and say, ‘I’ve got to be proven right.’ He said, ‘I didn’t come for that.’ He made himself of no reputation but took upon Him the form of a servant.

 

“Notice the verbs. He MADE himself and TOOK upon Him. Nobody forced Him to do this. Jesus Christ—now get this terminology in your mind—voluntarily of His own free will laid aside the free and independent exercise of all of His attributes as God.

 

“He purposely chose to live as ‘the man Christ Jesus’ in absolutely complete total dependence on what His Father told Him.

 

“He doesn’t know everything. Here’s God the Son, who has all the infinite knowledge of God—knows everything God the Father knows, everything God the Holy Spirit knows, everything they planned—but in order to be your Savior, in order for that Word . . . that expression of God to become flesh, He made a choice. He made himself of no reputation. He said, ‘I’ll not use my personal attributes.’

 

“He willingly chose to be a servant and one of the characteristics of a servant is He does not know everything there is know about the master’s plan. He’s going to live in total dependence on what the master tells Him.”

 

How does a baby pre-stage his birth?

One of the great proofs God’s Word is true and Jesus Christ is who He says He is, is the exact fulfillment of His birth from prophecy.

Jordan reasons, “If you can predict something down to the exact place and time, and seven hundred years later it takes place . . .

“You know what the world says? ‘Must have been written after the fact and just made to look like that.’ But you know you can have an absolute historic certainty that cannot be argued with successfully in that one verse right there (Micah 5:2).

"Ir reads, 'But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.'

“According to every historian—I don’t care if he’s a saved one or lost one; a Christian or atheist—the general understanding of all of history is that in about 250 B.C. the Jewish Bible was translated into the Greek language into a book called by people ‘the Septuagint.’

“The Greek translation of the Bible contained the Book of Micah and contained that verse exactly as it is in your King James Bible. Every historical source you could find to document the historicity of the Book of Micah guarantees you that it was written at least 250 years before Christ (more probably 700).

*****

“But let’s say you don’t want to take anything Christians say, so, okay, let’s take what the world says. What does the scholarship of the University of Chicago say? It says that 250 years before, minimum, the exact town . . .

“Now you know how improbable that was? Mary and Joseph didn’t live in Bethlehem; they lived in Nazareth almost 100 miles north.

“How in the world are you going to take a man and his pregnant . . . ‘she’s great with child,’ as the verse says and I love that expression. She’s ready to pop and be delivered.

“How’s he going to get her a hundred miles from up there to Bethlehem?! God uses a pagan ruler to give the decree that all  the world has to be taxed and you’ve got to go back to your hometown.

“What would have motivated Joseph to put his pregnant little wife on the back of a donkey, or in the back of a cart, and drag her a hundred miles in that condition? Because she had to go 100 miles for Him to be born where He’s supposed to be born.

“Everything about it is beyond human calculations. What that means is that based on the mathematical, statistical laws of probability, the very science that you use to demonstrate DNA conclusively identifies someone as guilty or innocent (DNA is all based on statistical probability), that one verse right there demonstrates!

“There are over 300 verses just like that. If you just took eight specific verses like that, and there are 300 of them, but if you just took eight markers like that, you’d have the ability to identify in a court of law a statistical absoluteness that this is true. That He is who He said He was.

“To me that’s a fascinating thing, because surrounding the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ is the scientific, cultural, conclusive proof that He is who He said He was by the fulfillment exactly on time…how could a baby prearrange all that to happen? How did a baby pre-stage it?

“When He died on the Cross, and He’s dead, they take Him down off that Cross and bury Him in a rich man’s tomb like Isaiah 53 said they would. His body lays there and doesn’t see corruption like Psalm 16 said it would. He’s raised from the dead like Psalm 2 said He would be. He then ascends up into heaven like Psalm 110 said He would.

“When He’s stone cold dead on the market, how did He arrange to be buried where Isaiah said He would be buried? How do you arrange that for yourself?!”

You bet your 401K!

At Christmas we sing, “Joy to the world, let the earth receive her king,” but nobody does. When Christ returns, all kings are going to serve Him as He rules an earthly, visible, political kingdom in Palestine as the headquarters.

“You just keep reading through Scripture and you can’t miss the fact that all this stuff is looked at and thought about to be just as real as it’s said to be!” says Jordan.

Isaiah 2:2 says, “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.”

Similarly, Daniel 2:44 says, “And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.”

Jordan reasons, “Does it say it shall stand hereafter and the dream is ‘symbolic and the interpretation is highly figurative, apocalyptic and uncertain’?  No, it said you can bet your 401K on this one—it’ll come to pass right on the money!

*****

“In Habakkuk 2:14 is the promise, ‘For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.’

“The earth is going to be filled with the knowledge, not just of the Lord, but of the glory of the Lord, and when He sits upon His throne of glory, which is located in the city of Jerusalem, the 12 apostles will sit upon 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel and the earth will be filled with the knowledge of a KING reigning in a city in Jerusalem. You can just go on and on and on with these things!

“What I want you to see is that when you read these passages, you get a sense that it’s real; it’s not some symbolic ‘spiritual rule in the hearts of men.’

 

"When you ask somebody where is that verse in the Bible, they always run over to Luke 17.

“We already studied that passage where Jesus said to the Pharisees ‘the kingdom of God is within you.’ If you think that the kingdom was within those Pharisees—that it was a ‘spiritual rule in the hearts’ of those lost Pharisees that Jesus was talking about—then you got bigger problems than just not understanding this verse!

“You see, Jesus said, ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and then all these things will be added unto you.’

“It’s only the nation who trusts Him with heart faith who receives the literal, physical kingdom. When God promised Abraham some land to him and his descendants forever, if He doesn’t give it to them, He’s a liar and He’s not ‘the God who cannot lie,’ and you got a big problem. But it is real!”

No manger for Magi

When the wise men (the Magi) come on the scene in Matthew 2, Jesus Christ is NOT a babe in the manger—He’s a toddler living in a house in Nazareth!

 “He’s not a baby in the sense of a newborn infant; He’s as much as two years old and living in a house," confirms Jordan. "When Herod wants to go find Jesus, he says, ‘Go out and have every male baby two years and younger killed.' Why? He’d looked for the timing when the star appeared because he wanted to know how old the baby was.

“He’s called a ‘young child’ over and over in Matthew 2. No longer the infant baby, but the little toddler now, and yet He’s still God in our humanity.

 

*****

“Matthew 2 reads, ‘[2] Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.
[3] When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.
[4] And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.
[5] And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet,
[6] And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.’

“Herod went out and got all the rabbinical scholars, brought them in and said, ‘Where’s the Messiah going to be born?’ And they answered, ‘That’s easy! In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, thou Bethlehem in the land of Juda are not least of among the princes of Judah.’

“Now that’s just like a bunch of religious tomfoolery right there! Look at what it says: ‘And thou Bethlehem in the land of Juda are not least of among the princes of Juda.’

“Micah said you are ‘the least.’ These guys, they don’t want their king to be born in a little insignificant po-dunk place out yonder. They said, ‘You’re not!’ They actually changed God’s Word.

*****

“You better watch so-called ‘religious scholars’ because they’ll take God’s Word and twist it to make themselves look like the winner. That’s why you better look at the verses yourself.

“Don’t let somebody take the thing out of its context, stick it on a wall, or stick it in a book, and then impose another meaning to it. That’s what these birds did! You have to be careful letting people mess around with your Bible.

*****

“Now why did he get the town right? Because 700 years before, Micah had said it’s going to be Bethlehem. Think about what’s happening here. Here’s a bunch of rabbinical scholars who have no interest in Jesus Christ at all. When He shows up they’re going to hate Him and cry, ‘Crucify Him! Away with Him! We will not have this man reign over us.’ And yet here they are, unsuspecting, unknowing, being the No. 1 witness to the fact He is who He says He is.

“Micah 5:1-2 says, ‘Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid siege against us: they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek. But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.’

“Micah lived 700 years before the birth of Christ. That’s seven centuries, longer than our country’s been in existence. Micah prophesies to the nation Israel about facing enemies coming in and invading their land, economic collapse and political upheaval and political corruption.

“You talk about a Middle East problem! The Middle East has been in turmoil for millenniums. You go 2,500 years ago in Micah’s day and the same kind of conflict going on in the Middle East today was going on then! And the goal of all the Gentile nations around Israel was to destroy Israel.

 

*****

“Bethlehem was a small, itty-bitty little insignificant town. In fact, there were two Bethlehems in Israel at that time and that’s why Micah says ‘Bethlehem Ephratah.’ That’s like saying the name of the city and the county in which Christ resides.

“The only claim to fame this town ever had was that a little shepherd boy named David was born there and that little shepherd boy, you remember, became king.

“It says, ‘yet out of thee shall he come forth.’ In Galatians when Paul said, ‘God send forth His Son,’ that’s a reference back to this verse where Micah says, ‘Out of thee, Bethlehem, shall come forth.’

*****

“When it says, ‘whose goings forth have been from of old,’ you see how ‘goings’ is plural? He had more than one going. Now if you’re old, you’re ancient. That’s talking about how long you’ve been around. That’s a reference to time.

“You can go back to a place where time began. In the beginning of what? Time and creation. In the beginning of that continuum in which we live—time and space.

“But this one that’s going to come forth in time, comes out of eternity. This isn’t a human person; this is God stepping out of eternity into time in the clothing of our humanity. You see, that makes Him kind of unique. It makes Him a little different. The Lord Jesus Christ demonstrated His deity--that He was who He said He was--by fulfilling that verse.

“Seven hundred years after Micah, the wise men come to Jerusalem ‘seeking him born king of the Jews.’ They know the time! How did a bunch of Gentiles over in the east know? They had some books that told them the time when He was going to be born. God had identified a time and apostate Israel, who had no care for their Bible, laid it aside, but some other people took it up and knew WHEN to be looking.

*****

“They saw His star. They saw exactly what Jacob told Israel to be looking for in Genesis 49. Just what Balaam, in Numbers 23, said would happen. Just exactly the timeline Daniel told Israel it would be.

“Where would you go to look for the king of Israel? Well, Jerusalem’s the ‘city of the great king,’ so they go there.

“In Luke, you go to the nativity and you see the shepherds and they’re biding in the field in that night and they go and worship the babe and then they find Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in the manger.”

Duck called out

All this talk about Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty and no one gets to the real meat. The "dirty little secret" the media hasn’t caught on to--either through willing ignorance (II Peter 3:5) or just running with their Roman Catholic playbook like Fox News--is that Phil is a Campbellite and that ain’t good.

To give just one definition of the heretical sect, here’s an outtake I found from the blog Ezekiel3 written by Ray McIntire:

“Most every time the Bible says baptism, the Campbellite assumes it is water, and every time the Bible says water, the Campbellite assumes the Scripture means baptism. Water Dogs (Campbellites) act on behalf of hell’s minions to deceive sinners into believing in a works salvation that is eerily similar to the Roman Catholic Church.

One might say that the Church of Christ (the Campbellites are associated with) demonization is ‘catholic lite’. Both cults substitute water for the blood of Jesus Christ for initial salvation, then try to keep their counterfeit Christianity by the mass or ‘mass lite’.

“Strangely enough, both the Campbellites and the current pope of Roman claim to oversee the one and only Christian church. Even though they part company around the claim to be the one true church, these two ominous cults have several heresies in common. Catholics and Campbellites agree on the following departures from scripture:

1.      Both believe a Christian can lose their salvation after Jesus gives it to them. 2 All sinners must be saved by baptism (sprinkling or submersion). 3. No Christian can be sure they are saved and must die to find out for sure. 4. Both believe Jesus will not come back and reign from Jerusalem. 5. Both believe Israel is NEVER going to be restored literally and politically to her own land.

******

Just after Thanksgiving, Jordan conducted a one-day conference for a crowd of dispensational grace believers down in Slidell, LA (only a duck’s call from where the Dynasty resides), in which he spoke specifically about water baptism, warning,  “If you commit spiritual larceny and try to steal somebody else’s blessings and  promises, it won’t do you any good. You can’t make God do something He’s not doing.”

This was in the context of how Israel’s program in time past differs dramatically from what Jews and Gentiles are to follow today in the dispensation of grace laid out by the Apostle Paul.

Jordan explained, “To become a priest in Israel, first you had to wash him with the water and then you had to anoint him. First, you had to get the baptism and repentance for the remission of sins and then he had to get the gift of the Holy Ghost. (Acts 2:38, Matt. 3:11)

“You know what God’s going to do with the nation Israel? Ezekiel 36:23: ‘And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, saith the Lord GOD, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes.’

“So the Gentiles are going to be able to look at Israel and see God set apart as the God of creation in Israel. They’re going to be His representative nation.

“Verse 25: ‘Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.’

“So the first thing that has to happen is they need to be separated away from all their idolatry, and the way He’s going to do it is He’s going to sprinkle clean water upon them.  Now what do you think that might represent?

“Doesn’t that sort of sound like, ‘I baptize you with water unto repentance’? By the way, did you notice HOW he said he’s going to do it? You ever hear anybody say the word ‘baptize’ means ‘immerse’? You know what that is? That’s a figment of the imagination of denominationally prejudiced dictionaries. I say that without batting an eye or any fear of being contradicted by anybody of any godly reputation.

“You’ve been told things all your life one way and it turns out to be something completely different. In your Bible, some baptisms are done by sprinkling, others by God (with the baptism of the Holy Ghost) pouring His spirit out. You think every baptism in the Bible is by water, but they’re not.

“The reason John the Baptist came baptizing with water is so they could have that remnant of believers identified, then they could be anointed and then they could go be of that kingdom."

*****

Obviously the Robertson clan’s beliefs in other areas are far astray from biblical truth. But here’s just one aside. Last month it was brought to light that one of the boys was cancelled from a Christian event in Tennessee because the organizers didn’t want to send mixed messages to their youth.

The news was that the famous family had a new business venture: Duck Commander Wines. In conjunction with the winemakers of Trinchero Family Estates in Napa, the Robertsons' had their own line of white and red wines slated to hit stores.

*****

At the same Slidell conference, Jordan told the story of the tee-totaling Rechabite family in Jeremiah 35:

“There’s a great family in the Bible called the Rechabites; it’s one of my favorite stories in Jeremiah. The Rechabites were a bunch of Gentiles and God told Jerry, ‘Go down and tell the Rechabites you want them to come over and have supper with you and I want you to put some wine out in front of them and watch what they do.’

“So Jerry gives them supper and puts out some nice fine red wine and they said, ‘We don’t drink wine.’ He said, ‘Why not?’ and they said, ‘Our father told us not to drink red wine and we do what our daddy tells us.’

“God says to Jeremiah, ‘You go out and tell Israel there’s a bunch of dumb Gentiles that do what their daddy tells them to do because they love their daddy, and Israel doesn’t love me enough to do what I tell them to do.’

“It’s a great story and a great demonstration of what the problem in Israel was. Israel was to be holy. They were to think and act—He gave them a lot of screwball things to do. They couldn’t eat catfish, crab or shrimp. They couldn’t eat pork. How do you make green beans if you don’t have a little pork fat?!

“When you go back and read what He’s telling them, He’s saying, ‘Don’t go and act like those Gentiles out there. Why? Because I set you apart. You’re to think like I think. You’re to do what I tell you to do.’

“It was because he wanted them to stick out like a sore thumb to be different. There’s nothing immoral about eating that stuff. Those were ceremonial things to make them look different and be separated!”

Endless exceeding

Job says that by God’s spirit “he hath garnished the heavens.”

Jordan explains, “When He put the stars out there, He didn’t just go, ‘Ehh, here’s a few stars.’ He literally decorated the heavens. The earth is the center and He put the stars out there in relationship to that to make it interesting and to decorate.

*****

“In the new heaven and the new earth, God takes away the curse of sin and all its debilitating effect. Think about how pock-marked the moon is. Did you read the thing the other day about Mars and how it looks like it’s been run over by a dump truck and they’re talking about finding water?

“You know why the front side of the moon is so pock-marked? In the Flood, God brought sheets of ice out through the universe. He opened the fountains of heaven, and if people find water up there it’s the remnants of that. It was a just a hail storm of stuff.

*****

“Isaiah 9:7 it says, ‘Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end,’ Notice it’s the increase of His government. It’s not just that there’s no end to His government. That means that after the millennium, when death is done away with, the increase is always going to be there. So eventually Planet Earth is going to become saturated.

“The heavens are divided into twelve sections. The earth is divided into twelve sections. Deuteronomy 32:8 says, ‘When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.’

“Things on the earth correspond to things in the heavens (Colossians 1). That’s why there are 24 elders in Revelation 24. In the heaven up there, there are universes, solar systems, whatever you want to call them, that correspond to ours.

“Revelation 22 starts, ‘And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.
[2] In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.’

“In the new heaven and new earth, there’s going to be that 12-month cycle, and the way I understand that is, each month one of those 12 sections, it will be their month for the fruit and so forth.

“Each one of those months, people in that section of the earth are transported to one of these new planets. You’ll have a new Adam and Eve out there. You and I, as members of the Body of Christ, will be there to be what the Lord Jesus Christ was for Adam and Eve in the Garden.

“You understand the Lord God that walked in the cool of the day with Adam was the second person of the godhead. The difference is there will never be any sin. All that’s been settled. He’s going to create a universe populated with people who honor and glorify Him.

“Since it’s clear that ‘the increase of his government there will be no end,’ there’s going to have to be some way to extricate people off the planet. If we can send people to the moon, the Lord can get up there.

“One thing knowing all that does is it helps us understand that what we’re going to be doing out there is a whole lot more than just floating on a cloud.

*****

“It’s not true to say there’s no time in eternity. That would mean there’s no events. Time is the way you measure phenomena and the distance between events. If you don’t have time, there’s no movement. In eternity in God’s presence there is movement. So there has to be time in that sense.

“What there is is endless time in eternity. The Bible talks about world without end. Eons without end, that type of thing--ages to come.

“Here’s the part about that that thrills me: ‘That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.’ (Ephesians 2:7)

“There’s more than one age and in each age you’re going to show the exceeding riches of His grace. That means in this age, you’re going to show the riches of His grace, and in the next age, you’re going to EXCEED the demonstration from before. Every age will be more exceeding in the demonstration of His grace.

*****

“I use an illustration about Adam and Eve. Adam goes out and gets supper. He works in the Garden and comes home with a bushel of peaches and says, ‘Sugar, I think you’re going to like these. I ate one and they’re good.’ She says, ‘Man they are!’

“So the next day she takes those peaches and says, ‘You know, I bet if I sliced these up and put a little sugar on them they’d be even better.’ Adam comes home and says, ‘Man, these peaches are better than the ones yesterday!’ This is just exceeding good. So the next day, Eve bakes them and makes a peach cobbler. That’s better than the sliced peaches. It’s sort of goes like that.

“We’re going to have this endless exceeding, and what’s going to happen is ‘in Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.’ So you’re just going to learn more about Him and appreciate Him more, value Him more, and you’re going to think it couldn’t get any better, and in the next stage, it’s going to be even better. You’re never going to stop learning more about Him.

*****

“When you go through the Scripture and find out the places where there was physical healing, it’s associated with the nation Israel. The last thing the Apostle Paul wrote was, ‘Erastus abode at Corinth: but Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick.’ (II Timothy 4:20)

“Here’s an apostle that can’t heal a worker. He couldn’t heal himself. He couldn’t heal Timothy; he had to prescribe him medicine. The healing program has to do with the restoration of the kingdom.

*****

Rev. 21:22 (And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it) is talking about New Jerusalem, showing the Father and Son visible and operative.

*****

“The way God intervenes today is through His Word working in His people. When God intervened with Israel in time past, most of the time it was through angelic intervention. God didn’t just say, ‘Levitate, chair, and move over there.’

“He would send angels to slay people, rescue people. People have odd ideas about intervention. In II Kings 6:17 it says, ‘And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.’

 “God opened the eyes and you can see them up on the mountain to protect Israel. That’s the way that intervention took place. It wasn’t what we think of—you know, ‘O, Lord, just keep the school bus from running into the ditch.’ Now, my question is, ‘How are you expecting God to do that?’ ”

Dress rehearsals

The five titles in Scripture--Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace--are not just written for Christmas cards. They describe how the Davidic Covenant is going to be put into effect.

“Wonderful means He’s the Redeemer; counselor means He’s going to be the Deliverer and give them counsel as to how to be delivered from the enemy,” explains Jordan. “The reference to Mighty God, over and over in Scripture, is to God coming and destroying His enemy and the word used in the Psalms for that is ‘vengeance’ and ‘avenging.’

“When you read about the ‘avenging of Israel,’ that’s what takes place at the Cross. But He’s also going to be Israel’s deliverer in the tribulation. When you deliver someone, if you leave their enemy intact, they’re still vulnerable.    

“To deliver them is to rescue them, but you don’t really fully deliver somebody until you completely wipe out their enemies, and what He’s going to do in the tribulation and at the Second Advent is He’s going to deliver redeemed Israel into the kingdom and then He’s going to completely destroy all of their enemies.

*****

“If you want to understand the covenant God made with David, Psalm 89, in one long 52-verse explanation, lays out the essence of that covenant.

“You notice it’s called a ‘mishal of Ethan.’ You probably don’t remember Ethan. He’s not a guy that we think about every day.

“But if you go back to I Kings 4:30, when you read about Solomon being the wisest man in the earth, and God gave Solomon all this wisdom, it tells you in the next verse that he was ‘wiser than Ethan.’

“Ethan was recognized in Israel as a scholar. He was a wise man. When you look at Solomon and his wisdom, and they would say he’s ‘smarter than Ethan,’ that tells you Ethan was a smart guy. He understood what God was doing and he was associated with King David and with his son Solomon.

“When you see that term ‘mishal’ over the heading of a psalm, it means it’s a song of instruction, a song of teaching. It’s designed to bring understanding and doctrine and teaching and edification for Israel. Most of the times we think of the Psalms as just devotional books and ditties.

“The Davidic covenant focuses on the Messiah who’s going to redeem the nation Israel and establish the throne; the government in Israel. So when you think about the Abrahamic Covenant, that’s the underlying covenant that gives the nation and the land and the blessing of God to Israel and through Israel to the nations.

“But the Davidic covenant focuses on the kingdom issue in Israel. Verse 22 says, ‘The enemy shall not exact upon him; nor the son of wickedness afflict him.’

“He’s going to extend David’s reign from the Mediterranean all the way over to the Euphrates River. The whole land mass that God promised Abraham; David is the one who’s going to rule the whole thing.

“Verse 26 goes on, ‘He shall cry unto me, Thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.
[27] Also I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth.’

“Now that’s the great promise, but here comes the problem: ‘If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments;
[31] If they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments;
[32] Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes.’

“That’s where you are in Hosea. That’s what they’ve done. God’s going to chasten them and send them out among the Gentiles and treat them the way they desire to be treated—that is, like any other nation.

“When He restores them it’s not going to be because of them; it’s going to be because of the covenant that He made. He gave His Word. God is not through with Israel.

“What these Minor Prophets are detailing is, ‘Here are the issues and these things look especially to the Last Days.’

*****

“We studied how that fifth course of judgment is laid out in Daniel through those 70 weeks. And he tells you there’s a beginning phase of it and there are several other phases that come along, and then there’s that final 70^th week. And that 70^th week is going to be sort of like a parallel to the first installment; the first beginning of the thing. The ‘day of the Lord’s wrath’ begins with the captivity.

“Then the ‘great and notable day of the Lord’ is over there at the end. So the whole period of the captivity is His wrath, His rod, His indignation on them. But that Last Day is when the thing comes to a fulfillment.

“The fury at the beginning is a picture of how the fury at the end looks, so when Hosea talks about this stuff, he’ll be talking about what the Syrians and the Babylonians are going to do to the northern kingdom and to Judah, but when you begin to read that you begin to see that the Assyrian that comes in and takes the northern kingdom is really a type of the Antichrist that attacks Israel in the Last Days.

“So there’s a parallel going on here and that’s why these things are so important for Israel in the Last Days, because they’re not simply explaining WHY these things are happening, they’re explaining WHAT’s going to happen to them.

*****

“Hosea 5:8 says, ‘Blow ye the cornet in Gibeah, and the trumpet in Ramah: cry aloud at Beth-aven, after thee, O Benjamin.’ Now that’s really a strange reference to Benjamin. Hosea is basically talking to the northern kingdom, but Benjamin and Judah are the two tribes in the southern kingdom.

“What he’s doing here is he’s calling them to, ‘Fight! There’s a battle coming! The enemy’s coming in!’ But then he says, ‘Cry aloud at Beth-aven, after thee.’ In other words, they’re literally crying for Benjamin to lead them!

“I tell you, if you read what the preachers say about this passage, they have no idea what he’s talking about. Commentaries aren’t much help for you in it either. What they wind up doing is just changing it to make it say something else.

“The cross reference is back in Judges 5, where you have the issue of Deborah being the judge in Israel.

*****

“Israel had gotten to the position where in the Book of Judges you have some very strange people come and deliver Israel. When I say strange, I mean unusual. Out of the ordinary. In one place there’s a left-handed man. In scripture, you think of the right hand as the hand of power.

“What you see in Judges is God, again and again and again, use people you don’t expect. It’s a great illustration of what Paul says that He ‘uses the weak things to confound the mighty.’

“One of the people he uses is a lady named Deborah and she’s a great leader in Israel. She goes and helps Israel be delivered from Sisera and the Gentile bondage.

“Judges 5 is one of these interesting passages, where you see something happening back here and then you begin to realize, ‘That’s really a dress rehearsal for what’s going to happen over there in the future!’

“I’ve said to you many times, when you get over into the Minor Prophets, or even the major prophets  in Isaiah to Malachi, it will say, ‘When the Lord comes back in judgment over here against the Antichrist, it’s going to be LIKE this stuff back over here,’ and it will point back to Numbers, Judges, Exodus and Joshua.

“In other words, this stuff back there is really dress rehearsals for what’s going to take place in the future. And you’ll see that in Judges 5: ‘Then sang Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam on that day, saying,
[2] Praise ye the LORD for the avenging of Israel, when the people willingly offered themselves.’

“Judges 5:11 says, ‘They that are delivered from the noise of archers in the places of drawing water, there shall they rehearse the righteous acts of the LORD, even the righteous acts toward the inhabitants of his villages in Israel: then shall the people of the LORD go down to the gates.’

“You see that word ‘rehearse’ in there? This stuff going back here is a rehearsal of what’s going to happen in the future. So there’s a connection here.

“Verses 12-14 says, ‘Awake, awake, Deborah: awake, awake, utter a song: arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam.
[13] Then he made him that remaineth have dominion over the nobles among the people: the LORD made me have dominion over the mighty.
[14] Out of Ephraim was there a root of them against Amalek; after thee, Benjamin, among thy people; out of Machir came down governors, and out of Zebulun they that handle the pen of the writer.’

“You see that phrase ‘lead thy captivity captive’? That verse is picked up in Psalm 68 and then Paul quotes it in Ephesians 4 about ‘when Christ ascended on high he led captivity captive.’

“What that’s talking about is going out and taking the people who once held you captive--you go out and whip them, take them captive and lead them off! Israel’s going to be delivered.

“When it says, ‘he made him that remaineth have dominion over the nobles among the people,’ that’s what leading thy captivity captive means. You now have dominion over them.

*****

“You see where he says, ‘after thee, Benjamin’? God roots out Amalek, Israel’s enemy and a type of the flesh.

“What he’s saying is Benjamin is going to lead them in delivering Israel. You know the tribe of Benjamin is the toughest tribe in Israel when you come to fighting.

“You remember Benjamin back in Genesis. Joseph’s in Egypt and his brothers come and they want food and eventually he says, ‘When you come back, you can’t have anything unless you bring Benjamin.’ Without Benjamin there was no hope for Israel.

“When you come over to Hosea 5, this little oddball kind of unexpected reference to Benjamin is reminding you that what’s going on here isn’t just the Assyrian captivity; this is something that’s a rehearsal for something out there in the future that’s coming when the battle cry is going to be that Benjamin is going to lead the way for Israel.”

The 'Give Me!' Generation

Isaiah 14 is a prophecy about the Antichrist. “It’s not talking about Lucifer in the beginning; it’s talking about the Antichrist at the end,” confirms Jordan. “What you have here is Israel, as Satan is thrown down into hell (verse 9 says, ‘Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming’), literally casting a proverb into the mouth of the Adversary.

“Verse 4 says, ‘That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!’

“They’re literally going to mock him as he goes off into the bottomless pit. What they’re going to say to him is in verse 13: ‘For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north.’

“It’s, ‘Here’s what you said back in the beginning. Look at what it’s got you!’

*****

“So verses 13-15 are going to give you the original plan Satan had. The goal of it is to be like the most high God, but notice the steps he’s going to use all have to do with ‘high places’--taking God’s place in the heavens, and in the government there, and having control; the religion.

When he says, ‘I will ascend into the heavens,’ he’s going to ascend up to the top position and assume rulership.

“ ‘I will exalt my throne.’ Notice he has a throne. In the original order of things, Lucifer had authority, but it wasn’t enough. He says, ‘I’m going to exalt my throne ABOVE the stars of God. I’m going to become the ruler over the angelic creation. All of it! I’m going to be the one who has the opportunity to dictate its directions, and talk about and explain what it’s going to do.’

“ ‘I will also sit upon the sides of the north.’ ‘I’m not only going to be the head ruler, I’m going to be the one people come to and give account.’

*****

The mount of the congregation on the sides of the north is a location in the universe.

“You remember in Job 1 when the angels came to appear before God and Satan came with him? Have you ever wondered how Satan got to come up into heaven and talk to God? The dirty rascal. Well, he didn’t go to the third heaven. That’s not where he met. He met on a place the Bible calls ‘the mount of the congregation.’

“It’s a planet in the universe where the angels would congregate and give account for their activity. It was an accounting thing. That’s what they were doing in Job. That’s why he asked the devil, ‘Where do you come from?’ He said, ‘From going to and fro in the earth. I control the earth. I’m down there running what I control down there!’

“That mount of the congregation on the sides of the north is the . . . when you talk about the sides of something, you go back in Samuel, and Saul is pursuing David, and David hides in a cave--he’s in the sides of the cave. What that’s talking about is the farthest back recesses of the cave.

“When he talks about ‘the sides of the north,’ he’s talking about the upper region of the north up here. The universe has an identifiable shape to it. It has locations to it. There is a north (not magnetic north in the earth) but a north relative to the universe and that north is where God’s throne is.

“New Jerusalem is north. It would do you well to always know which way north is. There is a place up there in the sides of the north where God calls His angels together and Satan says, ‘I want the whole universe to be accountable to me. I want them to be answerable to me.’

“Then Satan says, ‘I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.’ God’s throne is surrounded by clouds. In Samuel, when Hannah and David talk about it, He dwells in the darkness. That’s because when Paul says He dwells ‘in the light which no man can approach,’ God holds back that glory with a veil.

“Satan says, ‘I’m going to go sit up there where He sits! I’m going to be the one that the universe worships! I’m going to be the one whose plan the universe is executing!’

*****

“You see in Proverbs 30:11 there’s a generation and it goes on like that. The verse says, ‘There is a generation that curseth their father, and doth not bless their mother.’

“You remember when Jesus said in Matthew 3, ‘This generation shall not pass until the son of man become’? With the generation He was talking about, He said, ‘O generation of vipers who hath warned thee to flee from the wrath to come.’

“When He talks about a generation, He’s not talking about a period of time somebody lives. We talk about the Baby Boomers and the Millennials. He’s not talking about that. He’s saying, ‘You were generated; you were created by snakes.’ Who is the viper? Satan.

“In other words, ‘You’re the offspring; your father is the devil.’ The generation is talking about the SOURCE where something comes from and in that Last Day, look at Proverbs 31:1: ‘The words of king Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him.’

*****

“You see the Book of Proverbs is not just a book of history. It’s a book written for the prophetic program specifically to give the Little Flock in Israel, in the Last Days, some wisdom to stand against the lie program; to stand against the ‘strange woman who rides the beast.’

“There’s a generation that will be there and they love ‘Give me! Give me!’ Here’s one of the characteristics of that apostate generation in Proverbs 30:14: ‘There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men.’

“In Matthew 23:13 is just one illustration of how this stuff fits: ‘But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.’

“Those hypocrites are the ones Jesus said, ‘You are of your father the devil.’

“Now, if you devour a widow’s house, aren’t you doing what that verse is talking about there? ‘Whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men.’

“How did they do that? They devoured widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers.

“Think about that for minute. Here’s a widow and you’re going to devour her house, and the way you’re going to do it is by pretense, making long prayers. Who would a widow want you to be praying for?

*****

“You ever hear of anybody praying for the dead? Well, a widow’s got a dead husband. You’ll find back in the Book of Maccabees, one the Apocryphal books, the whole issue.

“In fact, if you ask a Roman Catholic, ‘Why do you pray for the dead?’ they go to the Book of Maccabees and quote a passage that tells you what the Pharisees taught about praying for the dead. What are they doing? They’re going to that extreme with their religion just to get and suck.

“Here’s what they look like. Proverbs 30:15 says, ‘The horseleach hath two daughters, crying, Give, give. There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, four things say not, It is enough.’

“It’s, ‘Give! Give! We need more money! We got more expenses! The mortgage’s got to be paid. We got to reach out! More, more, more! Give, give, give!’

“You see, they’ve perverted the truth of God into a system of enrichment. Micah 3 says, ‘Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment, and pervert all equity.
[10] They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity.
[11] The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? none evil can come upon us.
[12] Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.’

“In other words, the princes and the kings and the rulers of the nation are judging for money. ‘The priest thereof teach for hire. The prophets thereof divine for money.’

“When you see all that stuff in religion today, it ain’t nothing new. Hosea 8 says, ‘Israel hath forsaken God and built temples,’ and you see that going on today. Build monuments and to keep them going you got to, ‘Give! Give! Give!’

“In Israel at this time, the politicians, the priesthood, the prophets--it’s just suck, suck, suck out of the people. That’s why He wrote over it, ‘Ichabod, the glory’s departed.’

“So the indictment against Israel, the sins as He proclaims them, have to do with being corrupted into a nation that can’t be used by God, because this false religious system has so corrupted the thinking of the people, and of the leaders, that they have no ability to even identify the truth.”