Just wandering a little

“And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside children. And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle,” says Exodus 12:37-38.

Jordan explains in an old study, “Some were believers and others weren’t, and He took them out into the wilderness. I heard a guy on the radio this morning who said, ‘I’m reading the Bible this year . . . By the way, how could you get lost in the Sinai Peninsula for 40 years?!’

“Folks, they weren’t lost in the wilderness. The Bible doesn’t say that. I mean, a guy in a wheelchair could have found his way out in 40 years!

“I talked to a guy who, in Desert Storm, drove one of these Humvees and he talked about getting lost in the desert out there. He said, ‘We were out in the middle of nowhere, didn’t know where we were. We were in Iraq but we were lost.’ I said, ‘What’d you do?’ He said, ‘We took a compass, found south and went head for it!’ Well, at least he knew he was going in the right direction.

“The Israelites weren’t lost; they wandered. If fact, they didn’t do a whole lot of wandering. They camped. The Shekinah glory of God would move and they’d get up and move, and then it would sit and they’d sit, and they didn’t even wander a whole lot in the sense of moving their encampment. They just were there.

“You know what the wilderness did? It identified in Israel who the Believer was and who the unbeliever was. The wilderness identified and shook out the unbeliever and left the believers to go in. That’s exactly what’s going to happen in the tribulation. That’s exactly the purpose of the tribulation period.

“Ezekiel 20 says, ‘Son of man, speak unto the elders of Israel, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Are ye come to inquire of me? As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will not be inquired of by you.
[4] Wilt thou judge them, son of man, wilt thou judge them? cause them to know the abominations of their fathers:
[5] And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; In the day when I chose Israel, and lifted up mine hand unto the seed of the house of Jacob, and made myself known unto them in the land of Egypt, when I lifted up mine hand unto them, saying, I am the LORD your God;
[6] In the day that I lifted up mine hand unto them, to bring them forth of the land of Egypt into a land that I had espied for them, flowing with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands.’

“That’s just like Hosea 2:14 (‘Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her’) and following: ‘I’m gonna take you out into the wilderness and I’m going to plead with you, directly, face to face, ‘like as I pled with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I plead with you, saith the Lord God.’

“How many times have I said to you Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, etc., are all a picture and a dress rehearsal of what’s coming out over here.

“Ezekiel 20: 27-28 reads, ‘And I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant:
[38] And I will purge out from among you the rebels, and them that transgress against me: I will bring them forth out of the country where they sojourn, and they shall not enter into the land of Israel: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.’

“Folks, he’s going to judge the nation Israel in the wilderness and purge out the rebel. You see the whole purpose of the tribulation is judgment on Israel to purge out the rebel; to cause the unbelievers, those that don’t receive the love of the truth, to be damned by sending them a lie and strong delusion so they follow the Antichrist because they believed the lie and received not the love of the truth."

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In the same study, Jordan said, “America thinking is so dominated by the theology of the Dutch Reformers Calvinism and Armenianism that it’s hard sometime just to break free of that stuff. The grace movement as a movement is so dominated by Calvinism that it’s hard to even breathe sometime, certainly to get any light, because of the oppression of their systems.

“But those systems have nothing to do with the Bible. They are philosophical systems developed by theologians who like to hear themselves talk, and who develop their systems to try to defend the integrity and honor of Almighty God, when they didn’t need to do that; God can take care of Himself.

“All this stuff about this pre-arranged life map . . . The idea there is before the foundation of the world, God Almighty planned everything and there’s nothing happens except what He planned and there’s this life map that you have to go around out here and find all these places.

“The silly thing about that is if God already planned everything that’s going to happen, and nothing can happen than what He planned, then what are you worrying about because what’s going to happen is what He planned!

“You ought to forget it and just go do whatever you want to do because whatever you want to do is what God planned for you to do. Quit worrying about it. I don’t understand what everybody’s getting all bent out of shape about. You know, ‘Oh, I got to find out God’s Word because He planned it . . .’

“If He planned it and it can’t be any other way, then just forget it. Just go on. Just do whatever you want to do. Because nothing can happen except what He planned in His eternal decrees.

“That’s so silly! You say, ‘Well, you’re making fun of it.’ I sure am because it’s just like Jay Leno and Johnny Carson! It’d be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. And the other side’s just as goofball.

“Just remember that all that stuff is a bunch of Dutch theologians sitting around over there arguing among themselves about who’s right and it’s just like the thing about how many angels dance on the head of a pin. It doesn’t make any difference who’s right because neither one of them are anywhere even in the game!

“Ephesians 1:9 says He’s made known to us the mystery of His will. God HAD a secret will; the only problem is He’s made it known. If the verse means what it says and says what it means, then there isn’t anymore secret will of God because He’s said He already told it to you and wrote it down in a book for you!

“When Paul says ‘if God permit’ and ‘the Lord willing,’ he’s not talking about all this stuff like, ‘God didn’t come in here and check something going on here, or check something going on there, and I’m going to go over here and do this but God brought this hurricane in here and stopped me.’ Or ‘God brought that tanker accident on the freeway that got the traffic all balled up and I couldn’t go down that way so I had to go another way.’ That’s not it!”