MAJOR restoration

The fundamental reason the Minor Prophets are called minor is they’re small.

While the Book of Daniel, for example, has just 12 chapters it has almost 12,000 words in it, so it’s actually twice as long wordwise.

Jordan explains, “Isaiah to Daniel, they deal with the MAJOR issues; Hosea to Malachi are going to deal with filling in the blanks and the details. Hosea is the first book of the Minor Prophets and the 28^th book in the Bible. That means it matches Isaiah 28.

“I would recommend to you—if you would familiarize yourself with II Kings 14-18, that’s the time period historically out of which the whole book of Hosea comes.

*****

“What Zechariah’s going to be about is the time when the Lord comes back to repossess His possession.  He’s got these angelic beings out there ready to go and He says, ‘The earth is at still and is at rest. It’s ready for me to come back and take it!’

“Once you’re at home, you have access and that’s that idea of ‘walking to and fro.’ It’s an action and an activity talking about repossession.

“Zechariah 1:12-13 says, ‘Then the angel of the LORD answered and said, O LORD of hosts, how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah, against which thou hast had indignation these threescore and ten years? And the LORD answered the angel that talked with me with good words and comfortable words.

“I like that: good words, comfortable words. In Isaiah 4 he says, ‘Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.’ Paul says, ‘Comfort one another with these words.’

“There’s information, doctrine, truth, words in the Bible designed to produce various effects. These are ones that are going to produce comfort in Israel.

“The passage goes on, ‘So the angel that communed with me said unto me, Cry thou, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy.’

“The picture here is that the time is going to come when He’s going to re-establish the kingdom. He scattered them but it’s not going to be forever. What Zechariah does is talk about that restoration process.

“Verse 18-19 says, ‘Then lifted I up mine eyes, and saw, and behold four horns.
[19] And I said unto the angel that talked with me, What be these? And he answered me, These are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.’

“That verse is fascinating. The horns are explained to you in the Book of Daniel. Zechariah’s going to build onto that previous revelation. But notice how he says this because there’s a sense in which this verse, if you don’t read it right, is not accurate.

“It says ‘which have scattered Judah.’ See that past tense? But the horns in Daniel, only one of them is past. They’re in the second one and there’s more to come. Here Zechariah says, ‘They’ve already done it.’ “He’s alerting you to the fact that he’s looking beyond the activities of this period of time here. He’s looking beyond to the fulfillment of these things.

“So Media-Persia, Rome, Greece—these kingdoms, once they’re done, Zechariah’s looking for that and that’s why when you come to verse 20, and I’ve always thought this verse was the fascinating one, it says, ‘And the LORD shewed me four carpenters.’

“What do carpenters do? They build things. You remember how Christ talked to the Pharisees and said, ‘You builders . . .’ The leaders of Israel were supposed to be builders of the nation.

Isaiah 28:16 says, ‘Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.’

Psalm 118:22, says, The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.

“Well, builders who don’t do their work get to be replaced by the builders, and when you’re going to be a builder, there’s carpenters. And then he says there’s going to be four carpenters and he said, ‘What come these to do?’

“Verse 21 goes on, ‘Then said I, What come these to do? And he spake, saying, These are the horns which have scattered Judah, so that no man did lift up his head: but these are come to fray them, to cast out the horns of the Gentiles, which lifted up their horn over the land of Judah to scatter it.’

“These carpenters are going to come to break the power of the Gentile dominion over Israel and establish Israel’s kingdom. Now, the fascinating thing is when the Lord Jesus Christ came, you know what they called Him? You remember what Jesus’ daddy did? He was a carpenter. In Mark, they called the Lord Jesus Christ ‘the carpenter.’

“You say, ‘I wonder why they’d call him that?’ Well that’s because that’s what His daddy did. Isn’t it fascinating that when God arranges for the Lord Jesus Christ to be born by the virgin Mary, she’s espoused to a guy who fits the pattern exactly like He said it was going to come to pass?!

“By the way, there are going to be four carpenters. How many Gospels are there? It’s interesting. The four gospels are there because there are four specific ways the Messiah is described as coming.

“Zechariah 9:9 says, ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.’

“So when you come to the book of Matthew, you see, ‘Behold the king.’ It starts out ‘son of David, the son of Abraham.’ Luke takes him back to the son of Adam. You know what Zechariah’s telling you: ‘You know what want to watch out for? The king’s coming.’

“Zechariah 3:8 says, ‘Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before thee: for they are men wondered at: for, behold, I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH.’

“Isn’t it fascinating how that word BRANCH is all in upper-case letters? There are only a very few words in the KJB that are in all upper case like that. That’s a reference to the Messiah. There are four different Branch titles given to the Messiah.

“You know what the Book of Mark does? It says, ‘Behold my servant.’ You go through the Book of Mark and just mark down sometime how many verses start with the word ‘and.’ You read the first chapter of Mark and if you just sit and read it you just go, “Huggh, huggh, huggh.’ Mark is moving! He’s moving, he’s doing!

“There’s no genealogy in Mark. There is in Matthew because you need to know who the king came from. But who cares where a servant came from? What do you want to know about a servant? Can he work! You don’t want to know what his pedigree is. It’s, ‘Can he get the job done?’ Mark is the gospel of the servant.

“What you’re going to read about in Mark is sonship service. There’s a lot of talk today about ‘your sonship walk.’ If you want to see a real sonship service, you’ll see it in the Lord Jesus Christ, specifically in the Book of Mark.

“When Paul says, ‘Let this mind be in you which is also in Christ Jesus,’ you want to see that sonship mentality put on display in human form made real—the Book of Mark’s for that.

“Zechariah 6:12 says, ‘And speak unto him, saying, Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, Behold the man whose name is The BRANCH; and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD.’

“We’ve got another behold statement. Now he’s the man. So you’ve got the Book of Luke presenting Him as ‘the man Christ Jesus.’ He gives the most thorough description of the nativity.

(To be continued . . . )

Down, down, down

II Kings 14-18 is the time period historically out of which the Book of Hosea comes.

“If you start to read Hosea repeatedly you’ll be familiar enough with the book that you then can go back to Isaiah 28 and begin to notice themes in the chapter that are kind of mirrored in the Book of Hosea,” says Jordan.

“I’ve said to you over and over that each of the 66 chapters in the Book of Isaiah will have information that correlates with the 66 books of the King James Bible . . . there are themes and ideas that pop up in one that pop up in the other and even through Paul’s epistles it works out that way!

“What that tells you is whoever wrote your Bible already knew what the end was going to be when they wrote the Book of Isaiah.

“Isaiah 28 starts out talking about one of the judgments on Ephraim, and Hosea is going to focus on Ephraim, which is one of the tribes of the northern kingdom and sort of the pseudonym for the whole of the northern kingdom of Israel.

“The nation of Israel at this time in history is divided into two parts: the northern kingdom (the 10 tribes) called Israel and the two southern tribes called the ‘kingdom of Judah.’

“Somebody once called Hosea ‘Israel’s northern kingdom Jeremiah.’ Jeremiah is known as ‘the weeping prophet,’ and he was there in the land when Nebuchadnezzar came in and he prophesied before the captivity, during the captivity and after the captivity.

“There are places in Jeremiah where he talks about how he can’t stop the tears from coming; the weeping for the sins of his people and for the judgment’s that coming upon them for their rejection of God’s Word.

“Hosea is sort of that same kind of a prophet to the northern kingdom. Verse 1: ‘The word of the LORD that came unto Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.’

“Just notice when you read the time element here about when this is. He lists four kings of Judah and then lists only one king of Israel.

“Four kings cover about a 50-year period of time. Now, Jeroboam the son of Joash, is, by the way, Jeroboam No. 2. When he tells you he’s the son of Joash, that’s so you know he’s not talking about ‘Jeroboam, the son of Nebat’ who caused Israel to sin and was the one who was involved with the dividing of the kingdom after Solomon died.

“The first Jeroboam is the reason there is a division between the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. He started that second course of judgment back there.

“Jeroboam No. 2 starts to reign in Judah about the same time as Uzziah and there are a bunch of kings in Judah after him but they’re not listed. And they won’t be listed in any of the Minor Prophets when he begins to identify who they are. The reason for that is the spiritual condition of the northern kingdom.

“II Kings 14:23 informs, ‘In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel began to reign in Samaria, and reigned forty and one years.’

“Joash king of Judah is one the high marks spiritually, politically and economically of the nation of Judah of all the sons of David. He had a tremendous life and ministry; he went out and destroyed the Baal worshippers out of the land (Kings 12 and 13 detail Joash’s life).

“He was a tremendously effective leader for the southern kingdom. It was during this time politically and economically the nation Israel, the southern kingdom just prospered and went ahead. So in the south there’s a real economic and spiritual revival going on. In the north it’s just exactly the opposite.

“I think about this situation and it reminds me of a nighttime picture of Korea on internet satellite. South Korea is lit up and North Korea is just like a black space. With these nighttime pictures of the globe on the internet, it’s fascinating where the lights and so forth are. That’s where there’s some productivity, some wealth, some ability to have electricity.

“I read verse 23 and I say, ‘How in the world I’m supposed to keep this stuff straight?!’ You got two Joashs—one in the south and one in the north! You got to be sure you notice which one they are because they’re different. One’s a good guy and one’s a bad guy.

“The next verse says, ‘And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.’

“You see he doesn’t start out so good. The spiritual heritage of Joash the second corresponds with the spiritual heritage of Jeroboam the first.

“Thirteen times in your Scripture the expression occurs, ‘Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.’ He’s the ultimate source of rebellion in the northern kingdom.

“Verse 25: ‘He restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the LORD God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gath-hepher.’

“One of the reasons Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh is because he didn’t want God to deliver Nineveh; he wanted God to destroy them. Jonah’s prophesying here about the same time that Hosea is going to be.

“God used Jeroboam the son of Joash to deliver Israel, so they were not completely wiped out and destroyed at this time. This guy is the last king in the northern kingdom who God ever operated through.

“So when you come to Hosea and these other prophets, when they list the kings in Israel they stop with this guy because he’s the last one God worked through and the prophets don’t recognize any of the rest of the kings; they’re unfit to mention in Hosea and the other prophets when they list the heritage and the time period in which they’re operating.

“You see verse 29: ‘And Jeroboam slept with his fathers, even with the kings of Israel; and Zachariah his son reigned in his stead.’

“Almost every one of his descendants doesn’t sleep with their fathers. You know what happens to them? They get bumped off. Even the kings of Israel and Zechariah his son reigned in his stead.

“Chapter 15:8 says, 'In the thirty and eighth year of Azariah king of Judah did Zachariah the son of Jeroboam reign over Israel in Samaria six months.'
[9] And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, as his fathers had done: he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.
[10] And Shallum the son of Jabesh conspired against him, and smote him before the people, and slew him, and reigned in his stead.

“So he’s assassinated. There’s a coup in his government and they take him out and they sort of ‘Et Tu, Brute?’ and they turn on him and slay him. And then this dude Shallum takes over.

“So you come to verse 13: Shallum the son of Jabesh began to reign in the nine and thirtieth year of Uzziah king of Judah; and he reigned a full month in Samaria.
[14] For Menahem the son of Gadi went up from Tirzah, and came to Samaria, and smote Shallum the son of Jabesh in Samaria, and slew him, and reigned in his stead.

“This dude didn’t get to reign but a month before somebody came and bumped him off! Another assassination.

“Verse 25 says, ‘But Pekah the son of Remaliah, a captain of his, conspired against him, and smote him in Samaria, in the palace of the king's house, with Argob and Arieh, and with him fifty men of the Gileadites: and he killed him, and reigned in his room.’

“Verse 30 says, ‘And Hoshea the son of Elah made a conspiracy against Pekah the son of Remaliah, and smote him, and slew him, and reigned in his stead, in the twentieth year of Jotham the son of Uzziah.’

“You go through here and what’s happening is just total complete bedlam in the northern kingdom and it comes to the place, you come over to chapter 17, Elah (that’s the guy who bumps off his predecessor).

The chapter reveals, “In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
[7] For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharoah king of Egypt, and had feared other gods.’

“The Assyrian captivity takes over so this is the last king in the northern kingdom. After Jeroboam the son of Joash, all of the kings after him, there’s just contention, fighting, murder, confusion and they’re just going down, down, down until finally they’re carried away into captivity.

“That carrying away into captivity is a warning of God to the southern kingdom because the southern kingdom was always an illegitimate kingdom. In the first 11 chapters of I Kings you’ve got King David, he dies, Solomon takes the throne and you have the reign of Solomon. Then in chapter 11 Solomon dies. When he died, he had a son Rehoboam take the throne.

“But when Rehoboam took the throne, this guy Jeroboam is going to come along and divide the kingdom. The reason he does that starts in I Kings 11:26.

“Verse 28 says, ‘And the man Jeroboam was a mighty man of valour: and Solomon seeing the young man that he was industrious, he made him ruler over all the charge of the house of Joseph.’

“A cross reference to think about is Genesis 10:8 when Nimrod became a mighty hunter before the Lord. There’s a spiritual connection between that with Nimrod and what’s going to happen with this character here.

“Jeroboam is told by the prophet, ‘God’s going to use you to divide the kingdom and the reason he’s going to do it is because of worshipping false gods.’  Baal worship begins in Genesis 10 with Nimrod and that false, counterfeit religion culminates with the Tower of Babel.”

(To be continued . . .) 

'He will be found of you'

As king of Judah, Asa reigned for 41 years in the southern kingdom. I Kings 15:11-12 says, “And Asa did that which was right in the eyes of the LORD, as did David his father. And he took away the sodomites out of the land, and removed all the idols that his fathers had made.”

Jordan says, “Asa didn’t come from a line of good and godly kings, but he was one. Notice his fathers had polluted the land with idolatry (introducing Baal worship into the land) and took God’s Word out of the culture so thoroughly that the sodomites had taken over.

“It’s interesting when you go through your Old Testament and notice that every time the Word of God was removed from Israel, and false religions came in (in other words, God’s Word was not the cultural norm), almost always the sodomites came in.

“They’re there all along but they’re down in the gutter, under the cover, back in the dark where they belonged. But when the light of the Word of God to Israel became dim and the culture was darkened . . . Look, if you’re doing deeds in darkness and the darkness begins to spread out in the culture, where do you do your deeds? Everywhere.

“When there’s light in the culture, you do it in the closet. You don’t pass laws to have that happen; you preach God’s Word to have that happen. Every time the Word of God was not honored, the Israelites kept going back to these activities.

“Now, when you talk about sodomy, the homosexual lifestyle, you’re talking about the extreme in sexual perversion, which by the time you get to the extreme, you’ve walked through all the other things to get there.

“Oftentimes, the Bible will describe the extreme, understanding that you have to go through all this other to get to that extreme. So you have this complete cultural breakdown of morality and what’s right and wrong and Asa came along and got rid of all that and turned it around!

“The verse says he removed all the idols that his FATHERS had made. Think about it. Notice in verse 10 he does what his father David did. But between him and David, he had a daddy and a granddaddy and a great-granddaddy before you get back to the great-great-granddaddy David.

“Asa didn’t grow up in a godly home. His grandfather, Rehoboam, if you look at the last verse in chapter 14: ‘And Rehoboam slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David. And his mother's name was Naamah an Ammonitess. And Abijam his son reigned in his stead.’

“I Kings 15:8 says, ‘And Abijam slept with his fathers; and they buried him in the city of David: and Asa his son reigned in his stead.’

“Between Asa’s daddy, Abijam, and his granddaddy Rehoboam, these two guys were real rascals! They were bad kings. Asa’s daddy was a bad dude; he subverted Israel, followed Baal, and rejected God’s Word. His daddy and granddaddy were the same.

“Now Asa’s great-granddaddy (Rehoboam’s daddy) was Solomon, the guys who’s ‘heart was divided.’ He starts out great but then he gets hooked up with all this false religion and they turned his heart from the Lord.

“Solomon’s daddy was David. David was the great good king in Israel. ‘The man after God’s own heart.’ II Chronicles 14 says, ‘So Abijah slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city of David: and Asa his son reigned in his stead. 'In his days the land was quiet ten years.
[2] And Asa did that which was good and right in the eyes of the LORD his God:
[3] For he took away the altars of the strange gods, and the high places, and brake down the images, and cut down the groves:
[4] And commanded Judah to seek the LORD God of their fathers, and to do the law and the commandment.
[5] Also he took away out of all the cities of Judah the high places and the images: and the kingdom was quiet before him. ‘

“Asa turns the whole culture around! Here’s how this came about. Chapter 15 says: ‘And the Spirit of God came upon Azariah the son of Oded:
[2] And he went out to meet Asa, and said unto him, Hear ye me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin; The LORD is with you, while ye be with him; and if ye seek him, he will be found of you; but if ye forsake him, he will forsake you.’

“You read on down through there and you see Asa does exactly what God said to do. And one of the great revivals in Israel came because Asa made a choice to ‘be ye strong therefore.’

“The prophet comes not to be like his fathers, but to go all the way back to David to the covenant God made with Israel and to stand on the Word of God, and he made that choice and that choice produced results. And Asa cleaned out the Baal worship and all of the social and moral effects that come from forsaking God’s Word.

“Now the question then is, ‘Well, what about his boy? What did his son decide to do? Where did he wind up?’

“When Asa dies at the end of chapter 16, in chapter 20: 32 you read of son Jehoshaphat that he ‘walked in the way of Asa his father, and departed not from it, doing that which was right in the sight of the LORD.’

“Jehoshaphat builds on what his daddy did. He doesn’t have to go around and destroy all the Baal worship. Having had the ground already cleared away for him, he can plant and, if you go down through II Chronicles 17: 5, it says, ‘Therefore the LORD stablished the kingdom in his hand; and all Judah brought to Jehoshaphat presents; and he had riches and honour in abundance. And his heart was lifted up in the ways of the LORD.’

“Not lifted up in the ways of his OWN thinking, but he’s encouraged in the Lord! What he does is he sends teachers out to teach the Word of God. In verse 8, he sends out Levites, the priests. Verse 9 says, ‘And they taught in Judah, and had the book of the law of the LORD with them, and went about throughout all the cities of Judah, and taught the people.’

 “Whoa! They got the Book! They’ve got the Book that goes all the way back to Moses! We call it the Received Text. They’ve got God’s Book and He sends it out to be taught and re-establishes the teaching priests.

“They go out into all the towns and villages and Jehoshaphat sends them out to teach God’s Word, and when it begins to permeated Israel again, God’s Word and the truth of who Israel was in the program of God began to take root again in the nation and they had one of the greatest revivals in all of the nation’s history under Asa’s boy!

“In fact, if you go on down through there, you’ll see that not just Israel, but the heathen nations around Israel began to fear the Lord God of Israel because of the blessings of God on Israel as a result of them keeping His Word. We call that social impact. You ever hear anybody talk about, ‘We want to be socially relevant’? These dudes were!

“What a dad Asa was. Imagine the benediction it would have been for him to be able to look and see what his son did in Israel! What a heritage to pass on!”

'The blow torch is on its way'

You got to love this verse in Joel 1: “That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten.”

In another words, there’s complete, total devastation overtaking the land. The passage goes on: “Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.
[6] For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion.
[7] He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white.”

Jordan explains, “If you want to kill a fig tree just strip the bark off of it. You go on down through the chapter and it’s talking about the captivity.

“He’s saying, ‘You’ve seen all these judgments take place—the palmerworm, the locust, the canker worm—Look around you what’s happened!’

“Leviticus 26, that fourth judgment--the pestilence that that fourth cycle of chastisement’s going to bring on Israel--it’s there! You’ve already experienced it! Now the fifth is coming. And Joel focuses on what that fifth course coming--Israel’s going to be destroyed but it won’t be left forever.

“Joel 3:9-10 says, 9] Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up:
[10] Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong.

“That quote’s on the wall across the street from the United Nations. It comes out of Isaiah 2 when He describes the kingdom. Where did they get the swords and the spears to start with? Before they got swords and spears to beat into plowshares and pruninghooks, they had taken their plowshares and beaten them into swords! They did that in order to face Armageddon.

“He goes on down to describe the kingdom and the blessing that are going to come. Verse 21 says, ‘For I will cleanse their blood that I have not cleansed: for the LORD dwelleth in Zion.’ Again, they start with the beginning of the fourth course over here and they end with the end of it. And it’s that phase one and phase five of that thing stuck together in these Minor Prophets. They do that consistently.

*****

“Amos is in the northern kingdom like Hosea, but he’s also ministering during the time that Isaiah and Hosea are ministering. So these guys are contemporaries and again, what that’s telling you is, what they’re focusing on is the things that are going to cause Israel to go into captivity, the fact that Israel has a remedy for it, and the fact God’s going to avenge the Gentile nations (that’s what Joel is about—He’s going to take the yoke of the Gentile nations off of them) and they have the opportunity to have Him work on their behalf.

“Amos 1:2 says, ‘And he said, The LORD will roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the habitations of the shepherds shall mourn, and the top of Carmel shall wither.’ He told you that back in Joel 3:16.

“That passage is talking about the Second Advent when He shakes the heavens—when, as Isaiah says, ‘The earth reels to and fro in the heavens like a drunken man.’ It’s when Jesus talks about peoples’ ‘heart failing them for fear and for the roaring of the oceans.’ How do you make the oceans roar like that? Well, you take a glass of water and you jiggle it around . . . it’s when He shakes the earth.

*****

“Today they talk about global warming covering up islands and so forth. That’s a hoax, of course. The planet can take care of itself . . . The thing is if you get man out of there, you know what happens? The planet grows back and goes back to like it wanted to be to start with before man got in there.

“Amos verse 2: ‘The Lord will roar from Zion.’ Jeremiah 25 uses that terminology to describe the coming of Nebuchadnezzar. Joel just used it to describe the coming of Christ at the end. That’s why ‘the day of the Lord’ begins with Nebuchadnezzar (the beginning of the captivity) but isn’t executed in its fullness until the end under the Antichrist. Then Christ comes back and destroys him.

“The first four courses have come, now the fifth one has come. It says, ‘Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.’ Every preacher I ever met preached at least one or two evangelistic meetings off of that. What that’s talking about is the fifth course is coming: ‘You didn’t pay attention. I’m coming and when I come, I’m coming to carry you away into captivity.’

*****

“When you get to the vision of Obadiah, you notice it’s just one chapter, 21 verses and 669 words. It’s the second shortest book in the Bible; only the Book of John is shorter. There it is stuck up in the prophets and you say, ‘What in the world is Obadiah for?’

“Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum are three Minor Prophets who deal with specific Gentile nations. This whole prophecy is a prophecy about Edom and God’s going to deal with the transgression of Edom against His people. The descendants of Esau became the Edomites and they fought against the Israelites and there was bad blood between them all along. So there’s going to be a special dealing by God against the Edomites.

“Psalm 83 is about the Edomites wanting to ‘make them no more a nation in the earth.’ Nineveh (from the Book of Jonah) was another source of persecution which in the last days will be part of the headquarters of the Antichrist. In fact, he’ll have a special retreat there in Nineveh during the 70^th week of Daniel.

“The Book of Nahum is about the wrath upon the territory and the people associated with the Antichrist. The Ninevites, the captivity, the Assyrians and so forth, but now you’re looking not at Israel and just the captivity; you look at Nahum 1:5 says, ‘The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence, yea, the world, and all that dwell therein.’

“People read that and say, ‘Well, that didn’t happen back in the captivity. Therefore it just must be figurative.’ But what that is is he says this about what’s over here; you know when you begin to study the prophets and the Second Advent you find out that’s literally going to happen and it’s going to happen in the territory where these people are.

“Now, I’ve talked to you about the fact there are openings in that part of the world over there that go down into the center of the earth into the underworld and there are pathways, hallways, shafts that go down into the earth that have locks and doors and keys and bars on them where these spirit creatures are put down in prison and held in the bottomless pit and Tartarus and all those kind of things.

“Those things are real. When Christ comes back, He’s literally going to melt out the earth. Just burn it out and they’ll be a big hole that goes down into there. And Nahum’s talking about that stuff becoming a reality in front of them.

*****

“After Nahum comes Habakkuk.  Habakkuk is the only one of the prophets that you got absolutely no idea who he is. He doesn’t tell you. He doesn’t tell you WHEN he is, doesn’t tell you what he’s about. But the burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see: ‘Oh how long shall I cry?’ He sees the fifth course, he sees the enemy coming and he cries out, ‘Lord, they’re wicked! We’re your people! Why you doin’ this?!’

“And this is the great passage starting in verse 13: ‘Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he?’

“It’s saying, ‘Well, you’re nailing us, but don’t you see what they are?!’ And God answers Habakkuk by telling him, ‘You know what, I’m gonna fix the whole thing.’

“Chapter 3 of Habakkuk is one of the great passages in the Scripture on the route, the flight path of the Second Advent. The same path that was taken by the Assyrian when he came into Israel. The same path that was taken in the captivity over here in Judah is going to be the path the Antichrist follows when he comes down against Israel in the last days, and the way the Lord defends against it will be exactly the same.

*****

“Zephaniah is the last one of the pre-exile prophets. ‘I will utterly consume all from off the land.’ Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Nahum—those books are literally, absolute, utter, destructive calamity and judgment. Notice how short they are? What’s happened is you’ve come to the place where he’s not telling them, ‘Here’s why it’s coming and you can get right!’

“Now He’s just saying, ‘Back up, boys, the blow torch is on its way!’ "

One million heathen!

In last night’s study on the Minor Prophets, Jordan mentioned Jonah. I am working on a new piece on some of the new material being presented, but for now here is an old piece I wrote on Jonah: 

Not even six months ago, I had yet another person warn me that I “believe in fairytales,” saying something to the effect, “Do you really think a grown man was swallowed by a whale and, after sleeping three days inside its belly, was vomited up alive onto the shore?!" 

I thought, “If only you knew how much more there is to Jonah’s story than just that, as big as that was, you might have a glimpse of appreciating it.” 

Here’s how my pastor, Richard Jordan, tells a side of Jonah that Bible-mockers will likely never examine for its richness in revealing human nature:

“If you were to use the number of people converted under one man’s ministry as the measure of greatness then, without a doubt, the greatest preacher of the Bible is Jonah.

 

“It’s estimated that over 1 million Ninevites were converted under Jonah’s ministry; they repented as a result of his preaching and God spared them.

 

“In Matthew 12, the Lord Jesus Christ, in referring to Himself as Israel’s prophet, priest and king, even says ‘a greater than Jonas is here.’ Jonah is an important man in the purpose and plan of God and yet there he is out on a hillside—bitter, resentful, pitying himself, muttering and complaining against God.

 

“The salvation of over 1 million heathen, God-hating Gentiles ought to thrill anybody and yet Jonah turned it into a depressing, miserable experience. Instead of being elated at the way God had used him to bring salvation to so many undeserving souls, Jonah became strangely depressed. Actually, he became enraged!

 

“You read in Jonah 4 that it ‘displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.
[2] And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.
[3] Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.’

 

“He’s saying, “I just knew it, Lord! I mean, I knew that if I went down there and preached to the people they’d repent. . . That’s the reason I ran to start with! I knew better than you did.’

 

“He’s mad; he’s angry. He’s sore displeased and then he gets resentful, and pretty soon he’s saying, ‘Just kill me, will you?! Rub me out! It’s better for me not to live than to see this stuff going on!’

 

“Do you get the idea he didn’t like those Ninevites. He’d been praying, ‘Lord, smite ’em for me!’ And he had a right to feel that, by the way. The Ninevites hated Israel. Nineveh had many times persecuted Israel mercilessly and had done dastardly things to them.

 

“Jonah was a political statesman in Israel, so you could understand the politics of the thing and the personal feelings he had. But instead of rejoicing as a child of Abraham in being given the opportunity to go out and see these nations submit themselves to the God of Abraham, he got resentful.

 

“Now, if you’re a psychologist you’d look at chapter 4 and try to probe for some deep-seated emotional problem in the life of Jonah to account for his distressed state.

 

“Maybe you’d say, ‘Well, it’s understandable; it’s just the natural emotional letdown following this great preaching tour he went on for 40 days.’ Or maybe you’d say, ‘His momma didn’t properly potty-train him as a boy.’

 

“The fact is, Jonah was ‘displeased exceedingly,’ and he was very angry, and that’s the problem. In verse 5 you see he’s now gone off to pout. It says, ‘So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city.’

 

“That’s that loneliness, the seclusion, the complaining, the muttering that comes along with the brooding. Instead of Jonah responding in faith, he responds in bitterness and it torments him.

 

“In verse 6 and following is a weird thing; watch how the Lord fixes him. He’s going to try and teach Jonah a lesson here: “And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd.
[7] But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.
[8] And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live.
[9] And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death.
[10] Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night:
[11] And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?”

 

“Do you see how Jonah was ‘exceedingly glad of the gourd,’ but then God prepared a worm and ‘a vehement east wind’ and there Jonah goes again, saying, ‘It is better for me to die than to live’?

 

“God said to Jonah, ‘Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd?’ and Jonah said, ‘I do well to be angry even unto death,’ meaning, ‘Yes, I do! I got a right to be mad and I’m gonna be mad! I’m offended! I’m mad! I’ve been hurt!’

 

“That’s self-pity and he’s hanging on to it, claiming a light for it, arguing his case against God that he’s got a right to be mad—a right to be depressed, a right to feel sorry for himself. No wonder the guy’s in the slew of despond.

 

“If Jonah had trusted God for the outcome instead of demanding his own way—instead of his self-pity short-circuiting his potential for rejoicing so that he withdrew into the anguish of seclusion, muttering to himself and complaining against God—and had a thankful heart, rejoicing in what God was doing, well there could have been not only a great spiritual revival in Nineveh, but he would have never gone into this (downward spiral).

 

“I look at that and I think, ‘There’s all those Gentiles down in Nineveh praising God for deliverance from the Judgment, and there’s the prophet of God who brought them the message sitting out there under the hill, all mad because they’re happy in the Lord!’ That’s what depression does!”

 

Here is more old stuff related to current studies on the Minor Prophets:

 

II Kings 15:4 talks about how “the people sacrificed and burnt incense still on the high places.”

 

Jordan says, “You remember in Mark 5 where it says that when they found the demoniac from Gadera, it says he would dwell in the mountains—up in the high places?

 

“God repeatedly told Israel not to build a grove: ‘Don't go out and build some little religious shrine with an idol in the middle as an aid to worship.’ Why? Because that's what the pagans did. And the pagans put those things on high places.

 

“In II Kings they had these little high spots out there where they had set up these little church buildings with this grove-like situation. They have these little shrines they worship in and offer sacrifices in, and they’re always put upon the high places. That’s, in fact, where the church steeple came from.”

 

*****

 

Here are two more examples in Scripture of God warning of this same practice:

 

Ezekiel 6:13 says, “Then shall ye know that I am the LORD, when their slain men shall be among their idols round about their altars, upon every high hill, in all the tops of the mountains, and under every green tree, and under every thick oak, the place where they did offer sweet savour to all their idols.”

 

Hosea 4: 12-13 says, “My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them: for the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err, and they have gone a whoring from under their God.
[13] They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains, and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks and poplars and elms, because the shadow thereof is good: therefore your daughters shall commit whoredom, and your spouses shall commit adultery.”

Hosea's healing prescription

Hosea preached over a long period of time. “He wasn’t just there as a flash in the pan,” says Jordan. “You see Obadiah in one shot, but Hosea ministered a long time.

“Amos 1:1 says, ‘The words of Amos, who was among the herdman of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel, two years before the earthquake.’

“So Amos is going to be a contemporary at some point with Hosea, and it helps you to kind of grasp the doctrine; the focus of what these Minor Prophets are going to pick up on.

“I’ve tried to say to you that the Major Prophets; they kind of lay the whole scope of the land. Then the Minor Prophets come back and hook onto certain specific issues and amplify those specific issues.

“You notice that with Israel is Jonah, Amos and Hosea. For Judah, you’ve got Obadiah and Joel together, Micah and Isaiah together, Nahum, Zephaniah, Habakkuk and Jeremiah kind of work in the same time groupings. It’s sort of the chronology of their ministry. Now they’re not that way in the Scripture. The reason for that is the doctrine that’s being developed.

“It’s fascinating that you see Isaiah and Micah together. There are whole sections of Micah which are almost, verbally, exactly the same as in Isaiah. You take Micah 4 and Isaiah 2 and there are whole sections of them that are the same, where obviously they knew each other and their ministering things . . .  they say those things and draw different things out of them, but it’s obvious that they knew one another and worked together, that kind of thing.

“By the way, then you notice the post-exilic prophets—Zechariah, Haggai and Malachi. They’re all put together in this doctrinal design. The first nine, the pre-exile prophets, lead to an issue that they conclude with that they’re focusing on and the post-exile prophets are designed to do one very specific thing for Israel.

“It’s important to notice these writing prophets are all in that fourth course and the early part of that fifth course. And he’s identifying where they are in that. Now it’s important to see that because then you see the captivity these guys are going into and, by the way, Hosea is in Judah writing mainly about the northern kingdom. The northern kingdom goes into captivity before the southern kingdom. Jeremiah’s told them about that.

“When Judah goes into captivity, Jeremiah says, ‘Don’t you see what God did with your rebellious sister up north? He carried them away.’ The Assyrians took them away. The fifth course of judgment on the northern kingdom literally began while the fourth course was still going on in the southern kingdom. Jeremiah uses the term ‘adulterous wife’ for the northern kingdom.

“So when you come to Hosea, what does God tell him to do? Verse 2 says, ‘The beginning of the word of the LORD by Hosea. And the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the LORD.’

“Literally the Lord tells Hosea, ‘Come here, I got a job for you. I want you to go marry a gal but the gal I want you to marry is going to be a prostitute. She’s not going to be faithful to you. She’s going to have children by you and by others. And I want you to love her and be faithful to her even though she’s not going to be faithful to you.’

“Hosea’s a picture of Jehovah and Gomer (Hosea’s wife) . . . you know names in the Bible have meanings. Years ago, I heard a preacher say Gomer meant ‘fruitcake.’ I’ve never been able to validate that.

“When I tell you Hosea means ‘Jehovah God is salvation,’ I get that out of the Jewish Encyclopedia. But every time I hear Gomer I think ‘fruitcake’ because that’s just what she was whether her name really meant that or not.

“Gomer represented Israel in that apostate, treacherous, rebellious condition and that’s why when they have the children he names the kids . . . You see he names one of them Lo-ruhamah (meaning ‘I’ll have no mercy’). Then he names one Lo-ammi (meaning ‘not my people’) and he had another one Ru-hamah (meaning, ‘you’re going to be my people again.’)

“God’s going to send judgment, no mercy. He’s going to cut Israel off, put them in captivity, but then He’s going to bring them back. And Hosea’s going to be a living demonstration of that to the nation.

“Now when you understand that, and you’re to understand where they are, what He’s doing in Hosea and what He’ll do in these first minor prophets is point out to Israel, ‘Here’s why the judgment’s coming and it’s not too late for you turn around and not get it.’

“At the end of the Book of Hosea, after he gives all these details about why and what’s going on and so forth and what the problem is, when you come to the end of the book, he carries you to the end of the captivity. I emphasize that because the beginning and the end connect together.

“In Hosea, when he moves you through the captivity, he moves from the beginning to the end. All the stuff in between it’s just sort of like its looped back around to the beginning again. And that’s why when you find the first phase of the captivity, often it will be replayed in the final stage; that is the Antichrist and the 70^th week of Daniel.

In Hosea 14, you see he’s calling them to repent—turn back to God. The chapter starts, ‘O Israel, return unto the LORD thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity.
[2] Take with you words, and turn to the LORD: say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips.’

In Hebrews 13, he talks about giving the offering of their lips. The whole point was that Israel still had the opportunity for repentance. Verse 4 says, ‘Yet I am the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but me: for there is no saviour beside me.’

“From there on down to the end of the chapter, he’s describing the kingdom. He looks forward to the day when the Lord comes back and regathers Israel out of the captivity.

“In Hosea 5 is one of these passages that’s just sort of the frosting on the cupcake. Hosea 5:15 says, ‘I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early.’

“He’s saying, ‘I’m going to leave.’ He was the Lord God of all the earth; now he’s going to leave Israel and go back and become the Lord God of heaven.

“At the end of II Chronicles 36, when you read about the captivity, that’s what He’s described as: the Lord God of heaven. In Joshua 3, when He took them into their land, He was the Lord God of all the earth leading Israel into the land to reclaim the earth. They fail; He goes away.

“He says, ‘I will go and return to my place till they acknowledge their offense.’ The captivity’s not going to go on forever. Here’s what they say, chapter 6, ‘Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.
[2] After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.

“That passage is literally talking about the Second Advent of Christ.

"Then down to verse 11: ‘Also, O Judah, he hath set an harvest for thee, when I returned the captivity of my people.’

"So even though He starts out with the captivity--the fourth course is here, the fifth’s coming and captivity’s going to happen if you don’t get right--He tells them the captivity won’t last forever. There’s hope and there’s a prescription for Israel to be cleansed and taken into their kingdom.”

In good times and in bad

In his new Wednesday night series of studies on the minor prophets, Jordan spoke of God's order to Hosea to marry a prostitute, etc. This reminded me of this article I wrote several years ago on the subject: 

 

 

What’s fascinating is how much God in Scripture talks about being married to Israel and refers to Himself as the husband who’s repeatedly cheated on with pagan “lovers.”

In one particularly blatant passage in Isaiah 50, God argues, “Thus saith the LORD, Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.
[2] Wherefore, when I came, was there no man? when I called, was there none to answer? Is my hand shortened at all, that it cannot redeem? or have I no power to deliver? behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness: their fish stinketh, because there is no water, and dieth for thirst.”

Jordan explains, “God says, ‘Where’s the bill of divorcement I gave you?! Look at what you’ve done to me and yet I didn’t leave you! You left ME! I didn’t depart; you departed!”

*****

In another incredibly blunt confrontation, God says in Hosea 2, “Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts; Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst.”

He continues, “And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them: then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now.
[8] For she did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal.
[9] Therefore will I return, and take away my corn in the time thereof, and my wine in the season thereof, and will recover my wool and my flax given to cover her nakedness.
[10] And now will I discover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and none shall deliver her out of mine hand.
[11] I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.
[12] And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, whereof she hath said, These are my rewards that my lovers have given me: and I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them.
[13] And I will visit upon her the days of Baalim, wherein she burned incense to them, and she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and she went after her lovers, and forgat me, saith the LORD.
[14] Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.
[15] And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope: and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.”

*****

By way of example, God orders the prophet Hosea to, “Go find you a prostitute and marry her,” explains Jordan. “So, Hosea married a woman named Gomer. Somebody told me years ago that name means ‘fruitcake.’ It sure does apply. God says, ‘Just go love her and watch what happens,’ and she takes advantage of him; she goes after other lovers. And God says, ‘You see what’s happening to Hosea; that’s what Israel’s done with me!”

God’s reconciliation with his wife comes in Hosea 2:19-20 when He vows, “And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies.
[20] I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the LORD.”

Just before this, in verse 16, God assured Israel that one day “thou shalt call me Ishi; and shalt call me no more Baali.”

Jordan says, “Ishi means ‘my husband.’ They’re going to go back to calling Him ‘my husband’ instead of calling him by one of the names of the false gods that they’d been worshipping. He says, ‘I will betroth thee unto me forever.’ The word ‘betroth’ means faithfulness. ‘I’ll make you faithful to me.’

“God is literally going to make them faithful to Him. He’s going to give them power to become His faithful people. God’s going to restore Israel and rejoice over her as over a virgin bride.”

*****

In Isaiah 62, God promises, “Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzi-bah, and thy land Beulah: for the LORD delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married.
[5] For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.”

Jordan says, “That’s that thing about Beulah land—the word means ‘married’ and Hephzi-bah means ‘the one in whom I delight.’ God’s going to take Israel and marry them to the land. He’s going to put them in the land where they never depart again. And then He’s going to have them joined to Him so they’re never separated again.”

Beulah Land is a well-known gospel hymn dating from the late 1800s, in which the chorus goes:

O Beulah land, sweet Beulah land!

As on thy highest mount I stand,

I look away across the sea

Where mansions are prepared for me

And view the shining glory shore

My heaven, my home forever more.

 

Wikipedia defines Isaiah 62:4 as being “in reference to the return of the Jews from their exile in Babylon in which the Jews shall no longer be called Forsaken, but Hephzibah (My Delight Is in Her), and Jerusalem shall no longer be called Desolate, but Beulah (Married). This implies that the Jews have turned back to the worship of God.

“The idea the hymn presents that Heaven can be seen from Beulah land comes from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress in which he states "Therefore it is, I say, that the Enchanted ground [i.e. Heaven] is placed so nigh to the land Beulah and so near the end of their race."

 

*****

Another very famous marriage passage, Jeremiah 31:31-33, states, “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:
[32] Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:
[33] But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

Jordan explains, ‘The implication is that what He’s going to do with Israel in the new covenant is to restore the marriage relationship that they’ve broken. He’s going to restore them back to Himself as His wife. That’s why Revelation talks about it being ‘the bride, the Lamb’s wife.’ She’s already His wife but now she’s going to be restored back to purity and fidelity.”

*****

Jordan summarizes, “What’s going on with Israel is they were committing spiritual adultery. They were going after all these other gods, and they were serially being unfaithful to God. They were spiritually polygamists, if you want to say that.

“People talk about polygamy, but I laugh at a culture . . . I was listening on the TV news recently about a Mormon guy in jail for having multiple wives. I’m thinking, ‘How in the world could a congressman put some dude in jail for having multiple wives when they believe in serial polygamy and most of them practice it!’

“Having one wife after another after another after another. I mean, it’s not a whole lot of difference, folks. If you’re going to have one wife and then get you a different one and then get another different one, okay you did it serially and the (Mormons) just did it all at once!

“Many times I’ve quoted (comics curmudgeon) Barney Google: ‘Pity the man with a soul so tough to say one wife is not enough.’ And I find that works the other way too.

“By the way, the passage people use to tell you the Body of Christ is the bride of Christ is generally Ephesians 5, where Paul’s talking about marriage. I scratch my head in wonderment why people would say our marriage is a picture of Christ when that passage says our relationship with Christ is a picture of our marriage. Would you want your marriage to be a picture of your relationship with Christ? Well, I hope not.”

Name game

“And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” says Ephesians 2:6.

This goes along with Ephesians 1: 20: “Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places.”

Jordan explains, “He sits Him there and He sits as the head of the heavenly government. Where do you sit? We participate with Him in His status; in His government. We literally participate in the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ.

*****

Acts 26:15 says, “And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.”

Jordan says, “Can you imagine the shock that must have been to the Apostle Paul? In my mind when I try to make a video of that, I see Paul saying, ‘Who art thou, Lord?! Please don’t say Jesus, please don’t say Jesus, please don’t say Jesus!!!’

“Paul believed in Jehovah. He was an orthodox, rabbinical scholar. He knew who that was who opened the heavens. That was the God of the Bible. He knew that! When he said, ‘Who art thou, Lord?’ that question goes back to the Book of Genesis.

“When Jacob wrestled with the Lord he said, ‘Tell me your name!’ Moses does it in Exodus 3. He says, ‘Tell me, who am I supposed to tell them sent me?!’ In the Book of Judge Gideon’s mom and dad say, ‘Tell us who you are! Who is this guy?’ And He wouldn’t tell any of them!

“Paul said, ‘I got a question. Who are you?’ You know good and well he was just going, ‘Oh, man!’ because he’d been out killing; he hated Christ’s followers.

*****

“The inheritance is going to be based upon some building UP into me now.  Col. 3:23 says, ‘And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.’ Let it come out of your inner man. Let it come out of your heart. ‘As a man thinketh in his heart so is he . . .’

“I’m not doing it with eye service to please men. I’m doing it because the Lord allows me by His grace to respond and to serve. Everything I need for fulfillment, for love, for purpose, for meaning, whatever  . . . you don’t need money, you don’t need fame.

“People get along without that all the time. You know what you need? You need some spiritual things that are lasting . . . You need something that reaches down into who you are. Not the circumstances. The things that are lasting are in Him.

“Find out what He would do in that situation and then do that and have a heart of obedience. When you build that skill set into your life of being able to respond to life as He would: ‘I’m going to do this as unto the Lord; I’m going to take what the Lord’s will is and I’m going to apply it to that.’

*****

“Col. 3:25 says, ‘But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done: and there is no respect of persons.’

“Notice in verse 24, you’re going to receive, not the inheritance--you get the inheritance because you’re in the family. You’re an heir of God; a joint heir with Jesus Christ because you’re in the body.

“But there is a reward associated with the inheritance and there is a reward that you don’t receive, that you miss out on, if you don’t serve.

“There’s a position and reward IN the inheritance that a person could have had. Ephesians 1:21 says, ‘Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.’

“That’s positions of government, activities that are carried out there in the heavens. But you see he says, ‘And every name that’s named.’

“I read that and I say, ‘That’s a strange thing to say.’ Because there’s some of them that he just doesn’t even name. We always think about CEOs and head guys, but then there’s just a whole bunch of other Joes. Everybody gets a job.”